Voices and influences
Ambrose of Milan
A Roman governor drafted into a bishop's chair before he was even baptized, who made an emperor stand outside the church door until he repented of a massacre.
Summary
This site quotes Ambrose of Milan 908 times across 50 books, and lists 0 works.
- Lived died 397.
- Quoted here most in Luke: 271 of 908.
Ambrose of Milan
- Lived
- died 397
- Tradition
- Patristic
5 of 908 quotations
Own words
Quoted in full, because Ambrose of Milan died in 397 and these works are out of copyright. Each citation below names its edition and its year. A citation naming a modernised text means that edition makes its own editorial changes, and that edition's terms are not in this site's record.
Christ, then, is the beginning of our virtue. He is the beginning of purity, who taught maidens not to look for the embraces of humanity but to yield the purity of their bodies and minds to the service of the Holy Spirit rather than to…
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a husband. Christ is the beginning of frugality, for he became poor, though he was rich. Christ is the beginning of patience, for when he was reviled, he reviled not again. When he was struck, he did not strike back. Christ is the beginning of humility, for he took the form of a servant, though in the majesty of his power he was equal with God the Father. From him each various virtue has taken its origin.For this cause, then, that we might learn these different virtues, "a son was given us, whose beginning was upon his shoulder." That "beginning" is the Lord's cross—the beginning of strong courage, wherewith a way has been opened for the holy martyrs to enter the sufferings of the holy war.
Isaiah 9:6 For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given, and the government will be upon His shoulders. And He will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. BSB
Therefore, in order to call the Gentiles to the grace of his resurrection (for it is indeed a rich and fertile land that produces eternal fruits, fruits a hundred and sixty times over), he subjected his shoulder to work, subjecting himself to the cross, in…
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order to carry our sins. And so the Prophet says: His authority is on his shoulder (Isaiah 9:6), that is, the power of divinity over the bodily passion, or the cross surpassing the body. Therefore, he placed his shoulder on the plow, enduring all insults, subjected to labor in such a way that he was wounded because of our iniquities, and weakened because of our sins.
Isaiah 9:6 For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given, and the government will be upon His shoulders. And He will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. BSB
Accordingly, even at that time, the cross that was to come was prefigured in sign; and at the same time that he was stripped of his tunic, that is, of the flesh he took on, he was stripped of the handsome diversity of colors that…
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represented the virtues. Therefore his tunic, that is, his flesh, was stained with blood, but not his divinity; and his enemies were able to take from him his covering of flesh but not his immortal life.
Genesis 37:23 So when Joseph came to his brothers, they stripped him of his robe—the robe of many colors he was wearing— BSB
Moses indeed killed the Egyptian and became a fugitive from the land of Egypt, in order to avoid the tyrant of that land.
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But he would not have killed that Egyptian man before he had first killed the Egyptian man of spiritual wickedness within himself, and had renounced the luxury of regal honors, considering the reproach of Christ a greater inheritance than the treasures of Egypt.
Exodus 2:12 After looking this way and that and seeing no one, he struck down the Egyptian and hid his body in the sand. BSB
A wish is a request for blessings from God with a promise to fulfill a duty. And so, when you obtain what you have asked for, it is ungrateful to delay the promise.
Deuteronomy 23:21 If you make a vow to the LORD your God, do not be slow to keep it, because He will surely require it of you, and you will be guilty of sin. BSB
Influence, on the record
This site quotes Ambrose of Milan 908 times across 50 books.
This site’s own count of what it does with the voice
The life, in order
The life told as one accountfrom this site's record
Ambrose was born about 339 at Trier, where his father served as praetorian prefect of Gaul — one of the four or five highest offices in the Western empire. The father died young and the family went back to Rome. Ambrose was trained in law and Greek, entered the imperial service, and by about 372 was governor of Aemilia and Liguria, with his seat at Milan. Milan was then the working capital of the West, where the emperor actually lived. In 374 the bishop of Milan died, and the city split. The Arian party and the Nicene party each packed the basilica, and it looked like a riot. The governor went in to keep order and make a speech about calm. Someone in the crowd — the tradition says a child — called out, Ambrose for bishop, and both sides took it up. He was thirty-five, a career administrator, and not baptized. He tried to get out of it. He was baptized, ordained through every clerical rank in eight days, and consecrated bishop on 7 December 374. He gave his land to the church and the rest of his money to the poor, hired a priest named Simplicianus to teach him theology, and started reading Greek Christian writers no one in the Latin West had absorbed yet — Origen, Basil, Athanasius. He learned the job in public, at speed. He turned out to be extraordinary at it. He preached every Sunday and taught the congregation to sing: antiphonal hymns, two sides of the church answering each other, an Eastern practice he planted in the West. Some of the hymns are his own and are still sung. Augustine, who heard him, says he wept at the singing and could not stop. He also decided that the church was not a department of the state, and he made it stick three times. In 385 and again in 386 the Empress Justina, an Arian, demanded that one of Milan's basilicas be handed over for Arian worship, with her son the boy-emperor Valentinian II behind the order. Ambrose refused. Imperial troops surrounded the church. He and the congregation stayed inside, day and night, and he taught them the hymns to keep their courage up through the siege. He sent back the line that made the position permanent: the emperor is within the church, not above it. The troops withdrew. He pressed the same claim in 388 over Callinicum, where a mob of Christians had burned a synagogue and Theodosius ordered the bishop to pay for rebuilding it — a just order, and Ambrose fought it until the emperor gave way. It is the ugliest episode in his record and should be named as what it is. Then came Thessalonica. In 390 a riot there killed the imperial garrison commander, and Theodosius answered by turning his soldiers loose on the crowd in the circus. Something like seven thousand people were killed in a few hours. Ambrose wrote him a private letter — it survives — telling him he could not celebrate the Eucharist in his presence until he repented publicly, and that David had been a great king and still said, I have sinned. When the emperor came to the church in Milan, the bishop met him at the door and did not let him in. Theodosius, master of the Roman world, took off his imperial robes, stood among the penitents for months, and was readmitted at Christmas. No one had seen anything like it. It set a precedent the West lived under for a thousand years: there is a bar the state does not cross, and someone will be standing at the door. His other lasting work was quieter. He wrote On the Duties of the Clergy, a Christian answer to Cicero's book on duty, and treatises on the Holy Spirit and on the sacraments that carried Greek theology into Latin. And he preached the sermons that a rhetoric professor named Augustine came to hear for the technique. Ambrose showed him how to read the Old Testament without stumbling over its surface, took his confession, and baptized him at Easter 387. He kept his door open, ate almost nothing, and worked past exhaustion. He died on Good Friday, 4 April 397, and Milan filled with people who had watched a governor become a shepherd. Sources: Paulinus of Milan, Life of Saint Ambrose; Ambrose, Letters (including Letter 51 to Theodosius); Augustine, Confessions, books 5–9; Theodoret, Ecclesiastical History; Philip Schaff, ed., Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Series II, vol. 10.
908 quotations across 50 books
Where this voice is quoted
After looking this way and that and seeing no one, he struck down the Egyptian and hid his body in the sand.
“Moses indeed killed the Egyptian and became a fugitive from the land of Egypt, in order to avoid the tyrant of that land.”
“Do not come any closer,” God said. “Take off your sandals, for the place where you are standing is holy ground.”
“Pass by like Moses, that you may see the God of Abraham and of Isaac and of Jacob and that you may see a great vision.”
Furthermore, the LORD said to Moses, “Put your hand inside your cloak.”
“Again, another sign which Moses gave points to our Lord Jesus Christ. He put his hand into his bosom and drew it out again, and his hand had become as snow.”
Now go! I will help you as you speak, and I will teach you what to say.”
“The Lord also said to the Apostles, opening their mouths, Receive ye the Holy Ghost, whereby He declared that He is the same Who said to Moses, I will open thy mouth, and teach thee what thou shalt say.”
So Moses and Aaron went to Pharaoh and did just as the LORD had commanded. Aaron threw his staff down before Pharaoh and his officials, and it became a serpent.
“He cast down his rod, and it became a serpent which devoured the serpents of Egypt. This signified that the Word should become flesh to destroy the poison of the dread serpent by the forgiveness and pardon of sins.”
“Tomorrow,” Pharaoh answered. “May it be as you say,” Moses replied, “so that you may know that there is no one like the LORD our God.
“But Pharaoh, who was devoted to beliefs and vain superstitions (Egypt being filled with frogs, which produced empty sounds and noisy clamor), when Moses said to him: 'Appoint a time for me to pray for you, and for your servants, and for your people, so…”
But Moses replied, “It would not be right to do that, because the sacrifices we offer to the LORD our God would be detestable to the Egyptians.
“You tell me that you have felt a difficulty in the text We shall sacrifice the abomination of the Egyptians to the Lord our God.”
Then the LORD said to Moses, “Stretch out your hand over the land of Egypt, so that the locusts may swarm over it and devour every plant in the land—everything…
“Even the locust, by divine grace, penetrates everywhere, and when it has filled the width of each region with its dense swarm, it first strikes without harm, and feeds on the barren land only after receiving the divine signal of permission.”
The waters flowed back and covered the chariots and horsemen—the entire army of Pharaoh that had chased the Israelites into the sea. Not one of them survived.
“The waters of the sea were held back yet at the same time surrounding the Hebrews. They then poured back and brought death upon the Egyptians, so that they destroyed one people and saved the other. What too do we find in the Gospel itself?”
But You blew with Your breath, and the sea covered them. They sank like lead in the mighty waters.
“Moses himself says in his song, "You sent your Spirit, and the sea covered them." You observe that even then holy baptism was prefigured in that passage of the Hebrews, wherein the Egyptian perished, the Hebrew escaped.”
And Moses cried out to the LORD, and the LORD showed him a log. And when he cast it into the waters, they were sweetened.
“Marah was a fountain of most bitter water. Moses cast wood into it and it became sweet. For water without the preaching of the cross of the Lord is of no avail for future salvation.”
When the Israelites saw it, they asked one another, “What is it?” For they did not know what it was.
“"This is the bread that God gave" to you "to eat." Hear who this bread is: "The word," Scripture says, "which God has ordained." This then is the ordination of God; this food nourishes the soul of the wise.”
And unto Me you shall be a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.’ These are the words that you are to speak to the Israelites.”
“How indeed but in his body did Christ expiate the sins of the people? In what did he suffer, save in his body—even as we said: "Christ having suffered in the flesh"?”
Then the LORD said to Moses, “Go to the people and consecrate them today and tomorrow. They must wash their clothes
“However, even the people had to be purified two or three days beforehand, so as to come clean to the sacrifice, as we read in the Old Testament. They even used to wash their clothes.”
Honor your father and mother, so that your days may be long in the land that the LORD your God is giving you.
“The formation of the children is then the prerogative of the parents. Therefore honor your father, that he may bless you. Let the godly man honor his father out of gratitude and the ingrate do so on account of fear.”
You shall not covet your neighbor’s house. You shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, or his manservant or maidservant, or his ox or donkey, or anything that belongs to your…
“Love of money then is an old, an ancient vice, which showed itself even at the declaration of the divine law; for a law was given to check it.”
But if the servant declares, ‘I love my master and my wife and children; I do not want to go free,’
“That man is truly free, a true Hebrew, who is entirely God's. Everything that he possesses shares in freedom. He has nothing in common with the man who rejects freedom and says, "I have loved my master.… I will not go out free."”
Moses entered the cloud as he went up on the mountain, and he remained on the mountain forty days and forty nights.
“If, then, any one desires to see this Image of God, he must love God, that he may be loved by God; and be no longer a servant but a friend, because he has kept the commandments of God, that he may enter into the…”
The twelve stones are to correspond to the names of the sons of Israel, each engraved like a seal with the name of one of the twelve tribes.
“Of these twelve, as of twelve precious stones, is the pillar of our faith built up. For these are the precious stones—sardius, jasper, smaragd, chrysolite, and the rest—woven into the robe of holy Aaron, even of him who bears the likeness of Christ, that is…”
Yet now, if You would only forgive their sin.... But if not, please blot me out of the book that You have written.”
“What reproaches Moses had to bear from his people! But when the Lord would have avenged him on those who reviled him, he often used to offer himself for the people that he might save them from the divine anger.”
Now Moses used to take the tent and pitch it at a distance outside the camp.
“Therefore did Jesus go forth out of the city, that you going out of this world may be above the world.”
But He added, “You cannot see My face, for no one can see Me and live.”
“"Who shall see my face and live?" Scripture said, and rightly so. For our eyes cannot bear the sun's rays, and whoever turns too long in its direction is generally blinded, so they say.”