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
When extreme hunger came to all the land of Egypt and the people cried out to Pharaoh for food, he told all the Egyptians, “Go to Joseph and do whatever…
“Finally, whoever was suffering from hunger, was sent to Joseph. Who are these people, if not those of whom it is said: They will turn back at evening, and suffer hunger like dogs?”
And every nation came to Joseph in Egypt to buy grain, because the famine was severe over all the earth.
“And all the regions came into Egypt to Joseph to buy; for famine had obtained. For all hunger, whom Christ did not feed. Therefore, let us buy food, with which we can repel hunger.”
When Jacob learned that there was grain in Egypt, he said to his sons, “Why are you staring at one another?”
“And Jacob said to his sons, "Why are you idle? Behold, I have heard that there is grain in Egypt. Go down there and buy food for us."”
But Jacob did not send Joseph’s brother Benjamin with his brothers, for he said, “I am afraid that harm might befall him.”
“Nor does everyone undertake this business matter, but only the sons of Jacob and only those sons of more mature age. Thus ten sons go, whereas the youngest son does not go. The father did not send him; else "infirmity may befall him."”
“My silver has been returned!” he said to his brothers. “It is here in my sack.”
“"There is grain in Egypt"; that is, where the famine is greater, the abundance is greater. There is much grain in Egypt. Surely, and God the Father says, "Out of Egypt I called my son!"”
So they approached Joseph’s steward and spoke to him at the entrance to the house.
“And they began to desire to plead their case to the man who was steward of the house at the door of the house.”
“It is fine,” said the steward. “Do not be afraid. Your God, the God of your father, gave you the treasure that was in your sacks. I received your silver.”
“They indeed had said to him, "We found the money of each one of us in our sacks. We have brought back our money in full weight." O mighty mysteries, and mysteries clearly portrayed! This is to say: Why are you puffed up?”
The steward searched, beginning with the oldest and ending with the youngest—and the cup was found in Benjamin’s sack.
“The sacks of the brothers are first examined according to the order of age of each brother. God's Scripture is teaching you a moral lesson. Previously they sat at the banquet in Joseph's presence in order of age from the firstborn.”
Joseph said to his brothers, “I am Joseph! Is my father still alive?” But they were unable to answer him, because they were terrified in his presence.
“And Joseph ordered all to withdraw so that he could be recognized by his brothers. For, even as Jesus said, he had not come except to the lost sheep that were the lost of the house of Israel.”
Then Joseph said to his brothers, “Please come near me.” And they did so. “I am Joseph, your brother,” he said, “the one you sold into Egypt!
“"Come to me," because I have come near to you, yes, even so far that I made myself a sharer in your nature by taking on flesh.”
Now return quickly to my father and tell him, ‘This is what your son Joseph says: God has made me lord of all Egypt. Come down to me without delay.
“Indeed they are expressed in the same words, so that we may know that Jesus is the same who spoke before in Joseph and afterward in his own body, seeing that he did not change even the words.”
And he sent to his father the following: ten donkeys loaded with the best of Egypt, and ten female donkeys loaded with grain and bread and provisions for his father’s…
“And presents are also sent on ahead to the father. The son does honor to the father; so Christ invites his people with promises and invites them with presents.”
Then Joseph sent his brothers on their way, and as they were leaving, he said to them, “Do not quarrel on the way!”
“Now "he sent away his brothers, and they departed. And Joseph said to them, 'Be not angry on the way.'”
I will go down with you to Egypt, and I will surely bring you back. And Joseph’s own hands will close your eyes.”
“Our God himself also exhorts that people with his own prophecy and promises them advancement in the faith, the fruit of his gift, for he says to them, "Joseph shall put his hand on your eyes."”
Then Jacob called for his sons and said, “Gather around so that I can tell you what will happen to you in the days to come:
“After this blessing was celebrated, he also called his sons (Gen. XLIX, 1). And the one who had preferred the younger to the elder began with the first, so that he might bestow favor upon him in that mystery, and observe the order of age…”
Simeon and Levi are brothers; their swords are weapons of violence.
“For the brothers supplied the reasons for their own misfortune when they claimed to their father that they, although young in years, were vindicators and avengers of a wrong done to the sense of respect and of a violation of chastity.”
Judah, your brothers shall praise you. Your hand shall be on the necks of your enemies; your father’s sons shall bow down to you.
“This text appears to be directed to the patriarch Judah, indeed, but more so that later Judah is meant, the true confessor who was born of that tribe and who alone is praised by his brothers; of them he says, "I will declare your name…”
Judah is a young lion—my son, you return from the prey. Like a lion he crouches and lies down; like a lioness, who dares to rouse him?
“Therefore you have become acquainted with the incarnation; learn of the passion. "Resting, you have slept like a lion."”
He ties his donkey to the vine, his colt to the choicest branch. He washes his garments in wine, his robes in the blood of grapes.
“Let us be bound with bonds of a faith that is like a fruitful branch and cannot be undone, as it were, to that everlasting vine, that is, to the Lord Jesus, who says, "I am the vine; my Father is the gardener."”
Benjamin is a ravenous wolf; in the morning he devours the prey, in the evening he divides the plunder.”
“The devil has many wolves, whom he directs towards the sheep of Christ; and therefore Joseph, being intelligent, snatched the wolf Paul, the enemy who came to plunder the sheep, in order to save his own sheep, making him a teacher from a persecutor.”