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
From the sole of your foot to the top of your head, there is no soundness—only wounds and welts and festering sores neither cleansed nor bandaged nor soothed with oil.
“They had nothing to pour. If they had had any oil, they would have poured it on their own wounds. Isaiah cries, "They cannot apply ointment or oil or bandage."”
“What good to Me is your multitude of sacrifices?” says the LORD.
“By saying that he does not delight in the sacrifices of the people, God is saying this: I abound in my own [sacrifice], I do not seek yours, I do not desire whole burnt offerings of rams and the fat of lambs and the blood…”
“Come now, let us reason together,” says the LORD. “Though your sins are like scarlet, they will be as white as snow; though they are as red as crimson, they…
“[One] who is baptized is seen to be purified both according to the law and according to the gospel. According to the law, because Moses sprinkled the blood of the lamb with a bunch of hyssop; according to the gospel, because Christ's garments were white…”
And they were calling out to one another: “Holy, holy, holy is the LORD of Hosts; all the earth is full of His glory.”
“Cherubim and seraphim with unwearied voices praise him and say, "Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God of hosts."”
And with it he touched my mouth and said: “Now that this has touched your lips, your iniquity is removed and your sin is atoned for.”
“Tell me, then, whoever you are who deny the divinity of the Holy Spirit. The Spirit could not be liable to sin, who rather forgives sin. Does an angel forgive? Does an archangel?”
For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given, and the government will be upon His shoulders.
“And not only did the Father send the Son but also gave him, as the Son himself gave himself. For we read, "Grace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ, who gave himself for our sins."”
For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given, and the government will be upon His shoulders.
“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…”
For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given, and the government will be upon His shoulders.
“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…”
And the Light of Israel will become a fire, and its Holy One a flame. In a single day it will burn and devour Assyria’s thorns and thistles.
“And Isaiah shows that the Holy Spirit is not only light but also fire, saying, "And the light of Israel shall be for a fire."”
The cow will graze with the bear, their young will lie down together, and the lion will eat straw like the ox.
“Such is the grace of the waters, that their calves and lions flee from them, so that this prophetic saying about the sanctity of the Church rightly applies to them: Then wolves and lambs will graze together, and lions and oxen will eat straw together.”
The infant will play by the cobra’s den, and the toddler will reach into the viper’s nest.
“Listen to how the flesh of God becomes an antidote: The Word became flesh; He put His hand into the den of vipers, He expelled the venom, He removed sin; that is, He condemned sin in the flesh.”
Wail, O ships of Tarshish, for your harbor has been destroyed!
“"Howl," he says—he repeats it—"O you ships of Carthage, for your strength is laid waste. And it shall come to pass in that day, Tyre shall be abandoned;" and below, "but after seventy years, Tyre shall be as the song of a harlot."”
He will swallow up death forever. The Lord GOD will wipe away the tears from every face and remove the disgrace of His people from the whole earth.
“In the Old Testament the jaw of death is bitter, since it is said, "Strong death is all devouring." In the New Testament the jaw of death is sweet, for it has swallowed death, as the apostle says: "Death is swallowed up in victory!”
We were with child; we writhed in pain; but we gave birth to wind. We have given no salvation to the earth, nor brought any life into the world.
“Isaiah also, proclaiming the resurrection to the people, says that he is the announcer of the Lord's message, for we read thus: "For the mouth of the Lord has spoken, and they shall speak in that day."”
I, the LORD, am its keeper; I water it continually. I guard it night and day so no one can disturb it;
“You have in Isaiah the speech made by the soul of a just man or of the church: "I am a strong city, I am a city besieged," defended by Christ and besieged by the devil.”
Blessed are those who sow beside abundant waters, who let the ox and donkey range freely.
“Accordingly, like a perfect man learned in the law and made firm in the gospel, accept the faith of both Testaments, for, as we read today, "Blessed is he who sows upon every water, where the ox and the donkey tread," that is, who sows…”
Strengthen the limp hands and steady the feeble knees!
“Therefore the traders came from Gilead, that is, from their possessions of or dwelling in the law, and brought their wares to the church, so that that balm might heal the sins of the nations.”
And the glory of the LORD will be revealed, and all humanity together will see it. For the mouth of the LORD has spoken.”
“He [Christ] was a reproach but at the same time also the majesty of the Lord, as it is written, "And the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh together shall see the salvation of God."”
Who has measured the waters in the hollow of his hand, or marked off the heavens with the span of his hand?
“Who would deny that God has made these things, who spoke through the Prophet, saying: 'Who has measured the waters in the hollow of His hand, and marked off the heavens with a span, enclosed the dust of the earth in a measure, and weighed…”
He sits enthroned above the circle of the earth; its dwellers are like grasshoppers.
“Therefore, it is enough to mention the qualities and substance of the heavens that we find in the writings of Isaiah, who expressed the nature of the celestial sphere in ordinary and familiar language, saying that God has made the heavens firm like smoke, not…”
to say to the prisoners, ‘Come out,’ and to those in darkness, ‘Show yourselves.’ They will feed along the pathways, and find pasture on every barren hill.
“[When] we have changed our creditor, we have not entirely escaped, or, rather, we have escaped, but the debt remains, while the interest is canceled, the Lord Jesus saying, "To them that are bound, come forth.”
Behold, I have inscribed you on the palms of My hands; your walls are ever before Me.
“Let us flee these evils and elevate our soul to the image and likeness of God. The flight from evils is the likeness of God, and the image of God is gained through the virtues.”
Lift up your eyes and look around. They all gather together; they come to you.
“And he added: And in the blood of the grape, his garment: that is, in the suffering of his body, he washed the nations with his blood.”
Therefore My people will know My name; therefore they will know on that day that I am He who speaks. Here I am!”
“That is, he extended his hands to a people who did not believe and contradicted: not seeking an ambassador or messenger, but desiring to save his own people, the Lord himself: 'I, who spoke, behold I am here,' he said.”
He grew up before Him like a tender shoot, and like a root out of dry ground.
“Therefore, Christ is both the great mountain and the small mountain: truly great because He is the great Lord and His power is great; small because it is written: You have made him a little lower than the angels.”