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
As they sailed, He fell asleep, and a windstorm came down on the lake, so that the boat was being swamped, and they were in great danger.
“We are told above, moreover, that He passed the night in prayer. How then does He here fall asleep in a storm?”
The disciples went and woke Him, saying, “Master, Master, we are perishing!”
“You must remember that no one can pass from the course of this life without temptations, for temptation is the trial of faith.”
When Jesus stepped ashore, He was met by a demon-possessed man from the town.
“Now although the number of those healed by Christ is different in Luke and Matthew, yet the mystery is one and the same.”
There on the hillside a large herd of pigs was feeding. So the demons begged Jesus to let them enter the pigs, and He gave them permission.
“People are the authors of their own tribulation. If someone did not live like a swine, the devil would never have received power over him. If he did receive power, it would be power not to destroy but to test him.”
When those tending the pigs saw what had happened, they ran off and reported this in the town and countryside.
“When those who kept the herd saw this they fled. For neither the teachers of philosophy nor the chief of the synagogue can bring a cure to perishing mankind. It is Christ alone who takes away the sins of the people.”
Just then a synagogue leader named Jairus came and fell at Jesus’ feet. He begged Him to come to his house,
“But when about to raise the dead, in order to bring faith to the ruler of the synagogue, He first cured the issue of blood.”
because his only daughter, who was about twelve, was dying. As Jesus went with him, the crowds pressed around Him,
“But while the Word of God hastens to this daughter of the ruler that He might save the children of Israel, the holy Church collected from among the Gentiles which was perishing by its falling away into gross crimes, seized first by faith the health…”
including a woman who had suffered from bleeding for twelve years. She had spent all her money on physicians, but no one was able to heal her.
“The assembly of the nations is like the woman who spent all her money on physicians. The assembly of nations also lost all the gifts of nature and squandered the inheritance of life.”
While He was still speaking, someone arrived from the house of the synagogue leader. “Your daughter is dead,” he told Jairus. “Do not bother the Teacher anymore.”
“But still also were the servants of the ruler incredulous with regard to the resurrection, which Jesus had foretold in the Law, fulfilled in the Gospel; therefore say they, Do not trouble him; (Ps. 16.)”
Meanwhile, everyone was weeping and mourning for her. But Jesus said, “Stop weeping; she is not dead but asleep.” And they laughed at Him, knowing that she was dead.
“What shall I say about the daughter of the ruler of the synagogue, at whose death the people were mourning and the flute players were playing their music? In the belief that she was indeed dead, solemn funeral services were being performed.”
But Jesus took her by the hand and called out, “Child, get up!” Her spirit returned, and at once she got up.
“Now the Lord taking hold of the hand of the maid, cured her. Blessed is he whom wisdom takes by the hand, that she may bring him into her secret places, and command to be given him to eat.”
“Take nothing for the journey,” He told them, “no staff, no bag, no bread, no money, no second tunic.
“Of what kind then he ought to be who preaches the Gospel of the kingdom of God is marked out by these Gospel precepts; that is, he must not require the supports of secular aid; and clinging wholly to faith, he must believe that the…”
Then the apostles returned and reported to Jesus all that they had done. Taking them away privately, He withdrew to a town called Bethsaida.
“After that she who received the type of the Church was cured of the issue of blood, and that the Apostles were appointed to preach the Gospel of the kingdom of God, the nourishment of heavenly grace is imparted.”
But the crowds found out and followed Him. He welcomed them and spoke to them about the kingdom of God, and He healed those who needed healing.
“After the law has passed away, the food of the gospel begins to feed the hungry hearts of the people.… It was fitting that those whom he had healed from the pain of wounds he freed from hunger with spiritual nourishment.”
But Jesus told them, “You give them something to eat.” “We have only five loaves of bread and two fish,” they answered, “unless we go and buy food for all…
“For we read that first five thousand are fed with five loaves, then four thousand with seven loaves. So let us seek the mystery which the miracle represents.”
Taking the five loaves and the two fish and looking up to heaven, Jesus spoke a blessing and broke them.
“Although the multitude is not as yet fed with stronger food. For first, as milk, there are five loaves; secondly, seven; thirdly, the Body of Christ is the stronger food.”
They all ate and were satisfied, and the disciples picked up twelve basketfuls of broken pieces that were left over.
“It is clear that the multitude were filled not by a scanty meal, but by a constant and increasing supply of food.”
They replied, “Some say John the Baptist; others say Elijah; and still others, that a prophet of old has arisen.”
“But it is no trifling opinion of the multitude which the disciples mention, when it is added, But they answering said, John the Baptist, (whom they knew to be beheaded;) but some say, Elias, (whom they thought would come,) but others say that one of…”
“But what about you?” Jesus asked. “Who do you say I am?” Peter answered, “The Christ of God.”
“Although the other apostles know, yet Peter answers for them all, "You are the Christ, the Son of the living God." Thus he who manifested both the nature and the name, in whom is the sum of the virtues, encompassed all things.”
Jesus strictly warned them not to tell this to anyone. “The Son of Man must suffer many things,” He said.
“The Lord Jesus Christ was at first unwilling to be extolled, lest any murmuring arise. He rebuked his disciples, lest they say this to anyone, because the Son of man must suffer many things, and be rejected by the elders and the chief priests and…”
Then Jesus said to all of them, “If anyone wants to come after Me, he must deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow Me.
“Now our Lord while He ever raises us to look to the future reward of virtue, and teaches us how good it is to despise worldly things, so also He supports the weakness of the human mind by a present recompense.”
But I tell you truthfully, some who are standing here will not taste death before they see the kingdom of God.”
“Thus, if we wish not to fear death, let us stand where Christ is, so that he may say of us too, "There are some standing here that shall not taste death."”
About eight days after Jesus had said these things, He took with Him Peter, John, and James, and went up on a mountain to pray.
“Or, Peter went up, who received the keys of the kingdom of heaven; John, to whom was committed our Lord's mother; James, who first suffered martyrdom. (Acts 12:1.)”
And as He was praying, the appearance of His face changed, and His clothes became radiantly white. Suddenly two men, Moses and Elijah, began talking with Jesus.
“Or else, according to your capacity is the word either lessened or increased to you, and unless you ascend the summit of a higher wisdom, you behold not what glory there is in the word of God.”
Meanwhile Peter and his companions were overcome by sleep, but when they awoke, they saw Jesus’ glory and the two men standing with Him.
“Peter saw this grace, and so did those who were with him, although they were heavy with sleep. The incomprehensible magnificence of the Godhead overwhelms the perceptions of our body.”