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
Woe to you! You build tombs for the prophets, but it was your fathers who killed them.
“Also a good argument against the most foolish superstition of the Jews, who condemned the building of tombs for the prophets and their fathers; but by emulating their fathers' crimes, they turned the judgment upon themselves.”
Because of this, the wisdom of God said, ‘I will send them prophets and apostles; some of them they will kill and others they will persecute.’
“Therefore Wisdom sends apostles and prophets to them. Who is Wisdom if not Christ? Finally, in Matthew you have: Behold, I send you prophets and wise men.”
In the meantime, a crowd of many thousands had gathered, so that they were trampling one another.
“Our Lord has introduced a most forcible argument for preserving simplicity, and being zealous for the faith, that we should not after the manner of faithless Jews put one thing in practice, while in words we pretend another, namely, that at the last day the…”
I tell you, My friends, do not be afraid of those who kill the body and after that can do no more.
“Since unbelief springs from two causes, either from a deeply-seated malice or a sudden fear; lest any one from terror should be compelled to deny the God whom he acknowledges in his heart, He well adds, And I say unto you my friends, Be not…”
I tell you, everyone who confesses Me before men, the Son of Man will also confess him before the angels of God.
“He has also well introduced faith, stimulating us to its confession, and to faith itself He has placed virtue as a foundation. For as faith is the incentive to fortitude, so is fortitude the strong support of faith.”
Someone in the crowd said to Him, “Teacher, tell my brother to divide the inheritance with me.” But Jesus replied, “Man, who appointed Me judge or executor between you?”
“This whole place is prepared for undergoing the passion of the Lord either with contempt of death, or with hope of reward, or with the declaration of intention to endure punishment, to which no forgiveness will ever be granted.”
But Jesus replied, “Man, who appointed Me judge or executor between you?”
“Well then does He avoid earthly things who had descended for the sake of divine things, and deigns not to be a judge of strifes and arbiter of laws, having the judgment of the quick and dead and the recompensing of works.”
Then He told them a parable: “The ground of a certain rich man produced an abundance.
“For he gathers wealth in vain who does not know how to use it: just like that person who, when the granaries were bursting with new harvests, was preparing receptacles for himself to collect the overflowing fruits, being ignorant of how to use them.”
Then Jesus said to His disciples, “Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat, or about your body, what you will wear.
“Now nothing is more likely to produce conviction in believers that God can give us all things, than the fact, that the ethereal spirit perpetuates the vital union of the soul and body in close fellowship, without our exertion, and the healthgiving use of food…”
Consider the ravens: They do not sow or reap, they have no storehouse or barn; yet God feeds them. How much more valuable you are than the birds!
“But it is a great thing to follow up this example in faith. For to the birds of the air who have no labour of tilling, no produce from the fruitfulness of crops, Divine Providence grants an unfailing sustenance.”
Consider how the lilies grow: They do not labor or spin. Yet I tell you, not even Solomon in all his glory was adorned like one of these.
“Nor does it seem of light moment, that a flower is either compared to man, or even almost more than to man is preferred to Solomon, to make us conceive the glory expressed, from the brightness of the colour to be that of the heavenly…”
If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow is thrown into the furnace, how much more will He clothe you, O…
“Therefore, if lilies or angels are clothed with glory surpassing that of humans, we must not despair of God's mercy in us, to whom the Lord promises a similar appearance of angels through the grace of resurrection.”
But seek His kingdom, and these things will be added unto you.
“For when he says, Seek the kingdom of God: and all these things shall be added unto you; he shows that grace will not be lacking to the faithful, neither in the present nor in the future, if only those who desire divine things do…”
“Lord,” said Peter, “are You addressing this parable to us, or to everyone else as well?”
“Or else, the form of the first command is a general one adapted to all, but the following example seems to be proposed to the stewards, that is, the priests; and therefore it follows, And the Lord said, Who then is that faithful and wise…”
From now on, five in one household will be divided, three against two and two against three.
“Though the connection would seem to be of six persons, father and son, mother and daughter, mother in law and daughter in law, yet are they five, for the mother and the mother in law may be taken as the same, since she who is…”
So he said to the keeper of the vineyard, ‘Look, for the past three years I have come to search for fruit on this fig tree and haven’t found any.
“But our Lord sought, not because He was ignorant that the fig tree had no fruit, but that He might show in a figure that the synagogue ought by this time to have fruit.”
One Sabbath Jesus was teaching in one of the synagogues,
“He soon explained that He had been speaking of the synagogue, showing, that He truly came to it, who preached in it, as it is said, And he was teaching in one of the synagogues.”
But the synagogue leader was indignant that Jesus had healed on the Sabbath. “There are six days for work,” he told the crowd.
“Not understanding this, the ruler of the synagogue commanded that no one should be healed on the sabbath since the sabbath is an image of a future day of rest, days of rest from evil deeds, not from good works.”
Then Jesus asked, “What is the kingdom of God like? To what can I compare it? It is like a mustard seed that a man tossed into his garden.
“In another place, a grain of mustard seed is introduced where it is compared to faith. If then the mustard seed is the kingdom of God, and faith is as the grain of mustard seed; faith is truly the kingdom of heaven, which is within…”
Again He asked, “To what can I compare the kingdom of God? It is like leaven that a woman took and mixed into three measures of flour, until all of…
“There are three measures: of the flesh, of the soul and of the spirit. This is truer of the spirit in which we all live.… The woman, who prefigures the church, mixes with them the virtue of spiritual doctrine, until the whole hidden inner person…”
When Jesus noticed how the guests chose the places of honor, He told them a parable: “When you are invited to a wedding banquet, do not sit in the place…
“First the dropsical man is cured, in whom the abundant discharges of the flesh crushed down the powers of the soul, quenched the ardour of the Spirit. Next, humility is taught, when at the nuptial feast the desire of the highest place is forbidden.”
Another said, ‘I have bought five yoke of oxen, and I am going to try them out. Please excuse me.’
“Or let us suppose that three classes of men are excluded from partaking of that supper, Gentiles, Jews, Heretics.”
Still another said, ‘I have married a wife, so I cannot come.’
“Or marriage is not blamed; but purity is held up to greater honour, since the unmarried woman careth for the things of the Lord, that she may be holy in body and spirit, but she that is married careth for the things of the world.”
The servant returned and reported all this to his master. Then the owner of the house became angry and said to his servant, ‘Go out quickly into the streets and…
“Because then the proud refuse to come, the poor (Greg. Hom. 36.) are chosen, since they are called weak and poor who are weak in their own judgment of themselves, for there are poor, and yet as it were strong, who though lying in poverty…”
So the master told his servant, ‘Go out to the highways and hedges and compel them to come in, so that my house will be full.
“Or, He sends to the highways and about the hedges, because they are fit for the kingdom of God, who, not absorbed in the desire for present goods, are hastening on to the future, set in a certain fixed path of good will.”