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
On that day, let no one on the housetop come down to retrieve his possessions. Likewise, let no one in the field return for anything he has left behind.
“"He that will be on the housetop, do not let him go down. He that will be in the field, do not let him turn back." How may I understand what is the field unless Jesus himself teaches me?”
Remember Lot’s wife!
“For this reason, the Lord says, "Remember Lot's wife," who because she looked back, lost the function of her own nature. Satan and Sodom are behind. Flee excess and shun extravagance. Know that not everyone can flee to the mountain.”
Two women will be grinding grain together: one will be taken and the other left.”
“Or out of the same bed of human infirmity, one is left, that is, rejected, another is taken up, that is, is caught to meet Christ in the air. By the two grinding together, he seems to imply the poor and the oppressed.”
“Where, Lord?” they asked. Jesus answered, “Wherever there is a carcass, there the vultures will gather.”
“He says concerning this body, "My flesh is meat indeed, and my blood is drink indeed." Around this body, eagles fly on spiritual wings.”
Now people were even bringing their babies to Jesus for Him to place His hands on them. And when the disciples saw this, they rebuked those who brought them.
“It may be thought strange by some that the disciples wished to prevent the little children from coming to our Lord, as it is said, when they saw it, they rebuked them.”
But Jesus called the children to Him and said, “Let the little children come to Me, and do not hinder them!
“Why does he say that children are fit for the kingdom of heaven? Perhaps it is because they do not know spitefulness, have not learned to deceive, dare not strike back, neglect to search for wealth, and do not work after honor and ambition.… Childhood…”
Truly I tell you, anyone who does not receive the kingdom of God like a little child will never enter it.”
“Lastly, our Saviour expressed this when He said, Verily I say unto you, Whosoever will not receive the kingdom of God as a little child, &c. What child were Christ's Apostles to imitate but Him of whom Esaias speaks, Unto us a Child is given?”
“Why do you call Me good?” Jesus replied. “No one is good except God alone.
“He does not deny that He is good, but points to God. None is good then except he be full of goodness.”
You know the commandments: ‘Do not commit adultery, do not murder, do not steal, do not bear false witness, honor your father and mother.’”
“Honour is concerned not only with paying respect, but also with giving bountifully. For it is honouring to reward deserts.”
Indeed, it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.”
“"It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God." This is great power. It has great weight in words.”
As Jesus drew near to Jericho, a blind man was sitting beside the road, begging.
“In the blind man we have a type of the Gentile people, who have received by the Sacrament of our Lord the brightness of the light which they had lost.”
“What do you want Me to do for you?” “Lord,” he said, “let me see again.”
“Or, He asked the blind man to the end that we might believe, that without confession no man can be saved.”
So he ran on ahead and climbed a sycamore tree to see Him, since Jesus was about to pass that way.
“He has well added, that our Lord was to pass that way, either where the sycamore-tree was, or where he was who was about to believe, that so He might preserve the mystery, and sow the seeds of grace.”
The first servant came forward and said, ‘Master, your mina has produced ten more minas.’ His master replied, ‘Well done, good servant!
“But the ten cities are the souls over whom he is rightly placed who has deposited in the minds of men his Lord's money and the holy words, which are tried as silver is tried in the fire.”
As He approached Bethphage and Bethany at the Mount of Olives, He sent out two of His disciples,
“He came to the Mount of Olives so that he could plant new olive trees on the heights of virtue, the mother of which is the Jerusalem that is above.”
saying, “Go into the village ahead of you, and as you enter it, you will find a colt tied there, on which no one has ever sat.
“For they were in the village, and the colt was tied with its mother, nor could it be loosed except by the command of the Lord. The apostle's hand looses it. Such was the act, such the life, such the grace.”
Then they led the colt to Jesus, threw their cloaks over it, and put Jesus on it.
“The apostles threw down their own garments before Christ. By their preaching of the gospel, they would present the glory of their action.”
And as He approached the descent from the Mount of Olives, the whole multitude of disciples began to praise God joyfully in a loud voice for all the miracles they…
“For it pleased not the Lord of the world to be borne upon the ass's back, save that in a hidden mystery by a more inward sitting, the mystical Ruler might take His seat in the secret depths of men's souls, guiding the footsteps of…”
But some of the Pharisees in the crowd said to Him, “Teacher, rebuke Your disciples!” “I tell you,” He answered, “if they remain silent, the very stones will cry out.”
“Nor is it wonderful that the stones against their nature should chaunt forth the praises of the Lord, whom His murderers, harder than the rocks, proclaim aloud, that is, the multitude, in a little while about to crucify their God, denying Him in their hearts…”
Then Jesus entered the temple courts and began to drive out those who were selling there.
“God does not want his temple to be a trader's lodge but the home of sanctity. He does not preserve the practice of the priestly ministry by the dishonest duty of religion but by voluntary obedience.”
Then He proceeded to tell the people this parable: “A man planted a vineyard, rented it out to some tenants, and went away for a long time.
“Very many derive various meanings from the word vineyard, but Isaiah clearly stated that the vineyard of the Lord of hosts is the house of Israel. Who else but God founded this vineyard? He leased it and set out to foreign places.”
But when the tenants saw the son, they discussed it among themselves and said, ‘This is the heir. Let us kill him, and the inheritance will be ours.’
“When then the only-begotten Son was sent to them, the unbelieving Jews, wishing to be rid of the Heir, put Him to death by crucifying Him, and rejected Him by denying Him. Christ is the Heir and the Testator likewise.”
So they threw him out of the vineyard and killed him. What then will the owner of the vineyard do to them?
“He rightly puts a question to them, that they may condemn themselves by their own words, as it follows, What then will the Lord of the vineyard do to them?”
“Show Me a denarius. Whose image and inscription are on it?” “Caesar’s,” they answered.
“When they questioned him about the penny, he asks about the image, because there is one image of God and another image of the world.”
“Teacher,” they said, “Moses wrote for us that if a man’s brother dies and leaves a wife but no children, the man is to marry his brother’s widow and raise…
“According to the letter of the law, a woman is compelled to marry, however unwilling, in order that a brother may raise up seed to his brother who is dead. The letter therefore killeth, but the Spirit is the master of charity.”