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
The fear of the LORD is the beginning of knowledge, but fools despise wisdom and discipline.
“It is also the beginning of good discipline, as it is written: The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom (Proverbs 1:7); for those who fear the Lord turn away from error and direct their ways to the path of virtue.”
Keep your path far from her; do not go near the door of her house,
“Your flight is a good one if your heart does not act out the counsels of sinners and their designs.”
Drink water from your own cistern, and running water from your own well.
“And I hope, O man, that you imitate the example of this kind, so that you yourself may bear fruit of joy and delight!”
Then a woman came out to meet him, with the attire of a harlot and cunning of heart. She is loud and defiant; her feet do not remain at home.
“With a provocative movement of a prostitute, with a disrupted gait through delights, with wandering eyes, and with playful darting of her eyelids, she captures the precious souls of young men (for the eye of a prostitute is a snare of a sinner), and with…”
I was there when He established the heavens, when He inscribed a circle on the face of the deep, when He established the clouds above, when the fountains of the…
“Learn also that the Father was with him, and he with the Father, when all things were being made. Wisdom says, "When he was preparing the heavens I was with him, when he was making the fountains of waters."”
“Come, eat my bread and drink the wine I have mixed.
“But do you want to eat, do you want to drink? Come to the banquet of wisdom which invites everyone with great preaching, saying: Come and eat my bread, and drink the wine which I have mixed for you.”
The wealth of the rich man is his fortified city, but poverty is the ruin of the poor.
“But riches in themselves are not blameable. For the ransom of a man's life are his riches, for he who gives to the poor, redeems his soul. There is therefore scope for virtue even in these material riches.”
When words are many, sin is unavoidable, but he who restrains his lips is wise.
“The virtue of silence, especially in church, is very great. Let no sentence of the divine lessons escape you.”
Dishonest scales are an abomination to the LORD, but an accurate weight is His delight.
“Therefore let every man weigh his words, not with deceit and guile, for a false balance is abomination to the Lord.”
Riches may ransom a man’s life, but a poor man hears no threat.
“A man's riches ought to avail to the ransom of his soul, not to its destruction. And a treasure is a ransom, if a man use it well; on the other hand it is a snare, if a man know not how to use it.”
He who spares the rod hates his son, but he who loves him disciplines him diligently.
“Then the provident guide of the soul has regard to this, that he may circumscribe her pleasures and cut off her desires, that she may not delight herself in them.”
The proud speech of a fool brings a rod to his back, but the lips of the wise protect them.
“What judgment harder than that of our hearts, whereby each one stands convicted and accuses himself of the injury that he has wrongfully done against his brother?”
A tranquil heart is life to the body, but envy rots the bones.
“While all our actions should be free from hidden malevolence, this is particularly the case in the selection of a bishop, whose life is the pattern for all his flock.”
He who is slow to anger is better than a warrior, and he who controls his temper is greater than one who captures a city.
“If you are angry, be angry with yourselves, because you are roused, and you will not sin. For he who is angry with himself, because he has been so easily roused, ceases to be angry with another.”
Differing weights and unequal measures—both are detestable to the LORD.
“Every kind of unfair action is shameful. Even in common things, false weights and unjust measures are accursed.”
A good name is more desirable than great riches; favor is better than silver and gold.
“A good name is more excellent than money, and good favor is better than heaps of silver. Faith itself redounds to itself, sufficiently rich and more than rich in its possession.”
The mouth of an adulteress is a deep pit; he who is under the wrath of the LORD will fall into it.
“The mouth of one speaking ill is a great pit, a steep precipice for the innocent, but steeper for one of ill will. An innocent person, though easily credulous, falls quickly, but when he has fallen rises again.”
Do not answer a fool according to his folly, or you yourself will be like him.
“[David] used not to answer the enemy that provoked him, the sinner that exasperated him. As he says elsewhere, "As though he were deaf he heard not them that speak vanity and imagine deceit, and as though he were dumb he opened not his mouth…”
The wounds of a friend are faithful, but the kisses of an enemy are deceitful.
“Rebukes are good, and often better than a silent friendship. Even if a friend thinks himself hurt, still rebuke him; and if the bitterness of the correction wounds his mind, still rebuke him and fear not.”
Do not forsake your friend or your father’s friend, and do not go to your brother’s house in the day of your calamity; better a neighbor nearby than a brother…
“Solomon says, "Better is a neighbor that is near than a brother far off." For this reason a person generally trusts himself to the good will of a friend rather than to the ties of relationship to his brother.”
Keep falsehood and deceitful words far from me. Give me neither poverty nor riches; feed me with the bread that is my portion.
“Therefore, pay attention to yourself, poor man, pay attention, wealthy man; because there are trials in both poverty and riches. And therefore the Wise Man says: Do not give me riches or poverty, give me only what is sufficient for me.”
the way of an eagle in the sky, the way of a snake on a rock, the way of a ship at sea, and the way of a man with…
“An eagle and a ship and a serpent are not of one family and nature but of a distinguishable and different substance, and yet they are three.”