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
He is like a tree planted by streams of water, yielding its fruit in season, whose leaf does not wither, and who prospers in all he does.
“(Verse 3.) And it shall be like a tree that is planted by the courses of water, which will yield its fruit in its season. And its leaf shall not wither, and whatever it does, it shall prosper.”
Be angry, yet do not sin; on your bed, search your heart and be still. Selah
“It is said that the greatest of the philosophers granted immunity from punishment to those crimes that had been committed through anger, but the divine Scripture says better: "Be angry, and sin not." It preferred rather to cut off sin than to excuse it.”
You made him ruler of the works of Your hands; You have placed everything under his feet:
“One who, by way of ignorance, pretended to the insensibility and lack of knowledge characteristic of a beast begins to be a human once he has been encompassed by the grace of God.”
He who walks with integrity and practices righteousness, who speaks the truth from his heart,
“In everything, therefore, good faith is seemly, justice is pleasing, due measure in equity is delightful. But what shall I say about contracts, and especially about the sale of land, or agreements or covenants?”
who lends his money without interest and refuses a bribe against the innocent. He who does these things will never be shaken.
“What is more cruel than to lend money to one who has none and then to exact double the amount?”
I said to the LORD, “You are my Lord; apart from You I have no good thing.”
“Who has ever given him anything, since "from him, and through him and in him" are all things? The fount of life is that highest Good that bestows the substance of life on all, because it has life abiding in itself.”
Show the wonders of Your loving devotion, You who save by Your right hand those who seek refuge from their foes.
“It becomes Christians to pray for peace and quiet but not to abandon steadfast faith and truth even at the peril of death. For the Lord is our Leader, "who will save them that put their hope in him."”
it rises at one end of the heavens and runs its circuit to the other; nothing is deprived of its warmth.
“Christ fills his world with copious lights, since "his going out is from the end of heaven, and his circuit even to the end of it, and there is no one who can hide himself from his heat."”
For You will put them to flight when Your bow is trained upon them.
“"Turned away" [is] an expression properly applied to the sinner, for "Cain went out from the face of the Lord," and the psalmist says, "You will make them turn their back."”
My God, my God, why have You forsaken me? Why are You so far from saving me, so far from my words of groaning?
“Seeing, then, that he took on himself a soul he also took the affections of a soul, for God could not have been distressed or have died in respect of his being God.… As being man, therefore, he speaks, bearing with him my terrors, for…”
But I am a worm and not a man, scorned by men and despised by the people.
“He became all these things so that he might dull the sting of our death, that he might take away our state of slavery, that he might wipe away our curses, sins and reproaches.”
From birth I was cast upon You; from my mother’s womb You have been my God.
“He and the Father are One, and the Father is his Father by possession of the same nature.… Speaking as the Son, he called God his father, and afterward, speaking as man, named him as God.”
I will proclaim Your name to my brothers; I will praise You in the assembly.
“He is the Lord by nature but a brother by grace.”
The LORD is my shepherd; I shall not want.
“How often have you heard Psalm 23 and not understood it! See how it is applicable to the heavenly sacraments: "The Lord feeds me, and I shall want nothing; he has set me in a place of pasture; he has brought me on the water…”
You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies. You anoint my head with oil; my cup overflows.
“"You have prepared a banquet in my sight." This banquet consists of the living Bread, the Word of God. At this banquet there is the oil of sanctification, poured richly over the head of the just. This oil strengthens the inner senses.”
Show me Your ways, O LORD; teach me Your paths.
“Now the ways of the Lord are, we may say, certain courses taken in a good life, guided by Christ, who says, "I am the way, and the truth and the life."”
When the wicked came upon me to devour my flesh, my enemies and foes stumbled and fell.
“David says that he does not fear, because the enemy were eating up his flesh but not his soul.”
O LORD my God, I cried to You for help, and You healed me.
“For as much as someone directs their intention towards the Lord, they elevate the Lord even more, and they themselves are elevated. Hence, he says: I will exalt you, O Lord, for you have lifted me up.”
Blessed is he whose transgressions are forgiven, whose sins are covered.
“For some sins Thou dost wash away in the blood of Thy Son, others Thou dost remit unto us, that by good works and confession we may cover our errors.”
Do not be like the horse or mule, which have no understanding; they must be controlled with bit and bridle to make them come to you.
“Fools then are not free, for it is said to them, Be ye not like to horse and mule, which have no understanding, whose mouths must be held with bit and bridle lest they fall upon thee.”
Taste and see that the LORD is good; blessed is the man who takes refuge in Him!
“In Christ we possess everything. Let every soul approach him, whether it is sick with the sins of the flesh, infixed by the nails of worldly desires, admittedly still imperfect, progressing by intense medication or already perfect in its many virtues.”
Keep your tongue from evil and your lips from deceitful speech.
“If … anger has got the start, and has already taken possession of your mind and mounted into your heart, forsake not your ground. Your ground is patience, it is wisdom, it is reason, it is the allaying of indignation.”
An oracle is in my heart regarding the transgression of the wicked man: There is no fear of God before his eyes.
“The wicked person speaks, and the inner conscience is mangled. Every word he utters is laden with malice and trickery. Who undergoes punishment greater than that which he inflicts on himself, when every word he says is piercing him through and through?”
For his eyes are too full of conceit to detect or hate his own sin.
“For it is written: There is no fear of God before his eyes: because he hath dealt deceitfully before him, that he might find his iniquity unto hatred. For what did he find?”
The words of his mouth are wicked and deceitful; he has ceased to be wise and well-doing.
“What shall I say about Judas the traitor, who sought after greed and found sacrilege, saying: What will you give me, and I will hand him over to you (Matt. XXVI, 15)?”