A Teacher
Ambrose of Milan
The inward word - reading scripture for the soul’s hidden sense
The transmission
Ambrose was born around 339, probably at Augusta Treverorum (modern Trier), into a high Roman official family, and rose as a provincial governor before being acclaimed bishop of Milan in 374 while still only a catechumen.
One of the four great Latin Doctors of the Church, he combined the skills of a statesman with those of a theologian, defending the independence of the Church against imperial power and resisting Arianism. He died at Milan on 4 April 397.
His writings - among them On the Duties of the Clergy, the Hexameron, and numerous treatises on the sacraments and on virginity - shaped Western Christian ethics and worship, and he is traditionally credited with promoting antiphonal hymn-singing in the Latin Church.
For a mind-power lineage, Ambrose matters above all as the bishop who decisively turned the young Augustine toward Christianity. Augustine, drawn first by Ambrose’s eloquent preaching in Milan, was led through it to a non-literal, allegorical reading of scripture that resolved his intellectual objections, and Ambrose baptized him at the Easter vigil of 387.
Ambrose’s method of reading the sacred text for its inner, spiritual sense beneath the letter - the conviction that “the letter kills but the spirit gives life” points to a hidden meaning addressed to the soul - opened the interior, contemplative approach to scripture that Augustine would carry into the heart of Western mysticism.
In this way Ambrose stands at the hinge between classical learning and the inward Christianity of the Latin West.
What they gave
Allegorical, inward reading of scripture: Taught that beneath the literal text lies a hidden spiritual sense addressed to the soul, freeing Augustine from his objections and seeding the contemplative reading of scripture.
- Mentor and baptizer of Augustine: His preaching drew Augustine toward conversion, and he baptized him in 387, making him a decisive link in the Western mystical lineage.
- Christian ethics from classical virtue: In On the Duties of the Clergy he recast Cicero’s framework of the virtues into a Christian moral vision for the Latin Church.
- Liturgical interiority: Promoted hymnody and antiphonal singing as a means of drawing the worshipper inward, shaping the devotional life of the West.
In their words
none
A noble thing, then, is modesty, which, though giving up its rights, seizing on nothing for itself, laying claim to nothing, and in some ways somewhat retiring within the sphere of its own powers, yet is rich in the sight of God, in Whose sight no man is rich.
The line they stand in
Taught by / Influenced by: the Greek Fathers, especially Origen, Basil the Great, and Philo’s allegorical method; Neoplatonism; and the classical ethics of Cicero. - Taught / Influenced: above all Augustine of Hippo, whom he baptized; and through him the whole inward, allegorical tradition of Latin Christianity and Western mysticism.
Revelations they taught
Essential Works
- On the Duties of the Clergy (De officiis ministrorum)c.391
- Hexameronc.387
- On the Mysteries (De mysteriis)c.391