On the Day April 4 397AD

Milan's Aurelius Ambrose Dies

Khen Lim




Image source: pinterest.com

“When we speak of wisdom, we are speaking about Christ. When we speak about virtue, we are speaking about Christ. When we speak about justice, we are speaking about Christ. When we are speaking about truth and life and redemption, we are speaking about Christ.”

These were the words of Aurelius Ambrose of Milan, the man who today has a university in Calgary, Canada named in honour of the hymnist, biblical exegete, preacher, political theorist, master of Latinate eloquence and teacher and who is best known for leading Augustine to faith.

By the beginning of April 397AD, Milan’s bishop was near death. Involuntarily or otherwise, he stretched out his arms like Christ nailed to the cross. It appeared that he saw the Son of God in a vision and on hearing this, the people were overcome in awe. 

When Michael Jackson died in 2009, the worldwide outpouring of sadness was proof of his popularity and the same can be said of other famous celebrities whose influence on modern culture is so pervasive. 

Ambrose was no different. He died on April 4 397AD, ironically, a Good Friday, and his death had gripped the public so intensely that even five bishops on hand were struggling to deal with the number of people who wanted to be baptised the following day.

Born in a devout Christian family in Trier, Germania in 339AD, Ambrose became the consular prefect (governor) of Liguria and Emilia in Milan, northern Italy at the age of 35 in the days when barbarians were threatening the Roman Empire. 

By custom, bishops then were elected by the people and so when Milan’s bishop Auxentius, an Arian, died, there was great conflict and dissension among the public as to who would be the successor. Arians and Christians were on the opposite ends of the divide. The former denied the full divinity of Christ and wanted one of their kind to carry on from Auxentius. The latter were desirous of a Christ-centred bishop who would proclaim the Son of God.

As the governor, Ambrose went to the church where the election was to take place to try to pre-empt potentially violent riots between the two factions. As he sought to address the crowd with encouragements of good and orderly Christian conduct, out of the blue, a child cried forth, “Ambrose, bishop!” And soon the rest of the thronging crowd followed suit and a deafening cry to elect him ensued.

The thing about Ambrose’s popularity was also well received by the Arians who recognised his charity in theological matters. Even so he strongly felt that he was ill-prepared for such a position and therefore he emphatically rejected their overture. After all, despite his family being Roman Christians, he was neither baptised nor had he received formal theological training but none of this stopped the public from calling for his election.

Upon the inevitable appointment, Ambrose went into hiding at a colleague’s home but relentlessly, the people sought Emperor Gratian’s endorsement and got it. The Emperor not only praised the appropriateness of Rome in affirming appointees who were worthy of holy positions but in a bid to flush him out, he also declared severe penalties on whomsoever who was harbouring him. Summarily Ambrose’s host surrendered. In that week, he was arraigned until he agreed to serve and in his agreement, he was baptised, ordained and consecrated bishop of Milan in 373AD.

Consecration of Ambrose as archbishop in 373AD (Image source: idlespeculations-terryplest.blogspot.com)

No longer escaping his obligation, Ambrose took it upon himself to dedicate his life to Christ and His Church. He began to lead an ascetic life, offering all his savings to the poor and donating his properties with the exception of his sister Marcellina, who later became a nun, whom he made provisions for. Such actions merely endeared him to the public and soon, he was said to have more political clout than even the emperor himself.

In their calculated move to have Ambrose elected, the Arians soon discovered that he was no pushover. As an Orthodox Christian, he stopped Arianism in its tracks with the theology he learned from Simplician, his profound understanding of Greek and rhetoric argument as well as his understanding of the works of Philo, Origen, Athanasius and Basil of Caesarea. All of this made Ambrose such a compelling and excellent preacher that caught the attention of Augustine of Hippo whom it was said he baptised later.

In 385AD, Emperor Valentinian II’s mother, Justina, embraced Arianism along with many of the clergy and laity particularly the military. In their acceptance, she raised a demand against Ambrose to surrender two churches in Milan to the Arians. 

In rejecting the demand, Ambrose set himself up to answer before the council. His defence of the Church was so eloquent that the emperor’s ministers backed down and gave him free berth to do whatever he wanted with the churches without surrendering them to Justina. In fact there are many other similar attempts to force Ambrose’s hand but in each of them, he stood by Christ and refused to budge.

In one case, Justina and Valentinian attempted to cow Ambrose into surrendering a church in Milan for use by Arian troops. Together with his congregation, they barricaded themselves inside the church and rather than bearing arms, they prayed, sang psalms and listened to Ambrose preach. Eventually the imperial order was rescinded. During that time, he developed a type of congregational singing in which two groups would sing alternately.

Perhaps Ambrose’s most enduring contribution was on the subject of church-state intervention. In his time, he had to wrestle with three emperors concurrently controlling different parts of the vast Roman Empire and in each case, he made sure the Church was victorious. In 390AD when local authorities imprisoned a very popular charioteer from Thessalonica, charging him for being a homosexual, riots broke when the governor rejected their demands to have him released. In the ensuing melee, the governor and a number of others were killed and the charioteer was released.

Ambrose (R) demands repentance from Theodosius (L) (Image source: en.wikipedia.org)

Angered by the outcome, Theodosius I, emperor to the east, schemed revenge. After announcing another chariot race and seeing the crowd arrive at the stadium, he commanded the gates to be locked behind them before all the spectators were massacred by his soldiers. All told, 7,000 died. On hearing this tragedy, a mortified Ambrose wrote to Theodosius, demanding his repentance.

“I exhort, I beg, I entreat, I admonish you, because it is grief to me that the perishing of so many innocents is no grief to you,” his letter said, “and now, I call on you to repent.” He further wrote that he could not attend worship until he rightfully prostrate himself before the altar. Theodosius accepted and obeyed, marking the first time ever that the state bowed to the orders of the Church. 

Ambrose (Image source: traditionalcatholicpriest.com)

And in so doing, Ambrose introduced the medieval idea that a Christian emperor was a dutiful “son of the church, serving under orders from Christ.” In the ensuing thousand years and more, secular and religious leaders would struggle to exert their dominance and sovereignty in private and political life.

Theodosius was so taken in by Ambrose’s Christian integrity, saying, “I know no bishop worthy of the name except Ambrose.” In fact as he recalled the emperor lying in his arms dying, he eulogised, saying, “I confess I loved him and felt the sorrow of his death in the abyss of my heart.”

In his life as a bishop and hymnist, Ambrose wrote many hymns. It was he who devised a form of chanting in which one side of the choir alternately becomes the antephone to the other. He was also credited for introducing hymnody from the Eastern Church to the West. His congregational singing form became so popular in Milan before spreading to other parts of the world before it was universally used in churches for centuries.

Two years after the death of Theodosius, Ambrose himself became gravely ill and on Good Friday, April 4 397AD, the popular, influential and well-loved bishop of Milan for 23 years died, leaving one writer to lament, “When Ambrose dies, we shall see the ruin of Italy.”

Besides Theodosius, one other name would also be forever associated with Ambrose, a student who eventually outshone his teacher. This sceptic went to Milan in 384AD to witness Ambrose’s allegorical preaching and came away awe-struck. Four years later, this professor of rhetoric was baptised by the bishop amidst a hymnal composition of his own called Te Deum. He himself would eventually transform Christian theology.

The baptism of Augustine of Hippo by Ambrose (Image source; idlespeculation-terryprest.blogspot.com)

His name was Augustine.