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Biography

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Autpert Ambrose, known in Latin as Ambrosius Autpertus, was a Frankish Benedictine monk, abbot, and exegete of the eighth century. He was a native of Gaul and, by his own account, spent a period at the court of the Frankish king Pepin before taking the monastic habit. He entered the abbey of San Vincenzo al Volturno, situated in the duchy of Benevento in southern Italy and founded earlier in the eighth century by three Beneventan brothers, Paldo, Tato, and Taso. At San Vincenzo he lived in a mixed community of Frankish and Lombard monks and was ordained to the priesthood. His learning and character later led to his election as abbot.

In 777, after the death of Abbot Potho, Autpert was chosen abbot by the Frankish monks of the house. The election was opposed by Lombard members of the community, who advanced a rival, and the quarrel mirrored the political strains that followed Charlemagne's conquest of the Lombard kingdom in 774. Both Charlemagne and Pope Adrian I intervened. Autpert laid down the abbacy in 778 in order to restore peace and thereafter remained at the monastery as an ordinary monk. Disputes over the governance of San Vincenzo nonetheless continued and again drew the attention of the papacy.

Autpert's chief literary work is the Expositio in Apocalypsin, a commentary on the Book of Revelation in ten books, dedicated to Pope Stephen III. It ranks among the most extensive Latin treatments of the Apocalypse from the early Middle Ages and was drawn upon by later Carolingian commentators. He also composed a life of the three founders of San Vincenzo, a sermon on avarice, and homilies for the feasts of the Purification, the Assumption, and the Nativity of the Virgin Mary. These Marian sermons have been regarded as significant witnesses to the development of Marian devotion in the Latin West. A work on the conflict between the vices and the virtues has been ascribed to him by some authorities.

He died in 784. Later accounts connect his death with a journey toward Rome, made at the summons of the pope in connection with the still unsettled affairs of his abbey. Precise information about the place of his death and burial has not been preserved. Autpert was esteemed as a monastic theologian and biblical commentator rather than as the object of a widespread liturgical cult, and many details of his early life remain unknown. His writings, especially the Apocalypse commentary, secured him a lasting place among the ecclesiastical authors of the Carolingian era.

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