Bishop Ambrose

Aurelius Ambrosius, known as Saint Ambrose of Milan, was born in the mid-fourth century at Trier (Augusta Treverorum) in the western Roman Empire, where his father, also named Ambrosius, served as praetorian prefect of Gaul. The family belonged to the senatorial aristocracy and was already Christian. After his father's death, Ambrose, his mother, and his siblings Satyrus and Marcellina settled in Rome. There he received the education customary for a young man of his rank, including law, rhetoric, and both Latin and Greek literature. He entered the imperial civil service and rose quickly. By about 370 he had been appointed consular governor of Liguria and Aemilia, residing at Milan, then the principal imperial residence in the West.

When the Arian bishop Auxentius of Milan died in 374, Nicene and Arian factions in the city were bitterly divided over the succession. Ambrose, as the responsible civil magistrate, went to the basilica to keep order. During the assembly a cry arose that Ambrose himself should be bishop. Although he was still only a catechumen, not yet baptized, the crowd persisted. He tried to refuse and even left the city, but the emperor Valentinian I confirmed the election. Ambrose was baptized, passed through the ecclesiastical grades, and was consecrated bishop on 7 December 374. He gave away much of his property, adopted an austere manner of life, and devoted himself to the study of Scripture and the Greek Fathers, especially Origen, Basil, and Didymus, in order to make up for his lack of prior theological training.

As bishop he became the leading Latin defender of Nicene orthodoxy in the West. He resisted Arian attempts, at times backed by the imperial court of the empress Justina, to obtain basilicas in Milan for Arian worship. In 386 a famous occupation of a basilica by his congregation, during which Ambrose promoted the antiphonal singing of hymns, ended in the failure of the court party. He also asserted the independence of the Church from secular power. After the emperor Theodosius I ordered a massacre at Thessalonica in 390, Ambrose refused him admission to the Eucharist until the emperor performed public penance, an episode later treated as a classic illustration of episcopal authority over rulers. Ambrose was a celebrated preacher; his sermons helped bring about the conversion of Augustine of Hippo, whom he baptized at Milan in 387. He composed hymns that helped establish congregational hymnody in the Latin Church and left a large body of exegetical, moral, and dogmatic writings, including De officiis ministrorum, De fide, De Spiritu Sancto, the Hexaemeron homilies, and treatises on the patriarchs.

Ambrose died at Milan on 4 April 397 and was buried in the basilica he had built, later known as Sant'Ambrogio, where his relics remain, together with those of Saints Gervasius and Protasius. Already in his lifetime he was regarded as a holy bishop; later generations numbered him among the four original Doctors of the Latin Church. His principal feast is kept on 7 December, the anniversary of his episcopal consecration. A well-known legend that a swarm of bees settled on his face in infancy, leaving honey and portending his eloquence, underlies his patronage of bees, beekeepers, and candlemakers. He is also invoked as patron of Milan, of students and learning, and of related crafts and groups.