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 One of
Ambrose’s biographers observed that at the Last Judgment people would still
be divided between those who admired Ambrose and those who heartily disliked
him. He emerges as the man of action who cut a furrow through the lives of
his contemporaries. Even royal personages were numbered among those who were
to suffer crushing divine punishments for standing in Ambrose’s way.
When the Empress Justina attempted to wrest two basilicas from Ambrose’s
Catholics and give them to the Arians, he dared the eunuchs of the court to
execute him. His own people rallied behind him in the face of imperial
troops. In the midst of riots he both spurred and calmed his people with
bewitching new hymns set to exciting Eastern melodies.
In his disputes with the Emperor Auxentius, he coined the principle: “The
emperor is in the Church, not above the Church.” He publicly admonished
Emperor Theodosius for the massacre of 7,000 innocent people. The emperor
did public penance for his crime. This was Ambrose, the fighter, sent to
Milan as Roman governor and chosen while yet a catechumen to be the people’s
bishop.
There is yet another side of Ambrose—one which influenced Augustine, whom
Ambrose converted. Ambrose was a passionate little man with a high forehead,
a long melancholy face and great eyes. We can picture him as a frail figure
clasping the codex of sacred Scripture. This was the Ambrose of aristocratic
heritage and learning.
Augustine found the oratory of Ambrose less soothing and entertaining but
far more learned than that of other contemporaries. Ambrose’s sermons were
often modeled on Cicero and his ideas betrayed the influence of contemporary
thinkers and philosophers. He had no scruples in borrowing at length from
pagan authors. He gloried in the pulpit in his ability to parade his
spoils—“gold of the Egyptians”—taken over from the pagan philosophers.
His sermons, his writings and his personal life reveal him as an
otherworldly man involved in the great issues of his day. Humanity, for
Ambrose, was, above all, spirit. In order to think rightly of God and the
human soul, the closest thing to God, no material reality at all was to be
dwelt upon. He was an enthusiastic champion of consecrated virginity.
The influence of Ambrose on Augustine will always be open for discussion.
The Confessions reveal some manly, brusque encounters between Ambrose and
Augustine, but there can be no doubt of Augustine’s profound esteem for the
learned bishop.
Neither is there any doubt that Monica loved Ambrose as an angel of God who
uprooted her son from his former ways and led him to his convictions about
Christ. It was Ambrose, after all, who placed his hands on the shoulders of
the naked Augustine as he descended into the baptismal fountain to put on
Christ.
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