Saint Ambrose of Milan

He arrived i n Mil Milan Italian city where the saint has an altar and an annual feast. an, the principal city of his jurisdiction, just as the bishop Auxentius, a great promoter arianisme Heresy opposed by Columbanus in Italy among the Lombards. of Arianism who had governed that Church for twenty years more like a tyrant than a pastor, had died, leaving the Catholics and Arians in a great dispute over the election of a successor. The Emperor Valentinian, who was then at Trier, had not wished to claim the right for himself, and the bishops of the province were not the sole masters of it; the people participated in elections at that time, and it was very difficult for them to agree given such a great difference in sentiments and affections. It was even to be feared that the two parties would come to blows in the church; the Catholics could not bear to have a wolf put in the place of the Shepherd, and the Arians, who had fortified themselves during the prelacy of Auxentius and the reign of Constantius, did not want to lose the influence they had held under a bishop of their sect.

Saint Ambrose, being informed of what was happening, believed it was his duty, in his capacity as governor of the province, to come to the assembly to prevent this disorder. He came indeed, he publicly harangued the people, and exhorted them with all the force and charm of his eloquence to conduct the election without tumult. He was still speaking when a child, by an extraordinary impression of the Spirit of God, cried out in the midst of the company: "Ambrose, bishop!" and this voice having come like a heavenly inspiration, everyone from both parties began to shout with the child: "Ambrose, bishop!" The governor, who was not only not a cleric but had not even yet received baptism, was very surprised by such a general desire. He did what he could to change the mind of the people. He told them that what they were proposing was entirely against reason; that he had neither the vocation nor the will to be an ecclesiastic; that, even if he had some inclination for it, he was infinitely far from the episcopate; that Saint Paul himself excluded him by the condition he requires in a bishop, that he must not be a neophyte, and that being only a catechumen, he was much less than a neophyte; that, moreover, he had neither the knowledge of the mysteries of the faith and the ecclesiastical canons, nor the experience necessary for a pastor of the flock of Jesus Christ. These remonstrances, however, had no effect. The people, who were acting by a divine movement, remained firm in their resolution, and whatever excuse Ambrose could offer, they did not cease to demand him absolutely as bishop.

This caused him to leave the assembly, and, to make the Milanese change their minds, he took some very extraordinary measures. He mounted his tribunal, and, against the inclinations of his gentle nature, having had criminals brought before him, he had them put to the question in his presence, so that, passing for a cruel man, he would be judged incapable of the priesthood. This means not succeeding, he retired to his palace, and, chaste as he was, he had women of ill repute brought there publicly, hoping that this spectacle would give the people such an aversion that they would no longer think of him for a dignity that requires angelic purity. It was well seen that these were only artifices he used to exempt himself from the burden that Divine Providence wanted to place upon his shoulders. They insisted therefore more and more, and only the night could disperse the multitude that pressed him to accept the charge.

At midnight, he fled the city and took the road to Pavia, which was also under his jurisdiction; but it was useless; for, after having walked all the rest of the night, he found himself at daybreak at one of the gates of Milan, which was called the Roman Gate. The Milanese having recognized him, surrounded him, led him back to his palace, and gave him guards. At the same time, they wrote to Valentinian to beg him to approve his election, and even to oblige him by his sovereign authority to submit to it. This prince was all the more pleased, as it was very honorable to him that they had taken as bishop the one he had chosen as magistrate; so he ordered the vicar or governor of Italy to use his diligence so that the matter would be executed without hindrance. As for the prefect Anicius Probus, he felt extreme satisfaction, seeing that he had predicted without thinking what was to happen, when he had said to Ambrose: "Go, act more like a bishop than a judge." However, our Saint found a way to escape, and he retired secretly to the home of one of his friends, named Leontius, who had a country house; but the governor of Italy having ordered, under very rigorous penalties, all those who knew where he was to denounce him, Leontius denounced him himself by an innocent betrayal.

Thus, Ambrose was discovered, and having finally yielded to what God asked of him, he was baptized and promoted successively to the orders by a Catholic bishop, and eight days after his baptism, on December 14, 374, he received episcopal consecration, being about thirty-four years old, or, according to Baronius, forty-one years old. One cannot believe how much all of Italy and the other provinces of the empire rejoiced at his election, in the hope that he would repair, by his zeal and virtue, the great evils that the Church of Milan had suffered through the artifice and perfidy of the heretic Auxentius. Saint Basil, Archbishop of Caesarea, wrote him a letter of congratulations, in which he gave him very beautiful praise; and the other prelates, both of the East and the West, also approved and praised the choice that had been made of his person, because, although the ecclesiastical canons had not been followed to the letter, their spirit had nevertheless been followed; and that, moreover, God had sufficiently shown that He wanted them to pass over the ordinary rules on this occasion.

Saint Ambrose, having been raised in this manner to the episcopal throne, soon showed that he was worthy of this rank. He gave to the poor all the gold and silver he possessed. He made his church the owner of all his goods, leaving only the usufruct to Saint Marcellina, his sister; he did not wish to take charge of his temporal affairs, but, in order to be more free and to have nothing that would prevent him from giving himself entirely to his flock, he entrusted all the care of them to his brother, Saint Satyrus, who apparently came to live with him in Milan at that time. As he had hardly studied theological matters, he applied himself seriously to acquiring knowledge of them, as much by reading the Holy Scriptures and the Fathers of the Church who had preceded him, and whose thoughts he often gives and even transcribes the very words in his works, as by conferences with learned men, especially with Simplicianus, a priest of Rome, whom Baronius believes to have been sent to him by Saint Damasus to instruct him in the doctrine of the faith and the rules of ecclesiastical discipline. He said Mass every day when he had no unavoidable impediment, and one can see, by the prayers he composed to prepare himself to celebrate this august mystery, with what devotion he did so. He preached to his people every Sunday, and his sermons were filled with so much doctrine, eloquence, and unction that the more one heard him, the more one wanted to hear him, and the more he drew marvelous fruit from it and made incredible conversions in Milan. That of Saint Augustine was in itself a conquest so im saint Augustin Cited for his definition of fraternal charity. portant and so advantageous to the Church that it can be said that, even if Ambrose had converted only Augustine, he would have converted entire provinces and kingdoms.

He applied himself with such constant assiduity to the other functions of his office that he did alone, for the instruction of catechumens, what five bishops had great difficulty doing all together after his death. He was easily accessible, and he received in his palace and even in his room the poorest people with as much kindness as the richest; that is why he did not want there to be guards at his door, nor for anyone to be refused entry. He was always ready to exercise charity toward his faithful; and he took no less care of the poor, captives, widows, orphans, wards, and all kinds of unfortunate people than if they had been his own children. He did not have much to reform in his conduct when he became bishop, because it had always been very regulated; but he worked perpetually at his perfection in temperance, sobriety, fasting, the cutting off of the most innocent pleasures, and the mortification of the senses. Although he was one of the most learned doctors of the Church, he did not fail to submit his writings to the censure, not only of illustrious persons, such as were then Saint Simplicianus and Saint Sabinus, Bishop of Piacenza, but also to that of several others less considerable. Here is how he writes about it to Saint Sabinus: "Everyone makes mistakes in their writings. Many things escape one when rereading, and, just as fathers always find their children agreeable, however ugly they may be, so the most poorly made speeches do not fail to please their authors. I have, besides that, a mind wrapped in darkness and I recognize myself guilty of imprudence, so I pray you to examine severely the treatises that I send you; weigh the sentences and the words, and freely correct there what you find worthy of correction." He was no less deferential in all other things. The great prudence with which God had endowed him, and that strength of mind, which was his own character, did not prevent him from consulting the same Saint Simplicianus, whom he always considered as his father, in almost all his affairs. He also asked for advice from his sister, Saint Marcellina, in the difficulties that arose for him, and he usually did nothing important without first taking her counsel.

He applied himself singularly to leading his listeners to purity, which is a virtue so pleasing to Jesus Christ, and which can be called the honor of Christianity, and he even often exhorted young girls to remain virgins. It is true that these kinds of exhortations bore little fruit in Milan, because mothers stifled in the hearts of their daughters all the good sentiments that the holy prelate had brought forth there by his word; but these exhortations, spreading, succeeded elsewhere and in very distant places, so that there were brought to Ambrose, from Bologna, from Piacenza, and even from the extremities of Africa and the land of the Moors, very chaste girls who wanted to receive from his hands the veil of virginity: which made him say very pleasantly that, since the speeches he gave in Milan produced so much good in distant provinces, while his own people remained insensitive, he was of the opinion to go and preach in those provinces to touch the people of Milan. There were formed, especially in Bologna, excellent communities of virgins under his direction; besides serving the Savior with a pure heart, they applied themselves with marvelous zeal to constantly acquire new spouses for Him. It is in their favor that he composed his three books on Virginity, which we can call his masterpiece, and where he has surpassed himself as much as he surpasses most other doctors in the rest of his writings. As he had an extraordinary care to animate virgins to the preservation of chas trois livres de la Virginité Major work by Ambrose on chastity. tity, he also spoke very often to widows from the pulpit, to make them know the excellence and the obligations of their state. But, in order to be no less useful to those who were absent than to those who were present, he also gave to the public a Treatise on Widows, which is full of that light and divine unction with which his soul was entirely filled.

He had a singular compassion for sinners, and when they came to him to excuse themselves for their crimes, he received and listened to them with a kindness and tenderness that are almost inconceivable. He then shed tears in such abundance that he broke their hearts and forced them also to shed them on their side; he used toward them such great condescension that one would have said that he himself had been the guilty one, and he was so discreet in what concerned him that he never spoke of their sin except to God alone, to intercede in their favor with His goodness. He did not only keep this discretion with regard to the faults he had already heard in sacramental confession, and which must remain under the seal of an inviolable secret; but also with regard to those that had been discovered to him as to a charitable and sovereign physician, and to a pastor full of wisdom and mercy.

As the reign of Christianity was still recent, there remained on all sides many superstitious observances of paganism; but he applied himself with apostolic vigor to cut them off, among others, those that were done on the first day of the year in honor of Janus; he ordered for this a fast that lasted until the entire destruction of idolatry and the establishment of the solemn feast of the Circumcision. He also abolished the feasts that were held in the church, on the tombs of the martyrs, under the pretext of honoring them, because, although at the beginning this was practiced piously and to exercise charity and feed the poor, great disorders had slipped into it later, and the churches had become by this means places of tumult, mockery, drunkenness, and other similar dissolutions. Saint Augustine, having returned to Africa, imitated this zeal and ensured that the same abuse was banished from the churches of Carthage, Hippo, and some others that wanted to conform to their example. It is on this subject that he said in one of his sermons, which is the 101st of Diversis: "The martyrs hate your glasses and your bottles. They hate your grills and your stoves. They hate your excesses and your drunkenness. Finally, they hate this custom and do not love those who observe it."

If Saint Ambrose applied himself with such solicitude to regulating the laity well, he applied himself with more care to the good discipline of his ecclesiastics. He knew that a good priest is a treasure that one cannot value enough, that the greatest evils of the Church come from the corruption of those who govern it, as the greatest goods are born from their wise conduct and their good examples, and that, to reform the people, it is necessary to begin with the reformation of the ministers of the holy altar. Thus, he did not suffer libertine and vicious men among his clerics; he wanted everyone to be assiduous in the divine offices and to be modest, restrained, and perfectly well-composed in their bearing, their looks, and their clothes; he even refused to admit one of his friends because he had entirely secular manners. When one of them died of proven virtue, he bitterly deplored the loss he was suffering, because, on one hand, he would have wished to have died before him, and, on the other, he knew that it would be difficult to have his place filled by someone of the same merit. Thus, God granted him the grace to have in his clergy men eminent in doctrine and piety. Saint Paulinus, Bishop of Nola, was his priest. Saint Felix and Saint Venerius, Bishops of Bologna and Milan, were his deacons. Paulinus, who wrote his life and who was later one of the most generous adversaries of the heretic Pelagius; Theodulus, who was raised to the episcopal throne of the Church of Modena, also held the same rank.

As he had an extreme desire that the dioceses be provided with good pastors, he also contributed to it and concurred with all his power. It was he who, after the death of Saint Philastrius, Bishop of Brescia, worked to put that bishopric under the guidance of Saint Gaudentius. He also consecrated Saint Honoratus, Bishop of Vercelli, and Saint Felix, the first Bishop of Como, and he sent to Saint Vigilius, Bishop of Trent, newly ordained, holy rules to govern himself well in the administration of that office.

The struggles that our incomparable doctor had with the Arians since his promotion to the episcopate were continuous, because, as soon as he had loudly declared that he could not suffer them in his diocese, they never ceased to persecute him. It is true that during the reign of Valentinian I and Gratian, his son, their attacks were very light and of no consequence, because these great princes had made themselves the inflexible protectors of the Catholic religion. But since Valentinian had died, Gratian had been killed by the people of the tyrant Maximus, and Valentinian the Younger had ascended the imperial throne under the regency of Justina, his mother, an Arian princess, Ambrose had furious clashes to sustain, and he needed more than human strength to emerge victorious.

Under the reign of Gratian, he wrote five books on the Faith, where he established with invincible strength and solidity the divinity of Jesus Christ. He went generously to Sirmium, capital of Illyria, where there was then a dispute over the election of a bishop, and, despite the intrigue of Empress Justina, he had a Catholic elected. It was on this occasion that, as he had climbed into the episcopal chair to speak to the people, an Arian girl had the effrontery to climb up after him, in order to make him fall on the side of the women of her sect, and thus expose him to their insults and blows; but the Saint, turning toward her, said to her constantly, as he has often recounted himself: « I know that I am unworthy of the priesthood and the rank that it gives me in the Church; but it is not fitting for your sex or your profession to lay hands on a bishop, however contemptible he may be; and you must fear that God, who is the just avenger of his ministers, will punish you rigorously ». This remonstrance was a prophecy; for this impudent woman died suddenly a few moments later, and the very next day she was carried to the sepulcher. Saint Ambrose attended her funeral, showing thereby that he had no resentment for the injury she had done him. This terrible punishment stopped the tumult of the Arians, and was the cause of the peaceful and tranquil election of Anemius, who was an ecclesiastic of recognized faith and piety.

Our Saint was present at the Council of Aquileia; he disputed there against Palladius, an Arian heretic, confounded him by the strength of his reasoning drawn from the Holy Scriptures, and concurred in the condemnation of this impostor, as well as that of Secundianus and Attalus, who professed the same impiety as he.

It was around this time that the blessed prelate, having been obliged to go to Macedonius, grand master of the emperor's palace, to solicit the pardon of a criminal, this uncivil minister, whom the prince's favor filled with pride and presumption, refused him his door and would not allow him to enter to speak to him: « You will also come to the church », Saint Ambrose then said to him; « but you will not enter, although you may find the doors open ». The event showed the truth of this prediction; for, Gratian having been killed the following year by Andragathius, a general of Maximus's army, Macedonius wanted to take refuge in the church to avoid death, and although the doors were not closed, he could never find the entrance.

Two other lords, who acted as Catholics, although in their souls they were Arians, wanting to mock this great man, proposed to him a difficult question on the mystery of the Incarnation, and begged him to give the solution publicly. He consented and promised to do so the next day, in the basilica called Portiana. He was there at the hour he had marked and a crowd of listeners with him who were delighted to hear him discourse on this matter. But the two chamberlains, instead of going to the appointment, climbed into a chariot and went off to walk outside the city, without giving notice to anyone. God did not suffer the contempt they so insolently showed for his servant and the truths of our religion; they fell from their chariot, broke their heads, and were carried to the tomb at the same time they had planned to mock the assembly of Catholics. Saint Ambrose, who knew nothing of this accident, after having waited a long time, did not fail, notwithstanding their absence, to mount the pulpit, and the sermon he gave there produced for us this excellent treatise which has the title: *On the Mystery of the Incarnation of Our Lord*.

Toward the end of Gratian's life, he went to Rome, where he had not yet been since the eight years he had been bishop, to attend a Council that Pope Saint Damasus had convened upon the complaints of Maximus the Cynic, a false archbishop of Constantinople. It was on this journey that what Cardinal Baronius reports as a thing known by tradition happened to him. Having lodged in an inn, he inquired of his host how his affairs were going, and if he had nothing that worried him and gave him affliction. This man, who was a vain and presumptuous person, began to boast of his good fortune, and, without rendering any thanksgiving to God, who is the author of all goods, he said to the blessed bishop that he had never had any adversity, that all things until then had succeeded according to his desire; that he did not even remember having been sick; that his goods were abundant, and that everything smiled upon him in this world. Then the Saint remembered these words of Job: « They spend their lives in the abundance of the goods of the earth, and all of a sudden they fall into hell ». He recognized, by a divine movement, that they were about to be fulfilled in this wretch; also, turning toward those who accompanied him, he said to them: « Let us leave here promptly, for fear of being enveloped in the ruin of this family ». Scarcely had they left when the earth opened and buried the inn with all those who were inside; and this fatal place was changed into a lake, which serves as a witness and eternal proof of such a strange accident, and teaches us also that the happiness of the wicked is a secret scourge of God; that one must not envy, but rather deplore the prosperity of those who appear the happiest in the world.

When Saint Ambrose arrived in Rome, his mother had already passed away; but he found there his sister, Saint Marcellina, and that virgin, of whom we spoke at the beginning, who served as his companion, and when they came to kiss his hand, he reminded them with a smile that he had made them kiss it when he was a child, assuring them that he would be a bishop. His stay in this city was marked by the miraculous healing of a paralyzed woman, which he performed by laying his hands on her after his prayer. As soon as he had rendered to the Church the services he was obliged to render to it, he returned to Milan to watch over the conduct of his flock. It was also there that he drove away the deputies of Priscillian and his adherents, who, after having been condemned in Spain and in the Gauls, came to seek protection and support in Italy. It was also there that, to prevent the effect of the petition that some Roman senators, still pagan, had sent to present to the emperor to obtain the restoration of the Altar of Victory, whose demolition he had ordered, with the permission to offer sacrifices to the ancient divinities of the empire and to draw from the treasury the expenses of this superstition, our Saint presented, by the order of Pope Saint Damasus, to the same emperor, that of the Catholic senators who protested against such abominable requests and assured His Majesty that they did not come from the body of the senate, but from some sacrilegious people who persisted in the impiety of idolatry. And he conducted this affair so wisely that the request of the pagans was rejected and that of the Christians received and ratified.

The death of Gratian soon followed this happy event, and it was, as we have already said, the beginning of the persecutions and at the same time of the most illustrious victories of Saint Ambrose. Valentinian II, son of the first and brother of Gratian, from a second marriage, became master of the Western Empire; but, as he was still young, Justina, his mother, an Arian princess, took in hand the conduct of affairs and seized sovereign power. She could not nevertheless at first make her fury against the Catho lic fai Justine Arian empress and primary opponent of Ambrose. th break out. The tyrant Maximus, who had caused the emperor to die, was master of England, Germany, and the Gauls; he had two great armies ready to swoop down on Italy, and the little Valentinian was to Maxime Imperial usurper in Gaul. o weak to stop his conquests by force. In such great peril, Justina was careful not to attack Saint Ambrose, nor the orthodox who were united with him; she had, on the contrary, recourse to him and begged him to go on an embassy to this tyrant, to try to soften his spirit, to prevent him from crossing the Alps, and to lead him to an accommodation.

There was nothing more difficult than this project, and it seemed that it was no less an undertaking than wanting to stop a torrent in the greatest rapidity of its course. Ambrose nevertheless, who loved his country, and who knew that the irruption of the tyrant into Italy would fill it with murder and blood, accepted this mission. He left Milan, crossed the Alps, and arrived at the camp of Maximus; he requested an audience and acted so skillfully with him that this tyrant complained afterward that it was he who had prevented him from crossing the mountains when there was time and who had fixed the course of his victories. He was quite a long time on this trip, because Maximus kept him at the place where he was, until the return of Victor, whom he himself had sent to Valentinian. But God finally returned him to Milan to support the interests of his glory, against which the pagans and the Arians had conspired in favor of the prince's minority.

Symmachus, prefect of Rome, with some pagan senators, arrived at the court to renew the requests they had made the previous year to Gratian, namely: that they be permitted to resto re the A Symmaque Prefect of Rome and defender of paganism. ltar of Victory and the sacrifices of the idols, and to return to the ancient privileges of paganism. It was much to be feared that Valentinian would let himself be swayed by these solicitations, as much because of the weakness of his age and his empire, as because most of those who entered his council favored Symmachus greatly and were themselves still attached to idolatry. Moreover, money was not lacking to the pagans to corrupt those who approached His Majesty; and they had done things so secretly that neither the Pope, nor the bishops, nor any of the Christian senators had been informed. Saint Ambrose was the first to whom notice was given when the matter had already been proposed to the council; but he did not lose any time. He immediately put his hand to the pen, and wrote strongly to Valentinian, remonstrating to him that he could not grant to the idolaters what they asked without making himself guilty of sacrilege, declaring himself the enemy of Jesus Christ, forbidding himself the approach of the holy altars, closing the door of the church, opposing the wise constitutions of Gratian, his brother, and degenerating from his virtue and piety. This prince, young and child as he was, rejected the advice of his bad counselors, and answered vigorously that he would never grant to the pagans what Gratian had taken from them. Our Saint was not content with this victory: he also composed an excellent treatise against the arguments of Symmachus, where he refuted them so perfectly that this prefect never had anything to reply to them, and it has passed for one of the most beautiful apologies that have been made in favor of Christianity. It is the eleventh Epistle to Valentinian.

It was not so easy for him to destroy the enterprises of the Arians. The ungrateful Justina, who was indebted to him for the preservation of her son's crown and her own, soon forgot such a considerable benefit; and, because she knew that he alone was capable of opposing the design she was forming to revive Arianism in Milan, she made all kinds of springs play to ruin him. She had already opposed to him a false bishop of her sect, a Scythian by origin, who, to hide the great crimes he had committed in his country, had called himself Mercurinus, instead of Auxentius, which was his name. It is true that his diocese did not extend further than the empress's chariot; that he had neither temple, nor oratory, nor altar, nor place of assembly, and that his parishioners were no more than a few officers of the court, and some ladies, with a troop of Goths who followed the prince. But Justina undertook with all her might to have him given a church. She spoke of it to the council, and it was resolved there that our Saint would be obliged to cede to him the Portiana basilica. He was summoned to the palace, and the proposal was made to him; but this great man, who burned with zeal for the honor of his Master, was careful not to deliver a single one of his temples to his enemies. He answered courageously that the Christian churches were to honor God there with a holy and religious worship, and not to hold sacrilegious assemblies there, which could only be very odious to his divine Majesty; that those of the Arians were of this kind, and consequently that he could not give them any church either inside or outside the city to celebrate them. However, the people fearing that some violence would be done to him in the palace, ran there in such great numbers and with so much impetuosity that the whole court was frightened; the empress herself was forced, to appease this tumult, to have recourse to the one she was persecuting, to assure him that nothing would be undertaken against the Portiana basilica, and to beg him to appease and dismiss the people. He did it all the more willingly as he would have preferred to die than to be the cause of a movement of sedition and trouble in the city.

The very next day, Justina, forgetting what she had promised, carried her design even further; for, no longer thinking of the Portiana basilica, which was outside the city, she wanted to have a new church, which was inside, and she sent word to the Saint, on behalf of the emperor, that he should deliver it at that very hour, without allowing the people to interfere. He answered generously that he could neither deliver it, nor could the emperor seize it, because it was the house of God of which the bishops were the guardians and not the masters, and over which kings had no legitimate right. Many other instances were made to him on this, but he remained constant and unshakeable in his resolution; all the people applauded his answers and protested that they were ready to give their blood for the defense of their bishop and for the support of the Catholic faith. This happened on the Friday before Palm Sunday.

That same Sunday and the following Wednesday, the emperor and the princess his mother were not content with prayers and commands, but they sent soldiers and had the hangings of the palace carried, sometimes to the Portiana basilica, sometimes to the new church, of which they wanted to make themselves masters. They had citizens who had seized an Arian priest arrested and put in chains. They committed various acts of violence to push aside the Catholics, while they would take possession of one of these temples; but all that did not succeed. Our Saint prevented on one side, by his signal prudence, that the people should make some sedition and that there should be blood spilled; but, on the other hand, he did so much, by his unshakeable firmness, by his prayers and his tears before God, by his assiduity at church, and by his perseverance in entertaining his people there with holy discourses drawn from the histories of the Old and New Testament, that he rendered all these efforts useless. Finally, on Good Friday, calm was returned to the Church of Milan, and the emperor testified that he no longer thought of giving a basilica to the Arians, in this great city where he made his residence.

Calligonus, the chief of the palace eunuchs, irritated against the holy prelate for the resistance he had brought to the wishes of his prince, threatened to have his head cut off; but Ambrose made him this admirable answer, which covered him with confusion: « I wish that God would permit you to do it; I will then suffer what bishops are accustomed to suffer, and you will do what eunuchs ordinarily do ». Two years later, this insolent man himself had his head cut off for an immoral act. Euthymius, one of the other officers of the prince, wanting to please the empress, had had a chariot prepared, during all this great trouble, in a house near the church, to throw the holy prelate into it upon leaving the service, and to transport him thus from the city to some other province; but he did not dare to execute his project because of the zeal that the Milanese showed for the preservation of their holy pastor; and he himself, the following year, was driven from Milan and led into exile in the same chariot that he had arranged for such a criminal attempt.

Never did a victor use his victory more soberly and with more moderation than Ambrose. He knew that he did not owe it to his strength, nor to his industry, but to the infinite goodness of God, who is the source of all goods, and without whom all the effort and all the skill of men are useless; also he did nothing but exhort his people to render him thanks for it, and to recognize this favor by acts of religion and mercy.

At the end of the year, the war began again with more violence than before. The emperor made an ordinance by which he permitted all those who followed the decrees of the council of Rimini, which had established Arianism by proscribing the doctrine of the consubstantiality of the Word, to have churches, to hold assemblies, and to perform publicly the functions of their religion, with a prohibition to the bishops, under penalty of death, to oppose it. It is true that one of the secretaries of state, named Benevolus, a man of signal piety, refused to subscribe to a law so impious and so contrary to the public good, preferring to lose his office and be banished from the council than to contribute to the condemnation of the truth; but there were others who did not make the same difficulty and who willingly signed this law to win the good graces of the prince. Upon this edict, Valentinian and Justina asked again of Saint Ambrose, for the Arians, the Portiana basilica, with the sacred vessels that were there, to serve them for the celebration of the holy mysteries. The Saint refused them with the same vigor as he had done the year before, and said to them with an intrepid voice, that if Naboth had not wanted to deliver to Ahab and Jezebel a vineyard that was the inheritance of his fathers, it would be strange that he, a bishop, should abandon to the discretion of the Arians a church that was the inheritance of Jesus Christ; that, if it were a question of his own goods, he would willingly give them to those whom Their Majesties would indicate to him; but he begged them to consider that it was a question of a good that was not his, of which he was only the depositary and for which he had to render an account at the judgment of God.

Upon this answer, the resolution was first taken to arrest him; but, by a miracle of divine Providence, although he did not hide at all, that he went out every day, either to make visits, or to go with his people to the tombs of the martyrs, and that he even passed often before the palace, while going or returning, without being guarded by anyone, they never dared to lay a hand on him or do him any insult. Then they signified to him an order to retire where he would like and to take with him all those who would have the design of following him: this was so that the Arians would have fewer adversaries in the city and that they would more easily make themselves masters, not only of a church in the suburb, but also of the cathedral. This sentence of exile was very agreeable to him, and he asked for nothing better than to fulfill it; but seeing well that in his absence his dear flock would be prey to the wolves who wanted to devour it, he stood firm and said to the one who had come to find him that, if they tore him against his will from his fold, he would let himself be taken without resistance, but that he could in no way of his own accord leave the flock that Providence had committed to him.

This generous reply caused Empress Justina to send soldiers to take him. They came to the church where he was; but the people guarded him inside with so much assiduity and constancy that they could never enter. God himself wanted to be his protection, for the leaves of the doors having sometimes remained open, the soldiers did not notice it, and when they wanted to make themselves masters of them, they did not have the power; they even conceived so much esteem for the blessed prelate that, when they heard the faithful singing the divine offices or protesting, by their acclamations, of their inviolable attachment to the Catholic faith, they joined their voices outside to those that resounded inside. It was at that time that Saint Ambrose, to prevent the boredom and the cooling of the people, who remained several days locked up with him in his basilica, composed sacred hymns and ordered their singing with that of the psalms, canticles, antiphons, and verses according to the usage of the Church of the East; which inspired in the faithful such devotion that they almost forgot eating, drinking, and the other comforts necessary to life. It is not that they lived without any bodily food, for there was, next to the basilica, an enclosure of houses destined for the lodging of ecclesiastics and surrounded by a good fence, where they went, one after the other, to take their meals through back doors, without the soldiers being able to prevent it; but God gave them such courage that they were content with very little and that all their consolation was to watch and pray with their blessed pastor.

The court was more bored by his perseverance and that of the faithful who accompanied him than he himself was by being locked up with his sheep in the mystical sheepfold of his church. That is why the emperor thought of sending to summon him to come to the palace to dispute, in his presence, against the false bishop Mercurinus, on the contested matters of religion. The Saint despised this summons and sent word to the emperor that, if it were a question of disputing against his bishop in a full council, he would do it very willingly; but that to go to dispute against him in the palace, before laymen, catechumens, and pagans, such as were the arbitrators he wanted to have, would be a thing contrary to the holy Canons and which would go to the dishonor of the Church. He then preached divinely against this impostor and gave such horror of him to the faithful that they would rather have endured a thousand deaths than submit to his sacrilegious authority. Thus the constancy of a single man, filled with the spirit of God, rendered useless all the efforts of a great monarch and a superb empress, and the Church suffered no damage, because Ambrose could never resolve to yield anything to those who persecuted him. The invention of the bodies of Saint Gervasius and Saint Protasius, which happened at this same time, the evident and incontestable miracles that they performed in the sight of everyone, and the bright red and almost warm blood that flowed from their veins, after more than a century that they had been bur saint Gervais et de saint Protais Martyrs whose relics were placed in the Cathedral of Le Mans. ied, finished making him victorious and confounding the Arians. Justina, who had sent a murderer to assassinate him, and who even had won over a magician, so that, by his enchantments, he would put division between him and his people, without any of these stratagems having been able to succeed, saw well that heaven and earth were against her. Also she calmed down a little and left the Church of Milan in some sort of peace, under the conduct of such a holy prelate.

One of the principal Arians saw an angel speaking into the ear of Saint Ambrose while he was preaching the Catholic truths, which caused his conversion and broke the pride of the princess Justina; and the tyrant Maximus, according to Theodoret, wrote to Valentinian that, if he did not cease the persecution against the Church, he would go as soon as possible to carry his victorious arms into Italy, to avenge the injury he was doing to God and His ministers. This threat astonished the emperor and his mother all the more, as they learned that the tyrant was preparing for war almost before he had threatened it. They were hardly in a state to withstand his irruption; their armies were weak, their strongholds poorly fortified, their savings exhausted, and they had so embittered all the orders of the empire by the poor steps of their government that there was no great inclination to sacrifice oneself for the interest of their crown. What they could do in such a dire conjuncture was to have recourse to the great Ambrose, whom they had persecuted so outrageously. They remembered that it was he who had the first time prevented the tyrant from coming to surprise them, at a time when he would have found them devoid of all help. They knew that he was too generous to resent the injuries he had received, and that they could still hope that he would make it a point of virtue to return good for evil, and to procure for them liberty and life, although they had made such extraordinary efforts to seize his person, to load him with chains, and to put him to death.

Their hope was not in vain: Ambrose, whom Justina had looked upon as her greatest enemy; Ambrose, whom she had torn apart by the most atrocious insults and calumnies; Ambrose, who had everything to fear from the fury of Maximus, who complained that he had deceived him in his first embassy, and was the cause that he had not suddenly made himself emperor of the whole world; Ambrose, we say, did not fail to undertake a second one to him. He therefore went as soon as possible to Trier for the service of his prince and the fatherland; he presented himself at the tyrant's palace; he entered his council; not having been able to have a secret audience, as he requested, and as he believed was due to his character and the eminence of his mission, he remonstrated with him aloud for his injustice in having revolted against Gratian, his sovereign; for having snatched from him the scepter and his life; for withholding from his orphans the honor of burial, and for renewing the war against the young Valentinian who had never done him any harm and to whom the empire legitimately belonged. Finally, he insisted vigorously on two things, namely: for the continuation of peace and for the restitution of the body of the deceased emperor.

Maximus tried to exculpate himself from the just reproaches he had made to him; but, to amuse him at his court while he advanced his preparations for war, he answered him that he would deliberate in his council on his requests. The Saint saw his artifice well, and did not let himself be deceived by it, like other ambassadors who came even after him. He wrote to the emperor about it and warned him to be on his guard. As for him, during his stay in Trier, he carried his episcopal liberty even further. For, not only did he absolutely refuse to communicate with the Ithacian bishops, a fault that Saint Martin had committed; but he also separated himself from the communion of the tyrant, and Paulinus himself, his first historian, says that he cut him off from the union of the faithful and warned him to do penance, that is to say, he excommunicated him.

He therefore obtained nothing from this deceiver, whom his pride and ambition rendered inexorable; but he had the skill to discover his secrets in order to inform Valentinian and all of Italy. Upon his return to Milan, he gave good advice to this young prince and his mother; and, if they had believed him, they would not have been taken unawares by Maximus, nor forced to flee shamefully to the East toward the emperor Theodosius, as they did. But God permitted this great blindness to punish them for the persecution they had excited against His servant and against the Church.

This is not the place to report what happened in this most memorable war. Maximus entered Italy, and, finding Valentinian no longer there, he made himself entirely master of it. Theodosius came to fight him; and, having defeated his generals, he also defeated him himself and besieged him in Aquileia, where he seized him and could not prevent his soldiers from putting him to death to avenge the massacre he had made of Gratian. Afterward, he re-established Valentinian in all his States and in those of Gratian, his brother, warning him to renounce the impiety of the Arians, which had brought such great scourges upon him, and to remain firm in the profession of the Catholic faith; and, by this means, he procured a general peace for the Church, for the empire, and for the whole universe. During these great events, Justina, who was not worthy to see the end of them, was taken from this world, and Saint Ambrose, being in Milan, restrained his diocesans and prevented them from taking flight, assuring them, by a prophetic spirit, that their city would not be attacked, and that they would suffer no harm: as indeed happened.

One cannot believe the esteem t hat Theo Théodose Roman emperor under whose reign the narrative begins. dosius held for this incomparable prelate: he regarded him as the protector of the faith, the shield of the Church, the bulwark of the State, and the most generous bishop in the world. The Saint did not pride himself on this esteem; but he used it advantageously to correct this prince when he erred, and to prevent or reform many disorders that he recognized or foresaw would occur in his empire. With what force did he not write to him when, by a decree of his council, he had obliged the bishop of Callinicum to rebuild at his own expense the synagogue of the Jews that he had burned, and condemned to heavy penalties the monks who had set fire to a church that belonged to the Valentinian heretics! He pointed out to him the injustice of his ordinance, the harm it would do to religion, the advantage it would give to the enemies of Jesus Christ over his servants, and the freedom they would then take to insult the Catholics; as, indeed, the Jews and the heretics had been the first to insult the bishop and the monks before these two conflagrations. This letter, however pressing it may have been, not having yet been able to change the resolution of Theodosius, with what vigor did he not press him in the church itself, before everyone and while about to ascend to the altar, to quash his sentence, to revoke his rescript, and to cease all proceedings; even protesting that he would not begin the Mass until he had obtained from his clemency what he asked of him. He succeeded by this means, and Theodosius, who could not sufficiently admire the invincible courage of the holy prelate, was delighted to have been forced to do what he would never have done of his own accord.

What was also his generosity in supporting the interests of religion before this monarch, when Symmachus, former prefect of Rome, had the boldness to ask him again for what had been refused so many times, to leave the pagans the freedom of their sacrifices and to provide them with the funds from the treasury to perform these abominable ceremonies? Ambrose then dealt the final blow to idolatry. Symmachus was banished, the sacrifices of the idols were entirely forbidden, and there was a decree to tear down many very famous temples of the false deities that still remained.

But finally, who could worthily represent the episcopal, or rather apostolic, vigor that our glorious prelate displayed toward this same prince, when he had rendered himself guilty of the murder of the inhabitants of Thessalonica? These inhabi tants were criminals; they had staged meurtre des habitants de Thessalonique Event that triggered the penance of Theodosius. a sedition to pull from prison a charioteer who was convicted of a detestable crime; and, in this sedition, they had killed Butheric, who commanded the emperor's troops, along with several other officers of his army; thus, for this crime, they deserved severe punishment. But Theodosius exceeded in their chastisement. The soldiers who were sent for this purpose into the city had orders to strike down for three hours everyone they encountered. The innocent were massacred with the guilty, women with men, children with the elderly; and a father, offering himself to be slaughtered for two sons he had, could only obtain the life of one, and even then they were both killed while he was deliberating which of the two he would ask for. When Ambrose, who believed he had obtained from Theodosius the pardon of this city, learned of this execution, he was outraged with grief; he wept for those who had been massacred, but he wept more for Theodosius, the author of such a great evil. He wrote to him about it, he spoke to him about it; but he did so with such force and unction that he led him to one of the most exemplary penances ever seen in Christianity.

He was not yet well resolved to submit to the remedies that this wise and excellent physician wished to give him, when, notwithstanding his crime, he came one Sunday to the church to attend the divine offices. Ambrose went to meet him and gave him a powerful discourse to make him look into himself and prevent him from entering the assembly of the faithful before having expiated, through his tears, the fault he had committed. Theodosius humbled himself before him; but, so as not to be excluded from entering the house of God, he told him that he was not the first prince to have committed great crimes; that David had been an adulterer and a homicide, and that he had not ceased to approach the tabernacle and to be admitted to offer sacrifices to the Lord. "Yes," said Ambrose; "but, since you have imitated his fault, imitate also his penance." And this word struck such a blow to the heart of this monarch that he resolved, not only to weep in secret for the precipitation of his ordinance, which had been the cause of so many homicides, but also to perform a public penance for it. He did so for eight months, deprived of communion and forbidden from entering the church.

At the end of this time, Christmas having arrived, Rufinus, his favorite, who saw him bathed in tears and outraged with grief that he was not permitted to enter the church, where the poor, the slaves, and the lowest servants entered freely, exhorted him to go there, assuring him that he would obtain from Ambrose the relaxation of the penance he had ordered for him. This favorite went there a little beforehand, in the hope that the holy bishop would not refuse him a grace that seemed so reasonable; but Ambrose repulsed him with indignation, reproaching him that it was he who had led his master to order the murder that had rendered him a criminal before God and before men. Theodosius came after Rufinus, and the Saint spoke to him also with surprising severity; nevertheless, after he had asked for pardon, testified to the excess of his grief, and promised to make a law that death sentences would no longer be executed until thirty days after they had been pronounced, he finally admitted him to the rank of the faithful. There, this great prince prostrated himself on the ground, bathed the floor with his tears, and, penetrated with grief and contrition, he said while tearing his hair: "My soul is attached to the earth; give me back my life, Lord, according to your promises." Saint Augustine, reflecting on this event, says that God willed that this emperor perform public penance and that he humble himself in the presence of all the people, so that we might learn to do so when our crimes demand it, and that neither the poor nor the rich, the artisan nor the great lord, should blush to submit to this sovereign remedy that a prince as powerful as Theodosius had not refused.

Theodoret, who wrote for us at greater length such an edifying history, adds another very remarkable circumstance, namely, that the hour having come to offer the gifts on the holy Table, the emperor, still bathed in tears, approached the altar to make his offering, according to custom; but, that after having made it, he remained in the enclosure of the sanctuary, just as the other bishops had always permitted him, in order to prepare himself there more peacefully for the communion of the holy mysteries. Then, the generous Ambrose sent word to him by a deacon that this was not the place for the laity; that neither the purple, nor the gold, nor the diadem gave him the right to remain there; that only the clergy could be suffered there. Anyone other than Theodosius would have been offended by a message so extraordinary and which seemed so ill-timed; but this perfect penitent, whom our Saint wished to purify entirely through this final humiliation, received it with admirable modesty and submission. He said only that it was not out of pride or usurpation that he had remained near the priests, but that he had followed in this the usage of the Churches of the East, where no one had ever made any difficulty for him; that, moreover, he held himself very obliged to the blessed bishop for the advice he had given him, and that he was going to execute it in its full extent. Indeed, he left the enclosure of the sanctuary and withdrew with the people. Since then, having returned to Constantinople, when Archbishop Nectarius invited him, according to custom, to remain in the choir of the priests after having presented his offering, he said that he had only yet found Ambrose who deserved the name of bishop; and that he alone had made him know the difference that existed between a bishop and an emperor. In his imitation, Emperor Valentinian, who, during the regency of his mother Justina, had so persecuted our Saint, had thereafter much veneration and deference for him; so that one can say that Ambrose, by his virtue and his courage, had become the master of kings and the father of those who commanded absolutely over the entire universe.

When peace had been restored to the world by the defeat of Maximus, a new war arose within his own Church which continued to exercise his zeal. Jovinian , who ha Jovinien Heresiarch condemned by Ambrose. d formerly professed a very austere life in a monastery, eating no bread, drinking only water, and wearing only a poor, dirty robe, later abandoned himself to good living; he affected to have a bright and rosy complexion, and to be always very well-dressed. He also made himself a leader of heresy, teaching that marriage was equal to virginity, that there was no difference between abstaining from meats by fasting and using them with thanksgiving; that those who had been regenerated by baptism with full faith could no longer be overcome by the demon, and that merits were not unequal on earth, nor rewarded differently in heaven. He added that the holy Mother of God had not remained a virgin while bringing her Son into the world, although she had been one while conceiving Him in her womb. This monster, having been condemned in Rome by Pope Siricius, took refuge in Milan, believing he would find some support at court. But the great Saint Ambrose, who watched continually over his flock, having been informed of this, assembled a Synod as soon as possible and pronounced anathema against him again.

However, he could not prevent this heresiarch, in secret conferences he had with very holy religious who had their monastery near Milan, from corrupting some of them. Sarmatian and Barbatian were of this number. They began to love pleasure like him, and, unable to enjoy it in a place where only penance was professed, they left it to seek it in the midst of the world. Our Saint, who was the founder of this house, felt extreme sorrow; he did not, however, wish to receive them when they asked to return, because God made him know that they were not truly penitent and that they would only serve to sow disorder in that community. Indeed, they soon began to teach the execrable opinions of Jovinian and to preach against fasting, mortification, and continence. But our admirable doctor refuted them so powerfully that they did not do much harm and it does not appear that they had any following. We have an excellent Epistle that he wrote on their subject to the Church of Vercelli, whose bishop had died, and which for that reason needed his care and vigilance.

These particular troubles of the Church of Milan were followed by strange catastrophes and revolutions in the empire. In the year 392, the Emperor Valentinian, who was impatiently awaiting Saint Ambrose in Vienne, in Dauphiné, to receive baptism at his hands, was strangled there by the order of Arbogast, his general of the army. Eugenius, by the favor of this general, usurped the empire and made himself master of the entire West. Theodosius, a just avenger of his colleague, fought this tyrant, defeated him, and had his head cut off; and, by this glorious victory, he became the sovereign of the whole world. Finally, he divided the empire between Arcadius and Honorius, his two children, and died himself in Milan, full of glory and trophies. During these great revolutions, Saint Ambrose performed several very memorable actions. He received in his episcopal city the body of the Emperor Valentinian, and pronounced his funeral oration, which is a very eloquent piece and worthy of the pen of such a great doctor. He assisted in Bologna at the discovery of the bodies of the blessed martyrs Vitalis and Agricola. He delivered in Florence a child possessed by the demon; and, as he died shortly after, he resurrected him by lying on his body, in imitation of the prophet Elisha. He offered insistent prayers to obtain for Theodosius the total defeat of Eugenius and Arbogast; and it can be said that it was the fruit of his tears and sacrifices. Having learned of this defeat by a letter from Theodosius himself, he brought the letter to the church, placed it on the altar during Mass, and held it in his hand while offering to God the holy and life-giving host. He engaged this prince to make good use of his victory, to pardon those he had defeated, and to win their affection by heroic acts of clemency and gentleness. He assisted him with his advice until his death; and, after his death, he also delivered his funeral eulogy in the presence of the Emperor Honorius, his son. Finally, this great man became so famous that even the pagans looked upon him only with respect, and the Franks, who were beginning to appear at that time, said one day to Arbogast, who was then his friend (for this was before he revolted), that one should not be surprised at his victories, since he had the friendship of Ambrose, who commanded the sun and forced it to stop in the middle of its course.

There would still be an infinity of very considerable things to remark in the life of such an extraordinary prelate. He lost his brother, Saint Satyrus, a few years after his promotion to the episcopate; but, although he was extremely necessary to him, he endured this loss with marvelous patience and resignation. He made no difficulty about selling the sacred vessels of the church for the ransom of captives; he left us on this subject this excellent instruction, that, to feed the poor who are dying of hunger, to deliver prisoners, to build or repair churches, and to enlarge cemeteries destined for the burial of Christians, it is permitted to break, melt down, and sell the vessels consecrated to God. He worked with great care, both in the Council of Capua and through his letters, for the peace of the Church of Antioch, which had for so long been divided between two or three different bishops. Besides having found the bodies of Saints Gervasius and Protasius, Vitalis and Agricola, he also found, after the death of Theodosius, those of Saint Nazarius and Saint Celsus, and procured for them an honorable burial. He maintained with such success, against Count Stilicho, the right of asylum, that the soldiers who dared to violate it by taking Cresconius at the foot of the altars were immediately after devoured by leopards that came out expressly from the amphitheater.

The mere reputation of his virtue had the power to convert and attract to Christianity Fritigil, Queen of the Marcomanni, and a letter he wrote to her made her a perfect servant of Jesus Christ. His prudence and generosity delivered Indicia, a virgin of Verona, from a false accusation and an indiscreet and hasty judgment that had been pronounced against her, and preserved for her the honor that envy and slander wished to steal from her. Having learned that one of Stilicho's servants was falsely forging letters from his master to distribute offices without his knowledge, he delivered him to the demon, and at that very hour he became possessed. He stepped one day on the foot of a gouty man named Nicet, which made him cry out very loudly; but this touch was so salutary to him that, thereafter, he was no longer afflicted by the gout at all.

Saint Gregory of Tours reports that on the day of the burial of Saint Martin, this glorious bishop of Milan, saying Mass and being between the lesson and the epistle, leaned on the altar and fell asleep. No one dared to wake him, and he remained two or three hours in this state; finally, his officers pulled him and showed him that the hour was passing, and that those present were tired of waiting so long: "Do not worry, my children," he replied to them, "know that my brother Martin is dead, and that I have just celebrated his funeral, except that I have not finished the collect, because you interrupted me." They diligently marked the day and the hour, and it was found that indeed Saint Martin had died at that time, and that Saint Ambrose had been seen in Tours performing the ceremony of his burial. Baronius rejects this narrative as fabulous, because he believes that Saint Ambrose died before Saint Martin. But, besides the fact that the testimony of Saint Gregory must be of great weight in this matter, since he lived in Tours quite close to the time of these two great lights of Christianity, that he was its archbishop, that he knew the tradition, and that it is unlikely that he would have wanted to advance a thing so important and so extraordinary if he had not seen it commonly received and approved by his Church; besides that, it is also certain that the Church of Milan has always recognized it as true; that the oldest paintings of the Ambrosian basilica represent it, and that Cardinal Federico Borromeo, successor to Saint Charles in this archbishopric, having found it inserted in the oldest breviaries of the diocese, did not want to permit, notwithstanding the opinion of Baronius, that it be removed. As for the reason of this learned annalist, the Reverend Father Papebroch, in a dissertation he made on this subject and which he gave at the beginning of the Acts of the Saints for the month of April, shows clearly enough that it is null, because, according to the best opinion, the death of Saint Martin must be placed in November 397, and that of Saint Ambrose on the eve of Easter 398, which, according to the ancient calculation of the Gauls, still belonged to the year 397. Moreover, it is not an unprecedented thing for a Saint, while staying in one place, to appear and be seen in another place, since the same prodigy is reported of Saint Nicholas, Saint Severus, Saint Francis, Saint Anthony of Padua, and many others.

This was undoubtedly a warning that heaven was giving to Saint Ambrose that the end of his labors and his pilgrimage was approaching. Before he fell ill, one day when he was dictating to Paulinus, his deacon, a commentary on Psalm XLIII, a fire covered his head in the shape of a small shield, and from there entered his mouth as if into its own dwelling. Then his face became white as snow and remained for some time in this beauty, until it resumed its first color. He could not, therefore, finish the work he was dictating, and soon after he fell ill. Count Stilicho, who was the most powerful in the empire, fearing that his death would cause notable prejudice to the entire West, sent him several men of honor to urge him to ask God for the prolongation of his life; but he gave them this excellent answer, which Saint Augustine esteems so highly that it should be written in letters of gold: "I have not lived among you in such a way that I am ashamed to live longer; but, on the other hand, I do not fear to die, because we have to deal with a good master." Four of his deacons, talking in a corner of his room to know who could be elected bishop in his place, came to name Saint Simplician. They were so far away and they spoke so softly that he could not hear them; however, God revealed to him what they were saying, and he cried out: "He is old, but he is good." It was this excellent priest who had been his counsel and as his master during the whole time of his episcopate, and he was indeed put in his place after his death. Saint Bassianus, Bishop of Lodi, visited him sometimes in his illness, and one day when he was praying near him, he saw Our Lord descend from heaven, approach his bed, and show him much affection. Then, on the night of Holy Saturday, as he was praying secretly, his arms extended in the form of a cross, Saint Honoratus, Bishop of Vercelli, who was staying in a room above his, heard three times a voice saying to him: "Rise in haste, he will pass soon." He rose and brought him the adorable body of Jesus Christ, which he received with profound reverence, and immediately after, his soul, provided with such an excellent viaticum, detached itself from the prison of his body to go and enjoy the blessed eternity.

His body was carried to his cathedral to be buried there with the honor due to the greatness of his merits. Many had visions that marked the glory he already possessed in heaven. Especially there were those who saw a radiant star raised above his coffin. The demons did not dare to approach it, and the possessed, who were dragged there by force, were immediately delivered from these evil guests. So many people came to his funeral that the church could not contain them; the Jews and the pagans wept bitterly for the loss of a man so rare and so full of goodness. They placed shirts and other linens on him to take them to the sick, in order to procure their healing.

The virtues of Saint Ambrose appear with such great brilliance throughout this life that the reader will be able to notice them well enough for himself. It can be said that none was missing in him, and that he had them all to a very eminent degree. His occupations, almost incredible for the government of his flock, did not prevent him from composing very beautiful works.

Saint Ambrose is represented: 1st writing, inspired by an angel; 2nd having beside him a beehive with its bees, as an attribute of the sweetness of his writings; 3rd refusing entry to the church to the Emperor Theodosius; 4th standing, mitred and nimbused, holding in one hand his crozier, and in the other a kind of scepter surmounted by a pine cone; 5th at the moment of the lavabo of the Mass: a possessed woman is healed by drinking water that came from this liturgical ablution.