Collected Works 4 part 8/9

For concerning these too I learned that it was reported and commanded that vengeance be taken upon the monks—who, when the Valentinians were hindering their journey as they were proceeding (singing psalms according to ancient custom and usage) to the festival of the Maccabean martyrs, being stirred by the insolence, burned a temple of theirs, hastily set up in some rural village. 17. How many will be ready to offer themselves to such a choice, when they remember that in the time of Julian the one who cast down an altar and disturbed a sacrifice, being condemned by the judge, achieved martyrdom? And so never afterward was that judge who heard him held to be anything but a persecutor; no one thought him worthy of an encounter, no one ever thought him worthy of a kiss.

And were he not already dead, I would fear, Emperor, lest you take vengeance upon him—although he has not escaped the heavenly vengeance, surviving in his own heir. 18. But it is reported that the inquiry was entrusted to the judge, and that it was written that he ought not to have reported the matter, but to have avenged it; and that the offerings carried off were also to be sought out. I will pass over other things: basilicas of the churches were burned by the Jews, and nothing was restored, nothing demanded back, nothing sought. But what could a synagogue have possessed in the most remote fort, when all that is there is not much, nothing precious, nothing abundant? What, then, could have been snatched in the fire by Jews lying in wait? These are the arts of Jews wishing to calumniate;

so that while they complain of these things, an extraordinary military censure of judgment may be commanded, and a soldier sent—one who perhaps will say what another said here, before your coming, Emperor: 'How will Christ be able to help us, who wage war for the Jews against Christ? Who are sent to avenge the Jews? They lost their own armies; they want to destroy ours.' 19. Into what calumnies, besides, will they not leap—men who calumniated even Christ with false testimonies? Into what calumnies will they not leap—men liars even concerning divine things? Whom will they not say to have been authors of sedition? Whom will they not assail, even those whom they do not recognize—

so that they may behold countless ranks of chained men from the Christian people, that they may see the captive necks of the faithful folk, that the servants of God may be hidden in darkness, that they may be smitten with axes, given to the flames, handed over to the mines—lest the punishment pass quickly away? 20. Will you give this triumph to the Jews over the Church of God? this trophy over the people of Christ? these joys, Emperor, to the perfidious? this festival to the Synagogue, these mournings to the Church? The people of the Jews will set down this solemnity among their feast days; and among those they will surely number it, by which they triumphed either over the Amorites, or over the Canaanites, or by which they could be delivered from Pharaoh king of Egypt, or from the hand of Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon.

They will add this solemnity, signifying that they have triumphed over the people of Christ. 21. And although they themselves deny that they are bound by Roman laws—so much so that they reckon the laws to be crimes—now they think they should be avenged as if by Roman laws. Where were these laws, when they themselves burned the roofs of the consecrated basilicas? If Julian did not avenge the Church, because he was a prevaricator, will you, Emperor, avenge the injury of the synagogue, because you are a Christian? 22. And what will Christ say to you hereafter? Do you not recall what He commanded to holy David through Nathan the prophet (2 Sam. 7:8ff.)? 'I chose you, the lesser among your brethren, and from a private man I made you emperor. From the fruit of your seed I placed one upon the imperial throne.'

'I subjected to you barbarian nations, I gave you peace, I led your enemy captive into your power. You had no grain for the army's sustenance; by the very hand of your enemies I opened the gates to you, I opened the granaries: your enemies gave you their own provisions, which they had prepared for themselves. I confounded the counsels of your enemy, so that he stripped himself bare. I so bound the very usurper of the empire, and fettered his mind, that when he still had the means of fleeing, nevertheless, with all his men, as though fearing lest any should perish for you, he shut himself in. I gathered for you, to supply your victory, his Count and his army from the other part of the world—whom I had earlier scattered, lest they should join together in the alliance of war.'

'I commanded your army—gathered from many untamed nations—to keep the faith, tranquility, and concord, as it were, of a single people. I, when there was the utmost peril lest the treacherous counsels of the barbarians should penetrate the Alps, conferred the victory upon you within the very rampart of the Alps, that you might conquer without loss. I, therefore, made you triumph over your enemy; and you, over my people, give a triumph to my enemies. 23. Was not Maximus for this reason forsaken—he who, before the very days of the expedition, when he had heard that a synagogue had been burned at Rome, had sent an edict to Rome, as though a vindicator of public discipline? Whereupon the Christian people said: "No good threatens this man. That king has become a Jew."'

We have heard that you are a defender of this discipline, one whom Christ soon approved, He who died for sinners (Rom. 5:6). If this was said about a mere word, what shall be said about vengeance? That man, therefore, was at once overcome by the Franks, by the nation of the Saxons, in Sicily, at Siscia, at Poetovio: in short, everywhere on earth he was vanquished. What does the godly man have in common with the faithless? Even the examples of impiety are to be abolished together with the impious man. That which harmed him, by which the conquered man gave offence: the conqueror ought not to follow this, but to condemn it. 24. And so I have recounted these things to you not as though you were ungrateful, but I have reckoned them up as bestowed by right; so that, admonished by these things, you to whom more has been given may love the more. Finally, the Lord Jesus said this to Simon when he answered: 'You have judged rightly' (Luke 7:44).

And turning at once to the woman who anointed His feet with ointment, who bears the type of the Church, He said to Simon: 'Wherefore I say to you: her many sins are forgiven, because she loved much. But to whom less is forgiven, he loves less' (ibid., 47). This is the woman who entered into the house of the Pharisee, and cast out the Jew, but gained Christ. For the Church shut out the Synagogue: why is it again being tempted, that in the servant of Christ—that is, from the breast of faith, from the house of Christ—the Synagogue should shut out the Church? 25. These things, O Emperor, I have brought together into this discourse out of love and zeal for you. For I am indebted to your benefits, by which, at my request, you freed very many from exile, from prison, from the penalties of final death;

so that I ought rather to be willing, for your salvation, not even to fear giving offence to your mind (no one acts with greater confidence than he who loves from affection: no one surely ought to wound the man for whom he takes counsel), lest I lose in one moment the favour of any priest, conceived through so many years. And yet I do not deprecate the loss of favour, but the peril of salvation. 26. Yet how great a thing it is, O Emperor, that you should not think it ought to be inquired into or avenged—a thing which to this day no one has inquired into, no one has ever avenged? It is a grievous thing for your faith to be put in jeopardy for the sake of the Jews. When Gideon had slain the consecrated calf (Judges 6:31), the Gentiles said: 'Let the gods themselves avenge their own injury.' Who has the right to avenge the Synagogue? Christ, whom they slew, whom they denied?

Or will God the Father avenge those who do not even receive the Father, since they did not receive the Son? Who has the right to avenge the heresy of the Valentinians—a heresy which your piety in what manner avenges, when you have ordered them to be excluded, and not to usurp the liberty even of assembling (cf. 2 Kings 22:2)? If I should set before you Josiah, a king approved by God, you will condemn in these men that which was approved in him. 27. Certainly, if too little credit is given to me, command those whom you may judge to be bishops to be present: let it be examined, O Emperor, what ought to be done with faith preserved. If in money matters you consult your counts, how much more is it fitting that in a matter of religion you consult the Lord's priests! 28. Let your clemency consider how many liers-in-wait the Church has, how many spies:

if they find a slight crack, they will fix their sting in it. I speak after the manner of men: but for the rest, God is to be feared more than men, who by right is set above even emperors. If anyone thinks that deference should be shown to a friend, or to a parent, or to a kinsman, I have rightly judged both that deference should be shown to God, and that He should be preferred above all. Take counsel for yourself, O Emperor, or suffer me to take counsel for myself. 29. What shall I answer afterwards, if it should be discovered that, on the authority given hence, some Christians have been slain either by the sword, or by clubs, or by leaden whips? How shall I clear myself of this deed?

How shall I excuse it before the bishops, who now groan grievously because, after thirty and countless years of having served in the rank of presbyters, or as ministers of the Church, certain men are withdrawn from the sacred office and assigned to the municipal council? For if any serve in your army, they are kept safe for a fixed term of service; how much more ought you to consider also those who serve God! How, I say, shall I excuse this before the bishops, who complain about the clergy, and write that the churches are being laid waste by a heavy assault? 30. This, however, I wished to come to the notice of your clemency; concerning this you will deign, as it pleases you, to consult and temper according to your judgment: but that which troubles me, and rightly troubles me, exclude and cast out. You yourself do whatever you have commanded to be done:

or if he is not going to do it, I would rather that you be the more merciful, than that he should not have done what he was commanded. 31. You have matters in which you still owe it to invite and earn the Lord's clemency toward the Roman empire; you have those by whom you may hope for more than for yourself: let their grace, their salvation, plead with you in this discourse. I fear lest you entrust your cause to another's judgment. As yet all things are entire for you. In this I bind myself to our God on your behalf; nor need you fear the oath. Can it ever displease God that something is amended for the sake of His honour? You will change nothing at all in that letter, whether it has been sent or not yet sent: order another to be dictated, one that is full of faith, full of piety.

For you it is open to amend, for me it is not open to dissemble. 32. To the people of Antioch you forgave your own injury; you recalled the daughters of your enemy, and gave them to be reared at a kinsman's house; to the mother of your foe you sent provisions out of your treasury. Such great piety, such great faith toward God, will be obscured by this deed. You, therefore, who spared your armed enemies, and preserved your foes; do not, I beg, think that with so great zeal vengeance must be taken upon Christians. 33. Now I ask you, O Emperor, that you receive me not with disdain when I fear both for you and for myself; for it is the voice of the saint: 'Why was I made to see the affliction of my people' (1 Macc. 2:7), that I should incur the offence of God? I, at least, have done what could be done more honourably;

so that you might rather hear me in the palace, lest, if it were necessary, you should hear me in the Church. [Ambrose did not decline the emperor's coming out of any ungrateful feeling, but lest he should be forced to keep silence, or should give occasion for offence. Theodosius was wrathful, but of himself placable: lest, therefore, he should provoke him, he excused himself on grounds of ill health. The bishops groaned over the slaughter at Thessalonica, and therefore in washing it away the penitence of the saints was to be imitated, without which sin is not taken away. The devil who envied him was to be vanquished. Ambrose did not dare, in his presence, to offer the sacrifice, by whom he had even been divinely deterred: but that very penitence is a sacrifice. That his deed did not anticipate this, he grieved, inasmuch as one who truly loved him.]

To the most august Emperor Theodosius, Ambrose the bishop. 1. Both is the recollection of our old friendship sweet to me, and I remember with gratitude the benefits which, by my frequent intercessions, you have conferred with the highest favour upon others. Whence it may be gathered that it was not out of any ungrateful feeling that I have hitherto been able to decline your coming, which had always before been most longed for by me. But for what cause I did this, I will briefly explain. 2. I saw that to me alone in your retinue the right of nature, of hearing, was taken away, so that I was also deprived of the office of speaking; for you were often moved because certain things had reached me which had been decreed in your consistory. I, therefore, am excluded from the common usage, although the Lord Jesus says that nothing is hidden which is not made manifest (Luke 8:17).

By such modesty, then, as I could, I satisfied the imperial decision; and I provided that neither you yourself should have cause for displeasure—since I have acted so that nothing of the imperial decrees should be reported to me—nor that I, when I should be present, should either fail to hear through fear of all, and incur the reputation of one conniving; or should hear in such a way that my ears were open but my voice was barred; so that, having heard, I could not speak out, lest I should harm those who had come under suspicion of betrayal in their peril. 3. What, then, should I do? Should I not hear? But I could not stop my ears with the wax of the old fables. Should I betray it? But what I feared in your commands, I should have to guard against in my own words; lest anything bloody be committed. Should I keep silence?

But that would be the most wretched of all: my conscience would be bound, my voice torn away. And where would that text be? 'But if the priest shall not have spoken to him who errs, he who has erred shall die in his own guilt, and the priest shall be liable to punishment, because he did not admonish the one erring' (Ezekiel 3:19)? 4. Receive this, august Emperor. That you have zeal for the faith, I cannot deny; that you have the fear of God, I do not disavow: but you have an impulse of nature, which, if anyone wishes to soften it, you will quickly turn to mercy: if anyone goads it, you rouse it to greater fury, so that you can scarcely call it back. Would that, if no one calms it, no one may inflame it! Gladly I commit him to you: you yourself call yourself back, and by zeal for piety you conquer the impulse of nature. 5.

This impulse I preferred to commit secretly to your own reflections, rather than perhaps to stir it up publicly by my own deeds. And so I preferred that something should be lacking in my office, rather than in my humility; and that the authority of the priest should be required in me by others, rather than that the deference dearest to you should be missed in me by you; so that, the impulse being repressed, the faculty of choosing your counsel might be entire. I pretended an illness of body, in truth a grievous one, and one scarcely to be relieved except by gentler men: yet I would rather even have died, than not have awaited your coming for two or three days. But what I should do, there was none. 6. There was done in the city of the Thessalonians a thing such as no memory records, which I could not recall once it was done, lest it happen; nay, which I said beforehand would be most atrocious, when I asked so many times:

and a deed which you yourself, by recalling it too late, judged to be grievous—this deed I could not extenuate. When first it was heard, on account of the coming of the bishops of Gaul a synod had assembled; no one but groaned, no one took it moderately: there was no absolution of your deed in communion with Ambrose, and the odium of the offence committed would be still more heaped upon me also, if no one should say that the reconciliation of our God would be necessary. 7. Or are you ashamed, O Emperor, to do that which the king-prophet David, the author of Christ's lineage according to the flesh, did? It was said to him that a rich man who had very many flocks seized and slew the one ewe of a poor man on account of the coming of a guest; and when he learned that he himself was being accused in this, because he himself had done it, he said:

'I have sinned against the Lord' (2 Sam. 12:13). Do not, therefore, O Emperor, bear it impatiently, if it be said to you: 'You have done that thing,' which was said to King David by the prophet. For if you shall hear this earnestly, and shall say: 'I have sinned against the Lord'; if you shall say that royal and prophetic word: 'Come, let us worship, and fall down before Him; and let us weep before the Lord our God, who made us' (Psalm 95:6); it shall be said to you also: 'Since you repent, the Lord remits to you your sin, and you shall not die' (2 Sam. 12:13). 8. Again, when David had ordered the people to be numbered, he was smitten in heart, and said to the Lord: 'I have sinned exceedingly in that I have done this thing; and now, O Lord, take away the iniquity of your servant, for I have sinned exceedingly' (2 Sam. 24:10).

And Nathan the prophet was sent again to him, to offer him the choice of three conditions, that he might choose which he would: famine for three years in the land, or to flee for three months from the face of his enemies, or death for three days in the land. And David answered: 'These three are exceedingly great straits; nevertheless let me fall into the hand of the Lord, for His mercies are exceedingly many: and let me not fall into the hand of man' (ibid., 14). But the fault was, that he wished to know the number of all the people who were with him: which he ought to have reserved to God alone to know. 9. And when, it says, the death came upon the people, on that very first day at the hour of the midday meal, when David had seen the angel smiting the people, David said:

'I have sinned, and I the shepherd have done evil; but this flock, what has it done? Let your hand be against me, and against my father's house' (ibid., 17). And so the Lord repented, and commanded the angel to spare the people, but that David should offer sacrifice; for there were then sacrifices for sins, which now are the sacrifices of penitence. And so by that humility he became more acceptable to God: for it is no wonder that a man should sin; but this is reprehensible, if he does not acknowledge that he has erred, and does not humble his soul before God. 10. Holy Job, himself also mighty in the world, said: 'I did not hide my sin, but declared it before all the people' (Job 31:33). To the savage king Saul himself, his son Jonathan said: 'Do not sin against your servant David' (1 Sam. 19:4): and:

'Why do you sin in shedding innocent blood, to slay David without cause?' (ibid., 5). For even though he was king, yet he would sin, if he slew an innocent man. Finally, even David, when he had now gained possession of the kingdom and had heard that the innocent Abner had been slain by Joab the commander of his army, said: 'I am innocent, and my kingdom from this day and forever, of the blood of Abner the son of Ner' (2 Sam. 3:28); and he fasted in grief. 11. These things I have written, not to confound you, but that the examples of kings may move you to take away this sin from your kingdom: and you will take it away by humbling your soul before God. You are a man, and temptation has come to you; conquer it. Sin is not taken away except by tears and penitence. Neither angel can, nor archangel;

the Lord Himself, who alone can say: 'I am with you' (Matt. 28:20), if we have sinned, does not release it except to those who bring penitence. 12. I persuade, I ask, I exhort, I admonish; because it is a grief to me that you, who were an example of unheard-of piety, who held the summit of clemency, who did not allow individual guilty persons to be put in peril, should not grieve that so many innocent have perished. Although you have acted most successfully in battles, although you are praiseworthy in other things too; yet the summit of your works was always piety. The devil envied you this, which you had as your most excellent possession. Conquer him, while you still have wherewith you may conquer. Do not add another sin to your sin; lest you usurp that which to have usurped has harmed many. 13.

I, at least, though in all other things a debtor to your piety, to which I cannot be ungrateful, a piety which I preferred to many emperors and equated to but one: I, I say, have no cause of contumacy toward you, but I have cause of fear: I dare not offer the sacrifice, if you should wish to be present. Or is that which is not lawful in the blood of one innocent man, lawful in the blood of many? I think not. 14. Lastly, I write with my own hand what you alone may read. So may the Lord free me from all tribulations; for it was not from a man, nor through a man, but openly that I perceived I was forbidden. For when I was anxious, on that very night on which I was preparing to set out, you indeed seemed to have come to the Church; but it was not permitted me to offer the sacrifice. Other things I pass over, things which I was able to guard against:

but I endured them for love of you, as I judge. May the Lord grant that all things turn out with tranquility. In manifold ways our God admonishes us—by heavenly signs, by the precepts of the prophets; even by the visions of sinners He wills us to understand; that we may pray Him to take away disturbances, to preserve peace for you who rule, that the faith of the Church and tranquility may endure, for which it is profitable that the emperors be Christian and godly. 15. Surely you wish to be approved by God. There is a time for everything, as it is written: 'A time, He says, to act, O Lord' (cf. Eccles. 3:1); and: 'It is time for the Lord to act' (Psalm 119:126). Then you shall offer, when you have received the faculty of sacrificing, when your victim is accepted by God.

Would it not delight me to have the emperor's favour, that I might act according to your will, if the cause permitted? And simple prayer is a sacrifice: this one obtains pardon, that one offence; because this has humility, that has contempt: for it is the voice of God, that He prefers His commandment to be done, rather than that sacrifice be offered. God cries this out, Moses announces it to the people, Paul preaches it to the peoples. Do that which you understand to be more profitable in time. 'I prefer mercy,' He says, 'to sacrifice' (Matt. 9:13). Why should not those rather be Christians who condemn their own sin, than those who think to defend it? For the righteous man, at the beginning of his speech, is his own accuser (Prov. 18:17).

He who accuses himself when he has sinned is righteous, not he who praises himself. 16. Would, O Emperor, that I had rather believed myself even beforehand, than your custom. When I think that you quickly pardon, quickly recall your decree, as you have often done; both you were forestalled, and I did not decline what I ought not to have guarded against. But thanks be to the Lord, who wishes to chastise His little servants, lest He lose them. This is common to me with the prophets, and it shall be common to you with the saints. 17. Or shall I not prefer the father of Gratian before my own eyes? Your other holy pledges deserve pardon. I have set before me a name sweet to me, to whom I have shown love in common. I love, I cherish, I follow with prayers. If you believe, follow; if, I say, you believe, acknowledge what I say:

if you do not believe, pardon what I do, in which I prefer God. Most blessed and most flourishing, may you enjoy perpetual tranquility with your holy pledges, august Emperor. [Disclosing the cause of his silence, he mourns the death of Valentinian, chiefly on account of his supreme piety toward God and his benevolence toward himself. Then, having been informed that the marble is ready at hand for his burial, he urges that it be hastened for the sake of the dead man's sisters.] Ambrose to Theodosius the emperor. 1. My silence was broken by the discourse of your clemency; for in matters so sad I had resolved to do nothing better than, if it could be, to hide myself away. But since I could not lurk in some retreat and depart from the priesthood, I at least hid within myself by silence. 2.

For I grieve, I confess, with bitter grief, not only because the august Valentinian departed at an untimely age, but also because, formed in the faith and by your instructions, he had put on so great a devotion toward our God, and had leaned upon me with so great affection, that he whom he formerly persecuted he now loved: whom he formerly repelled as an adversary, he now esteemed as a parent. This I have brought forth not out of remembrance of an old injury, but as testimony of his conversion. For the former was a stranger's thing, this his own, which, instilled into him by you, he so held fast that he excluded his mother's persuasion. He boasted of being reared by me; he longed for me as a diligent father; at a falsely reported rumor of my coming, fabricated by certain men, he waited impatiently.

Nay more, in those very days of public grief, although he had the holy and highest priests of the Lord within Gaul; yet, that he might be initiated by me into the sacraments of baptism, he thought it necessary to write: which, even if not reasonably, yet affectionately he testified his zeal toward me as his own. 3. Shall I, then, not pant for him with my inmost breath, and embrace him with the secret depths of my mind and soul? Shall I think him dead to me? Nay, rather more dead to me. What thanks I rendered to the Lord, that he had so turned to me, that he had been so amended, as though he had put on the character of a man of greater age: what thanks to your clemency, that you had not only restored him to the kingdom; but also, what is more, had instructed him in the disciplines of your faith and piety?

Shall I, then, not grieve for him, who, whole in his prime of life, died by a sudden death before he obtained the grace of the sacraments which he desired? You have refreshed my soul, in that you yourself also deigned to bear witness to my grief. You, O Emperor, I hold as the arbiter of my affection, you as the interpreter of my mind. 4. But times for weeping will not be lacking at other times: now concerning his burial, since your clemency has written that it is to be provided for here in this way. If he departed without share in baptism, what I have come to know, I now repress. There is here a most beautiful basin of porphyry, most fit for uses of this kind; for Maximian too, the colleague of Diocletian, was thus entombed. There are most precious tablets of porphyry, with which the cover may be clothed, by which the royal remains may be enclosed. 5.

This had been prepared, but the rescript of your clemency was awaited: by the receipt of which your holy daughters, the sisters of your son Valentinian, were refreshed—daughters who afflict themselves in grievous ways; and they were the more agitated because for a long time nothing was written to them. Whence no small consolation came to them, but while the remains lie unburied, they by no means spare themselves; for they seem to themselves to keep a daily funeral for their brother. And indeed, since they are never without great weeping and grievous grief, yet as often as they approach there, they return bloodless. Both for them, then, will provision be made, and for the dearest remains, if the burial be hastened, lest they be utterly dissolved by the summer heat; for we have scarcely passed the preceding summer. 6.

Your command I keep, and I commend it to the Lord. May the Lord love you, because you love the Lord's servants. [To Eugenius he explains why he did not await him at Milan: then, having recounted what had been done under Valentinian and Theodosius on the occasion of Symmachus's petition, he freely censures that same tyrant because, by conceding expenses to the temples of the idols, he had set before his eyes neither the fear of God nor others' estimation of himself; and, opposing to his own prevarication the example of the Hebrews, he says this was the reason why he did not write back to him: yet that in future he would use toward him the same liberty which he had used with other princes.] To the most clement Emperor Eugenius, Ambrose the bishop. 1.