Resultados25 letters/passages
ambrose_milan · c. 385 · score 0.02
… cify who had been nominated, but added that the contest would take place in the imperial consistory, with your Majesty as arbiter. My reply, I trust, is appropriate -- and let no one call me defiant for stating what your own father of august memory not only said in words but established in law: in matters of faith or e …
ambrose_milan · c. 385 · score 0.02
… es on the grounds that they could not resist the severity and strictness of the imperial command? But this would be the response of a defiant priest, not of a modest one. Consider, Emperor: you are already rescinding your own law in part. Would that it were not in part, but altogether! For I would not wish your law to …
ambrose_milan · c. 395 · score 0.02
… d you saw fit to grant to those very petitioners what they had asked. 7. Though imperial power is great, consider, Emperor, how great God is. He sees the hearts of all, He examines the innermost conscience, He knows all things before they happen — He knows the hidden depths of your heart. You do not allow yourselves to …
ambrose_milan · c. 385 · score 0.02
The bishops, however, immediately recalled their deflected opinion. And certainly the greater number at Rimini approved the faith of the Nicene Council and condemned the Arian decrees. If Auxentius appeals to a synod to dispute about the faith -- although it is hardly necessary to fatigue so many bishops on account of …
ambrose_milan · c. 385 · score 0.02
But surely if we consult the sequence of divine Scripture or the records of past ages, who can deny that in a matter of faith -- I repeat, in a matter of faith -- it is bishops who have been accustomed to judge Christian emperors, not emperors to judge bishops? You will come of age, God willing, and then you will judge …
ambrose_milan · c. 395 · score 0.02
Since I am bound by my own words before both God and all people, I felt that nothing else was allowable or necessary for me but to act according to my conscience, since I could not fully trust you. I kept back and concealed my grief for a long time. I thought it wrong to confide it to anyone. Now I can no longer preten …
ambrose_milan · c. 385 · score 0.01
Ambrose, Bishop, to the most blessed Emperor Valentinian. Since the illustrious Symmachus, Prefect of the City [Quintus Aurelius Symmachus, the leading pagan senator and orator of his generation], has sent a memorial to your Clemency requesting that the Altar of Victory [a golden altar and statue of the goddess Victory …
ambrose_milan · c. 385 · score 0.01
To the most gracious Emperor and most blessed Augustus, Gratian — Ambrose, Bishop, sends greetings. Since your Clemency has asked me to write something on the faith — not because you doubt, but because you desire to know more fully — I have composed this work at your command. It would have been more fitting for others, …
ambrose_milan · c. 395 · score 0.01
Ambrose explains to the Emperor Eugenius [a Western usurper emperor, 392-394, a former rhetoric teacher elevated by the Frankish general Arbogast] why he was absent from Milan. He then reproaches him for his concessions to pagan worship. This, he says, was why he did not write sooner, and he promises to treat him with …
ambrose_milan · c. 385 · score 0.01
Ambrose, Bishop, to Eugenius. You have written to me requesting that I meet with you. I must decline, and I owe you an explanation for the refusal. I do not question that you hold power in the West. Power is a fact, and I am not so naive as to pretend that facts do not exist. But the manner in which you acquired that p …
ambrose_milan · c. 395 · score 0.01
… s are not allowed to contribute to idol worship. 3. My letters were read in the imperial council. Count Bauto [a Frankish general in Roman service], a man of the highest military rank, was present, as was Rumoridus — also of the same rank and devoted to pagan worship from his earliest youth. Valentinian at that time fo …
ambrose_milan · c. 385 · score 0.01
Shall I expose men either to betrayal of the faith or to punishment? Ambrose is not so important as to degrade the priesthood on his own account. The life of one man is not worth as much as the dignity of all priests -- on whose advice I have composed this document. They warned me that perhaps some pagan or Jew might b …
ambrose_milan · c. 394 · score 0.01
Ambrose, Bishop, to the Emperor Theodosius. You supposed, most blessed Emperor — as I gathered from your letter — that I had gone far from Milan because I believed God had abandoned your cause. But I am neither so imprudent nor so forgetful of your virtues and your merits as to have doubted that heaven's help would att …
ambrose_milan · c. 383 · score 0.01
Ambrose, Bishop, to the most blessed prince and most merciful Emperor Valentinian. When the illustrious Symmachus, Prefect of the City, submitted his memorial to your Clemency requesting that the altar removed from the Roman Senate house be restored to its place, you, Emperor — though still young in years — proved your …
ambrose_milan · c. 380 · score 0.01
Ambrose, Bishop, to the most blessed prince and most gracious Emperor Valentinian. Since the illustrious Symmachus, Prefect of the City, has petitioned your Grace to restore the altar removed from the Roman Senate house, and since you, Emperor — young in years but a veteran in faith — rejected the prayer of the pagans, …
ambrose_milan · c. 395 · score 0.01
For when in the city of Tyre the quinquennial games were being held and the extremely wicked king of Antioch [Antiochus IV Epiphanes, the Seleucid persecutor of the Jews] had come to attend, Jason appointed agents to carry three hundred silver didrachms from Jerusalem and give them for the sacrifice to Hercules. But th …
ambrose_milan · c. 385 · score 0.01
To the Emperor Gratian — Ambrose, Bishop. I send you these further reflections on the Holy Spirit, which I trust will confirm what I have already written. The matter is urgent because there are those who will concede the divinity of the Son but deny it to the Spirit — as though the Trinity could be two-thirds divine an …
ambrose_milan · c. 383 · score 0.01
I turned my temples red with the blood of animals, I bowed before dead stones, I honored gods who were demons. Now I have been taught better. I am ashamed of my past, not proud of it. I do not beg for my old errors to be restored. I beg you to leave them buried." If length of custom were an argument for truth, then the …
ambrose_milan · c. 380 · score 0.01
But Rome's greatness was built by her soldiers, not her priests. Regulus did not consult the augurs before marching to Carthage. Scipio did not sacrifice to Victory before destroying it. The battles that made Rome were won by Roman arms, not Roman altars. And the rites that Symmachus defends — the very rites he claims …
ambrose_milan · c. 397 · score 0.01
The clerical life and the monastic life are not the same, though they share much. A good monk is not automatically a good bishop, any more than a good soldier is automatically a good general. The skills are different. But the foundation — discipline, prayer, self-denial, obedience — must be the same. Do not choose a ma …
ambrose_milan · c. 385 · score 0.01
Ambrose to his friend Irenaeus — greetings. You have written to ask how we should understand certain passages of Scripture that appear to subordinate the Son to the Father. The question is an honest one, and I appreciate that you ask in the spirit of learning rather than controversy. When the Lord says "The Father is g …
ambrose_milan · c. 385 · score 0.01
Ambrose, Bishop, to the church of God established at Vercelli — greetings in the Lord. Brothers and sisters, your church has been without a shepherd for too long [the see of Vercelli had been vacant or contested following the death of the venerable Eusebius, one of the first Western bishops to champion monasticism]. Th …
ambrose_milan · c. 397 · score 0.01
They dress like monks but live like libertines. They affect holiness in public and pursue indulgence in private. They have drawn others after them into the same ruin. I say plainly: a man who abandons the monastic life for the world has not found freedom; he has found a different kind of slavery. The flesh he thought h …
ambrose_milan · c. 397 · score 0.01
Ambrose, a servant of Christ, called to be a bishop, to the church of Vercellae and to all who call on the name of our Lord Jesus Christ: grace be fulfilled in you from God the Father and his only-begotten Son, in the Holy Spirit. I am spent with grief that the church of God among you is still without a bishop, and tha …
ambrose_milan · c. 380 · score 0.01
I believed that gods of wood and metal could protect me. Experience has taught me otherwise. Hannibal came to my gates despite all the rites I performed. The Gauls seized the Capitol while the geese screamed and the priests chanted. My gods did not save me then. It was Roman courage that saved me — not Roman religion." …