23 April 2024: We are investigating problems with ecommerce on Cambridge Core. We apologise for any inconvenience and hope to have full functionality restored shortly.
We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 04 December 2007
Ambrose's funeral sermons on the emperors Valentinian and Theodosius have been analysed as texts borrowing from classical rhetorical traditions, and as repositories of detail about contemporary politics. However, the crucial context for these texts was ecclesiastical; they were sermons, preached in church in services during which lessons were read from the Bible. This article shows that a consideration of this particular historical and liturgical context helps to elucidate Ambrose's ‘levelling’ political thought, and that identifying the biblical cadences of the sermons, far from being obfuscatory, is the key to understanding them.
1 In praise of later Roman emperors: the Panegyrici latini, trans. C. E. V. Nixon and B. S. Rodgers, Berkeley 1994.
2 Eusebius, Life of Constantine i.6, trans. A. Cameron and S. Hall, Oxford 1999.
3 Ibid. i.10.
4 Ibid. iv.67.
5 Ambrose, De obitu Theodosii 36, CSEL lxxiii.389, line 10.
6 Idem, De obitu Valentiniani 59, CSEL lxxiii.357, line 2.
7 Ambrose writes in De apologia prophetae David 4, SC ccxxxix.74, that David was from infancy ‘exposed to many temptations’, and in De obitu Theodosii 12, he lists the royal snares (power, sovereignty and pride) which Theodosius avoided.
8 ‘You are a man, you have met temptation – conquer it’: Ambrose to Theodosius, ep. li.11, PL xvi.1162.
9 Ambrose, De obitu Valentiniani 48.
10 Idem, De obitu Theodosii 5.
11 Ibid. 11.
12 We find a similar contrast between privatus and emperor in Ambrose, De apologia prophetae David 5 and 15. However, elsewhere Ambrose presents emperors as de facto rulers, but not naturally ordained. For an expression of the idea of natural political society as republican see his discussion of the birds at Hexameron v.15.52, CSEL xxxii/i.178.
13 See J. M. C. Toynbee, Death and burial in the Roman world, London 1971, and K. Hopkins, Death and renewal, Cambridge 1983.
14 See N. McLynn, Ambrose of Milan: church and court in a Christian capital, Berkeley 1994, 339, who even suggests that Ambrose was the ‘true centrepiece’ of the oration for Valentinian.
15 Ambrose asserts his relationship with these two emperors in different vocabularies: gratuitous love for Theodosius and friendship with Valentinian. As David Konstan has shown, to speak about a friend, as opposed to a relation of charity or kinship, is ‘to include oneself in the equation’, as friendship is two-way: ‘How to praise a friend: St Gregory of Nazianzus' funeral oration for St Basil the Great', in T. Hägg and P. Rousseau (eds), Greek biography and panegyric in late antiquity, Berkeley 2000, 160–79.
16 Ambrose, De excessu fratris, CSEL lxxiii/vii. See J. Doignon, ‘Lactance intermédiaire entre Ambroise de Milan et la consolation de Cicéron?’, RÉL li (1973), 208–19, on the Ciceronian flavour of the consolation in Ambrose's De excessu fratris. Cicero's Consolation is lost to us in its entirety, but its character can be gauged from fragments preserved in Lactantius, Divine institutes iii.19.1–13, CSEL xix.241–3.
17 See Ambrose, De obitu Valentiniani 29, 40, and De obitu Theodosii 35. For Ambrose's orations as consolatory see C. Favez, La Consolation latine chrétienne, Paris 1937, and M. Biermann, Die Leichenreden des Ambrosius von Mailand: Rhetorik, Predigt, Politik, Stuttgart 1995, ch. ii.
18 Ambrose, De obitu Valentiniani 3.
19 Ibid. 45. See also idem, De bono mortis, CSEL xxxii/i.703–53.
20 See De obitu Valentiniani 36–43, dealing with Valentinian's relations with his sisters, and stating: ‘But, holy daughters, let me return to consoling you’ (40), and ‘But you wish to keep his body. Throwing yourselves upon his tomb, you cling to it’ (42).
21 Idem, De obitu Theodosii 37.
22 On the division of duties between bishops and presbyters see H. Chadwick, ‘Bishops and monks’, SP xxiv (1993), 45–61 at pp. 49–50.
23 See Augustine, Confessiones vi.3.4, CCSL xxvii.76, lines 33–5: ‘However, every Lord's day I heard him [Ambrose] rightly preaching the word of truth among the people.’
24 See N. McLynn, Ambrose of Milan, Berkeley 1994, 64–5.
25 ‘When I accomplished nothing by frequent attempts, I wrote and sent a letter to the emperor, and when he came to the church I delivered this sermon [on Nathan's rebuke of David]’: Ambrose, ep. xli.1; ‘When I came down from the pulpit, he [Theodosius] said to me: “You spoke about me.” I answered: “I preached what is intended to benefit you”’: ibid. 27. The question of emperors' churchgoing habits was raised in conversation with Neil McLynn, who has unpublished work on this matter. Many Christian emperors (Constantine, Valentinian ii, Honorius, Arcadius) of the period did not attend church apart from on very special occasions. Theodosius' exceptional, more regular habit (as evinced by Ambrose's casually noting his presence on different and non-festival days) exposed him to the possibility of episcopal reprimand; the basilica was the bishop's space and not the emperor's, as conclusively proved in Ambrose's successful defence of the Catholic basilicas of Milan against Valentinian ii's Arian mother, Justina.
26 Honorius, Theodosius' successor, is present at Theodosius' memorial service (De obitu Theodosii 3, 15, 54) and Valentinian's sisters are present at Valentinian's funeral.
27 Richard Finn, personal communication.
28 ‘And I was delighted to hear Ambrose in his sermons to the people saying, as if he were most carefully enunciating a principle of exegesis: “The letter kills, the spirit gives life” [2 Cor. iii.6]. Those teachings which, taken literally, seemed to contain perverse teaching he would expound spiritually, removing the mystical veil': Augustine, Confessiones vi.4.6, CCSL xxvii.77, lines 22–4.
29 See E. Mazza, Mystagogy: a theology of the liturgy in the patristic age, New York 1989.
30 ‘Yesterday I handled the verse [Psalm xix.2] as my ability enabled me; today Holy Scripture seems to me not only to have prophesied in former times, but even at the present’: Ambrose, ep. xxii.15. This letter reports the sermon preached on the finding of the bodies of SS Gervasius and Protasius in the basilica at Milan.
31 On the ‘publication’ (i.e. circulation/dissemination) of literary texts in antiquity see Starr, R., ‘The circulation of literary texts in the Roman world’, CQ n.s. xxxvii (1987), 213–23Google Scholar.
32 See, for example, ‘I felt unequal to this task [of preaching], and that I could not express in words what we can scarcely conceive in our minds or take in with our eyes. But when the course of holy scripture began to be read, the Holy Spirit Who spake in the prophets granted to me to utter something worthy of so great a gathering’: Ambrose, ep. xxii.3.
33 See Favez, La Consolation latin chrétienne, 181–8, who proposes that the ‘Invention of the Cross’ episode was added to De obitu Theodosii when publication beckoned, to demonstrate to the princes Arcadius and Honorius the piety of their predecessor.
34 See, for comparison, G. G. Willis, St Augustine's lectionary, London 1962. It is debatable whether the lectionary determined a cycle of continuous reading (whereby the whole Bible was read over a period of about three years), or whether it was composed of a selection of scriptural passages which could be repeated on a one-yearly cycle.
35 See, for example, ‘That passage was read by no arrangement of mine, but by chance; but it is well fitted to the present time: Ambrose, Contra Auxentium 19, PL xvi.1013; ‘the chance of this day's lesson’: ep. xxii.4; ‘today the story of the holy Joseph comes up’: De Ioseph 1, CSEL xxxii/ii.73, line 6.
36 That said, Ambrose talks of Valentinian ‘who today has risen before us in the sermon which I preached to the people [ad plebem]. For when in my treatment of the assigned lesson [propositae lectionis] I happened upon this, that the poor people blessed God’: De obitu Valentiniani 30. ‘Propositae lectionis’ implies the use of a lectionary in this service. But Valentinian's funeral sermon was certainly not preached ‘ad plebem’ so much as to an elite audience including the emperor's sisters and members of the court. Ambrose must here be referring to a separate, routine service held for the people earlier in the day, which did follow the readings set by the lectionary.
37 Ambrose, De obitu Theodosii 17.
38 Ibid. 3.
39 Idem, ep. liii.4–5.
40 See G. Rowell, The liturgy of Christian burial, London 1977; J. Harries, ‘Death and the dead in the late Roman west’, in S. Bassett (ed.), Death in towns: urban responses to the dying and dead, 100–1600, Leicester 1992; U. Volp, Tod und Ritual in den christlichen Gemeinden der Antike, Leiden 2002; and Toynbee, Death and burial.
41 See ‘It will be good for [Valentinian's sisters] and for the dear remains if the burial is hastened, lest the summer heat utterly dissolve them, for we have hardly passed its first tide’: Ambrose to Theodosius, ep. liii.5. The surmise that Theodosius' corpse also stank by the time Ambrose came to preach a sermon over it might be confirmed by the comment at De obitu Theodosii 5: ‘The fragrance of his praise, worthy to be proclaimed by the lips of all, has taken away all stench of death.’
42 Idem, De obitu Theodosii 36. The question of how the living had the power to affect the dead is a tricky one: see R. Markus, The end of ancient Christianity, Cambridge 1990, 21.
43 Ambrose, De obitu Valentiniani 63.
44 Idem, De obitu Theodosii 37.
45 Idem, De obitu Valentiniani 56.
46 Idem, De obitu Theodosii 3. The very presence of Honorius at the altar is significant given that laymen were not normally permitted to enter the sanctuary. Even the placing of the corpse at the altar is significant; according to Pseudo-Dionysius' Ecclesiastical hierarchy (admittedly written at least a century later), the body of a priest would be placed at the foot of the altar, whereas that of a monk or layman remained outside the sanctuary.
47 Ambrose, De mysteriis ix. 53–4, CSEL lxxiii.112–13. For Ambrose, the real presence is an internal likeness (‘similitudo’) rather than an external resemblance (‘species’) which would be discomfiting for partakers: ‘you drink the likeness of the blood, in order that there may be no disgust provoked by flowing blood and yet the price of redemption may have its effect’: De sacramentis iv.20, CSEL lxiii.54, lines 59–63.
48 What form the resurrected body would take was a subject of some debate. It was regularly expected to have been transformed. See P. Brown, Body and society: men, women and sexual renunciation in early Christianity, New York 1988, 441–2. See also C. Walker Bynum, The resurrection of the body in western Christianity, New York 1995.
49 See the description of apotheosis in Herodian, History iv.2, ed. K. Stavenhagen, Stuttgart 1922, 111–12.
50 For example, ‘let your [the army's] faith be the strength of [Theodosius'] sons': Ambrose, De obitu Theodosii 8.
51 On the complicated and murky political contexts of Valentinian and Theodosius' deaths see McLynn, Ambrose of Milan, 336–41, 357–60.
52 Imperial succession was not of course always directly by inheritance; the number of emperors who gained power by military means proves the fact that a non-linear claimant was not automatically rejected according to some strict law of primogeniture.
53 Ambrose, De obitu Valentiniani 55.
54 Idem, De obitu Theodosii 40.
55 Ibid. 55.
56 ‘His brother Gratian runs to meet this soul [Valentinian's] as it ascends … he stands at his side as an advocate’: idem, De obitu Valentiniani 7.
57 ‘There [heaven] he [Theodosius] is now embracing Gratian’: idem, De obitu Theodosii 39.
58 Idem, De obitu Valentiniani 79–80, citing 2 Samuel i. 22, 23, 26, 27.
59 Ibid. 80.
60 Ibid. 72ff.
61 See N. Henry, ‘The Song of Songs and virginity: the study of a paradox in early Christian literature’, unpubl. PhD diss. Cambridge 1999.
62 Menander Rhetor, Treatise ii.420, trans. D. A. Russell and N. G. Wilson, Oxford 1981, 174, lines 12–14.
63 Panegyrici latini vi.17.3–4.
64 Ibid.viii.19.3.
65 Ambrose, De obitu Valentiniani 62, quoting Song of Songs v.13–14.
66 The classic example is Jerome's correspondence with widows and virgins in Rome. See Brown, Body and society, and also Henry, ‘The Song of Songs and virginity’. Some scholars eschew the Song of Songs as the biblical inspiration for such language, for example J. Børtnes, ‘Eros transformed: same-sex love and divine desire: reflections on the erotic vocabulary in St Gregory Nazianzus' speech on St Basil the Great’, in Hägg and Rousseau, Greek biography and panegyric, 180–93, examines erotic vocabulary in Gregory of Nazianzus' speech on Basil the Great as a Christian version of a Platonic discourse of philia.
67 See Augustine, De doctrina Christiana ii.13, CSEL lxxx.37, lines 15–18.
68 Ambrose, De obitu Valentiniani 58.
69 Ibid. 70, quoting Song of Songs vii.6.
70 Ibid. 60, 62.
71 Ibid. 64.
72 Athanasius, Life of Antony 14, PG xxvi.864C–865A.
73 Brown, Body and society, 223–5.
74 Lucy Grig recounts the two different stories of Ambrose's discovery of the bodies of saints Protasius and Gervasius: Making martyrs in late antiquity, London 2004, 2. Ambrose (ep. xxii.2) told his sister that he had found ‘intact bones and much blood’, but Augustine (Confessiones ix.7.16) recalled that the bodies were found ‘per tot annos incorrupta’.
75 Ambrose, De obitu Theodosii 52.
76 Idem, De obitu Valentiniani 10.
77 Ibid. 11–12.
78 Idem, De obitu Theodosii 53.
79 Ibid. 27–8.
80 Ibid. 33.
81 Ambrose frequently criticised emperors when they were alive; see, for example, his De apologia prophetae David, and epp. li, xli.
82 Idem, De obitu Valentiniani 72.
83 Idem, De obitu Theodosii 40.
84 ‘Valentinian was but a youth … when he was murdered not far from the city which had witnessed his brother's death, and suffered the shame of having his corpse hung from a gibbet’: Jerome, ep. lx.15, CSEL liv. Sozomen, in his Ecclesiastical history vii.22, PG lxvii.1485B, is less certain: ‘Some say that he was put to death by the eunuchs of the bedchamber at the solicitation of Arbogast … Others assert, however, that Valentinian committed the fatal deed with his own hands.’ See also Croke, B., ‘Arbogast and the death of Valentinian ii’, Historia xxv (1976), 235–44Google Scholar.
85 Ambrose, De obitu Valentiniani 33.
86 Ibid. 34.
87 Pace McLynn, Ambrose of Milan, 336ff. The fact that Valentinian was given a church funeral at all is suggestive; it would have been difficult for Ambrose to preach a eulogy on a suicide, even an imperial one. The Church's attitude to suicide at this time is not explicit, but later Augustine wrote a detailed exposition of suicide as an evil for which there were no mitigating circumstances: De civitate dei i.17–27, CCSL xlvii.18–28.
88 Ambrose, De obitu Valentiniani 53. The idea of retrospective baptism ‘by desire’, as well as ‘by blood’, had been conjured up in an age of martyrdom to explain the happy fate of catechumens who were killed before they had been baptised.
89 Ibid. 71.
90 Ibid. 74.
91 ‘Ipsa quidem virtus pretium sibi’: Claudian, Panegyricus dictus Manlio Theodoro consuli, ed. J. B. Hall, Stuttgart 1985, 129, line 1.
92 Ambrose, De obitu Valentiniani 77.
93 Idem, De obitu Theodosii 33.
94 See Y.-M. Duval, ‘Formes profanes et formes bibliques dans les oraisons funèbres de saint Ambroise’, in A. Cameron and others (eds), Christianisme et formes littéraires dans l'antiquité tardive en occident, Geneva 1977, 237–91.
