St Ambrose of Milan: Life, Hymns, Prayer and Feast Day

St Ambrose (c. 340-397) was the bishop of Milan who baptized St Augustine, wrote hymns the Church still sings in the Divine Office, and told an emperor to his face that "the emperor is in the Church, not over it". He is one of the four great Doctors of the Latin Church, with St Augustine, St Jerome and St Gregory the Great, and his feast falls on 7 December, the anniversary of his consecration as bishop. Here is his life, what he is known for and patron of, the legend of the Te Deum, and the full prayers of his Mass in the Missal of 1962.

Who was St Ambrose?

Ambrose was born at Trier, in Gaul, probably in 340, where his father, also named Ambrose, was prefect of Gaul, one of the highest offices of the Western Empire. His father died while he was still young, and his mother returned with the children to Rome. He owed much, Butler says, to her and to his sister, St Marcellina.

A charming story belongs to his infancy. His secretary and first biographer, the deacon Paulinus, relates that as the baby slept in his cradle in the courtyard of the praetorium, a swarm of bees settled on his face and went in and out of his mouth; then the bees rose and flew so high that they were lost from sight, and the father took it as a sign that the child, if he lived, would be something great. The Middle Ages, in the Golden Legend, retold the story, and the beehive became one of his emblems.

Ambrose studied Greek, poetry and rhetoric, became an advocate, and was noticed by the praetorian prefect Anicius Probus, who made him his assessor. The Emperor Valentinian I then named him governor of Liguria and Aemilia, with his residence at Milan, then the administrative capital of the West. As he left, Probus told him, without knowing how true his words would be: "Go, and govern more like a bishop than a judge."

From governor to bishop in a week

In 374 the Arian bishop of Milan, Auxentius, died, and the city was torn between those who wanted an Arian successor and those who wanted a Catholic. To keep the peace, the governor went to the church where the people were assembled and spoke to them. While he was speaking, a voice cried out, "Ambrose, bishop!", and the whole assembly, Catholics and Arians alike, took up the cry.

Ambrose was dismayed: though he professed the faith, he was still only a catechumen, unbaptized. He tried twice to escape, once hiding in the house of a senator, and wrote to the emperor to be excused. Valentinian answered that nothing gave him greater pleasure than to see that the governors he had chosen were fit to be bishops. Ambrose yielded. He was baptized, and a week later, on 7 December 374, he was consecrated bishop of Milan. He was about thirty-five.

He gave his movable goods to the poor and his lands to the Church, keeping only an income for his sister, and set himself at once to study the Scriptures and the Fathers, especially Origen and St Basil, under a learned Roman priest, St Simplician. Every day he offered the Holy Sacrifice for his people, and his door was open to anyone.

What is St Ambrose known for?

The bishop who stood up to emperors

When the Arian Empress Justina demanded a basilica of Milan for the Arians in 385 and 386, Ambrose refused: "Naboth would not give up the inheritance of his fathers, and shall I give up that of Jesus Christ?" He would not hand over the churches, but neither would he stir up violence. Shut up in the basilica with his people while imperial troops surrounded it, he summed up the principle at stake in a sentence that has never lost its force: "The emperor is in the Church, not over it."

When certain senators asked the young Emperor Valentinian II to restore the pagan Altar of Victory in the senate house, it was Ambrose who answered their spokesman, Symmachus, and the altar was not restored. And in 390, after the Emperor Theodosius had ordered a massacre of thousands at Thessalonica in reprisal for a riot, Ambrose wrote to him with his own hand, refusing to offer the Holy Sacrifice in his presence until he had done penance.

"I counsel, I beseech, I implore you to penance," he wrote. The emperor submitted and did public penance in church. Butler warns that the dramatic scene of the bishop barring the cathedral door against him is a later embellishment; the simple truth, attested by St Augustine and by Ambrose himself, is more moving: "He stripped himself of every sign of royalty and bewailed his sin openly in church."

The bishop of the poor

To ransom captives taken by the Goths, Ambrose melted down the Church's gold vessels. When the Arians cried sacrilege, he answered: "If the Church possesses gold, it is in order to use it for the needy, not to keep it."

St Ambrose and St Augustine

Augustine came to Milan in 384 as professor of rhetoric, still far from the faith, and went to hear the famous bishop preach, at first for his eloquence, then for what he said. His mother, St Monica, followed him there and placed herself under Ambrose's direction. Monica was troubled to find that Milan did not fast on Saturdays, as Rome did, and Augustine put the question to the bishop. Ambrose answered, as Augustine records in a letter: "When I visit Rome, I fast on Saturday; when I am here, I do not fast", and counselled following the custom of the church where one is. Our proverb "When in Rome, do as the Romans do" is commonly traced to that answer.

At the Easter Vigil of 387, Ambrose baptized Augustine, with his son Adeodatus and his friend Alypius. "How greatly did I weep in Your hymns and canticles," Augustine writes in his Confessions, "deeply moved by the voices of Your sweet-speaking Church!" The story of that conversion is told in our page on St Augustine of Hippo, and his own prayers in the prayers of St Augustine.

The hymns of St Ambrose

During the siege of the basilica in 386, Augustine tells us, Ambrose had the people sing hymns and psalms "after the manner of the Eastern Church", so that they should not lose heart, in two choirs answering one another. From Milan the custom spread to the whole West. Ambrose wrote hymns for that purpose in a simple and noble metre, eight stanzas of four lines, which became the model of the Latin hymn.

The hymn of cockcrow Aeterne rerum Conditor is certainly his, Butler says, and it is still sung at Lauds of Sunday in the Breviary; Deus Creator omnium, whose verses Augustine quotes in the Confessions as Ambrose's, is another; and many others are ascribed to him with more or less probability.

Did St Ambrose write the Te Deum?

A venerable legend says that Ambrose and Augustine composed the Te Deum together, verse by verse, on the night of Augustine's baptism, which is why it was long called the "Ambrosian hymn". It is a legend, and scholars today more often attribute the hymn to Nicetas of Remesiana, a bishop of the late fourth century. But the legend says something true: the hymn belongs to their age and to the Church that baptized Augustine. The full text, in Latin and English, is in our page on the Te Deum.

The Ambrosian rite

The Church of Milan has kept to this day its own liturgy, the Ambrosian rite, with its own Mass, Office and chant, named after the great bishop and traced by tradition to his time. It is one of the very few ancient Western rites that survived the spread of the Roman liturgy.

How did St Ambrose die?

In his last illness Ambrose went on dictating a commentary on the forty-third psalm. Paulinus, who was writing for him, saw a flame like a small shield cover his head and pass into his mouth, and his face become white as snow; from that day he wrote no more. When Count Stilicho sent messengers to beg him to pray for a longer life, he answered: "I have not so behaved myself among you that I should be ashamed to live longer; nor am I afraid to die, for we have a good Master."

On his last day he lay for hours with his arms stretched out in the form of a cross, praying. St Honoratus of Vercelli brought him the Body of the Lord, and soon after he died. It was Good Friday, 4 April 397; he was about fifty-seven. He was buried on Easter Day in the basilica of Milan that bears his name, Sant'Ambrogio, where his relics rest under the high altar.

The prayer of St Ambrose (Missal of 1962)

His Mass is from the Common of Doctors, In medio Ecclesiae, with the Gospel "You are the salt of the earth" (St Matthew v. 13-19); the Secret and Postcommunion are proper to him.

Collect, 7 December

Deus, qui populo tuo aeternae salutis beatum Ambrosium ministrum tribuisti: praesta, quaesumus; ut, quem Doctorem vitae habuimus in terris, intercessorem habere mereamur in caelis. Per Dominum nostrum Jesum Christum Filium tuum, qui tecum vivit et regnat in unitate Spiritus Sancti Deus, per omnia saecula saeculorum. Amen.

O God, who didst give blessed Ambrose to Thy people as a minister of eternal salvation: grant, we beseech Thee, that we who had him as a teacher of life on earth may deserve to have him as our intercessor in heaven. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, Thy Son, who liveth and reigneth with Thee in the unity of the Holy Ghost, God, world without end. Amen.

Secret

Omnipotens sempiterne Deus, munera tuae majestati oblata, per intercessionem beati Ambrosii Confessoris tui atque Pontificis, ad perpetuam nobis fac provenire salutem. Per Dominum nostrum.

Almighty and everlasting God, make the gifts offered to Thy majesty, through the intercession of blessed Ambrose, Thy Confessor and Bishop, avail us unto eternal salvation. Through our Lord.

Postcommunion

Sacramenta salutis nostrae suscipientes, concede, quaesumus, omnipotens Deus: ut beati Ambrosii Confessoris tui atque Pontificis nos ubique oratio adjuvet; in cujus veneratione haec tuae obtulimus majestati. Per Dominum nostrum.

Having received the sacraments of our salvation, grant, we beseech Thee, almighty God, that we may be helped everywhere by the prayer of blessed Ambrose, Thy Confessor and Bishop, in whose honour we have offered these gifts to Thy majesty. Through our Lord.

The Collect is the simplest prayer to St Ambrose for any day: to have in heaven, as intercessor, the one the Church had on earth as a teacher. The Iter Fidei app also carries a novena to St Ambrose, which it sets from 29 November to his feast.

When is the feast day of St Ambrose?

The feast of St Ambrose falls on 7 December, the anniversary of his consecration as bishop, the same day on which the Eastern Church keeps him. In the Roman calendar of 1962 it is a feast of the third class, in white vestments, with a commemoration of the Advent weekday. The calendar of 1969 left his feast on the same day. It falls on the eve of the feast of the Immaculate Conception, and you will find both in our traditional Catholic calendar of 1962; St Ambrose takes his place among the saints of the year in our guide to the Catholic saints, listed by feast day.

What is St Ambrose the patron saint of?

St Ambrose is above all the patron of Milan, his city, where his name is everywhere: the basilica, the Ambrosian rite, the Ambrosian Library. From the bees of his cradle, and from the "honeyed" eloquence they were taken to foretell, he became the patron of beekeepers, and the beehive is one of his emblems in art.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who was St Ambrose of Milan?

A Roman governor acclaimed bishop of Milan by the people in 374 while still a catechumen, who became one of the four great Doctors of the Latin Church, the defender of the Church against the Arians and the emperors, the author of hymns still sung in the Office, and the bishop who baptized St Augustine.

Why is St Ambrose the patron saint of beekeepers?

Because of the story told by his biographer Paulinus: a swarm of bees settled on the infant's face and mouth in his cradle, then flew up out of sight, which his father took as a sign of future greatness. The bees were later read as a figure of his sweet eloquence.

When and where was St Ambrose born?

At Trier, in Gaul (today in Germany), probably in 340, where his father was prefect.

When did St Ambrose die?

On Good Friday, 4 April 397, at Milan, at about fifty-seven years of age, after receiving Holy Communion from St Honoratus of Vercelli.

Where is St Ambrose buried?

In the Basilica of Sant'Ambrogio in Milan, under the high altar.

When was St Ambrose canonized?

Never by a formal process, which did not yet exist: like the other Fathers of the early Church he was venerated as a saint by the custom of the Church from the time of his death.

What did St Ambrose do for St Augustine?

His preaching helped to bring Augustine to the faith, and he baptized him, with his son Adeodatus, at the Easter Vigil of 387 in Milan.

The Iter Fidei app carries the Roman Missal of 1962, the Breviary with the hymns of St Ambrose, a novena to St Ambrose and the traditional calendar, in Latin and English. Join early access here.

Sources. Alban Butler, Lives of the Saints, 7 December (St Ambrose, Bishop of Milan, Doctor of the Church). St Augustine, Confessions, Books V and IX; Letter 54, to Januarius. Roman Missal (1962), Proper of Saints, 7 December, and Common of Doctors. Holy Bible, Douay-Rheims version, St Matthew v. 13-19.