St. Ambrose
The Life and Times of St. Ambrose. By F. Homes Dudden, D.D. (Clarondon Press. 35s.) Visnrons to the great basilica of S. Ambrogio in Milan may enjoy, for a small fee, a remarkable historical experience. There, in the crypt, they may see the shrine in which still lie the remains of the great saint and bishop who was a doctor of the Western Church and the father of its music ; a poet; statesman and theologian of massive intellect and indomitable courage, who defied an emperor and baptised St. Augustine, and whose name is still attached to the special liturgic customs of the Milanese rite. With him lie the' relies of S.S. Gervasius and Protasius ; those supposed Neroniun martyrs whose gigantic skeletons Ambrose so appcn.it 3Iy discovered, when relics were required for the consecration of his great • church. Perhaps these bones, as Professor Reinach thought, may really be those of quaternary man, uncovered by Ambrose during, his diligent search for relics in an Early Christian cemetery. Nevertheless the startling miracles which they wrought • during and 'after the rite of translation are well attested, and did much for the Catholic cause in fourth-century Milan : and their names and the strange events in which their relics figured will always be associated with that of the great bishop who now rests by their side, and receives with them the veneration due to those who have been raised to the altars of the Church.
• St. Ambrose is perhaps the least generally known, though far from the least interesting, of the .fotir great Doctors of the West. As Dr. HOmes Dudden points out; not only was he one of the most massive personalities in a century of great men, but his life and activities were of such outstanding iniportance for the' history of the Church that it is strange that no full account of him has so far appeared in English. -This ()Mission has now 'been most handsoniely atoned for, 'in a work which is likely to take high rank among studies of the Patristic age. Ambrose was, in every sense of the word, a Roman saint: Born of the goVerning class, a Christian aristocrat with a' genius for administration ' and statesmanship, yet consumed at least in his later years—by " the saint's passion for com- munion with God," he had a mind of the true Roman cast ; clear, logical, practical, suspicious of specidation. The spirit' which Dr. Trench found in the authentic. Ambrosias hymns was precisely that by which their writer was inspired. It was " a fire burning inwardly, the glow of an austere enthusiasm,' which reveals itself indeed, but not to every careless beholder
. . the old Roman stoicism transmuted and glorified into that nobler Christian courage, which encountered and'at length overcame the world."
It is in this encounter—often violent—and some degree' of this overcoming, that the drama of St. Ambrose's life con- sists : for that life synchronised with the last stages of the Church's long struggle with the Pagan world. Dr: Homes Dudden is particularly successful in reconstructing its back- ground : that Roman scene of the fourth century, so full of conflicting faiths, facts and figures, that all sense of the forest is easily lost in contemplation of the many peculiar trees. He replaces us in that astonishing society where the old pagan gentry still practised their religion, the sacrifices were still offered at the temples, and the Vestals maintained their ancient state ; whilst the tombs of the Christian martyrs were visited by. parties of the pious on Sunday -afternoons, and devout and learned Roman ladies of the type made familiar to us by St. Jerome watched and prayed in the Christian basilicas, and petted the comfort-loving clergy who arc so vividly described by that same biting pen.
In this confused and .confusing world, Where the conflict between Catholic and Arian was hardly has embittered than that between the Church and the dying cult's, Ambrose—who had chosen the career of a magistrate, and' risen with case to the rank of Provincial Governor—was suddenly called or rather compelled by popular acclamation', to his own great distress, to become the Bishop of Milan. He was still unbap- tised ; and in six days passed from the font through the successive grades of the ministry to episcopal rank. He was thirty-four years Old ; an experienced and Conscientious administrator, wise, kindly and pions, but with little theological knowledge. This he gradually acquired in leisure hours ; and to such effect' did he applY:his sober, 'and lucid mind to the problems of-faith, that he is accounted 'one of the great theo- logians of- the :Western Church. No wonder that when the young Augustine—that " tall, dark-skinned, narrow-chested young professor " of whom we are given a vivid sketch-7. called to sec him, Ambrose was often reading and could not be disturbed. Yet this was only one among the many activities and duties which filled the bishop's life ; and included among other things the detailed care of the worship in his Cathedral church. It is interesting to note that he was the creator of Christian community-singing, which he valued for its psycho logical effects, " strengthening mind and soul " ; and that he' was the first person of poetic genius to write vernacular hymns for the use of the Latin Church. Even his services to Sacred music and poetry, apart from his vast and courageous activi- ties as statesman and ecclesiastic—fully set out in this admir- able book—would have been enough to place him in the small company of those who have devoted a first-class mind and an unquenchable energy to the exacting demands of a chosen ideal' Yet all this external action, this genius for the practical, was rooted in contemplation. In the last resort it was this, as. Ambrose said in the last words dictated before his death, which had enabled him " firmly to endure every contest " ; and this which gave him his lasting place among those creative personalities who were the true fathers of the Western Church.
• EVELYN UNDERHILL:
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