St. Ambrose

Ambrose was born about the year 339 at Trier, where his father was praetorian prefect of Gaul, and was trained for public life. As governor at Milan he went to the cathedral to keep the peace between the Nicene and Arian parties during the election of a bishop, and the people, it is said at the cry of a child, acclaimed him instead. He was still only a catechumen, and was baptized, ordained and consecrated within a week.

He gave away his property, set himself to study the Scriptures and the Greek Fathers, and became one of the great preachers of the age. He is remembered for the singing of hymns and psalms in the Western Church, which he ordered when his congregation kept vigil in the basilica against the demand that it be handed to the Arians.

He would not flatter power. He refused the emperor Theodosius communion until he had done public penance for the massacre at Thessalonica, and the emperor submitted. He resisted the restoration of the altar of Victory in the Senate and the attempts of the empress Justina to take a church for the Arians.

Among those who came to hear him preach was a teacher of rhetoric from Africa named Augustine, whom he baptized at Milan in 387. Ambrose reposed on Holy Saturday, the fourth of April, in the year 397. The Orthodox Church keeps his memory on the seventh of December.