Saint Aurelius Ambrose (377–397 C.E.) was Bishop of Milan from 374 C.E. until his death in 397 during a time when the Church sought to codify Christian theology in the beginnings of the Roman Empire’s decline. Ambrose thus lived during a time when the ancient world of classical Rome clashed with the new monotheistic religion, and this tension appears throughout Ambrose’s works. Although Christian, Ambrose had considerable familiarity with Roman authors through his training in rhetoric, and his writings demonstrate what could be considered a transference of intellectual tradition and history from classical Rome to the new Christian Church.
Ambrose lived during the reign of the first Christian Roman Emperor, Theodosius, who had been baptized during an illness from which he eventually recovered. As McLynn notes (1994, p. 291), Ambrose took issue with Theodosius’ massacre of his own civilians at Thessalonica, although the confrontation has over the centuries become exaggerated into myth....
Bibliography
Ambrose. (2002). De officiis (Ed. & Trans.: Davidson, I. J.). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Ambrosii. (1845). Opera omnia (Vol. 2). Paris: Migne.
Davidson, I. J. (1995). Ambrose’s de officiis and the intellectual climate of the late fourth century. Vigiliae Christianae, 49(4), 313–333. https://doi.org/10.2307/1583823.
Davidson, I. J. (2002). Introduction. In De officiis (pp. 1–112). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Freud, S. (1998). The interpretation of dreams (trans.: J. Strachey). New York: Avon.
Gaffney, J. (1981). Comparative religious ethics in the service of historical interpretation: Ambrose’s use of cicero. The Journal of Religious Ethics, 9(1), 35–47.
Jung, C. G. (1966). The practice of psychotherapy: Essays on the psychology of the transference and other subjects. (H. Read, M. Fordham, & G. Adler, Eds., R. F. C. Hull, Trans.) (2nd ed.). London: Routledge.
McLynn, N. B. (1994). Ambrose of Milan: Church and court in a Christian capital. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Ramsey, B. (1997). Ambrose. London/New York: Routledge.
Satterlee, C. A. (2002). Ambrose of Milan’s method of mystagogical preaching. Collegeville: Liturgical Press.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2017 Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany
About this entry
Cite this entry
Mills, D. (2017). Ambrose of Milan. In: Leeming, D. (eds) Encyclopedia of Psychology and Religion. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-27771-9_200029-1
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-27771-9_200029-1
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
Print ISBN: 978-3-642-27771-9
Online ISBN: 978-3-642-27771-9
eBook Packages: Springer Reference Behavioral Science and PsychologyReference Module Humanities and Social SciencesReference Module Business, Economics and Social Sciences