Church History (Vol.1-3). J. H. Kurtz
more conspicuous in the service of the church. To ransom the prisoners he spared not even the furniture of the church. To a peculiarly winning friendliness and gentleness he added great strength of character, which prevented him being checked in his course by any respect of persons, or by any threatening and danger. He so decidedly opposed the intrigues of the Arian Empress Justina, during the minority of her son Valentinian II., that she, powerless to execute her wrath, was obliged to desist from her endeavours (§ 50, 4). With Theodosius the Great he stood in the highest esteem. When the passionate emperor had ordered a fearful massacre without distinction of rank, age and sex, without enquiry as to guilt or innocence, of the inhabitants of Thessalonica on account of a tumult in which a general and several officers had been murdered, Ambrose wrote him a letter with an earnest call to repentance, and threatened him with exclusion from the communion of the church and its services. The emperor, already repenting of his hastiness, took patiently the rebuke administered, but did nothing to atone for his crime. Some time after he went as usual to church, but Ambrose met him at the entrance of the house of God and refused him admission. For eight months the emperor refrained from communion; then he applied for absolution, which was granted him, after he had publicly done penance before the congregation and promised never in future to carry out a death sentence within thirty days of its being pronounced. Theodosius afterwards declared that Ambrose was the only one truly deserving the name of a bishop. Ambrose was also a zealous promoter of monasticism in the West. In his sermons he so powerfully recommended virginity that many families forbade their daughters attending them. He deserves special credit for his contributions to the liturgical services (Officium Ambrosianum, Cantus Ambr., Hymn Composition, § 59, 4–6). On all dogmatic questions he strongly favoured the realism of the North African school, while in exegesis he did not surmount the allegorical method of the Alexandrians. To the department of morals and ascetics belong the 3 bks. De Officiis Ministrorum, a Christian construction of Cicero’s celebrated work and the most important of all Ambrose’s writings; also several treatises in recommendation of virginity. The book De Mysteriis explains baptism and the Lord’s Supper to the neophytes. The 5 bks. De fide, the 3 bks. De Spiritu S. and the tract De incarnatîonis sacramento, treat of the fundamental doctrines of the Christian faith in opposition to Arians, Sabellians, Apollinarians, etc. These are somewhat dependent upon the Greeks, especially Athanasius, Didymus and Basil. His expositions of Old Testament histories (Hexaëmeron, De Paradiso, De Cain et Abel, De Noë et arca, De Abraham, De Jacob et anima, etc.) are allegorical and typical in the highest degree. More important are his Sermones and 92 Epistles. But all his writings are distinguished by their noble, powerful and popular eloquence.
2 Ambrosiaster is the name given to an unknown writer whose allegorizing Commentary on Paul’s Epistles was long attributed to Ambrose. This work, highly popular on account of its pregnant brevity, was perhaps the joint work of several writers. In its earliest portions it belongs to the age of Damasus, bishop of Rome, who died in A.D. 384, who is named as a contemporary. Augustine names a Hilary, not otherwise known, as author of a passage quoted from it.
3 Pacianus,147 bishop of Barcelona, who died about A.D. 390, wrote in a clear style and correct Latinity three Epistles against the Novatians, from the first of which, De Catholico nomine, is borrowed the beautiful saying: Christianus mihi nomen est, Catholicus cognomen. He also wrote a Liber exhortatorius ad pœnitentiam and a Sermo de baptismo.
§ 47.16. During the Period of Origenistic Controversy.
1 Jerome148—Sophronius Eusebius Hieronymus—of Stridon in Dalmatia, received his classical training under the grammarian Donatus at Rome. In A.D. 360 he was baptized by bishop Liberius, but afterwards fell into sensual excesses which he atoned for by penitential pilgrimages to the catacombs. During a journey through Gaul and the provinces of the Rhine and Moselle he seems to have formed the fixed resolve to devote himself to theology and an ascetic life. Then for more than a year he stayed at Aquileia, A.D. 372, where he formed an intimate friendship with Rufinus. He next undertakes a journey to the East. At Antioch in a vision, during a violent fever, placed before the throne of the judge of all, having answered the question Who art thou? by the confession that he was a Christian, he heard the words distinctly uttered: Thou liest! thou art a Ciceronian and no Christian! He then sentenced himself to severe castigation and promised with an oath to give up the reading of the heathen classics which he had so much enjoyed. He afterwards indeed excused himself from the fulfilment of this twofold obligation; but this had sealed his devotion to an ascetic life, and the desert of Chalcis, the Syrian Thebaid, became for him during many years the school of ascetic discipline. Worn out with privations, penances and sensual temptations he returned in A.D. 379 to Antioch, where he was ordained presbyter but without any official district being assigned. Urged by Gregory of Nazianzum [Nazianzen], he next spent several years in Constantinople. From A.D. 382 to A.D. 385 he again lived in Rome, where bishop Damasus honoured him with his implicit confidence. This aroused against him the envy and enmity of many among the Roman clergy, while at the same time his zeal for the spread of monasticism and virginity, as well as his ascetic influence with women, drew upon him the hatred of many prominent families (§ 44, 4). On the death of his episcopal patron in A.D. 384 his position in Rome thus became untenable. He now returned to the East, visited all the holy places in Palestine, and also made an excursion to Alexandria where he stayed for four weeks in the school of the blind Didymus. He then settled down at Bethlehem, founded there with the means of his Roman lady friends an establishment for monks, over which he presided till his death in A.D. 420; and an establishment for nuns over which St. Paula presided, who with her daughter Eustochium had accompanied him from Rome. As to his share in the Origenistic controversies into which he allowed himself to be drawn, see § 51, 2. His character was not without defects: vanity, ambition, jealousy, passionateness, impatience and intense bitterness in debate, are only all too apparent in his life. But where these, as well as his scrupulous anxiety for the maintaining of a reputation for unwavering orthodoxy and by zeal for monasticism and asceticism, did not stand in the way, we often find in him an unexpected clearness and liberality of view. Comp. § 17, 6; 57, 6; 59, 1; 61, 1. To the instructions of the Jew Bar Hanina he was indebted for his knowledge of Hebrew and Chaldee. The greatest and most enduring service was rendered to the study of holy scripture by his pioneer labours in this direction. He is at his weakest in his dogmatic works, which mostly are disfigured by immoderately passionate polemic. In exegesis he represents the grammatico-historical method, but nevertheless frequently falls back again into allegorico-mystical explanations. His style is pure, flowing and elegant, but in polemic often reckless and coarse even to vulgarity. In the department of exegesis the first place belongs to his translation of the bible (§ 59, 1). We have also a number of Commentaries—on Genesis, Ecclesiastes, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Daniel, Minor Prophets, Matthew, Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians and Philemon. His Onomasticon s. de situ et nominibus locorum Hebr. is a Latin reproduction of the Τοπικά of Eusebius. In the department of dogmatics we have polemics against Lucifer of Calaris (§ 50, 3), against Helvidius, Jovinian and Vigilantius (§ 63, 2), against John of Jerusalem (§ 51, 2) and in several treatises against Rufinus, and finally against the Pelagians (§ 53, 4). In the department of history we have his Latin adaptation and continuation of the second part of the Eusebian Chronicle, his Catalogus Scriptorum ecclest. s. de viris illustr., which tells in anecdotal form about the lives and writings of biblical and ecclesiastical writers, 135 in number, from Peter down to himself, with the avowed purpose of proving the falseness of the reproach that only ignorant and uncultured men had embraced Christianity. It was afterwards continued by the Gaul Gennadius of Marseilles down to the end of the fifth century. Finally, the romancing legendary sketches of the lives of the famous monks Paul of Thebes (§ 39, 4), Hilarion (§ 44, 3) and Malchus, were added. His 150 Epistles are extremely important for the church history of his times. Of his translations of the Greek fathers only those of Didymus, De Spiritu S. and that of 70 Homilies of Origen, are now extant.
§ 47.17.
1 Tyrannius Rufinus of Aquileia after receiving baptism lived for a long time in monastic retirement. His enthusiasm for monasticism and asceticism led him in A.D. 373 to Egypt. At Alexandria he spent several years in intercourse with Didymus. He contracted there that enthusiastic admiration of Origen which made his after life so full of debate and strife. He next went in A.D. 379 to Jerusalem, where bishop John ordained him presbyter. Here he found Jerome, with whom he had become acquainted at Aquileia,