AMBROSE AMBROSIAN LIBRARY 385 violence of the mob, he resisted the dicta- tion of the empress Justina, who wished that an Arian bishop should be appointed for the city. He rebuked Valentinian, defied Maxi- mus, and compelled Theodosius to a humilia- ting penance and submission. When all the officers of the court were silent upon the mas- sacre which in a fit of anger Theodosius had ordered at Thessalonica, Ambrose declared to the emperor that his crime was beyond abso- lution without a special act of penance, and that the mass could not fitly be celebrated in such a presence. His boldness prevailed, and the emperor humbly obeyed his orders, and continued ever after to be his firmest friend. His contest with Symmachus is scarcely less remarkable. At the instigation of this learned man, then prefect of Kome, the senate took the occasion of a famine in> 383 to ask that the pa- gan worship might be revived. Ambrose was prompt to throw against the scheme all the force of his authority and eloquence. He was by no means the equal of his adversary in graces of rhetoric and fulness of scholarship, but his earnestness, and perhaps in some degree his threatenings, won the cause. The writings of Ambrose fill two folio volumes in the editions of Erasmus (Basel, 1527) and the Benedictines (Paris, 1686-'90). His moral teaching has throughout an ascetic tone, though less austere than that of the Greek fathers. He was hostile to all amusements and all pleas- ures of sense, and commended the monastic life as the truest way of Christian obedience and spiritual growth. He wrote treatises on " Widows," on " Virginity," on " Penance," and on the "Duties of Ministers," which satisfied the severe taste of Jerome much better than his seven books on " Faith and the Holy Spirit," which that harsh critic pronounced to be at once weak, fantastic, and stolen from the Greeks. His panegyrics, as we read them now, hardly justify his reputation for a won- derful oratory. Of his letters only a part have come down to us. They show very faithfully the character of the man, his moderation, courage, fidelity, practical wisdom, and unaffected piety. There was a dignity in his manner and bearing which made him appear at once like a ruler and a saint. Arbogastes, a Roman general, making war upon the Franks of the Rhineland, was asked by one of their chiefs whom he had conquered if he was a friend of Ambrose. From motives of policy he gave an affirmative an- swer. " No wonder that you have beaten us," was the reply, " since you have the favor of a man whom the sun itself would obey if he should command it to stand still." The most valuable legacies of Ambrose to the church were the hymns which he wrote qnd the im- provements which he made in the method of chanting the sacred offices. The most famous of these are the morning song, Sterne rerum Conditor ; the evening song, Deus Creator om- nium ; the Christmas chant, Veni, Redemptor gentium ; and the short hymn to the Trinity, 26 VOL. i. 26 which Luther translated and adopted. These hymns of Ambrose are not to be praised for the beauty of their diction or for any artistic merit. They are rude, loose, and as far from the musical flow of later Christian rhyming as from the ancient finish of classic Latin verse. But their vigor, their fervor, their striking im- agery, not less than their association with the revered name of their author, give them a place in the veneration of the faithful. The body of Ambrose is kept in the ancient basilica of Milan which bears his name, and his feast day is ob- served by the Latin church on the 7th of De- cember, the day of his ordination as bishop. He has also the honor of a place among the saints of the eastern church, and his name is classed on their registers with the names of Basil, Athanasius, and the two Gregories. AMBROSIA, in Greek mythology, the food of the gods, which was brought to Zeus by pigeojis, and which conferred upon the dwellers on Olympus eternal youth and immortality. It supplied the place of all terrestrial comestibles. Favorites of the gods are recorded to have had it given to them as a great favor. It was also used by the gods to anoint their body and hair ; hence we read of the ambrosial locks of Zeus. AMBROSIAV CHANT, a method of singing hymns first introduced into the western church by St. Ambrose, about 386. Although gene- rally supposed to be the foundation of all church music, it was in fact derived through the eastern church from the Greeks, and is so little known at this day, that it is impossible to say more of its general character than that it was constructed on the ancient Greek tetra- chords, and embraced the four authentic modes, the four plagal or collateral ones being added by Gregory to form what is known as the Gre- gorian chant. The Ambrosian chant, and in- deed all kinds of church music, were at first limited strictly to the performance of the psalms and doxologies, from an apprehen- sion among the early fathers and bishops that heretical doctrines might creep into the ser- vices by the introduction of original hymns. Ambrose, however, in imitation of the Greek fathers, subsequently wrote several hymns, in- cluding, it has been erroneously supposed, the Te Deum, which he caused to be habitually sung according to the new method in his church ; and St. Augustine, who was baptized there, speaks with great delight of the impres- sion which the performance of the psalms and hymns made upon him. The Ambrosian chant continued to be used in the services of the church until about the commencement of the 7th century, when it was superseded by the new method adopted by Pope Gregory. AMBROSIAN LIBRARY, a collection founded in Milan in 1609 by Cardinal Federigo Borromeo, archbishop of that city, and named in honor of St. Ambrose. It is especially rich in MSS., for the collection of which learned men were sent into all parts of Europe, and into Asia. A very large number of palimpsests belong to this
