Letter LXI¶
A.D. 394
THIS letter was addressed to Theodosius after his victory over Eugenius. S. Ambrose in it explains his absence from Milan, and after expressing his gratitude to God for His blessing on the arms of Theodosius, urges the Emperor to a merciful use of his victory.
AMBROSE TO THE EMPEROR THEODOSIUS
1. YOU seem to have supposed, most blessed Emperor, as I understood from your Majesty’s letters, that I had removed to a distance from Milan because I believed your cause was forsaken by God. But in my absence I was not so foolish, nor so unmindful of your virtues and good deeds, as not to feel sure that the assistance of heaven would aid your piety, and assist you to rescue the Roman Empire from the cruelty of a barbarian robber, and the rule of an unworthy usurper.
2. Wherefore I made immediate haste to return, as soon as ever I was aware that he whom I thought it right to avoid was gone, for I had not deserted the Church of Milan, which the judgment of God had committed to me, but I shunned the presence of one who had involved himself in sacrilege. So I returned about the first of August, and from that day I have been in residence here, and here your Majesty’s letter251 has found me.
3. Thanks be to our Lord God, Who has responded to your faith and piety, and revived among us the pattern of ancient sanctity, giving to us to see in our own times what we marvel at in the Lessons of Holy Scripture, so effectual a presence, I mean, of Divine aid in battle252, that no mountain tops delayed your passage, no hostile arms presented any impediment.
4. For this you think I ought to give thanks to the Lord our God; and this I will willingly do, conscious of your good deeds. That victim is certainly pleasing to God, which is offered in your name; and how great faith and devotion does this evince! Other Emperors, as soon as ever they gain a victory, order triumphal arches or other badges of triumph to be erected, but your Clemency provides a victim for God, and desires that oblations and thanksgivings should be offered to the Lord by the priests.
5. I therefore, though unworthy and unequal to such an office, and to the offering of such prayers, will yet tell you how I have acted. I carried with me your Majesty’s letter to the altar, and laid it thereon, bearing it in my hand, when I offered the Sacrifice; that so your faith might speak with my voice, and the Imperial letter itself might perform the functions of the priestly oblation.
6. Truly the Lord is merciful to the Roman Empire, seeing that He hath chosen such a prince and parent of princes, whose virtue and power, raised on so great and triumphant an eminence of dominion, is supported by such humility as to vanquish Emperors in valour and priests in humility. What shall I wish for, or what shall I desire? You possess everything; from your stores therefore I will obtain the sum of my wishes; your Majesty is pitiful, and has great clemency.
7. But I desire for you again and again an increase of mercy, than which the Lord hath given nothing more excellent; that by your clemency, the Church of God, as it rejoices in the peace and tranquillity of the innocent, so it may also rejoice in the absolution of the guilty. I would chiefly ask you to pardon those who have sinned for the first time. May the Lord preserve your Clemency. Amen.
- 251
‘Apices’ here and in § 5 undoubtedly means ‘a letter.’ ‘Apex,’ in late Latin, is used for a single letter written, and ‘apices’ like ‘literae,’ for a continuous writing. Aulus Gellius (xiii. 30, 10. xvii. 9, 12.) quoted in White’s Dictionary, uses the phrase ‘literarum apices,’ and in Cod. Just. ii. 8, 6. we find ‘Augusti apices’ for ‘the Emperor’s rescripts.’
- 252
Theodoret, v. 24. gives a detailed account of the ways in which the special intervention of heaven was displayed in Theodosius’ campaign against Eugenius. S. Aug. De Civ. Dei, v. 26. says that Theodosius ‘contra robustissimum Eugenii exercitum magis orando quam feriendo pugnavit,’ and, after mentioning stories told by eye-witnesses of the manifest intervention of God on his behalf, quotes the well-known lines of Claudian,
O nimium dilecte Deo cui fundit ab antris
Æolus armatas hyemes, cui militat æther,
Et conjurati veniunt ad classica venti.