04 — Against Arianism

The Western defense of Nicaea: De Fide and the Council of Aquileia (381), by which Ambrose led the Latin church against the Homoian party; and De Spiritu Sancto, his treatise on the divinity of the Holy Spirit, carrying the Greek fathers into Latin.

Tradition: Pan-Orthodox (Church Father / Latin)

Part of the St. Ambrose of Milan Reference Guide. This section contains two content files:

File	Summary
the-western-anti-arian-struggle.md	The Western Anti-Arian Struggle — Ambrose as the decisive Western champion of the Council of Nicaea against the Homoian (“Arian”) theology that had held Milan and much of the Latin world: the five books of De Fide, written for the emperor Gratian on the eve of the Gothic war; the Council of Aquileia of 381, which Ambrose orchestrated and which deposed the Illyrian Arian bishops Palladius and Secundianus; and the relationship of the Western struggle to the First Council of Constantinople, the Second Ecumenical Council, meeting in the same year.
de-spiritu-sancto.md	De Spiritu Sancto (On the Holy Spirit) — Ambrose’s three books on the full divinity of the Holy Spirit against the Pneumatomachi, written for Gratian around 381; one of the first sustained Latin treatments of the Third Person, and a study in the transmission of Greek theology westward, drawing openly on Basil the Great, Athanasius, and Didymus the Blind — so openly that Jerome accused Ambrose of plagiarism, a charge the file weighs.

See Also

• St. Ambrose of Milan — master guide — the full collection and its sources
• The Altar of Victory and the Basilica Crisis — the political face of the same struggle against the Homoian court
• The Man and the See — the Homoian Milan Ambrose inherited
• De Spiritu Sancto — Ambrose’s use of the Greek fathers
• METHODOLOGY — the citation and verification standard governing every file