06 — Ambrose and Augustine

The most consequential of Ambrose’s pastoral relationships: his preaching and his hands brought Augustine into the Church, and through Augustine Ambrose’s influence reshaped the whole Latin West.

Tradition: Pan-Orthodox (Church Father / Latin)

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

File	Summary
the-baptism-of-augustine.md	The Baptism of Augustine — how Ambrose’s preaching freed Augustine from his Manichaean contempt for the Old Testament through spiritual exegesis, and how Ambrose baptized him at the Easter Vigil of 387. The file follows the encounter through Augustine’s own Confessions — the coming to hear the rhetoric and staying for the matter, the famous observation of Ambrose reading in silence (with the scholarly dispute over what it proves), the baptism with Adeodatus and Alypius — and disentangles the medieval legend that the Te Deum was improvised at the font.
the-shaping-of-the-west.md	The Shaping of the West — Ambrose’s larger role as the bridge between the Greek East and the Latin West and the formative influence on the Latin tradition: the transmission of Cappadocian and Alexandrian theology into Latin, the legacy in Augustine’s theology and so in all subsequent Western thought, and Ambrose’s standing as one of the architects, with Augustine and Jerome, of Latin Christianity.

File

Summary

the-baptism-of-augustine.md

The Baptism of Augustine — how Ambrose’s preaching freed Augustine from his Manichaean contempt for the Old Testament through spiritual exegesis, and how Ambrose baptized him at the Easter Vigil of 387. The file follows the encounter through Augustine’s own Confessions — the coming to hear the rhetoric and staying for the matter, the famous observation of Ambrose reading in silence (with the scholarly dispute over what it proves), the baptism with Adeodatus and Alypius — and disentangles the medieval legend that the Te Deum was improvised at the font.

the-shaping-of-the-west.md

The Shaping of the West — Ambrose’s larger role as the bridge between the Greek East and the Latin West and the formative influence on the Latin tradition: the transmission of Cappadocian and Alexandrian theology into Latin, the legacy in Augustine’s theology and so in all subsequent Western thought, and Ambrose’s standing as one of the architects, with Augustine and Jerome, of Latin Christianity.

06 — Ambrose and Augustine

See Also