Moral teaching of St. Ambrose, Bishop of Milan

Thought about St. Ambrose of Milan, as a moralist, is usually associated with the idea of ​​him as the author, one might say, of the first attempt at a systematic presentation of Christian moral teaching, namely, De officiis ministrorum, which, as is known, is very closely dependent on the ethical and philosophical treatise of almost the same name by Cicero. At the same time, it is usually thought, or at least implied, that the mentioned work of the great Milanese saint gives an accurate expression of his moral views. While initially sharing this generally accepted view, the author of this study initially set himself a narrower task than the present one: to clarify the question of the relationship of the moral teaching of St. Ambrose in his De officiis ministrorum to the moral teaching of Cicero, set forth in De officiis. However, a closer acquaintance with other works of St. Ambrose (necessary for the successful achievement of his goal) led him to the conviction that the book “On the Duties of the Clergy” not only is not characteristic of the moral teaching of the Milanese saint, but, on the contrary, due to its exceptional proximity to the pagan work of Cicero, standing somewhat apart from other works of St. father - that the true moral views of St. Ambrose must be sought not so much in De officiis ministrorum as in other theological and ethical writings of the saint. Depending on this, the author was forced to abandon his previous task and set himself a new, broader one: to clarify the moral teaching of St. Ambrose in general, and the question of the relationship of his moral views in De officiis ministrorum to the moral teachings of Cicero in De officiis is left as a separate, but private, task of this study. Since the moral, as well as the generally theological, teaching of St. Ambrose, the father of the Church of the West, bears very clear traces of Eastern influence, it was necessary, as it seemed to the author, to present the moral teaching of St. Ambrose to preface at least a cursory outline of those historical conditions and circumstances that in a certain way influenced the formation of the theological and ethical views of St. father. Thus, the following three parts of the research he undertook were outlined before the author: the main one - the presentation of the moral teaching of St. Ambrose, preparatory – the attitude of St. Ambrose to the theology of the Eastern and Western fathers and teachers of the church and, finally, so to speak, the final one: the relationship of the moral teaching of St. Ambrose to the moral teachings of Cicero. About the dependence of St. Ambrose from eastern and western authorities we judge by the traces of their influence on St. father, which are preserved in his creations. Obviously, in order to more accurately establish the degree and nature of these influences, as well as their chronology, it is necessary to determine the time of writing of each of the works of St. father separately. On the other hand, before talking about theological influences on St. Ambrose (and even more so to write about his moral teaching), it seems necessary to say who St. Ambrose, or, in other words, to give at least brief biographical information about him, so necessary where the moral teaching is not set out by a theorist, but by practice. From here, the first (introductory) part of our study is divided into three chapters: in the first we give brief biographical information about St. Ambrose, in the second - a possible chronology of his creations, and in the third we interpret the dependence of St. Ambrose from the Eastern (partly Western) fathers and teachers of the church, as well as Philo, about the nature of this dependence, as well as the chronological continuity of influences on St. father from his samples. We consider it necessary to make a reservation that, in giving a biographical sketch, we are far from intending to present a complete biography of St. father, to exhaust all relevant material here - we, according to our main task, limit ourselves to only brief biographical information, emphasizing those facts from the life of St. Ambrose and those traits of his character that have one or another relation to his moral teaching. Likewise, the third chapter does not and, for the purpose of writing, cannot present such a detailed essay that could be required from the author in a work devoted to the issue specifically examined in this chapter. We did not need any special research: it would be enough, as it seems to us, to indicate the basic character of Eastern and Western theology and the historical situation in which St. Ambrose. This (but not exclusively, of course) explains, by the way, the fact that we are sometimes content in this part with what second hands give us, without finding it necessary to turn to primary sources. In the third chapter of this part, we dwell in some detail both on the theological in general and, in particular, on the ethical teaching of Philo and Origen, and partly of Clement of Alexandria, St. Hippolytus of Rome and St. Basil the Great. The fact is that these writers (especially the first two and the last) were the closest teachers of St. Ambrose, whose influence both on theology in general and on the ethics of the Milanese saint in particular had a particularly strong impact. Therefore, a general acquaintance with their theology and moral views seems absolutely necessary to us. The second part, central in both senses, is divided by us into four chapters, of which the first deals with the moral state of an innocent person, the second - a fallen one, the third - a redeemed one, and the fourth - a glorified one. It should be noted that, although St. Ambrose clearly outlines these four periods of the ethical life of man, or rather, humanity, but does not always clearly distinguish between them; sometimes he seems to forget about this division and does not even distinguish between fallen and redeemed man. That is why, on the one hand, we have to treasure every phrase of St. father, in which he concerns the relationship between the above periods, and, on the other hand, to be careful in characterizing one or another period in a person’s moral life, so as not to impose St. the father of those views and theological subtleties of the subsequent time, which he could not have. The indicated ambiguity and sometimes inconsistency in the moral teaching of St. father due to fear of imposing St. Ambrose, such thoughts, which he did not have, could not but affect the harmony of the plan of our work and lead us in places to tautology. For example, the presentation of the negative view of St. father on the flesh, as the source of sin, and on the world, as the dark and sinful kingdom of the devil, which has engulfed the entire earth since the time of Adam’s sin, a place should have been reserved in the second chapter, where we talk about the state of fallen man, who has lost paradise and found himself in hopeless slavery to the devil, however, in fact, we had to talk about this only in the third chapter and precisely where we were talking about negative perfection or negative virtue. The fact is that, although St. Ambrose distinguishes between the moral state of fallen and redeemed man, and although, on the other hand, he says that Christ redeemed not only the whole man, but the entire universe, however, as if forgetting about the fruits of Christ’s redemption, St. the father claims that even in the grace-filled times of Christianity, the flesh (even of a redeemed person) is a breeding ground for sin, that his whole life is darkness, sleep and misfortune, and the whole world is the kingdom of the devil. We talk about the psychology of sin twice: in one case about the sin (and its origin) of the first person, who, according to St. Ambrose, was not only innocent, but also adorned with virtues, in the second - about the sin of fallen man, in which sinful passions took root and even, perhaps, nature itself changed. However, in general the ethical views of St. Ambrose is not distinguished by clarity and distinctness. If we add to this the fact that St. Father usually does not give a coherent and consistent presentation of his views on this or that issue of ethics, but, prompted by the need to give an edifying sermon rather than a theological or ethical treatise, he only (for the most part) casually and casually throws in certain thoughts and positions that are interesting to us, then, I think, it will become clear how difficult it is to create a whole (mosaic) image of the moral teaching of St. from these individual pebbles. Ambrose. St. Ambrose was not an independent thinker. His theological and ethical views were formed under the influence mainly of the East and Eastern authorities. That is why, in order to better understand and assimilate the moral teaching of St. Ambrose, we considered it necessary to give, in necessary cases, teaching on the well-known issue of ethics of those teachers of St. the father whom he most often imitates, that is, mainly Philo and Origen. It is known that some interpretations of St. Ambrose St. The texts remain incomprehensible unless one reads the corresponding interpretations of Philo. It would, of course, be risky to assert that the nature of St.’s borrowings in this case. Ambrose has no place in the area of ​​moral issues among his models, especially since all the works of St. Ambrose are imbued with an ethical tendency. In the third part of this study we talk about the attitude of De officiis ministrorum of St. Ambrose to De officiis of Cicero. Scientists studying this issue usually make two mistakes: firstly, this creation of St. They consider Ambrose out of connection with other works of St. father (the same is the case with Cicero), and secondly, they focus attention almost exclusively on the particular provisions and instructions of ethics of both authors. We, it seems, are avoiding both mistakes. First of all, we take all the works of one and another author in their entirety. This gives us the opportunity to clarify the basic principle of ethics as St. Ambrose, and Cicero, and in the future it is easy to point out the deep abyss that separates the Christian moralist from the pagan in the most important and essential, and then in the secondary and particular. Without further denying the fact of the close dependence of St. Ambrose from Cicero and from the content side, we try to give a natural explanation for this in the circumstances of that time in general and the personal saints. Ambrose in particular. The presentation of the ethics (ancient and middle) of the Stoa, which we propose in this part, does not pretend to be complete and thorough, since it is not an end in itself, and we needed it only to better understand the essence of Cicero’s moral teaching. The manuals that we used when writing this study do not, of course, exhaust all the literature about St. Ambrose. This happened partly because some books that were very necessary for us had already been sold out, and therefore, despite all our efforts, we could not get them. By publishing this book, the author considers it his duty to express deep gratitude to Professor Alexander Alexandrovich Bronzov for his guidance and instructions, for moral support, and also for the fact that he, on his own initiative, took upon himself the difficult task of reading the latest proofs. The author also expresses his gratitude to Professor Nikolai Ivanovich Sagarda for his instructions regarding this work. May 26, 1911–February 12, 1912