AMBROSE OF MILAN ON CHASTITY

Marcia L. Colish

Ambrose of Milan is frequently depicted as an advocate of asceticism,

basing his exhortations to flee physical pleasures on a dualistic, Pla-
tonic conception of human nature.1 Some scholars have applied this

1
The leading advocate of this position is Pierre Courcelle, “Plotin et saint
Ambroise,” Revue de philologie, de littérature, et d’histoire anciennes 76 (1950), 29–56; idem,
“Nouvelle aspects de platonisme chez saint Ambroise,” Revue des études latines 34 (1956),
220–39; idem, “L’humanisme chrétien de saint Ambroise,” Orpheus 9 (1962), 21–34;
idem, “Anti-Christian Arguments and Christian Platonism,” in The Conflict between
Paganism and Christianity in the Fourth Century, ed. Arnaldo Momigliano (Oxford, 1963),
pp. 165–66; idem, Recherches sur les Confessions de S. Augustin, 2nd ed. (Paris, 1968), pp.
106–17, 122, 124–38; idem, Late Latin Writers and Their Greek Sources, trans. Harry E.
Wedek (Cambridge, Mass., 1969), pp. 137–38; idem, “Ambroise de Milan, ‘professeur
de philosophie’,” Revue de l’histoire de philosophie 181 (1972), 147–55; idem, Recherches sur
saint Ambroise: “Vies” anciennes, culture, iconographie (Paris, 1973), p. 16; idem, Connais-toi
toi-même de Socrate à saint Bernard, 2 vols. (Paris, 1974), 1:122–23, 125; idem, “Saint
Ambroise devant le précepte delphique,” in Forma futuri: Studi in onore del cardinale Michele
Pellegrino (Turin, 1975), pp. 185–86. See also Raymond Thamin, Saint Ambroise et la morale
chrétienne au IV e siècle: Étude comparée des traités ‘Des devoirs’ de Cicéron et de saint Ambroise
(Paris, 1895), p. 324; W. Willbrand, “Ambrosius und Plato,” Römische Quartalschrift 25
(1911), *42–*49; Lorenzo Taormina, “Sant’Ambrogio e Plotino,” in idem, Miscellanea
di studi di letteratura cristiana antica (Catania, 1954), pp. 41–85; Pierre Hadot, “Platon
et Plotin dans trois sermons de saint Ambroise,” Revue des études latines 34 (1956),
203–20; Aimé Solignac, “Nouvelles parallèles entre saint Ambroise et Plotin (Le De
Jacob et vita beata et le o , (Ennéade I, IV),” Archives de philosophie, n.s.
19 (1956), 148–56; Wolfgang Seibel, Fleisch und Geist beim heiligen Ambrosius (Munich,
1958), pp. 15–50, 97–99, 119–22, 129–45, 194–97; Heinrich Dörrie, “Das fünffach
gestufte Mysterium: Der Aufstieg der Seele bei Porphyrios und Ambrosius,” in Mullus:
Festschrift Theodor Klauser, eds. Alfred Stuiber and Alfred Herman (Münster, 1965), pp.
83–92; Ernst Dassmann, Die Frömmigkeit des Kirchenvaters Ambrosius von Mailand: Quellen und
Entfaltung (Münster, 1965), p. 17; Helen North, Sophrosyne: Self-Knowledge and Self-Restraint
in Greek Literature, Cornell Studies in Classical Philology 35 (Ithaca, N.Y., 1966), pp.
312–23, 328–60; André Loiselle, “‘Nature’ de l’homme et histoire de salut: Étude sur
l’anthropologie d’Ambroise de Milan,” Ph.D. diss., Université de Lyon, 1970, pp. 1–4,
12, 24–25, 31, 35–39, 44–46, 48–49, 77–78, 90, 117–20, 127, 143, 168; Peter Brown,
The Body and Society: Men, Women, and Sexual Renunciation in Early Christianity (New York,
1988), pp. 348–49; Robert A. Markus, The End of Ancient Christianity (Cambridge, U.K.
1990), pp. 34–38, 49; Elizabeth A. Clark, Reading Renunciation: Asceticism and Scripture in
Early Christianity (Princeton, 1999), p. 89; John Moorhead, Ambrose: Church and Society
in the Late Roman World (London, 1999), pp. 56–59, 172–73; Ilario Tolomio, “‘Corpus
carcer’ nell’Alto Medioevo: Metamorfosi di un concetto,” in Anima e corpo nella cultura
medievale, Atti del V convegno di studi della Società italiana per lo studio del pensiero
medievale, Venezia, 25–28 settembre 1995, eds. Carla Casagrande and Silvana Vecchio

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 38 marcia l. colish

interpretation even more stringently to the works Ambrose dedicated

to Christians with celibate vocations.2 This paper seeks to challenge
that position. While Ambrose certainly cites Platonic motifs in his
anthropology and ethics, he appropriates them in the light of non-Pla-
tonic philosophy and Christian thought. The anthropology he actually
develops is hylomorphic, not dualistic. His ethics, including ethics for
the celibate, is one of moderation, not extremism. After describing
Ambrose’s anthropology as found in his Hexaemeron, De paradiso, and
treatises on the four Old Testament patriarchs, we will consider his
views on chastity for three of the groups of Christians to whom he
writes: married couples, widows, and consecrated virgins.
Ambrose gives his broadest treatment of anthropology in his account
of creation and life in Eden in his Hexaemeron and De paradiso. In both
works he stresses, against Manichees, Gnostics, and Origenists, that
the primal parents God created and placed in Eden possessed gen-
dered bodies as well as souls. These attributes, and a sexual mode of
reproduction, were not consequences of the Fall.3 Ambrose shares the
consensus view that human souls are made in the image and likeness
of God, a condition which, in his view, applies equally to men and

(Florence, 1999), pp. 5–6, 10–11, 13. Although Carole Hill, “Classical and Christian
Tradition in Some Works of Saint Ambrose of Milan,” Ph.D. diss., Oxford University,
1980, pp. 150–76, generally portrays Ambrose as a Stoic, she sees him teaching a
Platonic body-soul dualism.
2
See, in particular, Franco Gori, introduction to his translation of Ambrose, Verginità
e vedovanza, ed. Ignatius Cazzaniga, Sancti Ambrosii episcopi mediolanensis opera
[hereafter SAEMO] 14/1–2 (Milan, 1989), 1:74, 76–78, 91; Jan N. Bremmer, “Pauper
or Patroness: The Widow in the Early Christian Church,” in Between Poverty and the Pyre:
Moments in the History of Widowhood, Jan Bremmer and Lourens van den Bosch, eds. (New
York, 1995), pp. 43–45; Domingo Ramos-Lissón, “En torno al alegorismo bíblico del
tratado De virginitatis de San Ambrosio: Los préstamos de los clásicos y cristianos,” in
Stimuli: Exegese und ihre Hermeneutik in Antike und Christentum. Festschrift für Ernst Dassmann,
Georg Schöllgen and Clemens Schotten, eds., Jahrbuch für Antike und Christentum,
Ergänzungsband 23 (Münster, 1996), pp. 455–56, 459, 460–61. Even more extreme
are John Bugge, Virginitas: An Essay on the History of a Medieval Ideal (The Hague, 1975),
pp. 31–66 and Calogero Riggi, “Fedeltà verginale e coniugale in S. Ambrogio,” in
“Humanitas” classica e “sapientia” cristiana: Scritti offerti a Roberto Iacoangeli, ed. Sergio Felici
(Rome, 1992), pp. 180–83, who see in Ambrose the idea that the primal parents
were pure spirit when first created and that embodiment and human sexuality are
consequences of original sin.
3
Ambrose, Hexaemeron 6.9.6.39, ed. Karl Schenkl, trans. Gabriele Banterle, SAEMO
1 (Milan, 1979); idem, De paradiso 1.5, 10.47–11.49, ed. Karl Schenkl, trans. Paolo
Siniscalco, SAEMO 2/1 (Milan, 1984). Noted by Loiselle, “‘Nature’ de l’homme,”
pp. 20–26; Luigi Franco Pizzolato, “La coppia umana in Sant’Ambrogio,” in Etica
e matrimonio nel cristianesimo delle origini, ed. Raniero Cantalamessa (Milan, 1976), pp.
190–208; Moorhead, Ambrose, pp. 45–46. Cf. Bugge and Riggi in n. 2 supra.

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