rerum conditor, Deus creator omnium, Jam surgit hora tertia, and Veni redemptor gentium, all mentioned by Augustine. The Ambrosian rite of later days is an amalgam of eastern, Roman and Gallican elements, and as such is not his work. Its eastern characteristics may have been brought to Milan by the Cappadocian bishop, Auxentius, Ambrose's Arian predecessor; and in that case Ambrose may have adapted them to western uses or may simply have removed any suggestion of Arianism. He did not compose the Te Deum, as one legend has it, but some modern scholars believe he wrote the Athanasian Creed. He undoubtedly influenced liturgical practice and the common life of the Church by the encouragement which he gave to the veneration of martyrs and the search for, and exchange of, relics.

He was a great prince of the Church in his own right. It was also given to him to help a greater man into the way of truth. Not that Augustine was ever intimate with him. But it was Ambrose whose preaching showed him how to understand the Old Testament and released him from some of his Manichaean difficulties, and it was Ambrose who baptized him, "the excellent steward of God whom I venerate as a father, for in Christ Jesus he begat me through the Gospel and by his ministry I received the washing of regeneration-the blessed Ambrose, whose grace, constancy, labours, perils for the catholic faith, whether in words or works, I have myself experienced, and the whole Roman world unhesitatingly proclaims with me."1

THE TEACHING OF AMBROSE ON THE RELATIONS BETWEEN CHURCH AND STATE

A treatise on Church and State from the pen of Ambrose would be an exciting thing to read, still more an intimate diary of his dealings with, and his thoughts about, his imperial masters. Failing any such thing, we have to put together the remarks drawn from him by political circumstances or made from time to time in the course of his exegesis of Scripture.

First, the State as such is good and within the purpose of God. In principle it precedes the Fall and is natural. The divinely appointed fellowship of Adam and Eve is the germ of the State, for fellowship implies mutual help and so justice and good-will, the twin principles of community and society. It is true that, but for sin, society would be more free and more 1 Aug., Contra Julianum Pelagianum, I, 10.

equal than it is; some of its institutions, like slavery and private property, are the result of the Fall. So indeed is monarchy. While the State itself is natural, coercive power is the fruit of sin; not, however, as an invention of the devil, but as the divinely approved remedy for sin. Thus where there is a monarch, he must be accepted as the power ordained of God and given his due.

But what is his due? What is the sphere of his God-given authority? By the third century the totalitarianism of the Roman Empire assumed that nothing lay outside the control of the emperor. It seemed quite natural that he should be Pontifex Maximus, and the government had always felt free to control or suppress religious cults and associations in the interests of politics or morals. It was this tradition that Constantine inherited, and to it he added the conviction that he was raised up as God's servant, responsible to God for the welfare of both Church and State. It must have seemed to many Christians, confronted unexpectedly with the problem of the place of a Christian emperor in the life of the Church, that the best model was to be found in the Old Testament, where the anointed king is held responsible by God not only for what we might call secular policy, but also, and primarily, for what he does about his people's faith and worship and morals. Thus, although Constantine himself declared that the judgment of bishops is as the judgment of God, and deprecated any appeal from them to himself, the Church of his day expected him to be active in its affairs, and asked the State to enforce the decisions of Councils and to banish recalcitrant bishops.

The dangers inherent in this outlook became manifest as the century progressed and as emperor after emperor, often sincerely desiring peace and unity, used his authority to enforce his own views or the doctrine of whatever party he found it expedient to support. Hence came appeals for liberty in religion and theories of ecclesiastical independence. "What has the emperor to do with the Church?" said Donatus in A.D. 347, when Constans sent his officers to suppress Donatism in Africa. "Do not intrude yourself into ecclesiastical matters, do not give commands to us [bishops] concerning them," wrote Hosius of Cordova to Constantius after the Council of Milan of A.D. 355. "God has put the kingdom in your hands; he has entrusted the affairs of the Church to us. Render to Caesar

the things that are Caesar's, and to God the things that are God's."

Ambrose started from some such dualist theory of the separate spheres of Church and State, and never renounced it, though what he handed down to posterity was somewhat different. The emperor derives his power from God and within his proper sphere is to be obeyed. But he is not over the Church. "The palace belongs to the emperor, the churches to the bishop." In God's cause (causa Dei, causa fidei, causa religionis) the bishops are the judges and are directly responsible to God. The difficulty, of course, is to define the spheres of Church and State. When he came to work this out, which he did in practice more than in theory, Ambrose gave no support to the clear and radical dualism in which the State is entirely neutral and indifferent in matters of religion, while the Church lives its own life without any responsibility for the State. He is thinking of a Christian State. On the one hand, then, the State has farreaching duties towards the Church. While the Christian emperor must not try to impose his own decisions in matters of faith and morals upon the Church, he should put the decisions of the Church (in practice, the bishops) into execution even by force, and he should protect the true religion and the true Church against its rivals, that is, he should prohibit heretical worship and the pagan cults. The Church, in its turn, as the guardian of the moral law, will speak its mind through the bishops to the emperor whenever political decisions or actions are held to be unchristian, and, if necessary, it will use its own kind of force, spiritual sanctions, excommunication, the threat of damnation. Thus Ambrose in effect excommunicated Theodosius, Maximus, and Eugenius. For the emperor, as a Christian, is within the Church, and, as a layman, is subordinate to the bishop. The bishop continues the function of the Old Testament prophet, of Nathan who rebuked David and Elijah who withstood Ahab. "Prophets and bishops must not rashly insult kings, if there are no grave sins for which they deserve reproach; but where there are grave sins, the bishop must not spare to correct them by his just remonstrances." 2 Again, "Although kings are above man's laws, they are subject to the punishment of God for their sins. 3" Ubi peccata graviora sunt, pro peccatis suis-this is the mediaeval argument that kings and emperors are subject to the dictation of the Church ratione peccati, since the Church is ultimately responsible to God for the consciences and souls of her children. It is no longer a matter simply of protecting the exclusive right of the bishops 2 Enarr. in Ps. 37, 43. 3 Enarr. in Ps. 40, 14.

to define the faith or to exercise ecclesiastical discipline over their flocks in matters plainly internal to the life of the Church. This is no doctrine of mutually exclusive spheres, but an interpenetration of Church and State with ultimate authority in the hands of the Church. Not that Ambrose himself worked it out in detail, or pressed his claims to the full. For many purposes a more obvious dualism was sufficient. But in principle the inroads of the Church upon the authority of the State are made at the most vital spot, and just where the New Testament might seem to support the State-the working-out of political justice, the preservation of public order, the exercise of that coercive power for which, on Ambrose's own theory of the State, government is ordained. For now the sovereign is not responsible directly to God for his use of the sword, but to the Church, and it may often rest with the Church to tell the faithful whether or not to obey the State.

The letters printed in this volume show Ambrose in action. No one will doubt his courage and sincerity or deny the force of his example in subsequent centuries. Later generations have had to consider how far he was right and how what he rightly desired can be secured without ecclesiastical tyranny.

Letter 10: The Council of Aquileia, A.D. 381

I

INTRODUCTION

N A.D. 378 TWO ARIAN BISHOPS OF ILLYRICUM, threatened with the loss of their sees by the increasing

movement back to Nicene orthodoxy, asked the emperor Gratian to summon a new General Council to discuss the disgreements in doctrine. He agreed, but the Gothic wars prevented the holding of such a council. One of the bishops, Palladius of Ratiaria, crossed swords with Ambrose by publishing a treatise On the Faith in reply to Ambrose's book of that name. In September, 380, he obtained an interview with Gratian, who consented to convene a General Council at Aquileia. This disturbed Ambrose, who suspected that many eastern bishops were still unorthodox and would support Palladius. He managed to persuade Gratian that a limited number of western bishops would suffice to settle the matter. So thirty-two bishops and two presbyter-deputies arrived, representing northern Italy, western Illyricum, Africa, and Gaul, in addition to Palladius and Secundianus, much aggrieved to find no eastern supporters present. After much wrangling about the validity of the Council as well as about doctrine, Palladius and Secundianus were condemned as Arians and excommunicated. At one stage Palladius had asked for a discussion before arbitrators, some of whom should be laymen of standing. Ambrose replied that bishops could not be judged by laymen, and that the very suggestion proved Palladius to be unworthy of his episcopal office.

According to the Acts of the Council, this took place on 3rd September, 381. Some scholars, disconcerted by the absence from the documents of the Council of any reference to the Council of Constantinople, which met from May to July, 381, have proposed to change this date. Palanque, followed by Dudden, at one time put the Council in May, but subsequently