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Summary

Ambrose of Milan’s pastoral project of ‘building up the faith’ (adstruere fidem), evident in his preaching, is exemplified best in his hymns. Relating this project to his suspicions about dialectic, I argue that the hymns aim less to ‘destroy’ through analysis than to ‘construct’ through compelling imagery and a programme of sensitisation. By comparing the presentation of Christ’s miracles in his Expositio on Luke and in his hymn for the Epiphany, ‘Illuminans Altissimus’, I show how Ambrose renders abstract, narrative, and conceptual claims by means of personal, concrete, and actualising exempla that present his congregation with objects for ‘real assent’ (in the words of John Henry Newman). Such an approach distinguishes Ambrose’s hymns from the verse compositions of his Latin-speaking contemporaries, Hilary of Poitiers and Augustine of Hippo.

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21 - Ambrose’s Hymns as Modes of Knowing the ‘Real’

Summary

Religious Dissent in Late Antiquity, 350–450. By Maijastina Kahlos. Oxford Studies in Late Antiquity. New York: Oxford University Press, 2020. xiv + 274 pp. $99.00 hardcover.

The Politics of Heresy in Ambrose of Milan: Community and Consensus in Late-Antique Christianity. By Michael Stuart Williams. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017. xi + 342 pp. $120.00 hardback.

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3 results

21 - Ambrose’s Hymns as Modes of Knowing the ‘Real’

Summary

Religious Dissent in Late Antiquity, 350–450. By Maijastina Kahlos. Oxford Studies in Late Antiquity. New York: Oxford University Press, 2020. xiv + 274 pp. $99.00 hardcover.

The Politics of Heresy in Ambrose of Milan: Community and Consensus in Late-Antique Christianity. By Michael Stuart Williams. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017. xi + 342 pp. $120.00 hardback.