ON S. AMBROSE, DEACON OF ALEXANDRIA IN EGYPT.
AROUND THE YEAR 400.
CommentaryAmbrose, Deacon of Alexandria (S.)
Ambrose of Alexandria, a disciple of Didymus, wrote against Apollinaris a volume of many lines concerning dogmas: and, as has recently been reported to me by a certain narrator, Praise from his written works, from S. Jerome: commentaries on Job. He survives to this day. So says Jerome in his book on Ecclesiastical Writers: from which we learn that he flourished around the beginning of the fifth century under Theodosius the Younger, as Constantine Ghini asserts in the Birthdays of the Holy Canons, enrolling him in his own Order: as also before him Giovanni de Negravalle, the Apostolic Librarian, had done, generously bestowing on him the title of Cardinal: nor is this surprising, since they also enroll Didymus, his teacher, among their own. And indeed we make less of this; we esteem more highly the fact that he is enrolled among the number of the Saints in so many ancient manuscripts, His veneration and the title of glorious Confession: among which are two very ancient and illustrious English ones, one in the Altemps Library at Rome, the other in our museum, written over six hundred years ago: that, I say, in such manuscripts the following is read: At Alexandria, the birthday of S. Ambrose, Deacon of the same Church, who was distinguished by the glory of the Lord's confession. The same things are read in two others, From ancient Martyrologies: hardly of lesser antiquity, manuscript copies of Ado, found at Queen Christina of Sweden's and in the monastery of S. Germain des Prés: as well as in Usuard augmented and printed by the Carthusians of Cologne in the year 1490; and again in 1521 by Hermann Greven: with which the most ancient manuscript Ado of the church of S. Lawrence at Liège agrees. Others, such as the manuscript of the Church of SS. Timothy and Apollinaris at Reims, and our manuscript Florarium, and Molanus, omitting the eulogy of confession, have only the title of Deacon: but the Cologne Carmelite manuscript also has that of Martyr. To these are added Whitford in the English and Canisius in the German Martyrologies, gloriously extolling the aforesaid eulogy of Confession.