El 'De paradiso' de Ambrosio: una fuente de inspiración para Agustín de Hipona

The theological influence of Ambrose of Milan on Augustine is often underestimated. Some of this influence is demonstrated in this short case-study bymeans of a rather direct question: Did Augustine use Ambrose’s 'De paradiso' in 'De peccato originali'?

“Since Those Days All Things Have Progressed for the Better”: Tradition, Progress, and Creation in Ambrose of Milan

In Ambrose’s apologetic writing against the Roman prefect Symmachus, he makes a surprising argument for Christianity’s superiority over Roman religious practices, arguing that Christianity is in fact a newer and therefore superior form of religion. The whole world has “progressed” and so must religious practices. In the letters to Symmachus, Ambrose’s arguments are ad hoc and apologetic, not constructive. This article seeks to understand better the intellectual and historical contexts that make Ambrose’s surprising convictions possible by looking at Ambrose’s writings on creation in the context of the pro-Nicene debates. Considering Ambrose’s writing in the Hexameron, I argue that Ambrose’s account of cosmological progress finds an intellectual milieu in pro-Nicene reflection on the implications of Christ’s divine consubstantiality for a doctrine of creation. When Christ is no longer seen as a mediator between God and the world, a new space is opened up to speak of creation’s change and even “progress” without a worry that doing so will jeopardize creation as the divine handiwork. Ambrose’s apologetic strategy, though apparently not directly related to pro-Nicene debates, is illuminated when seen against this backdrop. The result is a better understanding both of Ambrose’s strategies in particular and of the situation of fourth-century apologetics more broadly.

Cities in Conflict

This chapter focuses on the work of Ambrose of Milan: specifically, it considers his two letters to Valentinian to see what they can tell us about the structure and evolution of Christian apologetic literature in the later fourth century. Both of Ambrose’s petitions are intent on making the bishop’s Against Symmachus the basis of a broader appeal in establishing the legitimacy of Christianity to an audience of uncommitted Christians or pagans. If it is correct to regard the two documents as such, then we are acknowledging the elasticity of Christian apologetic literature—a recognition that has come to typify scholarly assessment of Christian apologetic texts. The chapter also examines the work of Augustine of Hippo Regius, particularly the City of God and his analysis of evil things happening during “Christian times.”

La virgen cristiana en los escritos de Ambrosio y de Agustín

The article presents the figure of the consecrated virgin, as it appears in the writings of Ambrose of Milan and Augustine of Hippo. It also offers a contextual synthesis of the conditions of women in Late Antiquity, both in civil society, presenting the women as uxor, the situation of the Vestal Virgins, as well as the women’s stituation within the Christian communities. Later a summary of the main Latin patristic writings on virginity is made, to analyze and compare in more detail, Saint Ambrose’s De Virginibus and Saint Augustine’s De sancta Virginitate.