HistoricalChristian.Faith

Ambrose of Milan on entreating the angels and martyrs

Dates: c. 377 (De viduis / Concerning Widows, written at Milan soon after De virginibus); Ambrose of Milan c. 339–397 · Wikipedia
Summary: Ambrose is the clearest Latin/Western counterpart to the fourth-century Cappadocian flowering, and on one measure he goes a step beyond Basil. Expounding the healing of Peter's mother-in-law to the widows of his church, he does not merely believe the saints intercede or apostrophize them in praise: he exhorts the faithful that "the angels must be entreated for us… the martyrs must be entreated" — invocation commended as a duty, with a reasoned ground (the martyrs' patronage attaches to the relics the church possesses, and the sinner, too weak to pray for herself, should "make use of others to pray for her to the physician"). Read through the timeline's lens this is still an exhortation to the living to entreat the saints rather than a recorded second-person prayer to a named saint; but it is the first unambiguous Western text that directs Christians to petition the saints, and so fixes invocation as a taught, normative practice in the Latin church by c. 377.

The exhortation in De viduis

In his treatise Concerning Widows (c. 377), Ambrose holds up the Gospel scene in which Christ heals Simon Peter's mother-in-law — "they besought him for her" (Luke 4:38) — as a pattern for the widow who feels herself alone. The point he draws is that one need not approach God unaided: the apostles and martyrs are "near," and they pray for those who cultivate their friendship.

"She was taken," it is said, "with a great fever, and they besought him for her." You too have those near you to entreat for you. You have the Apostles near, you have the Martyrs near; if associated with the Martyrs in devotion, you draw near them also by works of mercy… Cherish, then, the nearness of Peter and the affinity of Andrew, that they may pray for you and your lusts give way… You, widows, have then assistance, if you choose such sons-in-law for yourselves, such patrons and friends for your posterity.

Then comes the sentence the lead turns on. Having said that the soul "bound by great sin" is least able to pray for itself, Ambrose draws the conclusion as an imperative of duty — the Latin obsecrandi sunt, "they must be entreated":

So Peter and Andrew prayed for the widow. Would that there were some one who could so quickly pray for us, or better still, they who prayed for the mother-in-law, Peter and Andrew his brother. Then they could pray for one related to them, now they are able to pray for us and for all. For you see that one bound by great sin is less fit to pray for herself, certainly less likely to obtain for herself. Let her then make use of others to pray for her to the physician. For the sick, unless the physician be called to them by the prayers of others, cannot pray for themselves… The angels must be entreated for us, who have been to us as guards; the martyrs must be entreated, whose patronage we seem to claim for ourselves by the pledge as it were of their bodily remains. They can entreat for our sins, who, if they had any sins, washed them in their own blood; for they are the martyrs of God, our leaders, the beholders of our life and of our actions. Let us not be ashamed to take them as intercessors for our weakness, for they themselves knew the weaknesses of the body, even when they overcame.

Three features make this weightier than the average fourth-century invocation notice. First, it is prescriptive: not "the saints pray for us" (a statement of belief) nor a panegyrist's vocative, but a gerundive of obligation — the angels and martyrs are to be entreated. Second, Ambrose supplies a mechanism for why the martyrs in particular: their "patronage" is annexed to their relics, "the pledge as it were of their bodily remains" — the relic-cult logic Peter Brown traces as the engine of the fourth-century rise. Third, it is embedded in a theology of mediated prayer: the sinner, too sick to reach the physician unaided, secures the prayers of others, and the angels and martyrs are the most powerful of those others.¹

Invocation commended — but addressed to the living, not to the saints

Read through the lens the whole timeline must be read through, Ambrose sits a measurable step past Basil and right alongside the two Gregories, and the page should state the step precisely.

What Ambrose plainly attests is far more than bare intercession-belief. Basil urges recourse to the martyrs and apostrophizes them in praise; the one imperative in his homily ("may your requests be with the martyrs") is, like Ambrose's, addressed to the congregation. But Ambrose's imperative is sharper and more directly about the act of petition itself: the saints must be entreated. That is invocation taught as a duty — the practice not merely assumed or praised but enjoined, with grounds. By c. 377 the Latin church has a bishop instructing his flock that they ought to pray to the angels and martyrs.

What the passage stops just short of is a recorded second-person petition in Ambrose's own mouth — an "O Peter, pray for me" turned to the apostle. The grammatical addressees throughout are the living: "you" the widow, "us" the church. Ambrose tells Christians to entreat the saints; the text does not preserve him performing the entreaty as direct address. The distinction is fine but real, and it is the same one that keeps Basil one step short: a commendation of invocation is not identical to an instance of it. Still, a bishop's normative instruction that the saints "must be entreated" is, if anything, stronger evidence that invocation was settled practice than a single rhetorical apostrophe would be — one does not enjoin as duty what no one does. The clearest recorded second-person address to a saint qua saint remains Gregory of Nyssa's on Theodore; Ambrose supplies the Western norm that the Gregories supply as Eastern performance.²

For the development question

For the development-vs-apostolicity question, Ambrose is the Western witness that keeps the fourth-century flowering from looking merely Cappadocian and local. The same decade that produced Basil's homily (c. 373) and the Gregories' encomia (c. 379–381) produced, in the Latin West and independently of them, a bishop enjoining the entreaty of the saints as a matter of course — and grounding it in the relic-cult Peter Brown dates to exactly this period. That breadth across East and West, surfacing within a single generation without recorded controversy, is precisely the datum the continuity reading presses (a practice does not go near-universal in a century without older roots) and the development reading must accommodate (the public, taught practice is, on the visible record, a fourth-century phenomenon). Ambrose strengthens both halves of the standoff: he confirms the flowering is real and broad, and he is himself one more fourth-century data-point rather than a pre-Nicene one.

A note on dating and authenticity

De viduis (Concerning Widows) is a genuine work of Ambrose, written at Milan shortly after his De virginibus of 377 and conventionally dated to the same year; its authenticity is not in dispute. The passage above is §§54–55 in the standard division (NPNF). Ambrose addresses the departed elsewhere as well — his funeral orations on the emperors Valentinian II and Theodosius (De obitu Valentiniani, De obitu Theodosii, both early 390s) turn to speak to the dead — but those are the rhetoric of the funeral panegyric for named rulers, whereas De viduis is the doctrinally load-bearing text here because it prescribes the entreaty of the saints generally.³

Notes

• This witness bears on both of this doctrine's grouped arguments. It sharpens the invocation / intercession-belief distinction — Ambrose moves past intercession-belief and even past apostrophe to enjoin petition, yet the grammatical addressee is still the living congregation — and it is a key Western data-point for the development-vs-apostolicity question, showing the taught practice already settled in the Latin church by c. 377.
• The nearest companions on the timeline are Basil of Caesarea (c. 373, the apostrophe to the Forty Martyrs, one step short of prescription) just before, and the two Gregories — Gregory of Nazianzus and Gregory of Nyssa — whose encomia of the same years carry the address into recorded second-person petition.

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