him time to receive the sacrament, strangled him. Ambrose’s works include a liturgy and translations from the Fathers.
AMBROSE (Ambroise), AUTPERT (d. 778), French Benedictine monk. He became abbé of St Vincent on the Volturno “in the time of Desiderius, king of the Lombards.” He wrote a considerable number of works on the Bible and religious subjects generally. Among these are commentaries on the Apocalypse (see Bibl. Patrum, xiii. 403), on the Psalms, on the Song of Solomon; Lives of SS. Paldo, Tuto and Vaso (according to Mabillon); Assumption of the Virgin; Combat between the Virtues and the Vices.
See Mabillon, Acta sanct. Bolland. III. ii. 259, 266; Georg Lommel, Der ostfränkische Reformator Ambrosius (Giessen, 1847); Bollandist Bibl. hag. lat. (1898), 61.
AMBROSE, ISAAC (1604–1663/4), English Puritan divine, was the son of Richard Ambrose, vicar of Ormskirk, and was probably descended from the Ambroses of Lowick in Furness, a well-known Catholic family. He entered Brasenose College, Oxford, in 1621, in his seventeenth year. Having graduated B.A. in 1624 and been ordained, he received in 1627 the little cure of Castleton in Derbyshire. By the influence of William Russell, earl of Bedford, he was appointed one of the king’s itinerant preachers in Lancashire, and after living for a time in Garstang, he was selected by the Lady Margaret Hoghton as vicar of Preston. He associated himself with Presbyterianism, and was on the celebrated committee for the ejection of “scandalous and ignorant ministers and schoolmasters” during the Commonwealth. So long as Ambrose continued at Preston he was favoured with the warm friendship of the Hoghton family, their ancestral woods and the tower near Blackburn affording him sequestered places for those devout meditations and “experiences” that give such a charm to his diary, portions of which are quoted in his Prima Media and Ultima (1650, 1659). The immense auditory of his sermon (Redeeming the Time) at the funeral of Lady Hoghton was long a living tradition all over the county. On account of the feeling engendered by the civil war Ambrose left his great church of Preston in 1654, and became minister of Garstang, whence, however, in 1662 he was ejected with the two thousand ministers who refused to conform. His after years were passed among old friends and in quiet meditation at Preston. He died of apoplexy about the 20th of January 1663/4. As a religious writer Ambrose has a vividness and freshness of imagination possessed by scarcely any of the Puritan Nonconformists. Many who have no love for Puritan doctrine, nor sympathy with Puritan experience, have appreciated the pathos and beauty of his writings, and his Looking to Jesus long held its own in popular appreciation with the writings of John Bunyan.
AMBROSE THE CAMALDULIAN, the common name of Ambrogio Traversari (1386–1439), French ecclesiastic, born near Florence at the village of Portico. At the age of fourteen he entered the Camaldulian Order in the monastery of Sta Maria degli Angeli, and rapidly became a leading theologian and Hellenist. In Greek literature his master was Emmanuel Chrysoloras. He became general of the order in 1431, and was a leading advocate of the papacy. This attitude he showed clearly when he attended the council of Basel as legate of Eugenius IV. So strong was his hostility to some of the delegates that he described Basel as a western Babylon. He likewise supported the pope at Ferrara and Florence, and worked hard in the attempt to reconcile the Eastern and Western Churches. Though this cause was unsuccessful, Ambrose is interesting as typical of the new humanism which was growing up within the church. Voigt says that he was the first monk in Florence in whom the love of letters and art became predominant over his ecclesiastical views. Thus while among his own colleagues he seemed merely a hypocritical and arrogant priest, in his relations with his brother humanists, such as Cosimo de Medici, he appeared as the student of classical antiquities and especially of Greek theological authors. His chief works are:—Hodoeporicon, an account of a journey taken by the pope’s command, during which he visited the monasteries of Italy; a translation of Palladius’ Life of Chrysostom; of Nineteen Sermons of Ephraem Syrus; of the Book of St Basil on Virginity. A number of MSS. remain in the library of St Mark at Venice. He died on the 20th of October 1439.
See G. Voigt, Die Wiederbelebung des klass. Altertums (2 vols., 3rd ed., 1893); his Epistolae were published by Cannato (Florence, 1759 with a life by Menus; Bollandist Bibl. hag. lat. (1898), 65; A. Masius, Über die Stellung des Kamaldulensers Ambrogio Traversari zum Papst Eugen IV. und zum Basler Konzil (Döbeln, 1888); Savigny, Geschichte röm. Rechts, Mittel. (1850), vi. 422-424.
AMBROSIA, in ancient mythology, sometimes the food, sometimes the drink of the gods. The word has generally been derived from Gr. ἀ-, not, and μβρότος, mortal; hence the food or drink of the immortals. A. W. Verrall, however, denies that there is any clear example in which the word ἀμβρόσιος necessarily means “immortal,” and prefers to explain it as “fragrant,” a sense which is always suitable; cf. W. Leaf, Iliad (2nd ed.), on the phrase ἀμβρόσιος ὔπνος (ii. 18). If so, the word may be derived from the Semitic ambar (ambergris) to which Eastern nations attribute miraculous properties. W. H. Roscher thinks that both nectar and ambrosia were kinds of honey, in which case their power of conferring immortality would be due to the supposed healing and cleansing power of honey (see further Nectar). Derivatively the word Ambrosia (neut. plur.) was given to certain festivals in honour of Dionysus, probably because of the predominance of feasting in connexion with them.
The name Ambrosia was also applied by Dioscorides and Pliny to certain herbs, and has been retained in modern botany for a genus of plants from which it has been extended to the group of dicotyledons called Ambrosiaceae, including Ambrosia, Xanthium and Iva, all annual herbaceous plants represented in America. Ambrosia maritima and some other species occur also in the Mediterranean region.
There is also an American beetle, the Ambrosia beetle, belonging to the family of Scolytidae, which derives its name from its curious cultivation of a succulent fungus, called ambrosia. Ambrosia beetles bore deep though minute galleries into trees and timber, and the wood-dust provides a bed for the growth of the fungus, on which the insects and larvae feed.
AMBROSIANS, the name given to several religious brotherhoods which at various times since the 14th century have sprung up in and around Milan; they have about as much connexion with St Ambrose as the “Jeromites” who were found chiefly in upper Italy and Spain have with their patron saint. Only the oldest of them, the Fratres S. Ambrosii ad Nemus, had anything more than a very local significance. This order is known from a bull of Gregory XI. addressed to the monks of the church of St Ambrose outside Milan. These monks, it would appear, though under the authority of a prior, had no rule. In response to the request of the archbishop, the pope had commanded them to follow the rule of Augustine and to be known by the above name. They were further to recite the Ambrosian office. Subsequently the order had a number of independent establishments in Italy which were united into one congregation by Eugenius IV., their headquarters being at Milan. Their discipline afterwards became so slack that an appeal was made to Cardinal Borromeo asking him to reform their houses. By Sixtus V. the order was amalgamated with the congregation of St Barnabas, but Innocent X. dissolved it in 1650.
The name Ambrosians is also given to a 16th-century Anabaptist sect, which laid claim to immediate communication with God through the Holy Ghost. Basing their theology upon the words of the Gospel of St John i. 9—“There was the true light which lighteth every man, coming into the world”—they denied the necessity of any priests or ministers to interpret the Bible. Their leader Ambrose went so far as to hold further that the revelation which was vouchsafed to him was a higher authority than the Scriptures. The doctrine of the Ambrosians, who belonged probably to that section of the Anabaptists known as Pneumatici, may be compared with the “Inner Light” doctrine of the Quakers.
See Herzog-Hauck’s Realencyklopädie, i. 439.
