Ambrose of Sens

ON ST. AMBROSE OF SENS, BISHOP AND CONFESSOR, AT SENS IN GAUL

Before the year CDLXX.

SYLLOGE

On his cult, his date, and his deeds.

Ambrose, bishop and confessor, at Sens in Gaul (St.)

BY J. S.

Although the memory of St. Ambrose, bishop of Sens, is not read among the ancient martyrologists, The Saint's memory in the more recent Fasti, nor in today's Roman one, yet the cult of this holy Bishop is certain and undoubted; but his deeds are wholly obscure. In the additions to Usuard's Martyrology he is thus announced by Greven on the 3rd day of September: Of Ambrose, bishop of Sens and confessor. On the same day Galesini: Among the people of Sens, of St. Ambrose, bishop and confessor, famed for the glory of divine virtues. Ghini somewhat more at length, in this manner: At Sens, of St. Ambrose, thirteenth bishop, who for thirty-five years, a worker of virtues and a good shepherd, most excellently instructed by word and example the people committed to him unto virtues and the receiving of true goods; and, famed for his virtues, he died in the Lord in the year of Redemption CDLV. Saussay on this day celebrates the holy Bishop with such an eulogy: At Sens, of St. Ambrose, bishop of that metropolitan church and confessor: who, sitting after Sindinus , shone forth adorned with the outstanding splendors of his virtues. And at length, after the immense gains of souls which he brought forth to Christ by diligent preaching and by the conformity of his life with the Gospel precepts, he ascended to the most longed-for dwelling of the Blessed. Buried in the church of the holy Gervasius and Protasius with his predecessors Theodore and Sindinus, he received a cult so much the more ample than theirs as, by the signs which followed, he displayed a more evident testimony of the blessedness of his holiness.*

[2] The same martyrologist in his Supplement, at the 3rd of December, further declares the cult of St. Ambrose in these words: and a lawful cult: At Sens, the passing of St. Ambrose, bishop of that metropolitan see: whose memory is famous at Melun on the Seine, in the same diocese, made illustrious by a parish title or church dedicated under the name of that glorious Bishop. From these we have the Saint's cult abundantly established. I pass over therefore other moderns who agree with these; and I only add the Breviary of Sens, printed in the year 1625, in which the festival of St. Ambrose is prescribed to be celebrated on the 3rd day of September, and an Office of three lessons to be recited, which is wholly from the common. Theodoric Paul, canon of Gorinchem, who flourished in the fifteenth century, in his universal Chronicle, in MS. among us, fol. 253, weaving a catalogue of the bishops of Sens, adorns St. Ambrose with such an eulogy: Saint Ambrose, succeeding the venerable father Siclinus, is substituted as the eleventh archbishop of Sens. Who presently, passing through his own and the neighboring cities and villages, preaching, and converting the peoples to the faith, and confirming the faithful in the word, and curing those oppressed with various sicknesses, at length, after miracles of healings and the urgency of his preaching and the conversion of the peoples, happily rested in the Lord. His feast is kept on the third day of September.*

[3] he flourished about the middle of the fifth century, The Sainte-Marthes reckon Ambrose the twelfth among the bishops of Sens, Claude Robert the thirteenth, saying that he died in the year 455, on the 3rd day of December. Hugh Mathoud in his Catalogue of the archbishops of Sens, p. 15, numbers Ambrose the fourteenth. But all agree that he succeeded Siclinus, whom some name Sindinus. The aforesaid Mathoud thus discourses on Ambrose's date: Geoffrey of Collone, and before him Clarius, and likewise his fellow-priest Vivian , thus inscribe their eighth table with his name: “St. Ambrose, archbishop of Sens, was a contemporary of St. Germanus of Auxerre and of St. Lupus of Troyes, bishops.” The like chronology is in another MS. codex. About the middle of the fifth century those two prelates flourished, long since illustrious for the wondrous sanctity of their life and for the fame of their doctrine. St. Germanus of Auxerre died in the year 448, as was proved in vol. VII of July, p. 195. But St. Lupus of Troyes, although he lived with St. Germanus, survived until the year 479, dying in decrepit old age. And so the aforesaid words do not suffice to determine the date of St. Ambrose of Sens, save in a certain vague manner, especially since Mathoud himself presently subjoins these words of the aforesaid Geoffrey of Collone: The seventh table speaks of St. Ambrose. The present table, and the preceding and the following, does not speak of the Roman Pontiffs, nor of the emperors, nor even of the years of the Lord's Incarnation: for the Chronicles do not well agree upon these; and writings that do not agree beget ignorance: whence it seems to me better thus to pass over than to lie.*

[4] and he seems to have died long before the year 470. From these things it is clear that the death of St. Ambrose of Sens cannot certainly be assigned to the year 455, as some have wished, without any suitable proof. He could indeed have died in that year; but it is uncertain whether he did not die later or earlier. For this reason the author of the Paris Martyrology more cautiously noted in the margin before the year CDLXX: for this is somehow gathered from his successor St. Agritius, to whom about the year 472 Sidonius Apollinaris wrote his fifth letter of the seventh book: which, since it does not seem written to a bishop newly elected, makes it probable that St. Agritius held the see before the year 470, and perhaps much earlier. For the rest, concerning St. Ambrose, Mathoud adds the following from Geoffrey of Collone: The life of Ambrose himself shone with virtues. On the Nones of September he departed from the world, living in Christ. He was buried in the church of Bl. Leo, otherwise of Gervasius and Protasius, where through the Lord he flashed with miracles; and afterward, by the venerable Ansegisus, archbishop of Sens, his body was translated into the monastery of St. Peter the Living together with three others (SS. Urcisinus, Agritius, and Leo), and is there honorably preserved. This translation is likewise asserted in the Sainte-Marthes, vol. 2 of Gallia Christiana, p. 623, in the eulogy of Ansegisus, who, it is there handed down, presided over the church of Sens from the year 871 to 883. We have nothing further concerning this holy Bishop to communicate to the reader.

others Siclinum*

metropoliticæ*

* i.e. of St. Peter the Living