Ambrose Made Bishop of Milan, and the Novatians of Phrygia

Having forestalled in this way those who wanted to bring in innovations among them, the clergy of the West carefully went on keeping unbroken the faith that had been handed down to them from the beginning. Apart from Auxentius and his followers alone, none among them held unorthodox opinions. Auxentius, however, did not live long after this. At his death a riot broke out among the people over the choice of a bishop for the church of Milan, and the city was in danger. Those who had hoped for the bishopric and been disappointed were loud in their threats, as usually happens in such disturbances. [a] Ambrose, who was then governor of the province, was afraid of the people’s uprising. He went to the church and urged the people to stop their quarreling, to remember the laws, and to restore harmony and the prosperity that comes from peace. Before he had finished speaking, all his hearers at once put down the anger that had stirred them against one another, and they turned their votes for the bishopric to him, as the fulfillment of his own appeal for harmony. They urged him to be baptized, for he was not yet initiated, and begged him to accept the priesthood. He refused and declined, and genuinely tried to escape the whole business, but the people still insisted, declaring that their quarrel would never be settled unless he agreed to their wishes. At length news of these events was carried to the court. It is said that the emperor Valentinian prayed and gave thanks to God that the very man he had appointed governor had been chosen for a priestly office. When he was told of the people’s eager wishes and of Ambrose’s refusal, he concluded that God had arranged events in this way to restore peace to the church of Milan, and he ordered that Ambrose be ordained as quickly as possible. He was initiated and ordained at the same time, and he at once set about bringing the church under his care to one mind about the divine nature; for under the leadership of Auxentius it had long been torn by quarrels on this subject. We will have occasion later to speak of how Ambrose conducted himself after his ordination, and of the courageous and holy way in which he carried out the duties of the priesthood. [b]

About this time the Novatians of Phrygia, against their ancient custom, began to celebrate the feast of the Passover on the same day as the Jews. Novatian, the founder of their heresy, refused to receive into communion those who repented of their sins, and it was in this respect alone that he departed from the established doctrine. But he and his successors celebrated the feast of the Passover after the spring equinox, following the custom of the Roman church. About this time, however, some Novatian bishops met at Pazum, a town of Phrygia near the source of the river Sangarius. They agreed not to follow, in this point of discipline, the practice of those who differed from them in doctrine, and they made a new law: they resolved to keep the feast of Unleavened Bread and to celebrate the Passover on the same days as the Jews. Agelius, the Novatian bishop of Constantinople, and the Novatian bishops of Nicaea, of Nicomedia, and of Cotyaeum, a well-known city of Phrygia, took no part in this synod, although the Novatians regard them as the masters, and so to speak the final word, in the affairs of their heresy and their churches. How these innovators went further in their divergence for this reason, cut themselves off, and formed a separate church, I will tell at the proper time. [d]