Jerome’s Attack on Ambrose

You see from this what his opinions are about Origen, and about Ambrose too. If he should deny that his criticisms are aimed at Ambrose, as everyone knows they are, he will be refuted, first, by the fact that there is a commentary of Ambrose’s on Luke current among the Latins, and none by anyone else. Secondly, he knows that I possess a letter of his in which, while he clears others, he makes his criticisms fall on Ambrose. But since that letter contains certain more private matters, I do not wish to see it published before the right time. So I will support what I say with other proofs of the same kind. Meanwhile, let this be counted as proved by what I have said above: he extols Origen’s writings as admirable in every way, and declares that “if he translates them, the Roman tongue will then recognize what a store of good it had been ignorant of until now, and has now begun to understand.” He means the twenty-six books on Matthew, the five on Luke, and the thirty-two on John. These are the books to which he gives the highest honor. And in these is found absolutely everything that is in the books On First Principles, which are the groundwork of his charges against me, only set out with greater breadth and fullness. If, then, he promises to translate these, why does he condemn me for doing the same? [a]

But now I have undertaken to prove how violently he attacks a man worthy of all admiration, Ambrose, bishop of Milan, who was like a pillar or an impregnable fortress, not to that church alone but to all the churches. I will therefore set out a preface of his. From it you may see in what foul and unworthy terms he assails even a man so eminent. You may see, too, how he praises Didymus to the skies, though he has since cast him down to hell. And you may see how he speaks of the city of Rome, which now, by the grace of God, Christians count as their capital, in words that fitted it only when its people were pagans and its rulers persecutors.