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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 15 May 2025
Ambrose of Milan's hymn, ‘Splendor paternae gloriae’, uses metaphors of the sun and light to invoke the Trinity and invite God's sanctifying work. Ambrose's depiction of the Godhead in terms of the sun and its light demonstrates his careful engagement with traditional Christian metaphors, traditions which he carefully rearranges to align with his view of the Trinity. His representation of God's sanctifying activity illustrates the Trinity's inseparable operations, a central focus of his pro-Nicene works. These features suggest that Ambrose intended this hymn to serve as a confessio Trinitatis, perhaps amid the bishop's conflicts with anti-Nicene factions in Milan.
1 Augustine, Confessions 9.7.15; Paulinus of Milan, Vita Sancti Ambrosii, 4.13.
2 Franz, Ansgar, Tageslauf und Heilgeschichte: Untersuchungen zum literarischen Text und Liturgischen Kontext der Tagzeitenhymnen des Ambrosius von Mailand (St. Ottilien: EOS, 1991)Google Scholar, p. 14.
3 See Walpole, A. S., ‘The Hymns of St. Ambrose’, The Church Quarterly Review 83 (1917)Google Scholar, p. 255n1; Dunkle, Brian P., , SJ, Enchantment and Creed in the Hymns of Ambrose of Milan (Oxford: OUP, 2016)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, p. 47. Some, such as Corsaro, have continued to maintain that Ambrose began his poetic career ‘per caso’. Francesco Corsaro, ‘L'innografia ambrosiana: dalla polemica teologica alla liturgia’, Augustinianum 38/2 (1998), p. 383. Regardless, that Ambrose wrote hymns to commemorate a number of dominical feasts and martyrs suggests that they cannot have all been written for the specific conflict surrounding Easter in 386.
4 Ambrose, Sermo contra Auxentium de basilicis tradendis 34.
5 Augustine, Confessions 9.7.15.
6 Williams, Michael Stuart, ‘Hymns as Acclamations: The Case of Ambrose of Milan’, Journal of Late Antiquity 6/1 (2013), p. 109CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
7 Ibid., p. 108.
8 Corsaro, ‘L'innografia ambrosiana’, p. 381. On the longstanding view of Ambrose as a Kirchenpolitiker, see Campenhausen, Hans Freihernn V., Ambrosius von Mailand als Kirchenpolitiker (Berlin: De Gruyter, 1929)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; McLynn, Neil B., Ambrose of Milan: Church and Court in a Christian Capital (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1994)Google Scholar.
9 Dunkle, Enchantment and Creed, p. 2
10 Ibid., p. 2
11 Although the authenticity of Ambrose's full corpus of hymns has long been debated, that of ‘Splendor paternae gloriae’ is widely accepted. The earliest explicit citation of the hymn is by Fulgentius of Ruspe. For the text of the hymn, I use Ambroise de Milan, Hymnes, ed. Jacques Fontaine (Paris: Les Èditions Du Cerf, 1992). See also Dunkle, Enchantment and Creed; Franz, Tageslauf und Heilgeschichte.
12 In a recent article, Dorothee Bauer has also provided an interpretation of ‘Splendor paternae gloriae’ that recognises anti-Arian arguments within the hymn, although she does not significantly engage academic debates surrounding the origins of Ambrose's hymnody, nor does she examine the hymn's relation to other early Christian sources in detail. Bauer, Dorothee, ‘Christus, die wahre Sonne: Der Morgenhymnus “Splendor paternae gloriae”’, Communio. Internationale Katholische Zeitschrift 53/1 (2024), pp. 117–27Google Scholar.
13 Many of these parallel texts are noted by Michel Perrin, but have not been subjected to extended theological analysis; see Perrin, Michel, ‘Hymne 2: Splendor paternae gloriae’, in Ambroise de Milan, Hymnes, ed. Fontaine, Jacques (Paris: Les Èditions Du Cerf, 1992) pp. 179–204Google Scholar.
14 Biffi, Inos, ‘La teologia degli Inni di sant’Ambrogio’, Studia Ambrosiana : Annali Dell’ Academia Di Sant'Ambrogio 2 (2008), p. 111Google Scholar.
15 Dunkle, Enchantment and Creed, p. 6.
16 Plank, Peter, Φως Ιλαρον: Christushymnus Und Lichtdanksagung der Frühen Christenheit (Bonn: Borengässer, 2001)Google Scholar.
17 Franz, Ansgar, ‘“Confesssio Trinitatis, quae cotidie totius populi ore celebratur”: l'antiarianesimo negli inni di Ambrogio’, in Passarella, Raffaele (ed.), Ambrogio E L'Arianesimo, Studia Ambrosiana 7 (Milan: Biblioteca Ambrosiana, 2013), pp. 104–5Google Scholar.
18 ‘secundum morem orientalium partium’, Augustine, Confessions 9.7.15; Basil indicates that the ‘Phos hilaron’ hymn was already ancient in his time, though some have theorised that the Bishop of Caesarea wrote it himself. See Basil of Caesarea, De Spiritu Sancto, 73.
19 Nicene Creed of 325, in William G. Rusch (ed.), The Trinitarian Controversy (Philadelphia, PA: Fortress Press, 1980). The hymn's description of Christ ‘bearing light from light’ (de luce lucem proferens) also closely resembles the creed's language.
20 Perrin, ‘Hymne 2’, p. 179.
21 Ibid., p. 180.
22 Tertullian, Apology 21.12.
23 Tertullian, Adversus Praxeas 8.
24 Ambrose, De Spiritu 1.18.
25 Gregory of Nazianzus, Oration 29.3, in On God and Christ: The Five Theological Orations and Two Letters to Cledonius, trans. Frederick Williams and Lionel Wickham. (Crestwood, NY: St Vladimir's Seminary Press, 2002).
26 Gregory of Nazianzus, Oration 31.3, in On God and Christ; cf. Ambrose De Spiritu 1.14.140–143.
27 Ambrose, De Spiritu 1.14.140–43.
28 Cyprian, De Oratione Dominica 25; Zeno of Verona, Tractacus, 2.12.3.
29 Cyprian, De Oratione Dominica 25.
30 Ambrose, Epistulae CSEL 56.11–12 (Maur. 5).
31 Zeno of Verona, Tractacus 2.12.3.
32 Ambrose's propensity for borrowing has led to him being accused of plagiarism. See Harald Hagendahl, Latin Fathers and the Classics: A Study on the Apologists, Jerome and Other Christian Writers (Göteborg: Elanders, 1958). For recent examinations of how Ambrose borrowed from and creatively adapts other sources, see Lewis Ayres, Nicaea and Its Legacy: An Approach to Fourth-Century Trinitarian Theology (Oxford: OUP, 2004), pp. 264–67; Christoph Markschies, Ambrosius von Mailand und die Trinitätstheologie: Kirchen- und theologiegeschichtliche Studien zu Antiarianismus und Neunizänismus bei Ambrosius und im lateinischen Westen (364–381 n. Chr.) (Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr (Paul Siebeck), 1995).
33 See Plank, Φως Ιλαρον.
34 Origen, In Ioannem, 13.153. Plank, Φως Ιλαρον, pp. 92–3.
35 Franz, ‘Confesssio Trinitatis’, pp. 103–5.
36 Plank, Φως Ιλαρον, pp. 92–3.
37 Franz, ‘Confessio Trinitatis’, pp. 99–112.
38 Ibid., pp. 105.
39 Ibid., pp. 99–112.
40 Ambrose, Sermo contra Auxentium de basilicis tradendis’ 34.
41 Perrin, ‘Splendor paternae gloriae’, p. 180.
42 Ambrose, De Spiritu Sancto 2.7.69.
43 Tertulllian, Adversus Praxeas 8.
44 Cf. Ambrose De Spiritu Sancto. 1.2.31–1.3.40.
45 Ambrose, De Spiritu Sancto 1.1.25.
46 Ambrose, De Spiritu Sancto 1.14.140.
47 Ambrose, De Spiritu Sancto 1.18; see Gregory of Nazianzus, Orations 31.3.
48 Tertullian, Adversus Praxeas 8.
49 Ambrose, De Spiritu Sancto 1.119–120.
50 Edward Siecienski, The Filioque: History of a Doctrinal Controversy (Oxford: OUP, 2010), pp. 57–8.
51 Cf. Ambrose, De Spiritu Sancto 1.11.119–120, 2.12.130.
52 Cf. Virgil, Aeneid, 4.130.
53 S.v. ‘iubar’, P. G. W. Glare (ed.), Oxford Latin Dictionary (Oxford: OUP, 2004)
54 Gregory of Nazianzus, Orations 31.3.
55 Ambrose, De Spiritu Sancto 142.
56 Ambrose, De Spiritu Sancto 1.142, 2.130.
57 Henry Barclay Swete, The Holy Spirit in the Ancient Church: A Study of Christian Teaching in the Age of the Fathers (London: Macmillan, 1912); Ayres, Nicaea and Its Legacy, pp. 262–64.
58 ‘verusque sol, inlabere’ (5).
59 Ambrose, De Spiritu Sancto 1.144.
60 See Ayres, Nicaea and Its Legacy, pp. 264–5.
61 See Franz, Tageslauf und Heilgeschichte; Dunkle, Enchantment and Creed, pp. 1–12, 85–116.
62 Trans. Dunkle, Enchantment and Creed, p. 222.
63 Ayres, Nicaea and Its Legacy, pp. 264–5.
64 Ayres, Nicaea and Its Legacy, pp. 264–7; Markschies, Ambrosius von Mailand und die Trinitätstheologie.
65 While it was once regularly assumed that Nicene Orthodoxy was already dominant in Milan during Ambrose's episcopacy, recent scholarship has emphasised the continuing vitality of Arian and homoian ideas and has seen combatting these theologies as a central project of the bishop's career. See Williams, Daniel H., Ambrose of Milan and the End of the Nicene-Arian Conflicts (Oxford: Clarendon, 1995)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Selby, Andrew M., Ambrose of Milan's On the Holy Spirit: Rhetoric, Theology, and Sources (Piscataway, NJ: Gorgias, 2020)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
66 Rosenberg, Stanley P., ‘Beside Books: Approaching Augustine's Sermons in the Oral and Textual Cultures of Late Antiquity’, in Dupont, Anthony, Patroens, Gert, and Laberigts, Mathijs (eds.), Tractatio Scripturarum: Philological, Exegetical, Rhetorical and Theological Studies on Augustine's Sermons (Turnhout: Brepols, 2012), pp. 405–42CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
67 Dunkle, Enchantment and Creed, pp. 105–6.