St. Ambrose: The Virtues and the Beatitudes

SAINT AMBROSE FITTED THE CARDINAL VIRTUES into the teachings of Jesus as found in the New Testament. St. Ambrose found a connection between the beatitudes--the central focus of Christian life--and the cardinal virtues. He found there to be a parallel between the Lucan presentation of the beatitudes which are four in number with the four cardinal virtues of Christian life.  Given the focus of the Church on the  moral teachings of Jesus as found in the beatitudes, such a move would have been considered essential.

We find St. Ambrose's direct connection of the beatitudes in his exposition of the Gospel of Luke (Expositio Evangelii Secundum Lucam, 5.64-67).  The beatitudes in Luke are found in Luke 6:20–22, when Jesus addresses his followers in the so-called "Sermon on the Plain."  These are followed by the four "woes" that are parallel to the beatitudes in 6:24-26.

Accordingly, we have "Blessed are you who are poor: for yours is the kingdom of God."  Those who are poor display the virtue of temperance, a temperance which overcomes the seductions of the goods of the present life.  A temperate man will avoid the woe that Jesus imparts to the rich, for they have received their consolation in this life.  In the Ambrosian synthesis, the woes that Jesus imparts to the rich, are warnings against those who are intemperate.

"Blessed are you who are now hungry, for you will be satisfied," is a reference to those who hunger and thirst for the virtue of justice, a virtue which looks toward the needs of neighbor with a compassionate heart, one full of largesse and altruism.  Woe to those who are unjust, those who are filled now at the expense of their neighbor.

"Blessed are you who are now weeping, for you will laugh" is a reference to Christian prudence, one which avoids the mundane, and seeks the eternal, the lasting.  Woe to those who are imprudent, who laugh now, for they eventually will grieve and weep.

St. Ambrose, Bishop of Milan

Finally, the virtue of fortitude or courage is tied to the last Lucan beatitude: "Blessed are you when people hate you, and when they exclude and insult you, and denounce your name as evil on account of the Son of Man.  Rejoice and leap for joy on that day!  Behold, your reward will be great in heaven."  Woe when, because you renounced the Son of Man for lack of courage, you are well-spoken of.   The crown of suffering is the "consummation of courage" for the Christian.

While the Lucan four-fold version of the beatitudes in the Gospel of Luke fit nicely with the four-fold scheme of the cardinal virtues, the beatitudes of the Gospel of Matthew did not fit so nicely.  Yet Ambrose managed to find a parallel even here, largely through the use of allegory.  He insisted that the eight beatitudes of the Gospel of St. Matthew were reducible to the four of the Gospel of Luke and therefore also the four cardinal virtues.  "The four are in the eight, and the eight in the four," sed in istis octo illae quattuor sunt et in his quattuor illae octo.  (Exp. ev. sec. Lucam, 5.49)

The Matthean beatitudes are found in Matthew 5:3-10, and are part of the Sermon on the Mount:

• Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. (5:3) 
• Blessed are those who mourn: for they will be comforted. (5:4) 
• Blessed are the meek: for they shall inherit the earth. (5:5) 
• Blessed they who hunger and thirst for righteousness: for they will be satisfied. (5:6) 
• Blessed are the merciful: for they will be shown mercy. (5:7) 
• Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God. (5:8) 
• Blessed are the peacemakers: for they shall be called children of God. (5:9) 
• Blessed are those who are persecuted for the sake of righteousness: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. (5:10)

There are numerous ways where the Beatitudes in the Gospel of Matthew and the Beatitudes in the Gospel of Luke may be reconciled or synthesized.  One way is to expand each Lucan beatitude into two Matthean beatitudes, so that two Matthean beatitudes correlate to one of Luke's beatitudes.  The other method--which was the method chosen by St. Ambrose--is to see all the beatitudes are contained within one another.

It was a Platonic nostrum that all the virtues had to be had together, so that the virtues while "ontologically distinct, are unified operationally."  One will recall that for Socrates the union of virtue was even more unified as "essentially one while operationally many."  Houser, 36.  So we find in St. Ambrose a Platonic, even a Socratic notion of one overarching virtue, a binding together of beatitude to beatitude, of virtue to virtue in a circular chain of virtue:

Therefore, the virtues are so connected and chained together, that whoever has one seems to have them all; and there accrues to the saints one virtue.

Conexae igitur sibi sunt concatenataeque virtutes, ut qui unam habet plures habere videatur, et sanctis una conpetit virtus.

Exp. ev. sec. Lucam, 5.62-3.  It was this synthesis of St. Ambrose that was to influence the teachings of the Fathers and the medieval "masters" or magistri.

St. Ambrose and the Cardinal Virtues

SAINT AMBROSE, THE REDOUBTABLE bishop of Milan, is the first of the sancti that we will look at in the issue of virtues.  St. Ambrose is particularly notable for his moral teachings.  With regard to virtues in particular, he is to be regarded as the one who "invented the term 'cardinal virtues' because he was an inveterately allegorical thinker."  Houser, 32.  As Peter Lombard put it in his Sentences: primus autem qui eas cardinales vocat est Ambrosius.  "The first therefore who called them [the four principle virtues] cardinal was Ambrose."  (2:188, n.3).*

An example of St. Ambrose's allegorical style is his On Paradise, written circa 377 A.D.  As Houser summarizes it:

[T]he fertile land of paradise is like a fertile soul; Adam is like its intellect and Eve like its senses. The four rivers in Eden are in reality the four great rivers of the earth. These rivers in turn are analogous to the four Platonic virtues within the soul, because each is 'principal' within its own realm.  Platonic analogy turned into Christian allegory when Ambrose connected the two sides of the comparison--the four rivers with the four virtues--through a common point of reference, namely, through God, who is at once the cosmic artisan who created the rivers of paradise, and, in the person of Jesus Christ, the wisdom producing virtue in individual men.

Houser, 32 (citing to De par. 3.18)

We have a similar allegorical notion of the four virtues in St. Ambrose's funeral oration for his brother Satyrus (ca. 378).  In this funeral oration--where St. Ambrose first appears to have applied the term "cardinal virtues"--St. Ambrose praised his brother for having lived the four-Platonic virtues, but in a manner which exceeded the limits placed upon these virtues by the philosophi.  After recalling emotionally past rememberances of life with his brother and regarding him as a true friend, an "other self," Ambrose launches into an analysis of his brother's life by framing it within the four cardinal virtues.

After handling prudence, courage, and temperance, St. Ambrose addresses justice:

What remains, in order to complete the cardinal virtues, is that we also show the parts of justice in him [referring to Satyrus]. For even though the virtues are born together and perfected together, nevertheless one desires to know the form and outline of each one of them, and especially of justice.

Superest, ut ad conclusionem cardinalium virtutum etiam partes in eo debeamus advertere. Nam etsi cognatur sint inter se concretaeque virtutes, tamen singularum aquedam form et expression desideraturs maximeque iustitiae.

Houser, 3 (quoting De excessu fratris Satyri 1.57).

The Four Virtues

St. Ambrose tied the cardinal virtues to his brother's life and its culmination in his death.  It was these four cardinal virtues that helped his brother Satyrus face death, and, in particular, that great confrontation after death of judgment.  This is the "cardinal" moment of one's life, and it is the "cardinal" virtues that are aimed at not only living life well here on earth, but preparing for the ultimate "crisis" of one's life: one's judgment before God.  For St. Ambrose, therefore, the cardinal virtues are directly tied to God, to a life that is consecrated to God, to a life which is lived with an eye to the summum bonum, the Almighty God of Jesus Christ.

Ambrose turned to Plato to explain his brother's life, not his death, because Plato's four virtues are designed for living, for living the whole of life with an eye to the good. Ambrose simply replaced the abstract Platonic good with the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and in so doing he gave Plato's four virtues a more concrete end than the philosophers ever had. This teleological orientation toward God would always be maintained by Ambrose's patristic and medieval descendants.

Houser, 35.  "In Ambrose's conception," Houser summarizes, "three features make the four virtues 'cardinal': they  involve death, judgment, and orientation toward God."  It was in this manner that St. Ambrose effectively transformed the four Platonic virtues that had already been developed by the Stoics into something entirely different.  As Professor Colish puts it in her book, The Stoic Tradition, "Ambrose seeks to bring the Stoic sage into the fullness of being through Christian redemption."  Houser, 35 n. 70.

St. Ambrose therefore transformed the virtues from philosophical concepts to theological concepts, from natural virtues to virtues that were engraced.  They become Christian virtues; indeed, they become the principal virtues of the Christian life.  Et omnes quidem virtutes ad spiritum pertinent, sed istae quasi cardinales sunt, quasi principales.  De off. min., 1.29.142.  After St. Ambrose treats of the philosophical virtues, they become baptized, and they arise from the water as if reborn into the cardinal virtues.  They thus become something that is intrinsically part of life in the Holy Spirit.

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*In Latin, of course, the term cardo (pl., cardines; the adjectival form is cardinalis) or term "cardinal" is most frequently said to mean hinge-like.  In light of St. Ambrose's allegorical viewpoint, we can see the cardinal virtues as being the four hinges upon which the doors of the moral life swing.  However, the term cardo also can mean the tenon and mortise which dovetail to form a door's frame.  In Roman surveying, the term cardo mean the baseline or datum for the surveyor's measurement of the field.  The terms was also extended to include more comprehensively an entire geographical district, region, or boundary.  Houser, 33-34.  The term cardo was used by numerous Latin authors (Varro, Pliny, Cicero, Ovid, Statius, and Seneca) to refer to the poles of the earth or the points of a compass.  It was used by Pliny to refer to those days when the seasons would change.  Quintilian used the term to refer to the points on an ecliptic.  Servius, who was a contemporary of St. Ambrose, used the word to refer to the four winds.  Houser, 34 n. 67.  The allegorical possibilities of the word cardo are therefore quite rich.  As Houser summarizes it: "These meanings, however, are not haphazard but are united by he notion of something which is extraordinarily important, in no small part because it is a point of transition."  Indeed, Seneca used the term cardo to refer to that very important transition, death.