Arian heretics. Civilization declined for centuries, and it was not until nearly a thousand years
later that Christendom again produced men who were their equals in learning and culture.
Throughout the dark ages and the medieval period, their authority was revered; they, more than
any other men, fixed the mould into which the Church was shaped. Speaking broadly, Saint
Ambrose determined the ecclesiastical conception of the relation of Church and State; Saint
Jerome gave the Western Church its Latin Bible and a great part of the impetus to monasticism;
while Saint Augustine fixed the theology of the Church until the Reformation, and, later, a great
part of the doctrines of Luther and Calvin. Few men have surpassed these three in influence on the
course of history. The independence of the Church in relation to the secular State, as successfully
maintained by Saint Ambrose, was a new and revolutionary doctrine, which prevailed until the
Reformation; when Hobbes combated it in the seventeenth century, it was against Saint Ambrose
that he chiefly argued. Saint Augustine was in the forefront of theological controversy during the
sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, Protestants and Jansenists being for him, and orthodox
Catholics against him.
The capital of the Western Empire, at the end of the fourth century, was Milan, of which Ambrose
was bishop. His duties brought him constantly into relations with the emperors, to whom he spoke
habitually as an equal, sometimes as a superior. His dealings with the imperial court illustrate a
general contrast characteristic of the times: while the State was feeble, incompetent, governed by
unprincipled self-seekers, and totally without any policy beyond that of momentary expedients,
the Church was vigorous, able, guided by men prepared to sacrifice everything personal in its
interests, and with a policy so far-sighted that it brought victory for the next thousand years. It is
true that these merits were offset by fanaticism and superstition, but without these no reforming
movement could, at that time, have succeeded.
Saint Ambrose had every opportunity to seek success in the service of the State. His father, also
named Ambrose, was a high official-prefect of the Gauls. The Saint was born, probably, at
Augusta Treverorum (Trà ̈ves), a frontier garrison town, where the Roman legions were stationed
to keep the Germans at bay. At the age of thirteen he was taken to Rome, where he had a good
education, in-