On the Duties of the Clergy: The Complete Text

What the philosophers sought and did not find, a life ordered wholly to the good, is taught in the school of Christ.

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About this edition

Saint Ambrose of Milan (c. 340–397), bishop, statesman, and Doctor of the Church, was the teacher who baptized Augustine and the shepherd who once kept an emperor from the door of the church until he had done penance. On the Duties of the Clergy is his manual for the ministers in his charge, and the first full treatise on Christian ethics.

He took for his model the De Officiis of Cicero, the great pagan handbook of duty, and answered it point for point out of Scripture and the lives of the saints, showing that what the philosophers sought and did not find, a life ordered wholly to the good, is taught in the school of Christ. In three books he treats of what is virtuous, of what is useful, and of the two together, forming his clergy in honour, prudence, justice, and temperance, and above all in the mercy and the unbought love that mark a servant of the Church.

This Sanctified Souls Press edition gives the work complete, in its three books, in the public-domain English of the Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers. Newly set on cream paper, for reading and keeping.

Details

• Saint Ambrose of Milan (c. 340–397), Bishop of Milan, Father and Doctor of the Church
• Translated by H. de Romestin, E. de Romestin, and H. T. F. Duckworth, in the Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, 1896
• Complete and unabridged: all three books, the first in fifty chapters, the second in thirty, the third in twenty-two
• Sanctified Souls, Heritage Editions · Saint Ambrose
• Paperback and hardcover, 6 × 9, 198 pages, cream paper

Cover: a line engraving of Saint Ambrose by Gerard Edelinck (French, 1640–1707); Wellcome Collection. Public domain.