Funeral Orations

ON THE DEATH OF VALENTINIAN

ON THE DEATH OF VALENTINIAN IILTHOUGH IT MAY MEAN an increase of grief to write1 ~ about a subject over which we grieve, yet, because we often find solace in recalling the one over whose loss we grieve for the reason that he seems to live again in our discourse, while, as we write, we direct our minds to him and fix our attention on him, it has been a task of love to make known something of the last moments of Valentinian the Younger. It has been such, moreover, lest we should seem by our silence either to have blotted out the memory of a loved one who merited well of us and to have left it unhonored, or to have avoided an incentive to grief, since to grieve is often a consolation to him who grieves. Furthermore, when I speak about him or to him, let my discourse be about a man who, as it were, is present to me, or even before me. (2) What, then, shall I lament first? What shall I first deplore with bitter complaint? The days of our desires have been turned into tears for US, 2 since Valentinian has come to us, but not as he was hoped for. Yet even by his death he wished to fulfill his promise, but most bitter has become his presence, which was so desired. Would that he were still absent 1 The sermon was prepared for circulation in a revised, written form. 2 Cf. Tob. 2.6. 265 266 ST. AMBROSE from us, that for his own sake he might still be living! But he could not endure to be inactive when he heard that the Italian Alps were infested by a barbarian foe,3 and he preferred to encounter danger by wholly forsaking Gaul than to fail us in our peril. A grave crime on the part of the emperor do we acknowledge this to be, that he wished to come to the rescue of the Roman Empire! This was the cause of his death, a cause full of glory. Let us pay the noble prince a tribute of tears, since he has paid us the tribute even of his death. (3) Yet the exhortation to weep is not necessary. All are weeping: they weep who did not know him, even they weep who feared him, even they weep who do not wish to weep, even barbarians weep, even they weep who seemed to be his enemies. What great lamentations among the peoples were c?used by the course of his entire journey from Gaul hither? For all lament, not so much that their emperor is dead, but with a family grief, as it were, that a common parent has died, and all bewail his death as a death of one of their own. For we have lost an emperor whom we lament bitterly for two reasons : for immaturity of years4 and ripeness of age in counsels. For these things, then, do I weep, as the Prophet has said: 'My eyes are clouded by weeping, because he who consoled me has departed from me.'5 The eyes, not only of my body but also of my mind, have been dimmed, and every sense has been enveloped by a kind of blindness, because he has been snatched from me who turned my soul and recalled it from the depths of despair to the highest hope.6 (4) 'Hear all ye people and see my sorrow. My virgins, 3 An incursion of barbarians into Pannonia early in 382 had frightened Italy. 4 Valentinian was only twenty years old at the time of his death. 5 Lam. 1.16. 6 This prohably refers to Ambrose's struggle with the court. particularly with the mother of Valentinian II. concerning the transfer to the Arians of a basilica, first the Portian Basilica. later the Basilica Nova. ON VALENTINIAN 267 and my young men are gone into captivity';7 but once it was known that they were from the regions governed by Valentinian , they returned free. A barbarian foe made war on the youthful emperor, and the foe, forgetting his own victory, was mindful of the imperial dignity. Of his own accord he freed those whom he had captured, giving as an excuse that he did not know that they were Italians. We were preparing even to add a rampart to the Alps, but the majesty of Valentinian did not wait for a palisade of the Alps, for flooding rivers, for...