ST. AMBROSE
ST. AMBROSE
such a devoted brother was very great and it was shared by the public at large, for Satyrus was universally admired and loved for his amiability and fairness.
The body of Satyrus lay in state for a week, and was then carried by the nearest relatives accompanied by a vast throng of people, in funeral procession, to the cemetery church at Milan, where Mass was celebrated. Marcellina was present at the funeral. Following the reading of the Gospel, St. Am brose mastered his deep grief sufficiently to deliver a very touching and personal funeral oration, On the Death of His
Brother Satyrus. This oration, which was undoubtedly re corded by notaries, was subsequently revised and expanded and given the final form in which we now read it.
It was also customary to commemorate the dead on the third and the thirtieth, or on the seventh and fortieth day, after the funeral. Mass was offered, and a commemorative address was frequently delivered. Accordingly, St. Ambrose gave a second funeral oration on his brother on the seventh day after the funeral. This address was carefully prepared and written out before delivery. It is less personal and more definitely related to the pagan literary genre known as the consolation. While drawing freely from pagan models, and especially from the lost De consolatione of Cicero, St. Am brose naturally lays greater emphasis on the consolation to be derived from basic Christian ideas on death and resurrection.
The idea of resurrection, in fact, is stressed so much that this second oration is frequently called On Faith in the Resur rection (De fide resurrectionis) or On the Resurrection of the Dead (De resurrectione mortuorum) in many manuscripts.
St. Ambrose himself, moreover, in a later work (Enarr. in ps.
1.51) refers to his two orations on Satyrus as his 'books on consolation and resurrection.' The first oration in its elaborated written form was thus combined with the second and regarded as a work in two books dealing with the theme indicated.