Die Trostschriften des Ambrosius von Mailand, written by Florian Durner

This excellent monograph, originally a PhD thesis submitted at the Theological Faculty of the University of Jena in 2019, deals with three intersecting areas of study.Firstly, it enters into the discourse on Christian Latin consolation, which was magisterially staked out as long ago as 1937 by Charles Favez in his La consolation latine chrétienne.For Favez, only Jerome plays a more important role in that discourse than Ambrose, whose literary contribution to the consolatory genre is nevertheless in part compromised by the political context of his funerary speeches.Secondly, in response to this latter aspect the present monograph engages precisely with Ambrose's public role and his relationships with several emperors.The funeral orations on the deaths of Gratian, Valentinian II and Theodosius make up a large proportion of his consolatory oeuvre, his 'Trostschriften' , although, as Durner is well aware (e.g.p. 295 n. 215), their consolatory character is also called in doubt.Thirdly, as a theological dissertation the present monograph is not content with discussing literary and historiographical aspects of works of Ambrose that deal with matters related to consolatio mortis, human responses to dying and death and their emotional impact, especially grief, but it is determined to outline, on the basis of a study of Ambrose's works, "contours of a theology of consolation" including thoughts on the anthropological dimension of consolation, the meaning of Christian consolation in light of the soteriological role of death in Christianity, and the consolatory significance of Ambrose's combination of the role of consoler with that of political agent (pp.349-355).This aspect of the dissertation is made easier by the fact that Ambrose (unlike, for example, Jerome) did not only engage in literary consolation but also in philosophical reflection about death, for example in his work De bono mortis, here discussed on pp.61-116, or in his thoughts on the Purgatory (pp.41-44), which are here developed with a view to this concept's consolatory potential.Holding together three such disparate aspects as these can have its downsides.One might risk comparing apples with pears when weighing up consolatory speech against political rhetoric or theological thought.But it can also reveal itself as a strength, when new and innovative ways of interpreting the evidence can be mapped out.This is what this monograph does, as it offers new insights not only on Ambrose's Trostschriften but also on their author and his thought.To explore this in more detail let us look first at the overall structure and then on some sections of this monograph

Archaeology · Art · Character (mathematics) · Christianity · Consolation · Context (archaeology) · Epistemology · Literature · Meaning (existential) · Theology · Byzantine Studies and History · Historical and Religious Studies of Rome · Historical, Literary, and Cultural Studies · History · Philosophy