Sister Projects: Wikichristian | WikiMD
BelieversCafe is a large collection of christian articles with over 40,000 pages
Our sponsors:
1 The mob at Thessalonica had barbarously murdered a number of the officers of the garrison of that city. The Emperor, being exceedingly angry, sent orders in obedience to which over seven thousand of the inhabitants were cruelly put to death. This act of vengeance shocked the public conscience, and St. Ambrose felt it his duty to speak out in the name of the Church.
4 Theodosius had promised to forgive the Thessalonians, but was again stirred up by his courtiers, as Paulinus relates in his life of St. Ambrose.
1 Arbogastes, a Frankish general, had been set by Theodosius over the troops in Gaul, and determined to gain supreme power in the West. Having removed all who were faithful from the person of the Emperor Valentinian II., he caused him to be murdered, and then to conceal his own purposes caused the rhetorician Eugenius, his private secretary, to be acknowledged Emperor. Ambassadors were sent to Theodosius begging him to acknowledge the new Emperor as his colleague, but he saw through the design, and after two years' preparation marched into Italy, and defeated the usurper's troops. Eugenius was beheaded, and Arbogastes killed himself.
2 i.e. Eugenius, whom St. Ambrose avoided, because he had permitted the restoration of heathen ceremonies. See also Ep. 57.
3 Theodoret, Hist. Eccl. V. 24, relates certain prophecies and several prodigies connected with this victory, to which there seems to be some allusion here.