This valuable book consists of a collection of articles on the memory of Bishop Ambrose of Milan during the Middle Ages and the early modern era. Inspired and edited by two well-known French medievalists, Patrick Boucheron and Stéphane Gioanni, it initiates a larger project focused on the ways in which the exemplary lives of the four most influential fathers of the Latin Church have been put to political use. Its main objective is to show how their remembrance was shaped and, in specific moments, adapted to political needs—especially within the Italian context in the case of Ambrose. The thesis of the editors is that in Italy people of all sorts employed patristic memory to accomplish political goals or to foster social practices that had only secondary connection to religion. At a later time, the editors intend to look at Augustine, Jerome, and Gregory from the same point of view.

The study on Ambrose consists of twenty articles, half in French and half in Italian, arranged in four different groups. The first group contains elaborate studies on Saint Ambrose’s visual representations throughout the Middle Ages and on Milanese religious sites most connected to Ambrosian memorialization. The articles on portraiture show that an apparently minor detail, such as wearing a beard or not, is not casual, but connected with political events in various periods. Ambrose’s facial hair, symbolizing the early differences between Western and Oriental Christianity, reveals the Church’s political stance. The authors further reflect on whether ecclesiastical politics relate to larger issues of secular politics. In another article the Ambrosian monuments in Milan are thoroughly researched, but the authors have to concede that after so many restorations many uncertainties remain. Therefore, establishing links between Ambrosian-inflected church politics and concomitant political events becomes an even more arduous task. This was easier for the more militant images of Ambrose during the late Middle Ages.

The second section of the book is centered around manuscripts of and commentaries on the works of Ambrose, along with the hagiographies dedicated to him. Here much attention is expended, of course, on the first biography of the saint by his pupil Paulinus of Milan, since this first source shaped the collective memory into a dependable narrative. Rightly, the editors also emphasize the contents of various medieval florilegia of the church fathers, the source of many strong indications about which of their thoughts were considered the most important in a specific period. Especially interesting in this part of the book is the correlation between the collective memory of Ambrose and the Visconti family’s reach for power in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. Although a bishop, Ambrose was depicted as the personification of civic traditions and the incarnation of civic government. The third section describes how Ambrose’s voice of authority, constantly reinterpreted, found its way as a point of reference in various ecclesiastical and social-political controversies during the Middle Ages. Here the short period of the so-called Ambrosian republic in Milan from 1447 to 1450 is of great interest. The last and shortest part of the book deals with the way Ambrose was remembered in Milan in the early modern period. Of course, the importance Carlo Borromeo gave to his predecessor is of vital interest here. Wishing to be seen as a part of the seamless episcopal tradition of Milan, Carlo kept closely to the Ambrosian liturgy.

It is impossible to discuss here all the articles one by one; suffice it to say that all of them are written by specialists in their respective fields, based on the most recent research, and supported with long and valuable footnotes and, when useful, with very good illustrations. The actualizations of Ambrose after his death are mostly connected to the multiple meanings of his sainthood, his fights against heresy, his stern attitude toward Emperor Theodosius, and his ties to Milan. If and how they are shaped according to specific political ends is a rewarding question that all the contributors try to answer for specific periods and subjects. The answers also show, not surprisingly, that it is often very difficult to make clear demarcation lines between religious and secular political acts.