Selected Works and Letters

Description

contains a translation of St. Ambrose's De Virginibus (377), audiobook

from Fr. Unger's book on the single life:

St. Ambrose (d. 397) is considered the apostle of virginity in the Western Church. He composed several treatises on the subject. In 377 he wrote On Virgins, to His Sister Marcellina , which consists of three parts: the first is on the excellence of virginity, the second is a group of tableaux of heroines of this form of life, the third gives norms for living as Christ's spouse. That same year he wrote the work On Widows. A year later he composed On Virginity , which is more apologetic in tone. In 391-2 he penned On the Virgin and on the Perpetual Virginity of Holy Mary , because in Mary is realized the supreme model of feminine purity. The next year he produced another precious work, An Exhortation on Virginity.

ref:177.1-179.137 is the eulogy De excessu fratris on the death of his natural brother Satyrus, whom he described as having traditionally "feminine" virtues of verecundia , castimonia and pudor (cf. Undheim ref:9.103).