Ambrósíuss saga biskups / Notes on the Norse Vita of a neglected Church Father

Ambrose of Milan (c. 340-397), Father and Doctor of the Church, is a fundamental figure in Western Christianity. The Norse tradition preserves an account of the saint’s life, Ambrósíuss saga biskups, which is transmitted in four witnesses, whose chronology stretches from the mid-13th century to the first half of the 16th. Scholarship has devoted little attention to the saga. Besides the edition of the text’s redactions (Carl Richard Unger 1877 I, 28-54; Agnete Loth II 1969-70, 57-93), the only textual analysis of its composition was made by Peter Foote (1962, 21-2), who provided a list of sources and few remarks on their adaptation. This paper displays the first results of a research specifically devoted to Ambrósíuss saga. First, attention is given to the description of the saga’s structure. The text is based on the most popular account of the saint’s life in the Middle Ages (BHL 377), which has been expanded and made interact with other sources, both known and newly detected. The choice of this additional material responds to the need of a better delineation of the historical context of St Ambrose’s times than in the Latin hagiography and it serves to underline the active role of the bishop as an authority in both ecclesiastical and secular affairs. Secondly, the paper argues that this combinatory process is not casual, but rather it accounts for a coherent adaptation to the literary modes of saga-writing. In particular, the disposition of the additional material fits into certain rhetorical structures typical of saga composition (Lars Lönnroth, 1989, 71-98). These notes are part of a research that works towards a re-evaluation of the Old Norse reception of St Ambrose, as both a Doctor of the Church and an influential exemplum of ecclesiastical authority in other genres.