An SAU History through Its Patron's Portraits
The Academy for the Study of Saint Ambrose of Milan
April 4, 2019
A video that syncs the audio of this lecture with the PowerPoint presented is coming soon! In the meantime, the PowerPoint and audio are available separately below, and a transcript of the lecture follows.
In 1963 David Klise, a 1913 St. Ambrose Academy graduate, wrote an essay for the alumni publication about his student days. He described a college that was a small world unto itself. He wrote: “Sandy haired Tom Mitchell kept on mowing the grass under the majestic oaks on the front lawn, stopping the while to light the stub of a pipe. The great Doctor of the Church, St. Ambrose, from his pedestal on the front walk was imparting his blessing to passersby. Jim Gaffney was hurling curve balls down on the diamond. Luigi Ligutti was practicing the English language. Groups sat on benches on the hill. The bell in the tower rang out the Angelus. Young men stopped and blessed themselves. And evening came to a spring day at St. Ambrose in Nineteen Hundred Thirteen”
As I begin it occurred to me that you might wonder why it is St. Ambrose who imparts his blessing on passersby and not some other saint. In other words, why is our school named for St. Ambrose? As you know we were founded by the first Bishop of Davenport, John McMullen. McMullen was a priest in Chicago where he came to believe that education was the key for the future success of young Catholic boys, many of whom were immigrants or the sons of immigrants.
Shortly after coming to Davenport in the summer of 1881 he traveled the breadth of his new diocese, from Davenport to Council Bluffs. At each stop he would ask the local pastor about his Catholic school. If the pastor said he did not have a school, McMullen would urge him to open one. The next spring McMullen took his own advice and began to plan to open a school in Davenport. Sometime in the spring of 1882 McMullen met with the Reverend Henry Cosgrove, the pastor of St. Marguerite’s (later Sacred Heart) Cathedral. “Where shall we find a place to give a beginning to a college?” McMullen asked. Cosgrove’s response was immediate: “Bishop, I will give you two rooms in my school building.” “All right,” McMullen said, “let us start at once.”
However, when the school opened on September 4, 1882, McMullen was absent. He was in bad health, as it turned out he had cancer which would take his life the next summer. He had left Davenport in August planning to sail to Europe to visit the spas as a source of healing. The day school opened he was in New York waiting for his ship to sail. However, he realized that an ocean voyage would be too much for him, so he stayed in the east and finally returned to Davenport at the end of September.
In the meantime, Fr. Cosgrove, Fr. A. J. Schulte, the first president and one-half of the faculty, and Mr. Joseph Halligan the other half of the faculty, greeted the thirty-three sons of immigrants who came that first day. They had named the school St. John’s College in honor of the bishop. But when McMullen returned he objected, saying that while St. John was a great apostle he was not an educator. Since this would be an educational institution, McMullen said, “I think we shall call it St. Ambrose,” for the fourth-century bishop of Milan and Doctor of the Church who McMullen viewed as an educator.
So far, so good, but why did he choose St. Ambrose instead of another educator saint? McMullen had been born in Ireland but when he was an infant his family came to North America, first to Canada and eventually to Chicago. He had gone to Catholic schools in Chicago and had shown a great aptitude for study. He also wanted to be a priest so in 1853 the Bishop of Chicago sent him to Rome to study at the Urban College of the Propaganda which had been formed in 1627 to train priests to serve in missionary lands which included the nineteen-century United States.
His bishop had urged him to take advantage of the opportunities living in Rome afforded him and he urged him to study church history, which the bishop said, was the “indispensable key” to the rest of his studies. (Who can dispute that?) He also urged McMullen to visit the Christian antiquities around Rome. McMullen said he found the Christian antiquities “a fund of theological lore in the original expression of the early Christians.” He used his research to write a major work that was reportedly a “summary of the rites and institutions of the Church.” He was ordained a priest in 1858 and following his ordination he stayed in Rome long enough to take his exams that would lead to the Doctor of Divinity degree.
He brought the manuscript home with him and it had a pride of place in the theological library he was putting together. Unfortunately, his library and the manuscript were lost in the great Chicago fire of 1871.
Here is my speculation: I wonder if the major work on the rites of the church was a dissertation for his degree and whether one of the rites he wrote about was the Ambrosian Rite, a liturgy which has its roots in Ambrose’s Milan. But if it was a dissertation I wonder if it was filed in the library of the Urban College where he had studied. Some attempts have been made to find out, but so far without success. Still I wonder if it is there, lurking on some shelf deep in the Pontifical Urban College library which is now located on the Janiculum Hill next door to the North American College. (By the way, the coat of arms of the Urban College, McMullen’s alma mater, features three bees! Is that a sign?) We may never know why McMullen chose St. Ambrose, but it has turned out to be an inspired choice. We have benefited from his patronage for 137 years.
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But where do the bees come from? According to legend a swarm of bees had settled on his face when Ambrose was an infant. The bees are often seen as a sign that Ambrose would become a great orator, whose words would be as sweet as honey. However, one biographer has noted that even if the legend is not true, nevertheless, bees are a “propitious symbol, suggesting community . . . diligence, selflessness and, of course, sweetness,” characteristics which current day Ambrosians could well emulate.
A beehive and bees have become a common symbol for St. Ambrose University. In 1925 an official seal was created for the college which was “symbolic of the aim and spirit of the institution.” The central feature is a shield with three black crosses taken from the arms of the Davenport family in England. Below is a beehive and three bees surrounding it. The three bees were used to represent the Holy Trinity which Ambrose had defended against the Arians in the fourth century. The three crosses also appear on the seal of the Diocese of Davenport, emphasizing the fact that St. Ambrose University is a diocesan university with the Bishop of Davenport playing a prominent role in its governance. My favorite representation of the seal is the bas relief of it above the east door of McMullen Hall. And if you are good and study hard, it will be placed on your diploma and it will appear on a dangle attached to the zipper of your graduation gown.
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The Great Doctor of the Church had been imparting his blessing to passersby since 1895 when the Rev. Edmund Hayes, the pastor of St. Patrick’s Parish in Imogene, Iowa donated the statue. It was placed on a pedestal donated by Fr. James Davis who would later become Bishop of Davenport and for whom Davis Hall is named.
The statue showed Ambrose with a book in his left hand and holding a crozier in his right hand. He was wearing a cope and miter which were painted a darker color but since no color photograph exists we don’t know what color it was. The face was heavily bearded and had a benign, pastoral look. The Catholic Messenger described it “a masterpiece of art.”
But by the mid-1930s it had become impossible for St. Ambrose to impart his blessings on passersby because his right hand had mysteriously disappeared. The crozier it held had long since been gone and now the hand. For years it was rumored that one alumnus or another had the hand hidden away but no one ever came forth with the artifact.
By the mid-1980s the statue looked worse for the wear of years. The original paint was gone and any number of coats of white paint had been put on it. Then one November evening in 1985, a visitor to campus jumped up to greet the saint with a high-five and accidentally pushed the statue off its pedestal to the sidewalk below. As people gathered to look at the statue lying supine on the sidewalk, Fr. Drake Shafer, the college chaplain commented, ‘It seems much like a death in the family. It was part of college life.”
The head was badly damaged although the face was intact, but it appeared that it could not be repaired. Nevertheless, James Anderson, a part-time art instructor, took up the task of trying to repair it. Anderson worked through the spring and summer, rebuilt the head, fashioned a right hand to replace the one that had been missing for decades, and bronzed the entire statue. He also made two plaques illustrating incidents from the life of St. Ambrose and another of the college seal for the base. The restored statue was put in place and dedicated at homecoming 1986. In spite of Anderson’s work, however, the refurbished statue began to deteriorate and in 1992, it had to be removed.
The replacement was a statue of St. Ambrose that had stood in Christ the King Chapel since 1976. This one had come from a church in Cleveland, Ohio. According to one story the statue had been offered to St. Ambrose as a gift, provided we paid the shipping costs. When it arrived, however, grumbling was heard from certain administrators when they saw the rather considerable amount the shipper charged to transport the heavy, stone statue.
In 1992 it was moved from the entryway of the chapel and put on Fr. Davis’s base. It was slightly shorter than the original and portrayed a different Ambrose. The original had been pastoral, with Ambrose holding a bishop’s crozier in the right hand and a book in the left. In the new statue, Ambrose holds a sheaf of papers in his right hand and a book in the left, and instead of imparting a blessing to passersby, he looks out at them with a stern stare. Sharp eyed Ambrosians will also notice that this statue has a flat back. Clearly it was meant to be mounted against a wall, not seen in the round as it does on its pedestal in front of Ambrose Hall.
Nevertheless, the statue is still a focal point for campus visitors and each spring on graduation day new alumni come to the statue with their families to have one more picture taken to remember their days under the oaks. And surely, as they gather around the statue, the saint it represents blesses them and wishes them well.
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There are several images of St. Ambrose in Christ the King Chapel. In the corner of the gathering space there is a tall wooden statue of St. Ambrose. It was a gift from Marycrest College in 1957 upon the 75th anniversary of the founding of St. Ambrose. Marycrest was a women’s college founded in 1939, owned and staffed by the Sisters of Humility of Mary.
The Sisters of Humility had a relationship with St. Ambrose long before they presented the statue to us. In 1887 when St. Ambrose began to accept boarding students three Sisters of Humility, Sister Mary Peter Orienz, Sister Mary Benedict Smith, and Sister Mary Dechantel O’Reilly came from their motherhouse in Ottumwa to provide housekeeping services to the students and faculty who lived on campus. Over the years they were succeeded by many other Sisters of Humility who did the cooking, baking, cleaning, laundering, mending, and caring for the sick in the infirmary. They also provided a feminine, motherly presence to an all-male school.
In later years Sister Mary Carmella, a graduate dietician, was kitchen supervisor, Sister Mary Emmanuel supervised the general housekeeping, and Sister Mary of the Cross was in charge of the laundry. Through all those years the sisters lived in various places around the campus and for time at St. Vincent Center. Then in 1939 St. Ambrose purchased a house that sat on the corner of Gaines and Locust Streets to make way for building the new administration and library building (McMullen Hall). The house was moved to Scott Street. After Cosgrove Hall was built in 1968 the house sat just across the walk from the front door. Those with long memories will remember it as the Gray House. Now the sisters had a permanent home with rooms on the second floor and a chapel on the first floor.
In the meantime, through the 1930s Bishop Rohlman and the priests at St. Ambrose had wanted to provide for the education of Catholic women. This came about when Fr. Thomas Lawlor, the vice president and business manager of St. Ambrose purchased land on West 12th Street for a women’s college. The bishop talked with Mother Mary Geraldine Upham of the Sisters of Humility who agreed to take on the college, and in September 1939 Marycrest opened. At first it was a unit of St. Ambrose and received accreditation from St. Ambrose and its graduates received St. Ambrose degrees. In 1954 the two colleges separated and Marycrest sought its own accreditation from the North Central Association. Students from the two schools continued to participate in some joint activities, especially in music and the theater, and each was part of the social life of the other.
In that spirit and to commemorate the St. Ambrose anniversary, Mother Mary Geraldine, president of Marycrest presented the statue. It was created by Sister Mary Clarice and Miss Donna Meyer of the Marycrest art department. It was carved from a solid log of walnut and the artists said, “this is not St. Ambrose. It is an image in wood to suggest the saint [and] to suggest the saint, a structural form with dynamic rhythm in a modified spiral is used.”
An article about the statue in The Ambrose Alumnus said, “The saintly character of St. Ambrose is suggested by an elongated figure with a thin face. To show manly strength of character they exaggerated the size of the hands and retained the rough surface texture left by the chisel. To suggest the gift of persuasive oratory for which St. Ambrose was known they used the gesture of one arm and hand above the head and the diagonal active line of the other arm with the hand grasping the edge of the robe.”
For years the statue stood in the window well of the reading room on the second floor of the library in McMullen Hall. When the library was moved to the building on the east side of campus the statue was placed in storage until it was moved into the new gathering space of the renovated chapel in 2007.
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On the west wall of the gathering space is a picture that includes an image of St. Ambrose. My colleague, the late Richard Geiger, joined the St. Ambrose history faculty in 1962 and taught until his retirement in 2001. He taught almost every period of history but his specialty was medieval and renaissance history. In 2000 he asked Art Professor Tom Chouteau to paint a picture of the Seat of Wisdom, a traditional image of Mary teaching Jesus. Following the tradition of artists’ patrons in past generations Richard provided the names of six saints who were important to him. Choteau used Richard’s list and followed another old artistic tradition and selected individuals from Richard’s life to stand in for the saints. So we have:
St. Richard of Chichester, the fourteenth Century bishop of Chichester, who is appropriately represented by the patron, Richard Geiger.
St. Elmer (Aldhelm) of Sherborne, a late seventh century Abbot of Malmsbury and the first bishop of Chichester, commemorates Richard’s middle name. St. Elmer is represented by Fr. Ed Dunn, long-time member of the theology faculty. Professor Geiger and Fr. Dunn collaborated in teaching the History of Christianity.
St. Francis Solanus, a mid-sixteenth century Spanish Franciscan who became a missionary to South America, is the patron saint of Richard’s home parish in Quincy, Illinois. St. Francis is represented by Fr. Edward Catich, the legendary artist and calligrapher and a teacher and colleague of Tom Chouteau.
St. Jerome, the fourth century scholar is best known for his translation of the bible into Latin. Fr. William Dawson, Professor of Philosophy and long-time friend and colleague of Richard Geiger stands in for St. Jerome.
St. George, the third century Roman soldier and martyr, is the name of Richard’s father and grandfather. Here St. George is art Professor John Schmits. John was from Quincy and he and Richard were in kindergarten together.
St. Ambrose, the fourth century bishop of Milan and the patron saint of our university is represented by Dr. Ed Rogalski, former long-time President of St. Ambrose University.
Early in the process Chouteau posed his daughter Suzy and her four-year-old son, Eli, as Mary and Jesus. He decided to portray them as Shawnee native Americans in a tribute to his own background. Tom’s paternal grandmother was a full-blooded member of the Shawnee tribe in Oklahoma. He was proud of that heritage and made sure all his children had tribal membership.
Chouteau did preliminary drawings and sketches, began an overall design, and did some of the work. But the project languished until 2010 when, like artists of the period Richard studied, Chouteau enlisted students, in this case his daughters Katy and Terry and former daughter-in-law Rachel, to come to his studio and help him complete the project.
When he saw the finished work Richard was thrilled and invited friends to his house to view it. It was always his intention that the work be given to the University and so it now hangs in the gathering space of the chapel.
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As one enters the chapel, in a niche on the east wall opposite the baptismal font, there is a slate image of St. Ambrose. Created in 1962 by Fr. Edward Catich for an exhibition at the Catholic Art Association meeting, the image originally hung in the priests’ dining room in Cosgrove Hall. When Christ the King Chapel was renovated in 2006 the image was moved to the chapel.
Fr. Catich believed religious art should reflect the time and place of the viewer. This would allow the viewer to relate more closely to the subject of the work. So in this slate, Catich portrays a young Ambrose which was meant to connect the students of St. Ambrose University with their patron. The beehive Ambrose holds signals a different interpretation other than the omen of honeyed speech. In a sense it represents current day Ambrosians whom Ambrose holds in his hand and under his protection.
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When Christ the King Chapel was built in 1953 the T. C. Esser company of Milwaukee was contracted to construct the windows based on designs by Anton Wendling, a professor at the University of Aachen. As you enter the chapel from the gathering space the first two windows on your right have symbols representing the Eucharist. Before the renovation of the chapel in 2006, this was the area of the sanctuary and altar which stood about where the baptismal font is now, so the Eucharistic symbols were appropriate for that space. These two windows had been installed in time for the dedication of the new chapel in December 1953. The remaining windows were installed over the next few years, the last in 1959. Those windows honor the Blessed Mother, the priesthood, Pope St. Pius X, and on the east wall behind the music area, two windows represent the professions which are a development of the liberal arts education which is the foundation of St. Ambrose University: priest, doctor, lawyer, engineer, teacher, business person, farmer, scientist, scholar, artist, musician, dramatist.
The fourth window from the back on the west wall is dedicated to St. Ambrose of Milan. The window features symbols to represent various aspects of the life of our patron saint.
The first symbol from the top represents St. Ambrose’s influence on liturgy and the music of the church. Ambrose is credited with the introduction of antiphonal singing into the west which was later refined by St. Gregory in the form of Gregorian Chant. Ambrose also wrote poetry which became hymns. Some still exist in older compositions but a few years ago Professor Richard Geiger commissioned Professor William Campbell to compose new settings for these Ambrosian hymns. An earlier version of one of Ambrose’s hymns, Splendor Paternae Gloriae , “O Splendor of God’s Glory Bright,” was used for a number of years at the blessing of the beginning of the school year and other similar events. It was the second of Ambrose’s hymns Professor Campbell recast. Ambrose’s name is also attached to the Ambrosian Rite of the liturgy, a form of liturgy still used in the Archdiocese of Milan.
The second symbol from the top is a whip. The whip has been used for centuries to symbolize Ambrose’s defense of the church and its teaching. For example, Ambrose insisted the Emperor Theodosius repent before he entered the church. The whip has also been used to indicate Ambrose’s opposition to the Arians, a group who denied the Trinity. Sometimes the whip is portrayed with only three chords to indicate the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
The third symbol represents the wisdom of St. Ambrose. He was noted for his preaching which brought many converts to the church, most notably St. Augustine whom Ambrose baptized. He wrote commentaries on the scriptures, exegetical works, and had a wide correspondence with other leaders of his time. Many of his writings have been collected and are available to us today.
The fourth symbol is a miter indicating his role as the bishop of Milan. In 373 the See of Milan became open when the Arian bishop died and there was a contentious struggle between the Arians who denied the divinity of Jesus and thus the Trinity, and Nicean Catholics who accepted the Creed of Nicea which we still proclaim at Sunday Mass. At the time Ambrose was the Roman governor of Milan and one day when there was a great public controversy over the issue. Ambrose appeared to quell the disturbance. Seeing him there a small boy yelled, “Ambrose for bishop,” and the crowd took up the chant. But Ambrose was not yet a baptized Christian so in quick order he was baptized, confirmed, ordained a priest and then a bishop.
The fifth symbol represents Ambrose as a doctor of the church. This is a title given to Catholic scholars and teachers who have had a particular influence on the life and theology of the church. Although those theologians had long been recognized for their contributions, the custom of declaring them doctors of the church began in 1298 when Ambrose, along with Augustine, St. Gregory the Great, and St. Jerome were the first four to receive the title. The most famous representation of the doctors of the church is Bernini’s massive sculpture in the apse of St. Peter’s in Rome showing Ambrose and Augustine and two doctors of the eastern church, Athanasius and John Chrysostom, holding up the Chair of Peter.
The last symbol is the arms of St. Ambrose University which features a beehive and three bees which I have already described.
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Now let us move to Ambrose Hall. In 1902 the second addition to the original Ambrose Hall was built on the west end of the building. The new space served many needs of the growing college and chief among those needs was a new chapel. Our patron was commemorated in two ways in the chapel. For many years there was a statue of St. Ambrose in the front of the chapel. There are no pictures of it and it was probably no different from similar statues of other saints. However, when the old chapel was renovated decades ago, that statue and other statues disappeared.
The other Ambrose image is the colored glass window on the west side of the south wall. It was a gift of Mrs. Mary McDonough, the mother of the Reverend William McDonough, an 1889 graduate who had died in 1899, the first priest alumnus to die. At the time of his death he was the pastor of the parish in Valley Junction, Iowa, now West Des Moines. Mrs. McDonough was the first housekeeper at St. Ambrose and was well-known among the early alumni.
On the day the chapel was dedicated Archbishop Joseph Keane of Dubuque preached the sermon, using the relationship between Ambrose and Augustine, teacher and student, to address the congregation. His words, recorded in the Catholic Messenger, pair well with the Ambrose in stained glass, with his soft features, book and crozier, and a gesture of blessing. Archbishop Keane explained that Ambrose had taught Augustine and that one must listen to one’s intellect and to one’s heart, that it is through both of them that one finds wisdom. Thus in the chapel, illumined by light streaming through the image of the saint, the archbishop said the students can, “hold silent conversation with God . . . and ask for that light of love and beg St. Ambrose to teach [them] the lesson he taught to St. Augustine—the lesson of love. . .. Here is this chapel, may the spirit of St. Ambrose always be cultivated and may all the blessings [that] come from heaven through his spirit [be] cultivated in this house of prayer.”
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Six years after the chapel was dedicated a third addition was added on the east side of Ambrose Hall. When that portion of the building was built in 1908 the space in the ground floor of the north-east corner contained the gymnasium. Then, after the construction of the new gym in LeClaire Hall a few years later, the space was used for shop classes for the academy students. When the academy closed in 1959 the space was once again remodeled to become the new Bee Hive.
The first Bee Hive, which opened in 1948, was in the basement of the Library-Administration Building (now McMullen Hall). This space provided a social gathering location for the expanding campus; up to ninety patrons could gather. But as the campus continued to grow more social space was needed. In 1961 the new Bee Hive opened.
The two story room had a balcony on the south side with a curved stairway leading down to the ground floor. At the bottom of the stairs was a circular pit lined with couches to encourage conversation. To carry the beehive theme, on the outside in front of the large windows was a two story wall constructed with concrete blocks shaped to make the wall appear to be a large hive. That wall was taken down a number of years ago.
The entry has an image of St. Ambrose carved into the stone wall by Fr. Catich. Similar to the slate image in Christ the King Chapel, this shows Ambrose holding a crozier and a beehive. Catich included three bees next to Ambrose as a reference to the three persons of the Blessed Trinity. Seven stars, inspired by designs Catich saw in the Roman catacombs, refer to the seven sacraments.
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Our last stop is the library. The current St. Ambrose library was built in 1996. The architect wanted to suggest an Italian building as might be seen in Ambrose’s city of Milan. As originally designed the six openings along the front had flat tops. When the design was in progress I had recently been in Milan and visited the Basilica of St. Ambrose and had taken a number of photos. This watercolor was created by Fr. Catich in 1936. It shows the Saint Ambrose Basilica which was originally a church built by Ambrose himself and consecrated in 386. This 11th/12th century construction stands on the foundations for the original church. It was this church which Ambrose had designated as his burial place. His remains, along with those of the two martyrs which he discovered in Milan, Gervasius and Protasius, can be seen today in the crypt below the altar.
As you can see the openings have rounded tops and I thought the library should reflect more closely the Ambrosian style and so I sent a few of my photos to the architect and he changed his design to round the tops. The tower on the south side of the library is also an Italian feature. However, it is not a campanile with bells to call students to prayer or study; it is a fire escape.
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There are other images of St. Ambrose held by The Academy for the Study of Saint Ambrose of Milan. These include early printed editions of Ambrose’s works, ancient artifacts, and modern artworks inspired by Ambrose. One example is Donna Young’s medallion of Ambrose holding Christ the King Chapel. Other examples are Patricia Bereskin’s Ambrose print, and Chris Mandle’s ASSAM icon, a collage of Catich’s Ambrose images with the inscription Fons Luminis, the Font of Light. These Ambrosian artifacts and the images we have discussed bring together the past, present, and future of this Ambrosian community.
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But what about Ambrose of Milan, what did he look like? There is one image from Ambrose’s church in Milan that purports to be the most accurate portrayal of him. If it is an accurate portrayal, our images of Ambrose do not look like him at all. But for twenty-first century Ambrosians it seems to me that the important thing is not what he looked like, but the values and issues he espoused. Our images of Ambrose should bring those values to mind: the defense of faith and religion; his strength and determination in the face of adversity; his compassion for the poor; his scholarship and eloquent presentation of that scholarship; his use of music to praise God; and don’t forget the industry and determination of those bees.
This year the academic theme at St. Ambrose is “Visual Narratives,” which we take to mean “storytelling through images.” If our Ambrose images help us to tell the story of those Ambrosian values, then Ambrose of Milan continues to be the educator Bishop McMullen said he was