INTRODUCTION

Ambrosiaster, the author of a set of quaestiones and of commentaries on the Pauline epistles, appears to have been writing in Rome in the last third of the fourth century ad. There is a long-running scholarly quest to establish a personal identity for Ambrosiaster, but it seems unlikely that this will ever be determined conclusively. Nonetheless, it is possible to locate Ambrosiaster more generally in an ecclesiastical context, for many of his quaestiones exhibit stylistic tics which suggest that they were delivered orally in church as sermons or catechetical lectures. Normally this would indicate that Ambrosiaster was a bishop, since only bishops preached. However, there is firm evidence that in Rome special dispensation was made for presbyters to preach, since it would have been impossible for a bishop to minister equally to the large number of churches in Rome. It thus seems quite likely that Ambrosiaster was a presbyter at Rome, possibly at one of the outlying cemetery churches.

David Hunter has demonstrated convincingly that Ambrosiaster's works fit into a Roman tradition of resistance to extreme asceticism, and of a defence of human sexual relations; he also suggests that Ambrosiaster is the anonymous opponent with whom Jerome, during his brief sojourn in Rome in the 380s, engages on such matters.