Episcopal elections had now become occasions of disorder. For example, Damasus, the contemporary bishop of Rome, the protector of St. Jerome and himself entitled "saint," had gained his place after an election so vigorously contested that when the enthusiastic debate was over, and the decision made, and the church emptied of the congregation, there were found upon the floor a hundred and thirty-seven bodies of dead electors.

This disorder was due in part to the secular importance of the office. The bishopric of a city was a place of power and wealth. The bishop of a large diocese was the equal of nobles and princes, and did business with kings. The pagan prefect of Rome, Prætextatus, is reported to have said, "I will myself become a Christian, if you will make me bishop."

Another cause of disorder was the part taken in episcopal elections by the people. The choice of a bishop was a democratic undertaking. He might be selected at a town meeting. It is plain that a town meeting in Italy in the fourth century was very different both in tradition and in temperament from a town meeting of the present day in New England. The townsmen behaved themselves accordingly.

And the natural confusion and tumult of the occasion was frequently magnified, as in this instance in Milan, by bitter party strife. The long war between the Arians and the Athanasians was still an undecided conflict. Men went into the election of a bishop as if they were going into battle.

Thus the Christians assembled, under these critical and dangerous conditions, at Milan. The diocese was nearly as important as the see of Rome itself. Indeed, while that ancient city still shone in the light of the glory of its illustrious past, it had been politically superseded. The establishment of Constantinople, as a new Rome on the Bosphorus, and the division of the empire into two parts, East and West, had reduced the influence of Rome in the East to insignificance. Even the Western emperors had abandoned Rome, and had preferred to reside in Ravenna or in Milan. The city had ceased to be the centre of the world. When Chrysostom in his exile wrote to influential bishops in the West, protesting against the injustice of his condemnation, he addressed his letter in the same words to the bishop of Rome, the bishop of Milan, and the bishop of Aquileia, making no distinction.

Under these conditions, Ambrose came to the election to keep the peace. Standing at the bishop's throne, in the east end of the church, overlooking the crowded congregation, he addressed the people. Suddenly, in the midst of a moment's silence, a small child, lifted to his father's shoulder and seeing Ambrose in the bishop's place, called out in shrill surprise, "Ambrose is bishop!" Instantly the words were taken up, the rival candidates were forgotten, everybody shouted, "Ambrose is bishop!"

The possibility of such a position had never entered into the mind of Ambrose. The plans which he had made for his life were altogether different. A great noble, already well advanced in his civil career, he looked forward to political place and power. He was interested, indeed, in the Christian religion; he believed in it, and tried to live according to it; but he had not been baptized. Nevertheless, the people insisted, and Ambrose at last consented. Within the space of a single week he was baptized, confirmed, admitted to the Holy Communion, and made deacon and presbyter and bishop. Much of his property in land he gave to the church, much of his possessions in money he distributed among the poor. His business interests he entrusted to his brother.

He began the study of theology. Every day he celebrated the Holy Communion and preached. Every day he sat at a table in the hall of his house with his books before him, and the doors open. People came to consult him upon all manner of matters, great and small. In the free intervals between these consultations he gave his attention to reading, sometimes in the Bible, sometimes in the writings of Origen, sometimes in Plato. His mind was naturally conservative. He had an appreciation of the value of authority, which he had derived from his experience as a statesman. He desired to know the mind of the church, as expressed in the best traditions and in the instructions of the best teachers. This he would follow, this he would establish in his diocese. His to accept and administer the doctrine and discipline of the church as he found it was confirmed by the conditions under which his ministry began. Absorbed immediately in the pressing business of his office, having no time for study except in the midst of his constant problems of administration, he was compelled to take things theological and ecclesiastical at the hands of tradition.

It was soon plain to Ambrose that his office in the church would bring him quite as close to the affairs of the great world as the office to which he had looked forward in the state. Milan being one of the capitals of the empire, and thus a place of residence for the imperial court, Ambrose had emperors and empresses among his parishioners. Into the responsibilities of this relationship he entered heartily.

Thus he was brought into two important contentions. He had his part in the last contest between Christianity and paganism, and in the last contest between orthodoxy and Arianism.

The Roman Empire had now been nominally Christian for more than half a century. But paganism continued. The persistence of the old religion in the country districts was so noticeable that the word "heathen," meaning one who lives on the heath, and the word "pagan," meaning one who lives in a village (pagus), bear witness to it to this day. The tillers of the soil were off the line of progress. The missionaries of Christianity addressed their message to the cities. Only very gradually did the new religion make its way into the back districts. On the hills and in the woods the gods were still worshipped in the old manner. Even in the cities, where there were many Christians, there were also many pagans. People do not put off one religion and put on another quickly. The beliefs which are involved are venerable, and the associations are too sacred, for that. Under the conditions of official change, while ancient institutions are established and disestablished, some citizens are instinctively hostile, some are friendly, some are enthusiastic, many are indifferent. The indifferent people are commonly in majority, going quietly about their accustomed affairs, letting their excited neighbors fight it out, paying to the combination of politics and religion no more attention than is absolutely necessary, and never consulting the morning paper before they say their prayers to see under what name God is to be addressed that day. Thus passive paganism continued into the Middle Ages. In the fourth century it was ready, upon any suitable occasion, to abolish the innovations of Christianity and to return to the old ways. Especially among the Roman aristocracy and in the Senate the men were many of them pagans; their wives and daughters might be Christians.

When the emperor Augustus returned from the battle of Actium, which made him master of the world, he set up in the Senate-house at Rome an altar dedicated to Victory, with a golden statue of that goddess standing on a globe in the attitude of forward flight. On this altar every senator for centuries had taken his oath of faithful service to the state. It was still the custom of the pagan members of that body to offer incense at this shrine. It represented the prosperity of Rome. In the general demolition of the images of the gods, the statue of Victory had escaped. It had been prudently covered when the emperor Constantius came to Rome. But the emperor Gratian had removed it. To this action he had been impelled by his Christian conscience, which also forbade him to wear the vestments of the pontifex maximus. It meant that the time of compromise had passed, and that the Christians who had pleaded in vain with pagan emperors for toleration intended to follow their intolerant example. When Valentinian II came to the imperial throne of the West a last attempt was made to secure to paganism the right at least to exist. A petition was presented to the emperor asking for the restoration of the altar of Victory.

The prefect Symmachus presented the petition, the bishop Ambrose presented the argument against it.

Symmachus declared that Rome with tears asked for the renewal of the ancient ceremonies. These rites, he said, had in the old time repulsed Hannibal, and driven away the invading barbarians. Ambrose remarked that the gods had been a long time in coming to the help of Rome against Hannibal; they had suffered nearly the whole country to be devastated. As for the barbarians, they had forced their way to the very walls of Rome, and would have entered had not the garrison been awakened by the cackling of frightened geese. "Where was your Jupiter that night?" asks Ambrose. "Rome has been saved in all her perils by the courage of her heroes."

Symmachus called attention to the fact that the removal of the altar had been followed by a famine, showing the displeasure of heaven. Yes, says Ambrose, there was a famine last year, but how about the unusual plenty of this year? Everybody knows that the years are different, that now there is abundance and now scarceness, in all lands and under all conditions of religion.

Symmachus pleaded for the ancestral ways. But life, says Ambrose, consists in progress. The world has grown since the beginning of creation; we ourselves grow year by year. Can we maintain, then, that infancy is better than maturity? Shall we say "that all things ought to have remained in their first beginnings, that the earth which was at first covered with darkness is now displeasing because it is brightened with the shining of the sun?"

The arguments of Ambrose were effective with Valentinian; who, indeed, needed no arguments, his mind being already made up against the restoration of the altar. They are interesting as showing how far Christianity had come on in the Roman world since the apologies of Justin Martyr.

The attempt of paganism to save itself by the peaceful method of petition having thus failed, an attempt was made to preserve the old religion by wager of battle.

Valentinian II being but a youth, Theodosius had given him as prime minister, and practical administrator of imperial affairs, Arbogast the Frank. The appointment discloses the gradual manner in which the barbarians were effecting the conquest of the empire. Sometimes, indeed, they proceeded by invasion, but often they came quietly, by dint of individual ability, into places of power. Then being in place, and possessing the power, they used their opportunity. One day, Valentinian, irritated beyond endurance, discharged Arbogast. The prime minister brought the letter of dismissal into the presence of the emperor, tore it in pieces before his eyes, and said, "You are not my master." A few days later Valentinian was found strangled, and his throne was given by Arbogast to a schoolmaster, Eugenius, a teacher of grammar.

The new government sought to reinforce itself against the inevitable vengeance of Theodosius by calling to its side the forces of the old religion. The altar of Victory was replaced in the Senate-house, the closed temples were reopened, the abandoned and forbidden ceremonies were resumed. As the pagans marched to meet Theodosius among the foothills of the Alps, they vowed that on their victorious return they would stable their horses in the cathedral of Milan. The armies met beside the river Frigidus, north of Trieste, as Constantine and Maxentius, fifty years before, had met in the same kind of contention, between Christianity and paganism, beside the Tiber. At first the armies of the pagans prevailed. Then Theodosius prayed, as Constantine had prayed before. He led his army into battle crying, "Where is the God of Theodosius?" A great storm arose, the snow was blown fiercely into the faces of the foe. It was as when the stars in their courses fought against Sisera. And the Christians won.

Thus finally fell the ban of the empire on the ancient paganism. It lingered long in secret places, in recesses of the woods and hills. Here and there it rose, now and again, in local, ineffectual protest. Gradually it got itself baptized with the names of Christian saints. Thus far it is alive to-day. But with the denial of the petition of Symmachus and the defeat of the forces of Eugenius and Arbogast its existence as a recognized religion came to an end. The sons of Arbogast and Eugenius sought refuge in Milan with Ambrose, and by his intercession their lives were spared. The fact is a symbol of Christianity as a friendly conqueror, at war with paganism but not with pagans, seeking not captives but converts.