Our Father among the Saints Ambrose, Bishop of Sens
Life
Saint Ambrose was a bishop of Sens in Gaul during the fifth century, dated by tradition to around 455. He is venerated among the pre-schism Western saints of the undivided Church, and his memory is kept on September 3.
Almost nothing of his life survives. He is known principally as a name in the early episcopal succession of Sens, a Gallo-Roman see of growing ecclesiastical importance in the closing decades of the Western Roman Empire.
Contributions & Legacy
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The See of Sens
Sens, the Roman Agedincum, was an old Gallo-Roman city that retained its Roman street plan and the walls raised around it in the third century. After the imperial reorganization of 375 it served as the chief town of Lugdunensis Quarta, and it held the standing of a provincial metropolis. Its bishop came to be reckoned an archbishop as early as the middle of the fifth century, the very period of Ambrose's episcopate.
The earliest documented bishops of Sens begin in the fourth century, the list giving no certain evidence that the see existed before the later third century. Ambrose stands in this succession after Saint Ursicinus and before the bishops Agroecius and Heraclius. Sidonius Apollinaris records that by 475 the Church of Sens had reached its thirteenth bishop, a sign of an established and active local church in Ambrose's day.
Sources and Veneration
No dedicated life of Ambrose of Sens is preserved; he is attested chiefly through the episcopal lists of his see. He is numbered among the Latin saints of the pre-schism West who are venerated as Orthodox, his commemoration falling on September 3.
As with many bishops of the late-antique Gallic church, the surviving record amounts to little more than his name, see, and approximate date. The details of his birth, his pastoral work, and the manner of his repose are not recorded in the available sources.
