History Homes Dudden, F.: Life and Times of St. Ambrose (abr.). V1.0. 11 June 2012

[SkookumPete]

Engagingly written and solidly researched, F. Homes Dudden’s The Life and Times of St. Ambrose, published by the Clarendon Press in 1935, is still one of the best introductions to the eventful decades of the late fourth century. Despite the author’s Christian perspective, this is not hagiography: Ambrose is shown as what he was, a powerful, sometimes overbearing bishop capable of bringing emperors to their knees, even if it took adroit stage management and the convenient discovery of old bones. Though Ambrose is at the center of the narrative, Homes Dudden takes us on a wide-ranging tour of the empire in its last years of unity, showing us its daily life, its personalities, its political struggles, its religious rituals and controversies, ranging from the first executions for heresy in Gaul to the destruction of the great temple of Serapis in Alexandria.

This abridged e-book contains, in full, the first 500 of the 750-plus pages in the two original volumes, comprising the complete narrative and omitting only the three long chapters devoted to Ambrose’s ethics, theology, and writings — which would, I think, test the patience of the general reader as much as the endurance of the editor. The bibliographies and indexes are also omitted. Apart from correcting typographical errors, and augmenting a few bibliographical notes, I have left the remainder of the text as printed.

This is my first epub conversion; please report errors. One thing I have discovered is that some epub-readers do not support internal links in the format generated by Sigil, hence the thousands of endnotes in this volume become useless on those readers. For the PC, your safest bet is the Adobe Digital Editions reader. On Android, FB Reader (probably the best of the free apps) and Aldiko support the links; the Asus MyLibrary reader does not.

The author died in 1957; consequently the book entered the public domain in Canada in 2008 but remains in copyright in Britain until 2028. In the United States, it would appear to fall under the "publication date + 95 years" rule and therefore will not enter the public domain in that nation until 2031. I am not a lawyer and could be wrong about any of this; act accordingly.