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Life of St Ambrose
Paulinus the Deacon, tr. Kaniecka, 1928
2. Birth, Youth, and Early Public Career of Saint Ambrose
Ambrose, then, was born while his father Ambrose was engaged in the administration of the Praefectureship of the Gallic provinces. And when he, as an infant, placed in a cradle within the court-yard of the governor’s residence was sleeping with open mouth, suddenly a swarm of bees came and covered his face and lips in such a way that they kept entering and coming forth from his mouth alternately. The father, who was walking near by with his wife and daughter, fearing lest the bees might be driven away by the servant who had undertaken the task of feeding the baby, kept her back,—for she was alarmed lest they injure the child—and with fatherly affection waited to see with what end this miracle would terminate. And sometime later flying out they rose to such a height into the air that they could not be seen at all by human eyes. Terrified by this event the father said: “If this little child shall live he shall be something great.” For already at that time the Lord in the infancy of His servant was working for the fulfilment of what has been written: Good words are as a honeycomb. For that swarm of bees was generating for us the honeycombs of his writings which were to announce the gifts of heaven and raise the minds of men from earthly things to heaven.
Afterwards, in fact, when he had grown and had settled in the city of Rome with his widowed mother and sister—who had already professed virginity together with another girl, whose sister Candida herself also is of the same profession and is now an old woman in Carthage—when he saw the hands of bishops kissed by a member of the household, his sister, or mother, himself playfully was wont to offer his right hand saying that this should also be done to him by her because he said that he would be a bishop. For the Holy Spirit spoke in him Who was nurturing him for the episcopacy; but she repelled him on the ground that he was a youth and knew not what he said.
And when after being instructed in the liberal disciplines he had departed from the city and had taken up his profession in the court of the Praetorian Prefect, he pleaded his cases so brilliantly that he was chosen by the Right Honorable Probus, then Praetorian Prefect, to act as his advisor. After this he received the dignity of the consulship so that he should rule over the provinces of Liguria and Aemilia, and he came to Milan.