legation, he laboured to reform many of the religious orders, as the jacobins, the cordeliers, and those of St. Germain des Près. His disinterestedness was equal to his zeal. He never possessed more than one benefice, two thirds of which he employed for the relief of the poor and the support of the churches. Contenting himself with his archbishopric of Rouen and his cardinal's hat, he was not, like his contemporaries, desirous to add abbeys to it. A gentleman of Normandy having offered to sell him an estate at a very low price, in order to portion his daughter, he made him a present of a sum sufficient for that purpose, and left him the estate. He obtained the purple after the dissolution of the marriage between Lewis XII. and Joan of France, to which he greatly contributed: and, on having procured for Cæsar Borgia, son of pope Alexander VI. the duchy of Valentinois, with a considerable pension, his ambition was to be pope, with a view to the reform of abuses, and the correction of manners. After the death of Pius III. he might have succeeded in his wishes, and took measures to procure the tiara, but cardinal Julian de Rovera (afterwards Julius II.) found means to circumvent him; and the Venetians having contributed to his exclusion, he took the first opportunity to excite Lewis XII. to make war on them, a circumstance which seems not a little to detract from his character. This celebrated cardinal died in 1510, in the convent of the Celestines at Lyons,. of the gout in his stomach, aged 50 years. It is reported that he often repeated to the friar who attended him in his illness, "Brother John, why have I not during my whole life been brother John?" This minister has been greatly praised for having laboured for the happiness of France; but he has been equally censured for having advised his master to sign the treaty of Blois in 1504, by which France ran the risk of being dismembered. He governed both the king and the state; laborious, kind, honest, he possessed good sense, firmness, and experience, but he was not a great genius, nor were his views extensive. desire he had to ease the people in their taxes, procured him during his life, but much more after his death, the title of father of the people. He merited this title still more, by the care he took to reform the administration of justice. Most of the judges were venal, and the poor, and those who had no support, could never obtain justice, when their opposers were either powerful or rich. Another

The

evil not less enormous troubled the kingdom; law-suits were spun out to such a length, were so expensive, and accompanied by so much trick and chicanery, that most people rather chose to abandon their rights than engage in the recovery of them by suits which had no prospect of coming to an end. D'Amboise resolved to remedy this abuse. He called to his assistance many lawyers and civilians, the most learned and of the greatest integrity; and charged them to form a plan, by which justice might be administered without partiality, the duration of lawsuits abridged and rendered less ruinous, and the corruption of the judges prevented. When these commissioners had made their report, d'Amboise undertook the laborious task of examining into the changes they had proposed in the old laws, and the new regulations they designed to establish; and after having made some changes, these new regulations were published throughout the kingdom. As he was governor of Normandy, he made a progress through that province for the express purpose of seeing his new code properly established.'

AMBOISE (JAMES D'), a brother of the preceding Francis and Adrian, followed his father's profession, that of medicine, and obtained a doctor's degree in 1594. After Henry IV. had reduced Paris to its loyalty and submission, Amboise became rector of the university, which Crevier says he found in great decay and disorder, and which he left in a renovated and flourishing state: He began by making the members of the university take an oath of allegiance to Henry IV. He afterwards supported the university in the law-suit with the Jesuits, which was given against the latter, and they were expelled; he even accused them of being enemies to the Salique law, and to the royal family. He died of the plague in 1606. only works are, "Orationes duæ," against the Jesuits, Paris, 1595, 8vo, and "Questiones Medicales," mentioned in Carrere's "Bibliotheque de la Medicine." Haller attributes other medical treatises to one of the same name, but does not notice the " Questiones."2

His

AMBOISE (MICHAEL D'), a miscellaneous French writer, who, in his works, assumed the title of signior de Chevillon, was the natural, son of Chaumont d'Amboise, ad

1 Gen. Diet.-Moreri.-Life, by the Abbe Le Gendre, 1721, 4to, and 2 vols. 12mo. His Letters to Lewis XII. were printed at Brussels, 1712, 4 vols, 12mo. Gen, Dict.-Biog. Universelle.-Manget Bibl.-Haller Bibl. Med.

miral of France, and lieutenant-general in Lombardy. He was born at Naples in the beginning of the sixteenth century, and was educated with the legitimate son of his father, but the latter died suddenly, in 1511, before he had made any provision for Michael. He then went to Paris, and was intended for the profession of the law, but was so attached to poetry, although his first performances were unsuccessful, that he could not be prevailed on to study law, and his friends abandoned him. He married also imprudently, and his accumulated disappointments and distresses are supposed to have shortened his life. He died in 1547. Niceron has given a large catalogue of his works, all nominally poetical, but without any characteristics of the art, and which probably procured him some small degree of reputation, chiefly from the rapidity with which he wrote and published. '

AMBROGI (ANTOINE MARIE), an eminent Italian scholar, was born at Florence, June 13, 1713, and died at Rome in 1788, where he had been professor of eloquence for thirty years with great reputation. Most of the present Italian literati are indebted to him for their taste for study and the happy manner in which he taught them to employ their talents. He published a "Translation of Virgil into blank verse," of which the edition printed at Rome, 3 vols. fol. 1763, a most superb book, is very scarce: he translated likewise some of the tragedies of Voltaire, Florence, 1752, and a selection of Cicero's epistles; he published a Latin oration on the election of Joseph II. to be king of the Romans; but he is principally known for the " Museum Kicheranum," in 2 vols. folio, 1765. The care of this valuable museum was long confided to him, and he prevailed upon the learned cardinal De Zelada to enrich it by his collections. He left in manuscript, a Latin poem on the cultivation of the lemon-tree. One other publication remains to be noticed; his translation of the Jesuit Noceti's two poems on the Iris and the Aurora Borealis, which were printed in the same magnificent manner with bis Virgil."

AMBROGIO, or AMBROSIUS (THESEUS), a learned Italian orientalist, was born in 1469, a descendant of the noble family of the counts of Albanese. At fifteen months he is said to have spoken his native language with facility, Biog. Universelle.-Gen. Dict. Biog. Universelle.-Dict. Historique.

and at fifteen years, to have spoken and written Greek and Latin with a promptitude equal to the best scholars of his time. He entered young into the order of regular canons of St. John of Lateran, but did not come to Rome until 1512, at the opening of the fifth session of the Lateran council. The great number of ecclesiastics from Syria, Ethiopia, and other parts of the East, who attended that council, afforded him an opportunity of prosecuting his studies with advantage: and at the request of the cardinal Santa Croce, he was employed as the person best qualified to translate from the Chaldean into Latin the liturgy of the eastern clergy, previously to the use of it being expressly sanctioned by the pope. After having been employed by Leo X. for two years in giving instructions in Latin to the subdeacon Elias, a legate from Syria to the council, whom the pope wished to retain in his court, and from whom Ambrogio received in return instructions in the Syrian tongue, he was appointed by the pontiff to a professor's chair in the university of Bologna, where he delivered instructions in the Syriac and Chaldaic languages for the first time that they had been publicly taught in Italy. He is said to have understood no less than eighteen languages, many of which he spoke with the ease and fluency of a native; but from the letter quoted by Mazzuchelli, it appears more probable that he was master of at least ten languages, and understood many others partially. In the commotions which devastated Italy after the death of Leo X, he was despoiled in 1527 of the numerous and valuable eastern manuscripts, Chaldean, Hebrew, and Greek, which he had collected by the industry of many years, and of the types and apparatus which he had prepared for an edition of the Psalter in the Chaldean, accompanied with a dissertation on that language. He afterwards, however, came to Venice, in the prosecution of this object; and, in 1539, published at Pavia, his "Introduction to the Chaldean, Syrian, Armenian, and ten other tongues, with the alphabetical characters of about forty different languages," 4to, which is considered by the Italians themselves as the earliest attempt made in Italy towards a systematic acquaintance with the literature of the East. He died the year following.'

Biog. Universelle.-Roscoe's Lep.

AMBROSE (ST.) one of the most eminent fathers of the church, was by descent a citizen of Rome, but born at Arles, in France, then the metropolis of Gallia Narbonensis, in the year 333, according to Cave, or according to Du Pin, in the year 340. His father was the emperor's lieutenant in that district; one of the highest places of trust and honour in the Roman empire. Ambrose was the youngest of three children, Marcellina and Satyrus being born before him. After his father's death, his mother, with the family, returned to Rome, where he made himself master of all the learning that Greece and Rome could afford; and at the same time profited in religion by the pious instructions of his sister Marcellina, who had devoted herself to a state of virginity. When grown up, he pleaded causes with so much ability, as to acquire the good opinion of Anicius Probus, pretorian prefect, or emperor's lieutenant in Italy, who made choice of him to be of his council; and having authority to appoint governors to several provinces, he gave Ambrose one of these commissions, saying: "Go, and govern more like a bishop than a judge." In this office, Ambrose resided at Milan for five years, and was applauded for his prudence and justice; but his pursuit of this profession was interrupted by a singular event, which threw him into a course of life for which he had made no preparation, and had probably never thought of, and for which he was no otherwise qualified than by a character irreproachable in civil life, and improved by the pious instructions of his youth.

In the year 374, Auxentius, bishop of Milan, died, and immediately the bishops of the province met together to elect a successor. The emperor, Valentinian, sent for them, and told them, that they, as men acquainted with the scriptures, ought to understand better than himself the qualifications necessary for so important a station; that they should chuse a man fit to instruct by life as well as doctrine, in which case, he (the emperor) would readily submit his sceptre to his counsels and directions; and, conscious that he was liable to human frailty, would receive his reproofs and admonitions as wholesome physic. The bishops, however, requested his majesty to nominate the person, but Valentinian persisted in leaving the decision to their choice. This was at a time when factions were strong, and when the Arian party were very desirous VOL. II.

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