December 7th

[chris]

I've just found this information. Probably well known, but not to me:o
St. Ambroise de Milan (340-397) is the patron saint of, among other things, bees and beekeepers. For those who follow the Roman Catholic saints calender he is celebrated on the 7th of December. According to the legend, when he was a baby sleeping in his cradle, a swarm of bees landed on him and the bees entered his mouth as they do when entering a hive. Afterwards, they flew off so high that they were lost from the sight. Seeing this, the father cried out that his son would become somebody important because the bees had granted him the gift of a sweet talking tongue.

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Image 1 St. Ambroise and the bees. 14th century. Richard de Montbaston
Image 2 St. Ambroise,baby, visited by a swarm of bees .Here, they are shown on his sheet.
Image 3 The main choir altar of the Basilic of St.Ambroise in Milan. This detail shows St.Ambroise being fed by the bees.
Image 4 ???

[Mellifera Crofter]

Wonderful. 'St Ambrose' in English.

I immediately Googled 'St. Ambroise' and also found lots of images of stout and flying griffins. Not sure what the connection is.

I also looked it up 'ambrosia' in an online dictionary expecting to read that his surname was the origin of the word, but they suggested a 16th century origin. Wikipedia takes it back to Greek gods. So far I haven't seen St Ambrose being mentioned in the etymology of the word 'ambrosia'. I wonder whether he was named later - but his father was also called 'Ambroise'. Interesting.

Kitta

[Jon]

Seeing this, the father cried out that his son would become somebody important because the bees had granted him the gift of a sweet talking tongue.

Probably reincarnated as Julian Little the Bayer spokesman.

We had a teacher at school nicknamed 'the flycatcher' as he always walked around with his mouth open. Clearly not a good idea if you could be mistaken for a 40 litre cavity in the presence of a swarm.

[chris]

I immediately Googled 'St. Ambroise' and also found lots of images of stout and flying griffins. Not sure what the connection is.


There's a brewery in Quebec that has the griffon as its symbol (its first beer was called griffon blond I think). It also does a beer called st. ambroise- this is the name of a municipality in Quebec.

[Neils]

Ambrosia has its roots in Greek. Depending on who you prefer it's either the food of the gods and/or the drink. Homer tended to separate ambrosia as the food and nectar as the drink while I believe Sappho tended to refer to ambrosia as the drink.

Edit... A quick check on Wikipedia suggests ambrosia and the Sanskrit Amrit share a common root both refer to a "divine food"

[chris]

my *Larousse Classique* gets around the problem by calling it a divine "substance". - "Nine times sweeter than honey,it was taken by the gods of Olympe and those that tasted it became immortal".
Now where on earth does that nine come from?

[Jon]

I imagine the idea of divine food is common to a lot of religions. The Hindus have Prasadam which is tasty stuff; and all vegetarian so no danger of any Horse DNA on the plate.
As students, a bunch of us would go along to the Belfast Krishna temple for the free food on a Sunday.

At one point in the sermon there was always a line which resonated with us.
We used to wait for it coming:


'Actually, people are all living like dogs - eating, sleeping, mating and defending'

- fairly accurate comment on my mates at the time.

[Mellifera Crofter]

But what I can't figure out is: The word 'ambrosia' and its connotation with sweet food for the gods pre-dates St Ambrose's birth when the swarm of bees settled on him - but he was born 'Aurelius Ambrosius' (same name as his father). What a happy co-incidence. I wonder if it was his surname that then conveniently gave rise to the legend.
Kitta