About this Edition
St. Ambrose of Milan (c. 339–397) preached his Expositio Psalmi CXVIII in twenty-two sermons, one per Hebrew letter of the great acrostic Psalm 118 (= Psalm 119 in modern enumeration). The work was probably delivered in the years following 386 — two of the sermons carry independent dating anchors that converge on this period: Vau §16 echoes the natalis of Gervasius and Protasius (June 386), and Caph §22 alludes to the Justina persecution (late 386 or early 387). A third anchor in Res §44 (Sebastian, January 20) places at least that sermon among the earliest patristic witnesses to the Milanese Sebastian tradition.
The Latin Text
The Latin follows Michael Petschenig’s 1913 edition in volume 62 of the Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum(Vienna), still the only complete critical edition of the work. We have corrected obvious OCR garble against the Internet Archive djvu of CSEL 62 and crosschecked every page against Michaela Zelzer’s 1999 editio altera supplementis aucta. Petschenig’s editorial conjectures, lacunae, manuscript sigla, and Hexaplaric variants are preserved in the apparatus.
The English Translation
The English translation is fresh and literal, paragraph-for-paragraph with the Latin. Scripture quotations follow a Vulgate-Douay register to match Ambrose’s own scriptural texture (Vetus Latina readings preserved where Petschenig prints them), italicised exactly as in the Latin text.
The Apparatus
Every footnote pairs the Latin reference (Scr.) with an English gloss (En.). Manuscript-variant blocks (Var.) retain Petschenig’s Latin sigla, since textual-critical apparatus does not translate. Selected entries carry expanded scholia tracking classical citations (Vergil, Cicero, Horace, Sallust, Pliny, Plato, Solinus, and others), Petschenig editorial conjectures, Hexaplaric Symmachus / Aquila variants, and dating anchors.
Coverage
22 of 22 sermons are presented in bilingual edition, with 2,939 apparatus entries. The complete Latin body is set throughout.
Reading Modes
Each sermon offers four reading modes:
- Stacked (default) — Latin paragraph followed by its English translation, paragraph-by-paragraph, like a printed parallel-Bible.
- Facing — Latin and English in side-by-side columns (best on wide screens).
- Latin — Latin text only, full width.
- English — English text only, full width.
A separate toggle controls whether printed-page numbers from CSEL 62 are shown inline, in the margin, or off entirely.
Sancti Ambrosii Mediolanensis Expositio Psalmi CXVIII
Petschenig, CSEL 62 (Vienna 1913) · Bilingual Edition · MMXXVI