Concerning Virginity

Ambrose’s earliest writings date from the years 377–8 and include a pair of treatises on virginity (De virginibus and De virginitate), a discourse on widows (De viduis), and a pair of funeral orations for his brother Satyrus (De excessu fratris). In De virginibus Ambrose borrowed extensively from a letter to virgins attributed to Athanasius, developing for the first time in the West the ascetical interpretation of the Song of Songs and the image of Mary the mother of Jesus as a model for the consecrated virgin.

David G. Hunter, “Fourth-Century Latin Writers: Hilary, Victorinus, Ambrosiaster, Ambrose,” in The Cambridge History of Early Christian Literature, ed. Frances Young, Lewis Ayres, and Andrew Louth (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 309.