Sant’ Ambroeus - j’accuse!

I can’t let today pass without noting that Milan can claim as its patron saints two of the most unsavoury figures in the Roman church: St Ambrose (in Italian, Sant’Ambrogio, but known affectionately in Milanese as Sant’Ambroeus), whose festivity it is today, and St Carlo Borromeo, stalwart of the Counter Reformation, and still remembered in the hills around Lago Maggiore for his vicious persecution of local ‘witches’.
St Ambrose stands accused on three charges: he was Christianity's first fully-fledged anti-Semite; he was a champion of religious intolerance in a society that was multi-ethnic, pluri-religious and mainly tolerant; and he was the friend and educator of that other great kill-joy of the Western church, St Augustine of Hippo.
Here, in Henry Chadwick's words, is the evidence for At Ambrose’s anti-Semiticism:
"In 388 a synagogue at Callinicium on the Euphrates was burnt by Christian zealots, and (the emperor) Theodosius ordered the local bishop to make restitution in full from church funds. By a dramatic refusal to procede with the eucharistic liturgy until Theodosius yielded, Ambrose persuaded the emperor (against his better judgement) to revoke the restitution order... Ambrose insisted, unreasonably and to his lasting discredit, that it was sinful for a Christian emperor to help the Jews triumph over the church."
Chadwick cites two other examples of Ambrose's intolerance:
In 382 Cratian moved the Altar of Victory from the Senate House. His successor, the youthful new emperor Valentinian accepted the wealthy pagan aristocracy's plea to bring it back, claiming that the Altar was a symbol of Rome's greatness and arguing for a positive policy of toleration, since 'it is not possible by only one road to attain so great a mystery'. But oh no, Ambrose was having none of this and intervened to stay Valentinian's hand.
Next, in 385, Ambrose incited the populace of Milan to resist the demand of Valentinian's widow Justina that one of the Milanese churches be handed over to the use of the Arian Goths in the army, an act that in Ambrose's eyes would have meant the profanation of a consecrated building.
I, for one, will not be going to the O'bei O'bei – Milan’s traditional street market held on 7th December.