AMBROSIANS  , the name given to several religious

brother-hoods which at various times since the 14th century have sprung up in and around Milan; they have about as much connexion with St Ambrose as the " Jeromites " who were found chiefly in upper Italy and Spain have with their patron saint . Only the oldest of them, the Fratres S . Ambrosii ad Ne"rnus, had any-thing more than a very local significance . This order is known from a bull of Gregory XI. addressed to the monks of the church of St Ambrose outside Milan . These monks, it would appear, though under the authority of a prior, had no rule . In response to the request of ' the archbishop, the pope had commanded them to follow the rule of Augustine and to be known by the above name . They were further to recite the Ambrosian office . Subsequently the order had a number of independent establishments in Italy which were united into one congregation by Eugenius IV., their headquarters being at Milan . Their discipline' afterwards became so slack that an appeal was made to Cardinal Borromeo asking him to reform their houses . By Sixtus V. the order was amalgamated with the congregation of St Barnabas, but Innocent X. dissolved it in 1650 . The name Ambrosians is, also given to a 16th-century Ana-baptist sect, which laid claim to immediate communication with God through the Holy Ghost . Basing their theology upon the words of the Gospel of St John i .

9—" There was the'true

light which lighteth everyman, coming into the world "—they denied the necessity of any priests or ministers' to interpret the Bible . Their leader Ambrose went so far as to hold further that the revelation which was vouchsafed to him was a higher authority than the Scriptures . The doctrine of the Ambrosians, who belonged probably to that section of the Anabaptists known as Pneumatici, may be compared with the " Inner Light " . doctrine of the Quakers . See Herzog-Hauck's Realencyklopadie, i . 439 .