sister, dearer to him than eyes and life, Ambrose

This record's name is a corrupted salutation fragment ('sister, dearer to him than eyes and life') drawn from the opening of Ambrose of Milan's letters to his elder sister, Marcellina. Marcellina (c. 327-c. 398) was a consecrated virgin who took the veil from Pope Liberius in Rome around 353 and lived an ascetic life there; Ambrose addresses several of his most personal letters to her, including his eyewitness accounts of the 386 standoff with the Arian court over the Milanese basilicas and of the discovery of the relics of Saints Gervasius and Protasius. She is the same sister to whom he dedicated his treatise De virginibus, and she survived him as a revered figure in the Roman church.