How good a speaker is Ambrose, and what does Augustine learn about rhetoric from listening to Ambrose’s sermons?
Ambrose was a magnificent speaker, and combines content and form into one way of speaking that forces you to see the content even if you only want to hear the eloquence of it. Through this experience, Augustine learns that rhetoric can sound good, but also should have good content through which people will be moved, not by the words alone, but also by what the words mean. This helps settle the war between content and form that Augustine was wrestling with by showing him the use of both.
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