L’ingiustizia, radice del sopruso del più forte. Lo scritto di Ambrogio De Nabuthae historia

This article intends to examine the ideal path which Ambrose fol- lows within his exegesis of the famous story of the «vineyard of Naboth» (1Kgs 21:1-16). Given the active critical debate around this well-known Ambrosian work – not infrequently considered a monument of the «prehistory» of communist the- ory and ideality –, the analysis will underline an aspect often overlooked by schol- ars: Ambrose’s silence about the eschatological framework within which the First and the New Testament encrypt the value of wealth. Thus an ambiguous concept of justice emerges within the pages of the De Nabuthae historia, more inclined to recover the ideal inheritance of Roman aequitas than to become the herald of rad- ical eschatological justice.