Roman governance even after becoming a bishop. His acts and writings show he was quite clear about the limits of imperial power over the church's internal affairs including doctrine, moral teaching, and governance. He wrote to Valentinian: "In matters of faith bishops are the judges of Christian emperors, not emperors of bishops." (Epistle 21.4). He also famously told to the Arian bishop chosen by the emperor, "The emperor is in the church, not over the church." (Sermon Against Auxentius, 36). Ambrose's acts and writings "created a sort of model which was to remain valid in the Latin West for the relations of the Church and the Christian State. Both powers stood in a basically positive relationship to each other, but the innermost sphere of the Church's life--faith, the moral order, ecclesiastical discipline--remained withdrawn from the State's influence." Ambrose was also well aware of the limits of his power. At the height of his career as a venerable, respected and well loved bishop in 396, imperial agents marched into his church, pushing past him and his clergy who had crowded the altar to protect a political suspect from arrest, and dragged the man from the church in front of Ambrose who could do nothing to stop it. "When it came to the central functions of the Roman state, even the vivid Ambrose was a lightweight". Attitude towards Jews The most notorious example of Ambrose's anti-Jewish animus occurred in 388, when Emperor Theodosius I was informed that a crowd of Christians had retaliated against the local Jewish community by destroying the synagogue at Callinicum on the Euphrates. The synagogue most likely existed within the fortified town to service the soldiers serving there, and Theodosius ordered that the offenders be punished, and that the synagogue be rebuilt at the expense of the bishop. Ambrose wrote to the emperor arguing against this, basing his argument on two assertions: first, if the bishop obeyed the order, it would be a betrayal of his faith. Second, if the bishop instead refused to obey the order, he would become a martyr and create a scandal for the emperor. Ambrose, referring to a prior incident where Magnus Maximus issued an edict censuring Christians in Rome for burning down a Jewish synagogue, warned Theodosius that the people in turn exclaimed "the emperor has become a Jew", implying Theodosius would receive the same lack of support from the people. Theodosius