De Officiis Ministrorum

De Officiis Ministrorum, Ambrose of Milan's treatise dated to around 391, is a primary patristic text whose first book gives the earliest surviving account of the deacon Lawrence distributing the church's treasure to the poor, written roughly a hundred and thirty years after the events it describes. Its authority is that of a bishop writing within living memory of a strong Roman Christian oral tradition, though not as an eyewitness. Its limit is exactly that gap: a century and a half between the events and Ambrose's own account leaves room for legendary elaboration that a contemporary record would not carry. Cite it for the earliest documented form of the Lawrence tradition, not as eyewitness history.