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READING HALLTHE DOORS OF WISDOM |
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HISTORY OF CHRISTIANITY |
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LIFE OF SAINT BASIL THE GREAT330-379Archbishop of Caesarea
LETTERS AND SELECT WORKS.BY
THE REV. BLOMFIELD JACKSON
LIFE OF ST. BASIL. CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE
A.D.
329 or 330. St. Basil born.
335. Council of Tyre.
330. Death of Arius.
337. Death of Constantine.
340. Death of Constantine II.
341. Dedication creed at Antioch.
343. Julian and Gallus relegated to Macellum.
344. Macrostich, and Council
of Sardica.
346. Basil goes to Constantinople.
350. Death of Constans.
351. Basil goes to Athens.
1st Creed of Sirmium.
353. Death of Magnentius.
355. Julian goes to Athens (latter fart of year).
356. Basil returns to Caesarea.
357. The 2d Creed of Sirmium, or Blasphemy, subscribed
by Hosius and Liberius.
Basil baptized, and shortly afterwards ordained Reader.
358. Basil visits monastic establishments in Egypt,
Syria, Palestine, and Mesopotamia, and retires to the monastery on the Iris.
359. The 3d Creed of Sirmium. Dated May 22. Councils
of Seleucia and Ariminum.
360. Acacian synod of Constantinople.
361. Death of Constantius and accession of Julian.
362. Basil returns to Caesarea.
363. Julian dies (June 27). Accession of Jovian.
364. Jovian dies. Accession of Valentinian and Valens.
365. Revolt of Procopius.
366. Semiarian deputation to Rome satisfy Liberius of their
orthodoxy.
368. Semiarian Council in Caria. Famine in
Cappadocia.
369. Death of Emmelia.
Basil visits Samosata.
370. Death of Eusebius of Caesarea.
371. Basil threatened by Arian bishops and by
Modestus.
372. Valens attends great service at Caesarea on the
Epiphany, Jan. 6.
373. St. Epiphanius writes the “ Ancoratus.”
374. Death of Auxentius and
consecration of Ambrose at Milan.
375. Death of Valentinian. Gratian and Valentinian II,
emperors.
376. Synod of Iconium.
378. Death of Valens, Aug. p.
379. Death of Basil, Jan. 1 .
SKETCH OF THE LIFE AND WORKS OF SAINT BASIL.
I. LIFE.
St. Basil the
Great was born
about the year 329, of a Christian family, whose high religious character and
sacrifices for the cause of truth had been for generations widely known in Asia
Minor. It seems probable that the place of his birth was Caesarea, in
Cappadocia, the town of which he afterwards became bishop; but his father’s connexions were more with Pontus than with Cappadocia, and
some authorities place Basil’s birth in the former province. He himself calls
each of these countries in turn his native land.
Basil the elder—for father and son were
named alike—was a teacher of rhetoric, and an advocate in large practice. He
was a Christian of the best and most earnest type, and when Gregory of
Nazianzus addressed his panegyric of the younger Basil to a large audience he
was able to assume that the reputation of the father would be known to them
all. But the future saint owed his earliest religious education to his
grandmother Macrina, who brought him up with his
brothers, and formed them upon the doctrine of the great Origenist and saint of Pontus, Gregory Thaumaturgus.
Macrina had not only been taught by the best
Christian instructors, but had herself with her husband suffered for the faith.
In the persecutions of Maximin she and her family were driven from their home
and forced with a few companions to take refuge in a forest among the mountains
of Pontus, where they spent nearly seven years, and were wont to attribute to
the special interposition of God the supplies of food by which they were
maintained at a distance from all civilization.
It must not be supposed that the charge
of Basil’s childhood thus committed to his grandmother indicated any
deficiency in love or piety on the part of his mother. Her name was Emmelia, and Gregory describes her as fitly matched with
her husband. They had ten children. Of the five sons three became
bishops—Basil, Gregory of Nyssa, and Peter of Sebaste.
The four youngest daughters were happily married, but Macrina,
the eldest, devoted herself to the religious life, and exercised over Basil
himself a most salutary influence at a very critical period in his career. In
how great love and honour she was held by the whole
family we know from the eulogium pronounced upon her by her younger brother,
Gregory Nyssen.
Thus Basil was brought up under the most favourable circumstances as regards religion; nor was
his education of a narrow type. He enjoyed from the instructions of his father,
to which he passed while still a boy, very rich opportunities of classical
culture, and his writings prove how willingly he profited by
these, and by the university education to which they led, and how deeply he
always valued them. We can, in fact, imagine few periods or places until we
come to quite modem times which could have given to Basil’s genius fairer
development or wider exercise than did those which fell to his lot. But when we
come to describe the condition of public affairs we must acknowledge that few
periods could have prepared for him greater difficulties and disappointments.
He was born four years after the orthodox faith had been formulated at the
Council of Nicaea. His education and his own deepest tendencies of mind and
soul responded to his early teaching in the Catholic belief. The slightest
study of his works will convince us that it was no mere habit of profession
which placed him among the defenders of the Nicene Creed, but a conviction so
thorough that the slightest infringement of it would have been to him falsehood
of the deepest dye.
For a mind so framed and furnished the
times promised very badly. While Constantine lived Basil was but a boy; his
youth and early manhood were passed under the reign of the Arian Constantius,
to whom, after the brief episode of the reigns of Julian and Jovian, the Arian
Valens succeeded in the dominion of the East. Thus for more than thirty years
Arianism wielded the whole civil authority in the regions with which Basil was
connected, save for a short three years, which were chiefly occupied by a
heathen reaction, too weak and brief to do the truth the service of severe
persecution. We have, perhaps, no right to complain that Arianism availed itself of the
aid of the temporal power, seeing that the Catholics did the same when
opportunity offered. Such, however, was the fact. The whole of Basil’s mature
life is to be passed under governments which will only vary from unfriendly
opposition to actual persecution.
Two cities, Caesarea in Cappadocia and Neocaesarea in
Pontus, have both been named as his birthplace. There must be some amount of
uncertainty on this point, from the fact that no direct statement exists to
clear it up, and that the word patris was
loosely employed to mean not only place of birth, but place of residence and
occupation. Basil’s parents had property and interests both in Pontus and
Cappadocia, and were as likely to be in the one as in the other. The early
statement of Gregory of Nazianzus has been held to have weight, inasmuch as he
speaks of Basil as a Cappadocian like himself before there was any other reason
but that of birth for associating him with this province. Assenting, then, to
the considerations which have been held to afford reasonable ground for
assigning Caesarea as the birthplace, we may adopt the popular estimation of
Basil as one of “The Three Cappadocians,” and congratulate Cappadocia on the
Christian associations which have rescued her fair fame from the slur of the
epigram which described her as constituting with Crete and Cilicia a trinity of unsatisfactoriness. Basil’s birth nearly synchronizes
with the transference of the chief seat of empire from Rome to Byzantium. He is
born into a world where the victory already achieved by the Church has been now
for sixteen years officially recognized. He is born into a Church in which the
first great Council has already given official expression to those cardinal
doctrines of the faith, of which the final and formal vindication is not to be
assured till after the struggles of the next six score of years. Rome, reduced,
civilly, to the subordinate rank of a provincial city, is pausing before she
realises all her loss, and waits for the crowning outrage of the barbarian
invasions, ere she begins to make serious efforts to grasp, ecclesiastically,
something of her lost imperial prestige. For a time the centre of
ecclesiastical and theological interest is to be rather in the East than in the
West.
II. Education.
The place most closely connected with St. Basil’s
early years is neither Caesarea nor Neocaesarea, but an insignificant village
not far from the latter place, where he was brought up by his admirable
grandmother, Macrina. In this neighbourhood his
family had considerable property, and here he afterwards resided. The estate
was at Annesi, on the river Iris (Jekil-Irmak),
and lay in the neighbourhood of scenery of romantic beauty. Basil’s own
description of his retreat on the opposite side of the Iris matches the
reference of Gregory of Nazianzus to the narrow glen among lofty mountains,
which keep it always in shadow and darkness, while far below the river foams
and roars in its narrow precipitous bed.
There is some little difficulty in understanding the
statement of Basil in Letter CCXVI, that the house of his brother Peter, which
he visited in 375 and which we may assume to have been on the family property
was “not far from Neocaesarea.” As a matter of fact, the Iris nowhere winds nearer
to Neocaesarea than at a distance of about twenty miles, and Turkhal is not at the nearest point. But it is all a
question of degree. Relatively to Caesarea, Basil’s usual place of residence, Annesi is near Neocaesarea. An analogy would be found in the
statement of a writer usually residing in London, that if he came to Sheffield
he would be not far from Doncaster.
At Annesi his mother Emmelia erected a chapel in honour of the Forty Martyrs of Sebaste, to which their relics were translated. It is possible
that Basil was present at the dedication services, lasting all night long,
which are related to have sent his brother Gregory to sleep. Here, then, Basil
was taught the rudiments of religion by his grand-mother, and by his father,
in accordance with the teaching of the great Gregory the Wonder-worker. Here he
learned the Catholic faith.
At an early age he seems to have been sent to school
at Caesarea, and there to have formed the acquaintance of an Eusebius,
otherwise unknown, Hesychius, and Gregory of Nazianzus, and to have conceived a
boyish admiration for Dianius the archbishop.
From the instructions of his father
Basil passed to Caesarea, a place of much literary eminence, where there were
at the time excellent schools. Nazianzen, who here, if not before, began to
know him, informs us that he gained the highest reputation even at that early
period, as well for intellectual eminence as for religious character. He was a
philosopher among philosophers, an orator among orators, even before he had
passed the regular course in those branches of instruction; above all, a priest
among Christians so long before assuming the order of the priesthood. Thus
early did his wonderful versatility impress observers.
The education which he received was
altogether Greek. There is the best reason to think that he did not even know
the Latin language. Certainly the classic authors whom he quotes with so much
appreciation are uniformly Greek. The records which we have of the education
of his contemporary Julian assure us that it was upon Homer and Hesiod, upon
the great dramatists of Athens and her historians and orators, that the
youthful genius of Basil was fed. Although Gregory commends his Christian
character at this period, the custom of the age allows little doubt that he was
still, and for many years afterwards, unbaptized.
From Caesarea he proceeded to Byzantium
for further
improvement in learning. We know little of his progress there, save that it was
in Constantinople that he came in contact with the great sophist Libanius, if
indeed the tradition of their intercourse and the letters which are said to have
afterwards passed between them are genuine at all. In 351 Basil proceeded to
Athens, the step which in those days corresponded to entering a university
among ourselves. Of this part of his life we have a full and very interesting
record in the oration of Gregory Nazianzen, who was at Athens some time before
his countryman’s arrival, and had entered into the spirit of the place with
more enthusiasm than the less imaginative Basil was at first able to feel.
There is no corroboration of a sojourn of Basil of
Caesarea at Antioch. Libanius was at Constantinople in 347, and there Basil may
have attended his lectures.
From Constantinople the young Cappadocian student
proceeded in 351 to Athens. Of an university town of the 4th century we have a
lively picture in the writings of his friend, and are reminded that the rough
horse-play of the modern undergraduate is a survival of a very ancient
barbarism. The lads were affiliated to certain fraternities, and looked out for
the arrival of every new student at the city, with the object of attaching him
to the classes of this or that teacher. Kinsmen were on the watch for kinsmen
and acquaintances for acquaintances; sometimes it was mere good-humoured
violence which secured the person of the freshman. The first step in this
grotesque matriculation was an entertainment; then the guest of the day was
conducted with ceremonial procession through the agora to the entrance of the
baths. There they leaped round him with wild cries, and refused him admission.
At last an entry was forced with mock fury, and the neophyte was made free of
the mysteries of the baths and of the lecture halls. Gregory of Nazianzus, a
student a little senior to Basil, succeeded in sparing him the ordeal of this
initiation, and his dignity and sweetness of character seem to have secured him
immunity from rough usage without loss of popularity. At Athens the two young
Cappadocians were noted among their contemporaries for three things: their
diligence and success in work; their stainless and devout life; and their close
mutual affection. Everything was common to them. They were as one soul. What
formed the closest bond of union was their faith. God and their love of what is
best made them one. Himerius, a pagan, and Prohseresius, an Armenian Christian, are mentioned among
the well-known professors whose classes Basil attended. Among early
friendships, formed possibly during his university career, Basil’s own letters
name those with Terentius 20 and Sophronius.
If the Libanian correspondence be accepted as genuine, we may add Celsus,
a pupil of Libanius, to the group. But if we except Basil’s affection for
Gregory of Nazianzus, of none of these intimacies is the interest so great as
of that which is recorded to have been formed between Basil and the young prince
Julian. One incident of the Athenian sojourn, which led to bitter consequences
in after days, was the brief communication with Apollinarius,
and the letter written “from layman to layman,” which his opponents made a
handle for much malevolence, and perhaps for forgery. Julian arrived at Athens
after the middle of the year 355.
Gregory informs us that Basil’s
reputation had preceded him to Athens, and that he was eagerly expected by many
youths ready to compete for his friendship. It was the custom that the freshman
should be received upon his first appearance with a torrent of jokes and
banter, rough or refined according to his character, and designed, Gregory
supposes, to take down his pride; he used then to be conducted in solemn
procession to the bath, where the assembled youth were wont to burst into a
horrible din of shouting, and beat at the doors in a frantic manner, to the
great confusion of the raw lad whom they were conducting; from the bath he was
escorted home with similar solemnity, and thenceforth considered to be free of
the place. Basil alone, either because of his dignity of manner or the
influence of his fellow countryman, was spared the ordeal. But he did not
entirely escape: for certain Armenian youths of senior standing got up a disputation
with him, in which Gregory, not comprehending their insidious designs, was
inclined at first to give aid to them rather than to Basil, who was already
proving too strong for them. But presently perceiving the real state of the
case, he threw his weight upon the side of his countryman, to the discomfiture
of the assailants.
These circumstances drew the two
Cappadocians together, and their acquaintanceship speedily deepened into the
affection which, with one partial breach, was to last till death. They lived
together, and aided one another in exhausting all the opportunities of learning
which the place afforded. The discipline of university life at Athens was
extremely lax. Town and gown riots not unfrequently took place, and contests
between the pupils of rival teachers were very common. The pupils of different
nations severally banded together and obnoxious authorities suffered severely
at their hands; and misbehaviour, even at lecture,
was often complained of. It was doubtless possible, as in other places, for an
idle student to gain nothing whatever from the place, and for a diligent one
to gain a great deal. The instruction was entirely professorial. The youths
repaired to the house of their professor in the morning hours, attended
sometimes by short-hand writers to take down his lecture. They brought with
them their themes for correction, and they disputed in the presence of the
teacher in order to train themselves for public speaking. When he spoke, they
made no scruple of applauding; and the practice may surprise us less when we
remember that the like was done by thecongregations in the churches while listening to a
sermon. The chief teachers of Basil and Gregory were Proceresius,
a Christian of Armenia, and Himerius of Bithynia, a
heathen.
The two friends abstained wholly from
the amusements which prevailed among the youth. Two paths alone, as Gregory
informs us, were known to them, —that which led to the lecture-room of the
teachers, and that which led to church. Gregory confesses what indeed we can
well understand, that the heathen traditions of Athens and the magnificent
remains of the fallen religion with which it was filled, brought no slight
temptation to a young man’s faith. But during the four years of Basil’s sojourn
no relaxation of his religious strictness took place; rather was it confirmed
by resistance to the prevailing tone of his surroundings.
A frequent partner of their studies was
Julian, the nephew of the reigning emperor Constantius. This young prince was
on very friendly terms with Basil, with whom he was wont to read the Bible, and
search out the relation between its lessons and those of their heathen
teachers. Different indeed were the conclusions which in after-life the two
students were to draw from these researches. Gregory declares himself to have
disliked and distrusted Julian from the first, on account of his uneasiness,
his self-consciousness, and his vanity. Julian, however, caressed the two
friends, and may have seen in them, even at this time, possible instruments
for the reactionary designs which hewas already planning. He must have known that if
they declined to serve him for such a purpose, they were capable of becoming
the most formidable impediments to a restoration of heathenism, as knowing the
best it had to give, and yet perfectly ready to go rejoicing to death in
opposing it.
Gregory’s account of the student life of
his friend is very glowing; and yet it is too well supported by the results in
Basil’s after-years, and too similar to what has been observed in the college
days of other great men, to allow us to call it an undiscriminating eulogy. He
says that Basil’s industry and concentration were such that he could have
succeeded even without talent, and his quickness of intellect such that he
could have succeeded without great labour. Uniting
both he became so brilliant a scholar that in each of many branches of study he
was as proficient as if he had studied it alone. His favourite subjects were rhetoric,—which taught to speak with force and fire, though in
the use of this endowment his ethical purpose was absolutely different from
that of the rhetoricians of the time; grammar,—which “hellenized”
his language to the most exquisite degree, and taught him to observe the true
style of history, the canons of metre, and the laws
of poetry; philosophy,—that lofty science, in both its departments, the moral
speculation which has to do with human conduct, and the dialectical which
trains to argument. In this latter he became so skilled that there was no
escaping from the force of his logic when he cared to use it. Astronomy,
geometry, and the science of numbers he studied only so far as to be able to
hold his own among those acquainted with these branches of
study. But in medicine, which his own delicacy of health rendered peculiarly
interesting to him, he went so far as to acquire the practice of the art. But
all his intellectual eminence was a small matter when compared with the purity
of his life.
Indeed the philosophy which Basil
imbibed at Athens, though not Christian, had the deepest connexions with the morality of the Gospel. It was the Neo-Platonic and we know from the
remains of Julian what was its scope. It included three parts: logic, which
was called demonstrative, persuasive, or sophistic according as it regarded the
true, the probable, or the apparent; physics which comprehended theology,
mathematics, and the theory of ideas; morals, or practical philosophy, which
was denominated ethics, economics, or politics when applied respectively to
the direction of the individual, of the family, or of the State. All this vast
system formed a science of being, which taught the mind of man first how to
know and, guide itself and to find God within; secondly, to know God and the
world without; thirdly, to discern the end of man and the means of attaining
it.
At last “the ship had been loaded with a
cargo of learning,” and the time arrived for Basil and Gregory to carry out the
design long arranged between them of returning to their native land, there to
pursue the religious life with greater strictness than was possible at Athens.
The day of departure came, and with it the usual accompaniments, last words, seeing off
the parting friend, attempts to retain him, lamentations, embraces, and tears.
For there is nothing so sad in life, says Gregory, as for those who have been
brought up together at Athens to be parted at once from each other and from
her. Gregory suffered himself for the present to be prevailed on by the
entreaties of fellow collegians and masters, who crowded round them to hinder
their departure. But Basil, as we should expect, held by his purpose. He
explained to his friends the causes of his departure, and left them very sadly;
but he went, nor did Gregory remain long behind.
CAESAREA AND ANNESI : ASCETIC LIFE.
On Basil’s return to Caesarea (a.d. 355)
the designs of religious life which he and his friend had formed at Athens
appear to have been for a while forgotten amidst the admiration which his
accomplishments excited in the world. His father was dead; his mother settled
at Annesi, the place of his own early training, near
to Neocaesarea. He practised rhetoric at Caesarea
with great success, and Neocaesarea contended for his presence. It has been
inferred from a letter from Gregory, written to Basil at this period, that the
strict morality of his life at Athens had given way, and that he was entangled
in the pleasures of the world. It is hazardous to build such an impeachment
upon the banter, probably rather exaggerated, of this letter. But we have the
best reason for believing that Basil was at this period excessively vain and
self-conceited. It is Gregory Nyssen, his brother, and devoted admirer as well,
who is our authority for this statement. And the same truthful panegyrist relates
to us the process of his cure. It was effected by his elder sister Macrina; she found him puffed up beyond measure with
literary pride, despising all dignities, and looking down from his eminence
upon those who held places of highworldly power. Macrina pressed him to embrace the life of a solitary, and at last succeeded in
inducing him, like a new Moses, says his brother, to prefer the Hebrews to the
treasures of Egypt.
III.
Life at Caesarea. Baptism; and Adoption of Monastic
Life.
When Basil overcame the efforts of his companions to
detain him at Athens, Gregory was prevailed on to remain for a while longer.
Basil therefore made his rapid journey homeward alone. His Letter to Eustathius
alleges as the chief reason for his hurried departure the desire to profit by
the instruction of that teacher. This may be the language of compliment. In the
same letter he speaks of his fortitude in resisting all temptation to stop at
the city on the Hellespont. This city I hesitate to recognise, with Maran, as
Constantinople. There may have been inducements to Basil to stop at Lampsacus,
and it is more probably Lampsacus that he avoided. At Caesarea he was welcomed
as one of the most distinguished of her sons, and there for a time taught
rhetoric with conspicuous success. A deputation came from Neocaesarea to
request him to undertake educational work at that city, and in vain endeavoured
to detain” him by lavish promises. According to his friend Gregory, Basil had
already determined to renounce the world, in the sense of devoting himself to
an ascetic and philosophic life. His brother Gregory, however, represents him
as at this period still under more mundane influences, and as showing something
of the self-confidence and conceit which are occasionally to be observed in
young men who have just successfully completed an university career, and as
being largely indebted to the persuasion and example of his sister Macrina for the resolution, with which he now carried out
the determination to devote himself to a life of self-denial. To the same
period may probably be referred Basil’s baptism.
It would be quite consonant with the feelings of the
times that pious parents like the elder Basil and Emmelia should shrink from admitting their boy to holy baptism before his encountering
the temptations of school and university life. The assigned date, 357, may be
reasonably accepted, and shortly after his baptism he was ordained to the office of Reader by Dianius, the bishop of Caesarea, the revered friend of his
youth.
Gregory Nazianzen makes this incident in
the life of his friend the text for a lamentation over the hasty ordinations of
his time by which so many were introduced into the priesthood without due
training in the minor offices that there was a danger lest the order most
sacred of all should become the most ridiculous. Nobody, he says, is called a
physician or a painter until he has learnt the nature of diseases or the mixing
of colours and drawing of forms. But priests are
manufactured off hand;—conceived and born simultaneously, like the giants in
the fable. We make saints in a day, and bid men be holy and learned who have
had no preparation and contribute nothing to the priesthood except a desire to
enter it. Not so Basil, who was content to exercise the humble office of
reading the Scriptures to the people long before he proceeded forward to the
priesthood and episcopate.
He himself has given us in a letter,
unwillingly written to Eustathius of Sebaste, an
account of more than one disenchantment which he experienced at this period of
his life. He had spent, he confesses, many years in vanity, and had devoted a laborious youth to the
wisdom of this world, which God has made foolish; expressions which we need not
indeed accuse of the least exaggeration, but must balance by the remembrance of
the constant use which the saint continued to make of his classical
acquirements. At last, awaking as from a dream, he looked to the glorious light
of the Gospel, and saw the uselessness of the wisdom of this world, which comes
to nought. Lamenting his wretched life, he looked every way for some guidance
to introduce him into the ways of piety. First he was eagerly desirous of
making a change in his practical lifelong perturbed by intercourse with the
wicked. “herefore,” he says, with a touching
simplicity, “reading my Bible, and finding there that it is a great assistance
to perfection that we should sell our goods and distribute to the poor
brethren, and be entirely without care for the things of this life, and suffer
our soul to be distracted by no affection towards things here, I wished to
find some brother who had chosen this way of life, that with him I might pass
the brief waves of this world.” Repairing to Egypt, he found in Alexandria and
other parts of that land, in Palestine, Coele- Syria and Mesopotamia, many
persons whose extraordinary abstinence, not only from food, but from sleep,
whose constant labours and prayers moved his
astonishment, since they treated their own flesh as if it was some strange
residence in which they were sojourning. These holy men he deeply desired to
imitate.
It was about this time that he visited monastic
settlements in Palestine, Mesopotamia, Coele Syria, and Egypt, though he was
not so fortunate as to encounter the great pope Athanasius. Probably during
this tour he began the friendship with Eusebius of Samosata which lasted so
long.
It was natural, then, that he should be
greatly attracted by those who in his own country were already practising the ascetic life, and of whom Eustathius was
the most eminent. In his simplicity, he thought their rough garments and
girdles, and sandals of undressed hide, to be a sufficient proof of their
genuine humility. And when others warned him, he would listen to nothing
against the monks, but defended them against accusations of false doctrine.
Experience undeceived him; and he found afterwards in these monks of the school
of Eustathius (who was himself first a semi-Arian and
afterwards a denier of the deity of the Spirit) opponents of his work, so
turbulent and so deceitful, that a true account of their conduct must appear
either incredible, or, if believed, a reason for hating the human race.
Now, the support of orthodoxy was an
important part of the object for which Basil valued the ascetic life. There was
the most urgent need of an organization for this purpose. The bishops and
clergy of the time were, some of them, ignorant, and some deeply tainted with semi-Arianism. Even the best of them had made concessions
in the things of faith to the difficulties of the time. Basil did not judge
them hardly; his own revered old friend Dianius was
of their number. But he chose a different course for himself, and proceeded to
enlist a little army to fight the battle, whose whole fife should be founded
and organized upon Scriptural truth.
To the same period we may also refer his renunciation
of his share of the family property. Maran would appear to date this before the
Syrian and Egyptian tour, a journey which can hardly have been accomplished
without considerable expense. But, in truth, with every desire to do justice to
the self-denial and unworldliness of St. Basil and of other likeminded and
like-lived champions of the Faith, it cannot but be observed that, at all
events in Basil’s case, the renunciation must be understood with some
reasonable reservation. The great archbishop has been claimed as a “socialist”,
whatever may be meant in these days by the term. But St. Basil did not renounce
all property himself, and had a keen sense of its rights in the case of his
friends. From his letter on behalf of his foster-brother, placed by Maran
during his presbyterate, it would appear that this foster-brother, Dorotheus, was allowed a life tenancy of a house and farm
on the family estate, with a certain number of slaves, on condition that Basil
should be supported out of the profits. Here we have landlord, tenant, rent,
and unearned increment. St. Basil can scarcely be fairly cited as a practical
apostle of some of the chapters of the socialist evangel of the end of the
nineteenth century. But ancient eulogists of the great archbishop, anxious to
represent him as a good monk, have not failed to foresee that this might be
urged in objection to the completeness of his renunciation of the world, in
their sense, and, to counterbalance it, have cited an anecdote related by
Cassian. One day a senator named Syncletius came to Basil to be admitted to his
monastery, with the statement that he had renounced his property, excepting
only a pittance to save him from manual labour. “You have spoilt a senator,”
said Basil, “without making a monk.” Basil’s own letter represents him as
practically following the example of, or setting an example to, Syncletius.
Great as was the wonder with which he
viewed the solitary asceticism of Egypt and Palestine, the practical good
sense of Basil revolted against a life whose end was centred in itself. His idea was to combine the ascetic life with the advantages of
union and mutual aid. And he counted upon the assistance of his friend Gregory in
carrying out this purpose. It was in the year 358 that Basil returned to
Caesarea, resolved to live a life in which absolute superiority to all
indulgence should, instead of estranging him from refined enjoyment and the
interests of his fellow men, aid him in the pursuit of both. In this design
Gregory was pledged from the time of their college days to accompany him. But
Gregory’s father, the bishop of Nazianzus, was old, and his son unwilling to leave
him. Basil appears, therefore, for a short time to have followed his friend to
Nazianzus; but he soon abandoned this place for Annesi,
the home of his childhood, hard by the place where his mother and sister were
residing. What the method of his existence at Annesi was we learn from the pressing letters in which he urges Gregory to share his
retreat.
Stimulated to carry out his purpose of embracing the
ascetic life by what he saw of the monks and solitaries during his travels,
Basil first of all thought of establishing a monastery in the district of Tiberina. Here he would have been in the near neighbourhood
of Arianzus, the home of his friend Gregory. But the
attractions of Tiberina were ultimately postponed to
those of Ibora, and Basil’s place of retreat was
fixed in the glen not far from the old home, and only separated from Annesi by the Iris, of which we have Basil’s own
picturesque description. Gregory declined to do more than pay a visit to
Pontus, and so is said to have caused Basil much disappointment. It is a little
characteristic of the imperious nature of the man of stronger will, that while
he would not give up the society of his own mother and sister in order to be
near his friend, he complained of his friend’s not making a similar sacrifice
in order to be near him. Gregory good-humouredly replies to Basil’s
depreciation of Tiberina by a counter attack on
Caesarea and Annesi.
At the Pontic retreat Basil now began that system of
hard ascetic discipline which eventually contributed to the enfeeblement of his
health and the shortening of his life. He complains again and again in his
letters of the deplorable physical condition to which he is reduced, and he
died at the age of fifty. It is a question whether a constitution better
capable of sustaining the fatigue of long journeys, and a life prolonged beyond
the Council of Constantinople, would or would not have left a larger mark upon
the history of the Church. There can be no doubt, that in Basil’s personal
conflict with the decadent empire represented by Valens, his own cause was
strengthened by his obvious superiority to the hopes and fears of vulgar
ambitions. He ate no more than was actually necessary for daily sustenance, and
his fare was of the poorest. Even when he was archbishop, no flesh meat was
dressed in his kitchens. His wardrobe consisted of one under and one over garment. By night he wore haircloth; not
by day, lest he should seem ostentatious. He treated his body, says his
brother, with a possible reference to St. Paul, as an angry owner treats a
runaway slave. A consistent celibate, he was yet almost morbidly conscious of
his unchastity, mindful of the Lord’s words as to the adultery of the impure
thought. St. Basil relates in strong terms his admiration for the ascetic
character of Eustathius of Sebaste, and at this time
was closely associated with him. Indeed, Eustathius was probably the first to
introduce the monastic system into Pontus, his part in the work being
comparatively ignored in later days when his tergiversation had brought him
into disrepute. Thus the credit of introducing monasticism into Asia Minor was
given to Basil alone. A novel feature of this monasticism was the Coenobium,
for hitherto ascetics had lived in absolute solitude, or in groups of only two
or three. Thus it was partly relieved from the discredit of selfish isolation
and unprofitable idleness.
The idea of their author is not to
purchase heaven by the renunciation of all earthly delights; on the contrary,
the picture which they present is designedly inviting to a man willing to
mortify the sensual desires. There was indeed but one meal in the day and
little sleep; manual labour, the reading of Holy
Scripture, prayer, conversation, and psalmody, which imitated on earth the
concert of the angels, divided the day. But the description of the natural
beauties of the place which Basil lays before his friend has ever been counted
one of the most charming specimens of his eloquence. Gregory was prevailed upon
to come, but found the life by no means equal to the description, and very
little to his taste. Never, he declares, will he forget the soup and the bread,
which his poor teeth had much ado to pierce, and out of which they had to drag themselves
upwards as if getting out of the mud. If Basil’s good mother had not taken pity
on his hard case, he would no longer be in the land of the living. And how can
he omit to mention those gardens, unworthy of the name, which grew no
vegetables, and for manuring which they had to cast out of the house filth
enough to have filled the Augean stable, or that wagon which the two
accomplished university men used together to draw when they were levelling a
hill,—exertions which had left upon Gregory’s poor hands marks which they still
bear ? But this is not to be taken too seriously. Gregory’s succeeding letter
expresses an eager longing to return to a life of such spiritual benefit.
The joint studies of Basil and Gregory
were devoted to the sacred Scriptures, and it was at this period that they
compiled the selection from the works of Origen which they called Philocalia. Origen was the most suggestive writer
upon Bible subjects then accessible, certainly not the author who would have
been chosen if the friends had been losing their intellectual vigour or spirit of free inquiry in a dull asceticism. But
neither study nor prayer hindered Basil from evangelic labours.
We learn from Gregory Nyssen that so many disciples congregated around him as
to give his retreat the appearance of a town. And from thence he issued to
conduct missions in Pontus and Cappadocia, rousing the indolent souls of a
people little occupied with future hopes. He softened hard hearts, and brought
many to repentance. He taught them to renounce the world, to form communities and
build monasteries, to devote themselves to psalmody and preaching, to provide
for the poor, constructing asylums for their accommodation, to take care of
them when there, and to establish convents of women.1 Thus he
uplifted the ideal of the spiritual life through all the province. In a word,
Basil commenced, during his retreat at Annesi the
many-sided work of religion and philanthropy, which he carried on as bishop to
the last day of his life.
The example set by Basil and his companions spread. Companies of
hard-working ascetics of both sexes were established in every part of Pontus,
every one of them an active centre for the preaching of the Nicene doctrines,
and their defence against Arian opposition and misconstruction. Probably about
this time, in conjunction with his friend Gregory, Basil compiled the
collection of the beauties of Origen which was entitled Philocalia.
Origen’s authority stood high, and both of the main divisions of Christian
thought, the Nicene and the Arian, endeavoured to support their respective
views from his writings. Basil and Gregory were successful in vindicating his
orthodoxy and using his aid in strengthening the Catholic position
.An
episode in Basil’s life, in which there was nothing to look back on with
satisfaction, and which his enemies even made a reproach to him in afterdays,
was his visit to Constantinople with Basil of Ancyra, and Eustathius of Sebaste, to communicate the conclusions of the Council of
Seleucia. In a council which followed at Constantinople in the succeeding
year, 360, the worldly Acacius succeeded in carrying
everything for the cunningly veiled form of Semi-Arianism, which he favoured at the time. Basil was afterwards accused by Eunomius of cowardice in failing to oppose these disastrous
conclusions; but his subordinate position probably deprived him of all power.
And he retired from Constantinople when the heretical creed of Ariminum was
presented by Constantius for signature. He proceeded to Caesarea, but the Arian
emissaries followed thither; and to his intense grief his bishop, Dianius, was induced to sign the formula. Basil had done
his best to preserve the old man, for whom heentertained the sincerest affection, from this
step, too much in harmony with the weak facility which had always accompanied
his gentleness. And when the deed was done, Basil retired from Caesarea to
avoid the painful step of making public that inability to communicate with the
bishop, to which the interests of truth constrained him. But he afterwards disclaimed
with great energy the charge of having anathematized the old man, who had but
fallen into a snare, in which well-nigh all the bishops of the East, including
the elder Gregory of Nazianzum, were caught. And
when, two years afterwards, amidst the troubles of Julian’s heathen reaction, Dianius felt his end approaching, he recalled to his side
the man upon whom his spirit leant for guidance, and died in Basil’s arms,
declaring with his last breath that he had acted in the simplicity of his
heart, and never meant to cast doubt upon the creed of Nicaea, with whose
authors he desired to dwell in heaven. Such were the difficulties which in
those evil times overcame all but the clearest and the most steadfast minds.
IV. —
Basil and the
Councils, to the Accession of Valens.
Up to this time St. Basil is not seen to have publicly
taken an active part in the personal theological discussions of the age; but
the ecclesiastical world was eagerly disputing while he was working in Pontus.
Aetius, the uncompromising Arian, was openly favoured by Eudoxius of Germanicia, who had appropriated the see of Antioch in 357.
This provoked the Semiarians to hold their council at
Ancyra in 358, when the Sirmian “Blasphemy” of 357
was condemned. The Acacians were alarmed, and manoeuvred for the division of
the general council which Constantius was desirous of summoning. Then came
Ariminum, Nike, and Seleucia, in 359, and “the world groaned to find itself
Arian.” Deputations from each of the great parties were sent to a council held
under the personal presidency of Constantius at Constantinople, and to one of
these the young deacon was attached. The date of the ordination to this grade
is unknown. On the authority of Gregory of Nyssa and Philostorgius, it appears
that Basil accompanied his namesake of Ancyra and Eustathius of Sebaste to the court, and supported Basil the bishop.
Philostorgius would indeed represent the younger Basil as championing the Semiarian cause, though with some cowardice. It may be
concluded, with Maran, that he probably stood forward stoutly for the truth,
not only at the capital itself, but also in the neighbouring cities of
Chalcedon and Heraclea. But his official position was a humble one, and his
part in the discussions and amid the intrigues of the council was only too likely
to be misrepresented by those with whom he did not agree, and even
misunderstood by his own friends. In 360 Dianius signed the creed of Ariminum, brought to Caesarea by George of Laodicea; and
thereby Basil was so much distressed as henceforward to shun communion with his
bishop. He left Caesarea and betook himself to Nazianzus to seek consolation in
the society of his friend. But his feelings towards Dianius were always affectionate, and he indignantly repudiated a calumnious assertion
that he had gone so far as to anathematize him. Two years later Dianius fell sick unto death and sent for Basil, protesting
that at heart he had always been true to the Catholic creed. Basil acceded to
the appeal, and in 362 once again communicated with his bishop and old
friend.16 In the interval between the visit to Constantinople and this
death-bed reconciliation, that form of error arose which was long known by the
name of Macedonianism, and which St. Basil was in
later years to combat with such signal success in the treatise Of the Spirit.
It combined disloyalty to the Spirit and to the Son. But countervailing events
were the acceptance of the Homoousion by the Council of Paris,1and the
publication of Athanasius’ letters to Serapion on the
divinity of the two Persons assailed. To this period is referred the
compilation by Basil of the Moralia.
The death of Dianius occurred at a critical time. Julian was approaching; and the faithful of
Caesarea were greatly divided in their choice of a successor to the archbishopric.
At the prompting of friendship, or from motives of piety, some proposed one
candidate, some another. The election was finally carried by a popular impulse
by no means without example in those days. Eusebius, one of the chief civil
officials of the town, a man of high character but as yet unbaptized, was
seized by the crowd, with the assistance of the soldiers, and hurried in spite
of his own resistance to the bishops to be baptized and proclaimed elect. The
bishops were forced to yield. But on the retirement of the crowd they desired
to annul the election on the ground of violence. From this they were deterred
by Gregory of Nazianzus the elder, who reminded them that in throwing doubt
upon the election they were convicting themselves of cowardice.
Thus the choice of Eusebius stood; but
this forcible transfer to the Church’s service of a valuable civil official
added to the irritation which Julian already felt toward Caesarea for a tumult
which had occurred there, and in which a temple of Fortune had been destroyed.
The governor demanded of the bishops, under threat of the Emperor’s wrath, the
recall of the election. But Gregory answered firmly for his brethren that this
was not one of the questions in which they could in conscience permit the civil
power to interfere.
Basil was at Caesarea
during these transactions, and there is reason to believe that the course which
things took may have been due to his influence. His birth and literary fame,
increased at this time by the publication of his work against Eunomius, pointed him out as a leader, and himself a very
probable selection for the vacant throne; and the monks were a compact and
influential army of supporters to him. Thus it seems very likely that the
choice of Eusebius was suggested by him. And, indeed, the decision with which
the aged Gregory behaved was not much in harmony with his character, and makes
it probable that he was prompted by a stronger will. Basil was incapable, it
is true, of planning to set up a puppet for any selfish ends. But he had a
nature capable of ruling, and the desire for rule which accompanies the
capacity; and it is by no means impossible that he may have expected to be able
to wield for the excellent ends which he had in view the authority of a bishop
who, having no ecclesiastical experience, must be guided by someone.
And at first it seemed that such was to
be the event. Early in his episcopate, Eusebius ordained Basil to the
priesthood. There was at that time a fashion, doubtless a reaction of the
higher minds against the eager and hasty ordinations which were so common, but
sometimes partaking of affectation, to accept orders only upon compulsion. Such
had been the case in Eusebius’s own consecration. Gregory of Nazianzus had
shortly before been ordained a priest in the same way, and now Basil was made a
presbyter by force, and his whole time became so occupied with preaching and
with business as to leave him no leisure even to write to his friends. It is
not surprising that the bishop should have become jealous. He was a good man
and a brave one, but by no means accustomed to see himself eclipsed. And his behaviour to Basil became exceedingly offensive. Whether a
taint of pride in the presbyter may have had its share in producing the
misunderstanding we know not, but his conduct when it had arisen was admirable.
Many circumstances combined to render it perfectly easy for him to have made a
schism. The party of Eusebius was discredited on account of his tumultuous
election; the character of Basil was enthusiastically reverenced, and the more
pious party of the city was on his side; and lastly, there were present at the
time some Western bishops perfectly ready to consecrate him at a sign. Many a
man would have yielded to the temptation, for indeed the election of Eusebius
was not above just suspicion. But Basil resisted, and withdrew at the advice
of Gregory to the Pontic retreat, whither his friend accompanied him; and the
succeeding period was spent in study and in the rule and direction of the great
monastic and mission work already on foot.
A part of the care of the two friends
was devoted to the composition of works against Julian, whose Hellenic reaction took
place at this period. That prince, on coming to the throne, had proceeded to
set on foot the restoration of heathenism, on which his mind had been set ever
since his Athenian days, and he fixed his eye upon his Cappadocian college
friends as fit instruments in such a work. They certainly were richly equipped
by knowledge of both heathen and Christian literature, for the part of learned
foes to the faith, had conviction not stood in the way, just as we might easily
imagine Julian himself, had not the mistakes of an education conducted by
unworthy Christians prejudiced him against the faith, taking his proper place
by the side of his old acquaintances in the great cause of culture with
self-denial. The fact of Julian’s advances to Basil and his friend we know from
the writings of Gregory against him. But of the correspondence between Julian
and Basil, contained among the letters of the latter, all is doubtful, and part
almost certainly spurious. And after the catastrophe of Julian, Basil observed
towards his memory a dignified silence, which is certainly more attractive than
the vehement and exultant reproaches heaped on it by Gregory.
The brief reign of Julian would affect Basil, in
common with the whole Church, in two ways: in the relief he would feel at the
comparative toleration shown to Catholics, and the consequent return of
orthodox bishops to their sees; in the distress with which he would witness his
old friend’s attempts to ridicule and undermine the Faith. Sorrow more personal
and immediate must have been caused by the harsh treatment of Caesarea and the
cruel imposts laid on Cappadocia. What conduct on the part of the Caesareans
may have led Gregory of Nazianzus to speak of Julian as justly offended, we can
only conjecture. It may have been the somewhat disorderly proceedings in
connexion with the appointment of Eusebius to succeed Dianius.
But there can be no doubt about the sufferings of Caesarea, nor of the
martyrdom of Eupsychius and Damas for their part in
the destruction of the Temple of Fortune.
The precise part taken by Basil in the election of
Eusebius can only be conjectured. Eusebius, like Ambrose of Milan, a layman of
rank and influence, was elevated per saltum to the episcopate. Efforts
were made by Julian and by some Christian objectors to get the appointment
annulled by means of Gregory, Bishop of Nazianzus, on the ground of its having
been brought about by violence. Bishop Gregory refused to take any
retrogressive steps, and thought the scandal of accepting the tumultuary
appointment would be less than that of cancelling the consecration. Gregory the
younger presumably supported his father, and he associates Basil with him as
probable sufferers from the imperial vengeance. But he was at Nazianzus at the
time of the election, and Basil is more likely to have been an active agent.
To this period may be referred Basil’s receipt of the
letter from Athanasius, mentioned in Letter CCIV. On the accession of Jovian,
in June, 363, Athanasius wrote to him asserting the Nicene Faith, but he was
greeted also by a Semiarian manifesto from Antioch,
of which the first signatory was Meletius.
Valentinian and Valens, on their accession in the
following year, thus found the Church still divided on its cardinal doctrines,
and the lists were marked in which Basil was henceforward to be a more
conspicuous combatant.
V.
The Presbyterate.
Not long after the accession of Valens, Basil was
ordained presbyter by Eusebius. An earlier date has been suggested, but the
year 364 is accepted as fitting in better with the words of Gregory on the free
speech conceded to heretics. And from the same Letter it may be concluded that
the ordination of Basil, like that of Gregory himself, was not wholly
voluntary, and that he was forced against his inclinations to accept duties
when he hesitated as to his liking and fitness for them. It was about this time
that he wrote his Books against Eunomius; and it may
possibly have been this work which specially commended him to Eusebius. However
this may be, there is no doubt that he was soon actively engaged in the
practical work of the diocese, and made himself very useful to Eusebius. But
Basil’s very vigour and value seem to have been the cause of some alienation
between him and his bishop. His friend Gregory gives us no details, but it may
be inferred from what he says that he thought Basil ill-used. And allusions of
Basil have been supposed to imply his own sense of discourtesy and neglect. The
position became serious. Bishops who had objected to the tumultuary nomination
of Eusebius, and had with difficulty been induced to maintain the lawfulness of
his consecration, were ready to consecrate Basil in his place. But Basil showed
at once his wisdom and his magnanimity. A division of the orthodox clergy of
Cappadocia would be full of danger to the cause. He would accept no personal
advancement to the damage of the Church. He retired with his friend Gregory to
his Pontic monasteries, and won the battle by flying from the field. Eusebius
was left unmolested, and the character of Basil was higher than ever.
The threat of a new persecution recalled
Basil to Caesarea. Valens had, after the short reign of Jovian, succeeded to
the throne of Constantinople. He is said to have possessed the merit of
simplicity of life, and to have imposed some check on the waste of the court.
But his elevation was not due to personal qualities, but to the favour of his brother Valentinian. The latter prince
established religious toleration in the West; but Valens, baptized by the Arian
Eudoxius, patriarch of Constantinople, fell into the hands of that party, and
lent them the whole influence of the empire for the advancement of their
belief. His own character, in spite of the fact that he had kept his faith
under Valens, was very weak. In the words of Gibbon, “he derived his virtues as
well as his vices from a feeble understanding and a pusillanimous temper ”; and
the contemptuous excuse of the same historian, that the ecclesiastical
ministers of Julian may have exceeded the orders or even the intentions of
their master, is probably true. But from the second year of his reign we find
him traversing the East with a band of Arian courtiers, reducing the orthodox
everywhere to subjection.
Gregory gives a sombre picture of the consternation which this invasion of heretics diffused. It was a
hailstorm roaring frightfully and crushing all the churches upon which it fell;
an emperor loving gold and hating Christ; who arose after the apostate Julian,
not indeed himself an apostate, but none the kinder for that reason to the
orthodox, who declined “ to weigh duty as in a balance, and to separate the one
and indivisible nature in itself, and to cure the impious restrictions of Sabellius by a more impious diffusion and dismemberment.”
Eusebius felt himself unequal to the encounter, and invited to his aid Gregory
of Nazianzus, the only ecclesiastic whom he thought able to supply the place of
the man whom he had driven from his side. But Gregory, as might be anticipated,
was entirely indisposed to accept advances at the expense of his
friend. “To honour me,” he said, “ while you insult
him, is to caress me with one hand and strike me with the other. Believe me, if
you treat him as he merits, the credit will return to yourself, and I shall
come after him as the shadow after the body.” At first the bishop was offended
by this frankness; but at last he softened, and an interview with Gregory took
place, which formed the basis of a successful mediation on the part of the
latter. Basil, he informs us, was very easily prevailed upon. He admitted at
once that the time was not one for maintaining a private grudge, and returned
to Caesarea. Probably both Eusebius and he had derived valuable lessons from
what had occurred : the former had seen his own need of support, and the latter
had learnt prudence in the exercise of his influence. Certain it is that from
this time forward the whole rule of the diocese fell into the hands of the
presbyter, without any further symptom of jealousy in the bishop. Basil was his
counsellor upon all occasions, but made it his first care to honour the prelate before his flock. If there was any
instinct of a courtier in this, it was exercised for ends that were perfectly
pure and true.
During the years that Basil exercised
authority under the name of Eusebius he effected a vast amount of good. To
preaching and the charge of a parish were added a multitude of other cares :
the maintenance of the rights of the Church against the civil magistrates; the
reconciliation of differences; the succour of those
who were in need, always with spiritual aids, often also with temporal; the
support of the poor; the entertainment of strangers ; the care of virgins ;
monastic rules, delivered by writing or by word of mouth; arrangement of the
prayers p decoration of the sanctuary. Finally, when, in 370, a terrible famine
occurred, especially severe in Cappadocia on account of its distance from the
sea, Basil crowned his services by preserving the lives of a great number of
people. He devoted to this purpose the whole remains of his property, long
since, indeed, unused for his personal wants, but subject still to his control,
and the gifts which, by the most fervid appeals, he was able to extract from
the rich.
In the same year. 370, Eusebius died,
and Basil received his last breath, as he had that of his predecessor. It will
be readily conceived that Basil was pointed out for successor by the voice of
the best people in the town, of the clergy and monks; but the opposition was
very strong, including, as it did, the bishops of the province, the civil
magistrates, the rich, who revolted against his unceasing claims of charity,
and the loose livers of the place. According to the canons, the bishops of the
province were to assemble on the vacancy of a see and appoint a successor by
the suffrages of the clergy and people. But in point of fact their hands were
constantly forced by the influence of the rich and the tumultuous cries of the
populace. Thus a severe contest was to be faced; and Basil was convinced,
probably with perfect correctness, that the cause of genuine religion depended upon his
election. It was natural that he should desire the assistance of his friend ;
but he knew the fastidious temper of Gregory, and took the doubtful step of
feigning sickness as the ground for the summons. His state of health was,
indeed, never so strong as to deprive such a statement of some colour; but the pretence failed
of its effect, for Gregory met the bishops assembling, and, guessing the
condition of things, returned hastily to Nazianzus, whence he wrote to reproach
Basil and to advise retirement from the city during the election. But the
bishop, his father, took a more practical view of the necessities of the case.
And at his prompting, his son, though still unwilling to repair to Caesarea
himself, wrote to that church in favour of his
friend, and (a still more effectual measure) sent for Eusebius of Samosata, the
most eminent bishop of the country. Eusebius, in spite of the wintry season,
made haste to the scene of action, where his weight decided in favour of Basil all parties except the bishops. The bishops
tried every device to escape ; they wrote to Bishop Gregory suggesting that he
need not trouble himself to come. They maintained that while Basil’s claims to
elevation could not be denied, his health was unequal to the duties of the
episcopate. And finally, when they were obliged to yield, only two of them were
found willing to join in the consecration. Now the canons required three. But
if, as seems to have been the case, it was hoped in this way to nullify the
election, the plan was disappointed. For the aged Gregory of Nazianzus, though
scarce able to stand, had himself lifted from his bed and carried in a litter
to Caesarea, where he presided over the
election and consecration of the new bishop, and returned home restored, as his
son informs us, to the strength of youth by the good work in which he had been
engaged. The election was heard of at the court of Constantinople as a severe
check; but the orthodox churches everywhere received the news with exultation,
and Athanasius of Alexandria made it matter of special thanksgiving to God that
a bishop should have been given to Cappadocia such as every province might wish
for itself.
The seclusion of Basil in Pontus seemed to afford an
opportunity to his opponents in Cappadocia, and according to Sozomen, Valens himself, in 365, was moved to threaten Caesarea
with a visit by the thought that the Catholics of Cappadocia were now deprived
of the aid of their strongest champion. Eusebius would have invoked Gregory,
and left Basil alone. Gregory, however, refused to act without his friend, and,
with much tact and good feeling, succeeded in atoning the two offended parties.
Eusebius at first resented Gregory’s earnest advocacy of his absent friend, and
was inclined to resent what seemed the somewhat impertinent interference of a
junior. But Gregory happily appealed to the archbishop’s sense of justice and
superiority to the common unwillingness of high dignitaries to accept counsel,
and assured him that in all that he had written on the subject he had meant to
avoid all possible offence, and to keep within the bounds of spiritual and
philosophic discipline. Basil returned to the metropolitan city, ready to
cooperate loyally with Eusebius, and to employ all his eloquence and learning
against the proposed Arian aggression. To the grateful Catholics it seemed as
though the mere knowledge that Basil was in Caesarea was enough to turn Valens
with his bishops to flight,8 and the tidings, brought by a furious rider, of
the revolt of Procopius,’ seemed a comparatively insignificant motive for the
emperor’s departure.
There was now a lull in the storm. Basil, completely
reconciled to Eusebius, began to consolidate the archiepiscopal power which he
afterward wielded as his own, over the various provinces in which the
metropolitan of Caesarea exercised exarchic authority. In the meantime the Semiarians were
beginning to share with the Catholics the hardships inflicted by the imperial
power. At Lampsacus in 364 they had condemned the results of Ariminum and
Constantinople, and had reasserted the Antiochene Dedication Creed of 341. In
366 they sent deputies to Liberius at Rome, who
proved their orthodoxy by subscribing the Nicene Creed. Basil had not been
present at Lampsacus, but he had met Eustathius and other bishops on their way
thither, and had no doubt influenced the decisions of the synod. Now the
deputation to the West consisted of three of those bishops with whom he was in
communication, Eustathius of Sebasteia, Silvanus of
Tarsus, and Theophilus of Castabala. To the first it
was an opportunity for regaining a position among the orthodox prelates. It can
hardly have been without the persuasion of Basil that the deputation went so
far as they did in accepting the homoousion, but it is a little singular, and
indicative of the comparatively slow awakening of the Church in general to the
perils of the degradation of the Holy Ghost, that no profession of faith was
demanded from the Lampsacene delegates on this
subject. In 367 the council of Tyana accepted the restitution of the Semiarian bishops, and so far peace had been promoted. To
this period may very probably be referred the compilation of the Liturgy which
formed the basis of that which bears Basil’s name. The claims of theology and
of ecclesiastical administration in Basil’s time did not, however, prevent him
from devoting much of his vast energy to works of charity. Probably the great
hospital for the housing and relief of travellers and the poor, which he
established in the suburbs of Caesarea, was planned, if not begun, in the latter
years of his presbyterate, for its size and importance were made pretexts for
denouncing him to Elias, the governor of Cappadocia, in 372, and at the same
period Valens contributed to its endowment. It was so extensive as to go by the
name of Newtown, and was in later years known as the “Basileiad.”
It was the mother of other similar institutions in the country-districts of the
province, each under a Chorepiscopus. But whether the Ptochotrophium was or was not actually begun before Basil’s episcopate, great demands were
made on his sympathy and energy by the great drought and consequent famine
which befell Caesarea in 368. He describes it with eloquence in his Homily On
the Famine and Drought. The distress was cruel and widespread. The distance
of Caesarea from the coast increased the difficulty of supplying provisions.
Speculators, scratching, as it were, in their country’s wounds, hoarded grain
in the hope of selling at famine prices. These Basil moved to open their
stores. He distributed lavishly at his own expense, and ministered in person to
the wants of the sufferers. Gregory of Nazianzus gives us a picture of his
illustrious friend standing in the midst of a great crowd of men and women and
children, some scarcely able to breathe; of servants bringing in piles of such
food as is best suited to the weak state of the famishing sufferers; of Basil
with his own hands distributing nourishment, and with his own voice cheering
and encouraging the sufferers.
About this time Basil suffered a great loss in the death
of his mother, and sought solace in a visit to his friend Eusebius at
Samosata.11 But the cheering effect of his journey was lessened by the news,
which greeted him on his return, that the Arians had succeeded in placing one
of their number in the see of Tarsus. The loss of Silvanus was ere long
followed by a death of yet graver moment to the Church. In the middle of 370
died Eusebius, breathing his last in the arms of Basil.
VI.
Basil as Archbishop.
The archiepiscopal throne was now technically vacant.
But the man who had practically filled it, “the keeper and tamer of the lion,”
was still alive in the plenitude of his power. What course was he to follow?
Was he meekly to withdraw, and perhaps be compelled to support the candidature
of another and an inferior? The indirect evidence has seemed to some strong
enough to compel the conclusion that he determined, if possible, to secure his
election to the see. Others, on the contrary, have thought him incapable of
scheming for the nomination. The truth probably lies between the two extreme
views. No intelligent onlooker of the position at Caesarea on the death of
Eusebius, least of all the highly capable administrator of the province, could
be blind to the fact that of all possible competitors for the vacant throne
Basil himself was the ablest and most distinguished, and the likeliest to be
capable of directing the course of events in the interests of orthodoxy. But it
does not follow that Basil’s appeal to Gregory to come to him was a deliberate
step to secure this end. He craved for the support and counsel of his friend;
but no one could have known better that Gregory the younger was not the man to
take prompt action or rule events. His invention of a fatal sickness, or
exaggeration of a slight one, failed to secure even Gregory’s presence at
Caesarea. Gregory burst into tears on receipt of the news of his friend’s grave
illness, and hastened to obey the summons to his side. But on the road he fell
in with bishops hurrying to Caesarea for the election of a successor to
Eusebius, and detected the unreality of Basil’s plea. He at once returned to
Nazianzus and wrote the oft-quoted letter, on the interpretation given to which
depends the estimate formed of Basil’s action at the important crisis.
Basil may or may not have taken Gregory’s advice not
to put himself forward. But Gregory and his father, the bishop, from this time
strained every nerve to secure the election of Basil. It was felt that the
cause of true religion was at stake. “The Holy Spirit must win.” Opposition had
to be encountered from bishops who were in open or secret sympathy with Basil’s
theological opponents, from men of wealth and position with whom Basil was
unpopular on account of his practice and preaching of stern self-denial, and
from all the lewd fellows of the baser sort in Caesarea Letters were written in
the name of Gregory the bishop with an eloquence and literary skill which have
led them to be generally regarded as the composition of Gregory the younger. To
the people of Caesarea Basil was represented as a man of saintly life and of
unique capacity to stem the surging tide of heresy. To the bishops of the
province who had asked him to come to Caesarea without saying why, in the hope
perhaps that so strong a friend of Basil’s might be kept away from the election
without being afterwards able to contest it on the ground that he had had no
summons to attend, he expresses an earnest hope that their choice is not a
factious and foregone conclusion, and, anticipating possible objections on the
score of Basil’s weak health, reminds them that they have to elect not a
gladiator, but a primate. To Eusebius of Samosata he sends the letter included
among those of Basil in which he urges him to cooperate in securing the
appointment of a worthy man. Despite his age and physical infirmity, he was
laid in his litter, as his son says’ like a corpse in a grave, and borne to
Caesarea to rise there with fresh vigour and carry the election by his vote.
All resistance was overborne, and Basil was seated on the throne of the great
exarchate.
The position in which Basil was placed
by this election was magnificent if the reality of power had accompanied the
name. He was Archbishop of Caesarea, Metropolitan of Cappadocia, and Exarch of
the diocese of Pontus. In the latter character his jurisdiction extended over
half Asia Minor, but the authority was very indefinite. The exarchate was
weakened by the institution of metropolitans, and was on the way to be absorbed
in the patriarchate of Constantinople. His position as archbishop and
metropolitan of Cappadocia was scarcely more satisfactory. For the suffragans
who had refused to take part in his election continued their insubordination; and,
wonderful to say, an uncle of Basil was among the malcontents. The difference
was aggravated by a silly attempt at reconciliation devised by Gregory (Nyssen)
Basil’s younger brother. He was a very loyal soul, but not very wise ; a comparison
of his panegyric on his great brother with that of Gregory Nazianzen suffices
to show alike his affection and his poverty of mind. And upon this occasion he
conceived the notable plan of writing a letter to Basil in the name of his
uncle ; the well-intended forgery was of course at once discovered. But in
about a year the breach was closed by a kindly and submissive letter from
Basil himself to his uncle, little consistent with the pride which is
attributed to him. And it was followed by a reconciliation on the part of the
other bishops, both with Basil and the elder Gregory, who had taken so vigorous
a part in the election. There is reason, however, to think that this submission
of the bishops was merely a measure to which they were driven by the public
opinion of the religious people and the monks among their flocks, and implied
very little cordial co-operation.
The success of the Catholics roused, as was
inevitable, various feelings. Athanasius wrote from Alexandria to congratulate
Cappadocia on her privilege in being ruled by so illustrious a primate. Valens
prepared to carry out the measures against the Catholic province, which had
been interrupted by the revolt of Procopius. The bishops of the province who
had been narrowly outvoted, and who had refused to take part in the
consecration, abandoned communion with the new primate. But even more
distressing to the new archbishop than the disaffection of his suffragans was
the refusal of his friend Gregory to come in person to support him on his
throne. Gregory pleaded that it was better for Basil’s own sake that there
should be no suspicion of favour to personal friends, and begged to be excused
for staying at Nazianzus. Basil complained that his wishes and interests were
disregarded, and was hurt at Gregory’s refusing to accept high
responsibilities, possibly the coadjutor-bishopric, at Caesarea. A yet further
cause of sorrow and annoyance was the blundering attempt of Gregory of Nyssa to
effect a reconciliation between his uncle Gregory, who was in sympathy with the
disaffected bishops, and his brother. He even went so far as to send more than
one forged letter in their uncle’s name. The clumsy counterfeit was naturally
found out, and the widened breach not bridged without difficulty. The
episcopate thus began with troubles, both public and personal. Basil
confidently confronted them. His magnanimity and capacity secured the adhesion
of his immediate neighbours and subordinates, and soon his energies took a
wider range. He directed the theological campaign all over the East, and was
ready alike to meet opponents in hand to hand encounter, and to aim the arrows
of his epistolary eloquence far and wide.10 He invokes the illustrious pope of
Alexandria to join him in winning the support of the West for the orthodox
cause.17 He is keenly interested in the unfortunate controversy which
distracted the Church of Antioch. He makes an earnest appeal to Damasus for the wonted sympathy of the Church at Rome. At
the same time his industry in his see was indefatigable. He is keen to secure
the purity of ordination and the fitness of candidates. Crowds of working
people come to hear him preach before they, go to their work for the day. He
travels distances which would be thought noticeable even in our modern days of
idolatry of the great goddess Locomotion. He manages vast institutions eleemosynary
and collegiate. His correspondence is constant and complicated. He seems the
personification of the active, rather than of the literary and scholarly,
bishop. Yet all the while he is writing tracts and treatises which are
monuments of industrious composition, and indicative of a memory stored with
various learning, and of the daily and effective study of Holy Scripture.
Nevertheless, while thus actively engaged in fighting
the battle of the faith, and in the conscientious discharge of his high duties,
he was not to escape an unjust charge of pusillanimity, if not of questionable
orthodoxy, from men who might have known him better. On September 7th, probably
in 371, was held the festival of St. Eupsychius.
Basil preached the sermon. Among the hearers were many detractors. A few days
after the festival there was a dinner-party at Nazianzus, at which Gregory was
present, with several persons of distinction, friends of Basil. Of the party
was a certain unnamed guest, of religious dress and reputation, who claimed a
character for philosophy, and said some very hard things against Basil. He had
heard the archbishop at the festival preach admirably on the Father and the
Son, but the Spirit, he alleged, Basil defamed. While Gregory boldly called the
Spirit God, Basil, from poor motives, refrained from any clear and distinct
enunciation of the divinity of the Third Person. The unfavourable view of Basil
was the popular one at the dinner-table, and Gregory was annoyed at not being
able to convince the party that, while his own utterances were of comparatively
little importance, Basil had to weigh every word, and to avoid, if possible,
the banishment which was hanging over his head. It was better to use a wise
“economy” in preaching the truth than so
to proclaim it as to ensure the extinction of the light of true religion. Basil
showed some natural distress and astonishment on hearing that attacks against
him were readily received.
It was at the close of this same year 371 that Basil
and his diocese suffered most severely from the hostility of the imperial
government. Valens had never lost his antipathy to Cappadocia. In 370 he
determined on dividing it into two provinces. Podandus,
a poor little town at the foot of Mt. Taurus, was to be the chief seat of the
new province, and thither half the executive was to be transferred. Basil
depicts in lively terms the dismay and dejection of Caesarea. He even thought
of proceeding in person to the court to plead the cause of his people, and his
conduct is in itself a censure of those who would confine the sympathies of
ecclesiastics within rigidly clerical limits. The division was insisted on.
But, eventually, Tyana was substituted for Podandus as the new capital; and it has been conjectured that possibly the act of
kindness of the prefect mentioned in Ep. LXXVIII may have been this transfer,
due to the intervention of Basil and his influential friends.
But the imperial Arian was not content with this
administrative mutilation. At the close of the year 371, flushed with successes
against the barbarians, fresh from the baptism of Eudoxius, and eager to impose
his creed on his subjects, Valens was travelling leisurely towards Syria. He is
said to have shrunk from an encounter with the famous primate of Caesarea, for
he feared lest one strong man’s firmness might lead
others to resist. Before him went Modestus, Prefect of the Pratorium,
the minister of his severities, and before Modestus, like the skirmishers in
front of an advancing army, had come a troop of Arian bishops, with Euippius, in all probability, at their head. Modestus found
on his arrival that Basil was making a firm stand, and summoned the archbishop
to his presence with the hope of overawing him. He met with a dignity, if not
with a pride, which was more than a match for his own. Modestus claimed
submission in the name of the emperor, Basil refused it in the name of God.
Modestus threatened impoverishment, exile, torture, death. Basil retorted that
none of these threats frightened him : he had nothing to be confiscated except
a few rags and a few books; banishment could not send him beyond the lands of
God; torture had no terrors for a body already dead; death could only come as a
friend to hasten his last journey home. Modestus exclaimed in amazement that he
had never been so spoken to before. “Perhaps,” replied Basil, “you never met a
bishop before.” The prefect hastened to his master, and reported that ordinary
means of intimidation appeared unlikely to move this undaunted prelate. The
archbishop must be owned victorious, or crushed by more brutal violence. But
Valens, like all weak natures, oscillated between compulsion and compliance. He
so far abated his pretensions to force heresy on Cappadocia, as to consent to
attend the services at the Church on the Festival of the Epiphany. The Church
was crowded. A mighty chant thundered over the sea of heads. At the end of the
basilica, facing the multitude, stood Basil, statue-like, erect as Samuel among
the prophets at Naioth, and quite indifferent to the interruption of the
imperial approach. The whole scene seemed rather of heaven than of earth, and
the orderly enthusiasm of the worship to be rather of angels than of men.
Valens half fainted, and staggered as he advanced to make his offering at God’s
Table. On the following day Basil admitted him within the curtain of the
sanctuary, and conversed with him at length on sacred subjects.
The surroundings and the personal appearance of the
interlocutors were significant. The apse of the basilica was as a holy of
holies secluded from the hum and turmoil of the vast city. It was typical of
what the Church was to the world. The health and strength of the Church were
personified in Basil. He was now in the ripe prime of life, but bore marks of
premature age. Upright in carriage, of commanding stature, thin, with brown
hair and eyes, and long beard, slightly bald, with bent brow, high cheek bones,
and smooth skin, he would shew in every tone and gesture at once his high birth
and breeding, the supreme culture that comes of intercourse with the noblest of
books and of men, and the dignity of a mind made up and of a heart of single
purpose. The sovereign presented a marked contrast to the prelate. Valens was
of swarthy complexion, and by those who approached him nearly it was seen that
one eye was defective. He was strongly built, and of middle height, but his
person was obese, and his legs were crooked. He was hesitating and unready in
speech and action. It is on the occasion of this interview that Theodoret
places the incident of Basil’s humorous retort to Demosthenes, the chief of the
imperial kitchen, the Nebuzaradan, as the Gregories style him, of the petty fourth century
Nebuchadnezzar. This Demosthenes had already threatened the archbishop with the
knife, and been bidden to go back to his fire. Now he ventured to join in the
imperial conversation, and made some blunder in Greek. “An illiterate
Demosthenes!” exclaimed Basil; “better leave theology alone, and go back to
your soups.” The emperor was amused at the discomfiture of his satellite, and
for a while seemed inclined to be friendly. He gave Basil lands, possibly part
of the neighbouring estate of Macellum, to endow his hospital.
But the reconciliation between the sovereign and the
primate was only on the surface. Basil would not admit the Arians to communion,
and Valens could not brook the refusal. The decree of exile was to be enforced,
though the very pens had refused to form the letters of the imperial signature.
Valens, however, was in distress at the dangerous illness of Galates, his infant son, and, on the very night of the
threatened expatriation, summoned Basil to pray over him. A brief rally was
followed by relapse and death, which were afterwards thought to have been
caused by the young prince’s Arian baptism. Rudeness was from time to time shown
to the archbishop by discourteous and unsympathetic magistrates, as in the case
of the Pontic Vicar, who tried to force an unwelcome marriage on a noble widow.
The lady took refuge at the altar, and appealed to Basil for protection. The
magistrate descended to contemptible insinuation, and subjected the archbishop
to gross rudeness. His ragged upper garment was dragged from his shoulder, and
his emaciated frame was threatened with torture. He remarked that to remove his
liver would relieve him of a great inconvenience.
Nevertheless, so far as the civil power was concerned,
Basil, after the famous visit of Valens, was left at peace. He had triumphed.
Was it a triumph for the nobler principles of the Gospel? Had he exhibited a
pride and an irritation unworthy of the Christian name? Jerome, in a passage of
doubtful genuineness and application, is reported to have regarded his good
qualities as marred by the one bane of pride, a “leaven” of which sin is
admitted by Milman to have been exhibited by Basil,
as well as uncompromising firmness. The temper of Basil in the encounter with
Valens would probably have been somewhat differently regarded had it not been
for the reputation of a hard and overbearing spirit which he has won from his
part in transactions to be shortly touched on. His attitude before Valens seems
to have been dignified without personal haughtiness, and to have shown sparks
of that quiet humour which is rarely exhibited in great emergencies except by
men who are conscious of right and careless of consequences to self.
VII.
The Breach with Gregory of Nazianzus.
Cappadocia, it has been seen, had been divided into
two provinces, and of one of these Tyana had been constituted the chief town.
Anthimus, bishop of Tyana, now contended that an ecclesiastical partition
should follow the civil, and that Tyana should enjoy parallel metropolitan
privileges to those of Caesarea. To this claim Basil determined to offer an
uncompromising resistance, and summoned Gregory of Nazianzus to his side.
Gregory replied in friendly and complimentary terms, and pointed out that
Basil’s friendship for Eustathius of Sebaste was a
cause of suspicion in the Church. At the same time he placed himself at the
archbishop’s disposal. The friends started together with a train of slaves and
mules to collect the produce of the monastery of St. Orestes, in Cappadocia Secunda, which was the property of the see of Caesarea.
Anthimus blocked the defiles with his retainers, and in the vicinity of Sasima there was an unseemly struggle between the domestics
of the two prelates. The friends proceeded to Nazianzus, and there, with
imperious inconsiderateness, Basil insisted upon nominating Gregory to one of
the bishoprics which he was founding in order to strengthen his position
against Anthimus. For Gregory, the brother, Nyssa was selected, a town on the
Halys, about a hundred miles distant from Caesarea, so obscure that Eusebius of
Samosata remonstrated with Basil on the unreasonableness of forcing such a man
to undertake the episcopate of such a place. For Gregory, the friend, a similar
fate was ordered. The spot chosen was Sasima, a
townlet commanding the scene of the recent fray. It was an insignificant place
at the bifurcation of the road leading northwards from Tyana to Doara and diverging westward to Nazianzus. Gregory speaks
of it with contempt, and almost with disgust, and never seems to have forgiven
his old friend for forcing him to accept the responsibility of the episcopate,
and in such a place. Gregory resigned the distasteful post, and with very
bitter feelings, the utmost that can be said for Basil is that just possibly he
was consulting for the interest of the Church, and meaning to honour his friend,
by placing Gregory in an outpost of peril and difficulty, in the kingdom of
heaven the place of trial is the place of trust. But, unfortunately for the
reputation of the archbishop, the war in this case was hardly the Holy War of
truth against error, and of right against wrong. It was a rivalry between
official and official, and it seemed hard to sacrifice Gregory to a dispute
between the claims of the metropolitans of Tyana and Caesarea.
Gregory the elder joined in persuading his son. Basil
had his way. He won a convenient suffragan for the moment. But he lost his
friend. The sore was never healed, and even in the great funeral oration in
which Basil’s virtues and abilities are extolled, Gregory traces the main
trouble of his chequered career to Basil’s unkindness, and owns to feeling the
smart still, though the hand that inflicted the wound was cold.
With Anthimus peace was ultimately established. Basil
vehemently desired it. Eusebius of Samosata again intervened. Nazianzus
remained for a time subject to Caesarea, but was eventually recognised as
subject to the Metropolitan of Tyana.
The relations, however, between the two metropolitans
remained for some time strained. When in Armenia in 372, Basil arranged some
differences between the bishops of that district, and dissipated a cloud of
calumny hanging over Cyril, an Armenian bishop. He also acceded to a request on
the part of the Church of Satala, that he would
nominate a bishop for that see, and accordingly appointed Poemenius,
a relation of his own. Later on a certain Faustus, on the strength of a
recommendation from a pope with whom he was residing, applied to Basil for
consecration to the see, hitherto occupied by Cyril. With this request Basil
declined to comply, and required as a necessary preliminary the authorisation
of the Armenian bishops, specially of Theodotus of Nicopolis. Faustus then betook himself to Anthimus, and
succeeded in obtaining uncanonical consecration from him. This was naturally a
serious cause of disagreement. However, by 375, a better feeling seems to have
existed between the rivals. Basil is able at that date to speak of Anthimus as
in complete agreement with him.
VIII.
St. Basil and Eustathius.
It was Basil’s doom to suffer through his friendships.
If the fault lay with himself in the case of Gregory, the same cannot be, said
of his rupture with Eustathius of Sebaste. If in this
connexion fault can be laid to his charge at all, it was the fault of entering
into intimacy with an unworthy man. In the earlier days of the retirement in
Pontus the austerities of Eustathius outweighed in Basil’s mind any suspicions
of his unorthodoxy. Basil delighted in his society, spent days and nights in
sweet converse with him, and introduced him to his mother and the happy family
circle at Annesi. And no doubt under the ascendency
of Basil, Eustathius, always ready to be all things to all men who might be for
the time in power and authority, would appear as a very orthodox ascetic. Basil
likens him to the Ethiopian of immutable blackness, and the leopard who cannot
change his spots. But in truth his skin at various periods showed every shade
which could serve his purpose, and his spots shifted and changed colour with
every change in his surroundings.11 He is the patristic Proteus. There must
have been something singularly winning in his more than human attractiveness.
But he signed almost every creed that went about for signature in his lifetime.
He was consistent only in inconsistency. It was long ere Basil was driven to
withdraw his confidence and regard, although his constancy to Eustathius raised
in not a few, and notably in Theodotus of Nicopolis, the metropolitan of Armenia, doubts as to
Basil’s soundness in the faith. When Basil was in Armenia in 373 a creed was
drawn up, in consultation with Theodotus, to be
offered to Eustathius for signature. It consisted of the Nicene confession,
with certain additions relating to the Macedonian controversy. Eustathius
signed, together with Fronto and Severus. But, when
another meeting with other bishops was arranged, he violated his pledge to
attend. He wrote on the subject as though it were one of only small importance.
Eusebius endeavoured, but endeavoured in vain, to make peace. Eustathius
renounced communion with Basil, and at last, when an open attack on the
archbishop seemed the paying game, he published an old letter of Basil’s to Apollinarius, written by “layman to layman,” many years
before, and either introduced, or appended, heretical expressions of Apollinarius, which were made to pass as Basil’s. In his
virulent hostility he was aided, if not instigated, by Demosthenes the
prefect’s vicar, probably Basil’s old opponent at Caesarea in 372. His
duplicity and slanders roused Basil’s indignant denunciation. Unhappily they
were not everywhere recognized as calumnies. Among the bitterest of Basil’s
trials was the failure to credit him with honour and orthodoxy on the part of
those from whom he might have expected
sympathy and support. An earlier instance of this is the feeling shown at the
banquet at Nazianzus already referred to. In later days he was cruelly troubled
by the unfriendliness of his old neighbours at Neocaesarea, and this alienation
would be the more distressing inasmuch as Atarbius,
the bishop of that see, appears to have been Basil’s kinsman. He was under the
suspicion of Sabellian unsoundness. He slighted and slandered Basil on several
apparently trivial pretexts, and on one occasion hastened from Nicopolis for fear of meeting him. He expressed objection
to supposed novelties introduced into the Church of Caesarea, to the mode of
psalmody practised there, and to the encouragement of ascetic life. Basil did
his utmost to win back the Neocaesareans from their
heretical tendencies and to their old kindly sentiments towards himself.
The clergy of Pisidia and Pontus, where Eustathius had
been specially successful in alienating the district of Dazimon,
were personally visited and won back to communion. But Atarbius and the Neocaesareans were deaf to all appeal, and
remained persistently irreconcilable. On his visiting the old home at Annesi, where his youngest brother Petrus was now residing,
in 375, the Neocaesareans were thrown into a state of
almost ludicrous panic. They fled as from a pursuing enemy. They accused Basil
of seeking to win their regard and support from motives of the pettiest
ambition, and twitted him with travelling into their neighbourhood uninvited.
IX.
Unbroken Friendships
Brighter and happier intimacies were those formed with
the older bishop of Samosata, the Eusebius who, of all the many bearers of the
name, most nearly realised its meaning, and with Basil’s junior, Amphilochius
of Iconium. With the former, Basil’s relations were those of an affectionate
son and of an enthusiastic admirer. The many miles that stretched between
Caesarea and Samosata did not prevent these personal as well as epistolary
communications. In 372 they were closely associated in the eager efforts of the
orthodox bishops of the East to win the sympathy and active support of the
West. In 374 Eusebius was exiled, with all the picturesque incidents so vividly
described by Theodoret. He travelled slowly from Samosata into Thrace, but does
not seem to have met either Gregory or Basil on his way. Basil contrived to
continue a correspondence with him in his banishment. It was more like that of
young lovers than of elderly bishops. The friends deplore the hindrances to
conveyance, and are eager to assure one another that neither is guilty of
forgetfulness.
The friendship with Amphilochius seems to have begun
at the time when the young advocate accepted the invitation conveyed in the
name of Heracleidas, his friend, and repaired from Ozizala to Caesarea. The consequences were prompt and
remarkable. Amphilochius, at this time between thirty and forty years of age,
was soon ordained and consecrated, perhaps, like Ambrose of Milan and Eusebius
of Caesarea, per saltum, to the important see of Iconium, recently
vacated by the death of Faustinus. Henceforward the
intercourse between the spiritual father and the spiritual son, both by letters
and by visits, was constant. The first visit of Amphilochius to Basil, as
bishop, probably at Easter 374, not only gratified the older prelate, but made
a deep impression on the Church of Caesarea. But his visits were usually paid
in September, at the time of the services in commemoration of the martyr Eupsychius. On the occasion of the first of them, in 374,
the friends conversed together on the doctrine of the Holy Spirit, now impugned
by the Macedonians, and the result was the composition of the treatise De Spiritu Sancto. This was closely followed by the three
famous canonical epistles, also addressed to Amphilochius. Indeed, so great was
the affectionate confidence of the great administrator and theologian in his
younger brother, that, when infirmities were closing round him, he asked
Amphilochius to aid him in the administration of the archdiocese.
If we accept the explanation given of Letter CLXIX. in
a note on a previous page, Gregory the elder, bishop of Nazianzus, must be
numbered among those of Basil’s correspondents letters to whom have been
preserved. The whole episode referred to in that and in the two following
letters is curiously illustrative of outbursts of fanaticism and folly which
might have been expected to occur in Cappadocia in the fourth century, as well
as in soberer regions in several other centuries when they have occurred. It
has been clothed with fresh interest by the very vivid narrative of Professor
Ramsay, and by the skill with which he uses the scanty morsels of evidence
available to construct the theory which he holds about it. This theory is that
the correspondence indicates a determined attempt on the part of the rigidly
orthodox archbishop to crush proceedings which were really “only keeping up the
customary ceremonial of a great religious meeting,” and, as such, were winked
at, if not approved of, by the bishop to whom the letter of remonstrance is
addressed, and the presbyter who was Glycerius’ superior. Valuable information
is furnished by Professor Ramsay concerning the great annual festival in honour
of Zeus of Venasa (or Venese),
whose shrine was richly endowed, and the inscription discovered on a
Cappadocian hill-top, “Great Zeus in heaven, be propitious to me.” But the
“evident sympathy” of the bishop and the presbyter is rather a strained
inference from the extant letters; and the fact that in the days when paganism
prevailed in Cappadocia Venasa was a great religious
centre, and the scene of rites in which women played an important part, is no
conclusive proof that wild dances performed by an insubordinate deacon were
tolerated, perhaps encouraged, because they represented a popular old pagan
observance. Glycerius may have played the patriarch, without meaning to adopt,
or travesty, the style of the former high priest of Zeus. Cappadocia was one of
the most Christian districts of the empire long before Basil was appointed to
the exarchate of Caesarea, and Basil is not likely to have been the first
occupant of the see who would strongly disapprove of, and endeavour to repress,
any such manifestations as those which are described. That the bishop whom
Basil addresses and the presbyter served by Glycerius should have desired to
deal leniently with the offender individually does not convict them of
accepting the unseemly proceedings of Glycerius and his troupe as a pardonable,
if not desirable, survival of a picturesque national custom.
Among other bishops of the period with whom Basil
communicated by letter are Abramius, or Abraham, of Batnae in Osrhoene, the
illustrious Athanasius, and Ambrose, Athanasius of Ancyra; Barses of Edessa, who died in exile in Egypt; Elpidius, of
some unknown see on the Levantine seaboard, who supported Basil in the
controversy with Eustathius; the learned Epiphanius of Salamis; Meletius, the exiled bishop of Antioch; Patrophilus of Aegae; Petrus of Alexandria; Theodotus of Nicopolis, and Ascholius of Thessalonica.
Basil’s correspondence was not, however, confined
within the limits of clerical clanship. His extant letters to laymen, both
distinguished and undistinguished, show that he was in touch with the men of
mark of his time and neighbourhood, and that he found time to express an affectionate
interest in the fortunes of his intimate friends.
Towards the later years of his life the archbishop’s
days were darkened not only by ill-health and anxiety, but by the death of some
of his chief friends and allies. Athanasius died in 373, and so far as personal
living influence went, there was an extinction of the Pharos not of Alexandria
only, but of the world. It was no longer “Athanasius contra mundum” but
“Mundus sine Athanasio.” In 374 Gregory the
elder died at Nazianzus, and the same year saw the banishment of Eusebius of
Samosata to Thrace. In 375 died Theodotus of Nicopolis, and the succession of Fronto was a cause of deep sorrow.
At this time some short solace would come to the
Catholics in the East in the synodical letter addressed to the Orientals of the
important synod held in Illyria, under the authority of Valentinian. The letter
which is extant is directed against the Macedonian heresy. The charge of
conveying it to the East was given to the presbyter Elpidius.
Valentinian sent with it a letter to the bishops of Asia in which persecution
is forbidden, and the excuse of submission to the reigning sovereign
anticipated and condemned. Although the letter runs in the names of
Valentinian, Valens, and Gratian, the western brother appears to condemn the
eastern.
X.
PERSONAL TRAITS.
We shall commence our examination of these
works by endeavouring to gather from them some
personal traits which may help us better to know the man. It has been alleged
by his detractors that his bosom fault was pride;
even friends have admitted that there was ground for the charge, and he was
accused of it in his lifetime, though as he thinks very unjustly. The charge
may have been, however, in some sense true, but it must be observed that one of
the principal pieces of evidence for this defect is almost certainly imaginary.
It consists of a passage in the Chronicon of Jerome, which all the MSS. but one
refer, not to Basil at all, but to Photinus, the mention of whom stands in the
preceding sentence. Vossius, for the purpose of
depreciating Jerome as a detractor, eagerly adopted the reading which refers
the words to Basil, and Gibbon grasped at it in order to sneer at the Church
for concealment of Basil’s defects. But there is little doubt that Jerome never
applied the description to him at all. Gregory Nazianzen repels the charge by
alleging Basil’s care for the sick and poor, an answer which would be indeed
very insufficient if it referred to mere passing acts of humiliation,
such as the Papal washing of poor men’s feet. But it will, perhaps, be
considered that the persistent and long-continued work of a bishop in personal
attendance on the most repulsive diseases in an hospital is no such very bad
reply to the charge of pride.
If Basil was naturally of a proud
spirit, as perhaps he was, he deserves the praise of having forced himself to
face the humiliations which his ceaseless struggles for orthodoxy brought upon
him. He might have intrenched himself in his diocese, where his popularity was
so great, and persuaded himself that it was not his business to interfere with
the rest of the East, or that there was nothing which he could do. This is the
species of pride which he had to complain of in the bishops of the West. He
certainly did not display it himself. Nor when he is insulted and repelled
either by heretics, or, as sometimes happened, by orthodox fanatics, does he either
preserve the silence or display the resentment of a proud spirit. As for his
treatment of the vulgar courtiers of Valens, it is very difficult to blame him
for the contempt he displayed towards them. It was not merely an ebullition of
natural temperament, but the most truthful tone which he could have taken, and
by far the most wholesome for them : there is a time for all things, and this
was what that time required. He slighted them at the time of their power and
his weakness; but there is no record of his ever behaving in like fashion to any one who was poor, or in need of his aid. While, then,
we do not deny that pride may have been natural to Basil, we cannot allow it to have
assumed the proportions of a vicious habit: rather it was used for good, with
only such taint of defect remaining as necessarily belongs to human nature.
One passage in Basil’s life has caused
this charge to be entertained by some churchmen otherwise well
disposed to admire him: his relations to Pope Damasus.
There is no doubt a singular absence in Basil of that “dropping-down deadness”
of manner (if we may borrow Sydney Smith’s phrase), which the bishops of Rome
have been accustomed to demand. It is, of course, futile to accuse him of pride
for the non-recognition of claims on the part of the Pope, which it never
entered Basil’s mind to conceive, but there is no doubt that he shows himself
unwilling to concede even that degree of submissiveness which the bishops of
Rome at that time thought their due. The reason is to be found in the careless
and even heartless neglect with which he conceived the troubles of the East to
have been treated by the Western bishops living at ease. Some writers,
recognizing the absence of early evidence for the papacy, have seen a proof of
the hand of Providence upon it in the constant readiness of the popes to give
at every emergency the aid that was required of them. Certainly the treatment
of Basil’s appeals to the West is no mean proof to the contrary. A great
opportunity was here missed, and a distinctly anti-papal character was
impressed upon the writings of that father, whom, perhaps beyond all others,
the East reveres. It should be also remarked, however, that the adoption of an
independent tone towards Rome was a kind of tradition in the see of Caesarea. S. Firmilian, whose letter to S. Cyprian in relation to the
controversy about re-baptism has been ever a great stumbling-block to the
supporters of the Papacy, was, at an interval of a century, Basil’s predecessor
as bishop at Caesarea, and the latter calls him “ our Firmilian.”
If Basil displayed any pride towards
men, he certainly did not allow it to intrude into his relations to God. It may
seem strange to some that an ascetic and a follower after perfection should
show a deep sense of sin; but so it is. He is thoroughly sincere when he
declares that he is so far from claiming to be sinless that he knows his life
to be full of innumerable faults, and pours forth continual tears for his sins,
if perchance he may obtain favour of God, or when he
attributes his misfortunes to his sins. “Pray,” he begs his friend, “ for my
miserable life, that, freed from these temptations, I may begin to serve God.”
But he is very sensitive to desertion
and unkindness. He cannot think, though he broods over it constantly, why such
things should be believed against him. He knows that nothing is more hated
among the religious people of the time than his name. Those who take the middle
course, as they think, and setting out from the same principles as he, decline to
follow them to their logical conclusions, because these are hateful to the ears
of the populace; these “moderate” persons are all against him. How can he but
feel it ? His only comfort lies in his bodily infirmity, which assures him that
he will not live long,1 and when he recovers for a time, he is sorry
for it, knowing the evils to which he returns. May God give you, he prays, the
blessings of Jerusalem above, because you did not believe falsehoods about me.
The fault which we should consider most
obvious in Basil’s letters is despondency and readiness to complain, due,
probably, to the disease of the liver with which he had to contend all his life
through. No doubt his low spirits make the indomitable energy more remarkable,
which never allowed his work to grow slack through despair. But knowing what we
do of the effect which that work had, both in his own diocese and in the
churches of the East, it seems strange that he should say, “ I seem to myself
for my sins to succeed in nothing.”
His health was, indeed, wretched all his
life through, “ from his earliest youth.” When in health, he was weaker than
other people when their recovery is despaired of. In sickness he complains that
his body has failed him altogether. Fifty days has he been sick of a fever,
which not finding material enough in his poor body to nourish it, remained in
his dried-up flesh as in a burnt-out wick, and wore him out utterly. And then
his old plague of the liver coming in besides, deprived him of food, deprived
him of sleep, and kept him on the borders of life and death, allowing him only
just enough of life to feel his pains.7 He is reduced to the
condition of being actually thinnerthan himself, and is only so far alive that he
breathes.2 And even when he has grown a little better, he remains so
weak that the exertion of visiting the Church of the Martyrs in a carriage
throws him back nearly into the same condition again. After a
journey into Pontus he is afflicted with intolerable sickness ; but in the
midst of all this he is taking care for the churches of Lycia, and making out a
list of well-disposed persons in that quarter with whom a representative of
orthodoxy, if sent into the country, is to place himself in communication.
Basil, if proud, was certainly not
independent of love; the practice of asceticism had not the
result of deadening his affections. Although his monastic rule demands so much
renunciation of the ties of blood, yet he laments for his mother as “ his only
comfort in life,” and in the alienation from his uncle (for which he was not to
blame) he shows the strongest repugnance to disputes among relations. “Honoured brother,” he writes to a friendly bishop, “we feel
an exceeding hunger for love.” “We want
brothers more than one hand wants the other.” He declares that the reception
of a letter from a friend is to him like water to a tired racehorse. He
entertains a most affectionate remembrance of those who had been kind to him in
youth. Thus he repels, with the utmost vehemence, the charge of having anathematized
“the most blessed Dianius.” Rather is he conscious of
having been brought up from his earliest years in love for Dianius, and been accustomed to
reverence his venerable priestly air, and as he grew older to delight in his
company, for his simplicity, and nobleness, and freedom of manners, his
magnanimity and mildness, together with his good temper, his gaiety and
accessibility, combined with dignity. A corresponding affection
Basil felt for Neocaesarea, the place to which he was accustomed from his
boyhood, where he was brought up by his grandmother. How dearly would he love
to see his friend Eusebius and return with him in memory to boyhood, when they
had the same home, and fireside, and teacher, the same amusements and studies,
and pleasures, and wants. If he could but meet his friend, he might brush away
this weight of age and seem young instead of old.3 And his love for
the friends of his own youth naturally drew with it that love for young people
which is so attractive in the old. He has had with him the two sons of a friend
for a festival day, and sends back “our” sons safe to their father, telling him
that their love of God has helped him to spend the holy day in a perfect
manner, and praying to the God who loves mankind that the angel of peace may be
given them for a helper and companion of their way. And when the two sons of Olympius have brought him letters from their father, they
so comfort his afflicted soul that he forgets the poison which his enemies are
scattering to his injury. A like delight he expresses in Icelium,
the daughter of his friend Magninianus. He is assured that a rich reward must wait the father from the
Lord for such an education of his children. And his affection for Gregory of
Nazianzus, during boyhood, youth, and mature age, may be called one of the
celebrated friendships of the world. It was one of the great moulding facts of life for both of them.
He knew, of course, what it was to find
a friend capricious or mistrustful, or to lose him amidst the sad disputes of
the times. If you remain in our communion, he says to such a one, this were
the best thing that could happen, and worth the most earnest prayer. If others,
however, have drawn thee to them, that were sad indeed, for why should not the
loss of such a brother be so ? but if I have no other consolation, I have at
least, by the instrumentality of the same persons, been well exercised in such
losses.1 To him it seems that one who thinks of casting off a friend
should first reflect long and anxiously, spend many a sleepless night, and
seek, with many tears, God’s guidance to the truth. But when calumny attempts
to injure him with his friend, he can write that the calumniator injures three
persons,— the subject of his slander, and the person to whom it is addressed,
and himself. Of the injury done to himself as the subject he will say nothing
his friend knows well that Basil is not indifferent to his opinion; but of the
three persons injured, it is Basil who is injured least.3
He can very well accept a reproof from a
friend. He is not so absurd as to be offended at the chidings of a brother. Far from
being offended, he well-nigh laughs that when there were so many things which
seemed to strengthen and unite their friendship, his correspondent should write
that he has been so thunderstruck at small matters, and he is not in the least
inclined to stand upon his dignity, but will receive with the most perfect
submission any one who may be sent to investigate his
supposed misdeeds.2
Like many other eminent men, Basil found
a friend in his physician, and held the highest opinion of the profession.
Humanity is the very business of those who practise the healing art, and that man who places their science first among all the
pursuits of life, appears to Basil to judge rightly. But his doctor is not only
perfectly accomplished in his healing art, but extends his benefits beyond the
body and ministers to the mind.3 Basil gratifies his affection for
his friends by little presents, and they do the same by him. Wax candles and
dry fruits seem to have been common gifts.4 But Basil cannot use his
teeth upon the latter : they are gone, through time and disease.
We can well understand what misery the
distracted condition of the Church must have brought to a soul so full of piety
and love. It was no spirit of proselytism that impelled Basil to work for
Catholic unity, but a spirit of love. He can assert that there is in his heart
such a longing for the peace of the churches, that he could willingly shed
forth his own life to extinguish the flames of a hatred which the evil one has kindled. So bitterly
did the misconduct of many who should have known better weigh upon him, that he
more than once confesses that a temptation to misanthropy had come over him,
if the mercy of God, and the affection of a few stanch friends had not
preserved him.3
Although it is laid down among Basil’s
monastic rules that it is beneath the dignity of a Christian man to laugh
heartily, yet he himself was not at all devoid of a sense of humour. The theory of transmigration moves him to a gentle
satire, perhaps not inapplicable to our own times, when he says that some
philosophers declare themselves to have been once the men, women, or fishes of
a far-back time; whether they were fishes or no he will not undertake to say,
but that when they wrote these things they were more unreasoning than fishes he
will very constantly affirm.3 Nor could any writer devoid of this
faculty have given us the description of the avaricious usurer swearing to the
needy borrower that he has no money at all, and is himself looking out for some one to lend him a little; but when the other mentions the interest
and the name of the security, then he smoothes his
brow and smiles, and somehow comes to a remembrance of their family friendship,
and says he will see if he can find some cash. “ A friend, indeed, left a sum
with me to be lent out in usury, but he requires very high interest.” The
debtor, on the other hand, has neither the wealth of the rich nor the careless freedom of
the poor. He is constantly estimating the value of his own property, or of the
plate and furniture of anybody with whom he happens to dine. “Were these mine,”
he says to himself, “I could sell them for so much and be free of my interest.”
If there is a knock at the door, he creeps under the bed. If any one runs up to him quickly, it gives him a palpitation
of the heart. If a dog barks, he bursts into a perspiration. Why is interest
called tokoq, that is, breeding ? It must be called
so from its immense fecundity of evil, or from the pangs which it brings on the
poor people who endure it. Basil can even exercise a grim humour upon his own misfortunes, as when the vicar of Pontus threatened to tear out
his liver, he replied, “ Many thanks : where it is it has given a great deal of
trouble.” Nor is he above describing a disturber of the peace of the Church as
the fat whale of Doara, who troubles the waters
there. And it is thus that his friend Gregory describes his social character
:—“ Who made himself more amiable than he to the well-conducted ? or more
severe when men were in sin? Whose very smile was many a time praise, whose
silence a reproof, punishing the evil in a man’s own conscience. If he was not
full of talk, nor a jester, nor a holder forth, nor generally acceptable from
being all things to all men and showing good nature, what then ? Is not this
to his praise, not to his blame, among sensible men ? Yet, if we ask for this,
who so pleasant as he in social intercourse, as I know who have had such
experience of him ? Who could tell a story with more wit ? Who could jest so
playfully ? Who could give a hint more delicately,
so as neither to be over strong in his rebuke nor remiss through his
gentleness?”1
But his kindness to the poor and
sorrowful is unfailing. The insensibility of the rich moves his bitter
indignation. People lavish their money on unworthy objects; but if a poor man,
scarce able to speak from hunger, comes into our sight, we turn from him as if
he were of a different nature from us ; we shudder at him, we pass by as if we
feared that if we walked more slowly we might catch the infection of his
misery. And if he looks upon the ground, filled with shame at his wretched
state, we say that he is a hypocrite ; and if he looks us boldly in the face,
under the spur of his hunger, we call him an impudent and violent fellow. And
if he happens to be clad in whole garments, given him by somebody or other, we
send him away as insatiable, and swear that his poverty is all a pretence; if he is covered with rotten rags, we hunt him
off as evil-smelling; and though he ask us for God’s sake, we will not be
moved. Yet Basil shows no weak pity. A helper who gives way to the impulse of
mere feeling seems to him like a pilot, who, when he ought to be directing the
crew and fighting against winds and waves, is himself sea-sick. We must use our
reason, and help people as we can. Do not therefore aggravate sorrow by your
presence. Whoever wants to raise up the afflicted, must be above them : he who
falls along with them, requires himself the same aid which he is attempting to
bring.
Basil’s recommendatory letters to his
powerful friends on behalf of the needy are often very moving and graceful.
Here is one on behalf of Leontius, who apparently desires to escape some imposition
of the government. “There is no one closer to me, or who, if he were in
prosperity, would do more to aid me, than my dear brother Leontius. Take care
of his house just as you would of myself, if you found me not in that condition
of poverty in which, by the Divine goodness, I am now, but possessing some
property. I know well that in that case you would not make me poor, but would
preserve to me what I had, or increase it.” Again, he begs that the valuation
of the property of a presbyter may not be increased for higher taxation; “ for
he toils perseveringly for the support of my life, because I, as you know, have
nothing of my own, but am supported by the resources of my friends and
relations.”1
A similar description of Basil’s mode of
subsistence is given in the succeeding letter, written on behalf of his
foster-brother, on whom he is dependent. But the explanation is added, that
Basil’s parents have given to this man most of the slaves whom he possesses,
as a fund for the support of their son.3 These letters appear to
have been written before his episcopate ; afterwards he had resources at his
command, though never for his own benefit. He is much disappointed that a
community of monks, when burnt out, have not resorted to him as the most natural
refuge prepared for them.
His own celibate life did not hinder him
from sympathy with family troubles. He has received a letter from a bishop,
which tells of the death of Urctarius’s only son. The
heir of a great house, the prop of his race, the hope of his country, the issue
of pious parents, brought up among a thousand prayers, in the very flower of
his age is snatched away from his father’s arms. But it is the bidding of God
that they who have faith in Christ should not sorrow for the dead; for they believe
in the resurrection. Some cause there is, inscrutable to man, why some are
carried soon away, and some left longer to endure pain in this world of
troubles; we are not deprived of our son, but have restored him to the Lender.
Nor was life extinguished, but changed; nor did the earth cover him, but heaven
received him. Only may we resemble his purity, that we may learn that innocence
which obtains the rest of children in Christ.1 And he knows how to
comfort the bereaved mother under the same loss. He was unwilling to write,
lest, even though he should give some comfort, yet he might appear to intrude
on her grief. But when he reflected that he had to do with a Christian woman,
long since schooled in religion and prepared for troubles, he thought it not
right that he should be wanting in his duty. A son she has lost, whom when he
was alive all mothers blessed, and wished their own to be like him ; and when
he was dead lamented him as their own. We are sad because he is taken away
before his time. But how do we know that it was not full time? We
know not how to choose what is most profitable for souls, and define the bounds
of human life. “ Regard the whole world in which we dwell, and consider that
all things that we see are destined to corruption. Beware of measuring your
calamity by itself: considered thus, it will seem unendurable. Compare it with
all human things, so will you find comfort. And besides, I have something to
say which is the strongest thing of all. Spare your husband. Be a comfort to
one another. Do not make his trouble harder by wearing yourself out with grief.
But, indeed, I do not imagine that words can bring comfort; prayer is what is
needed for such a time. And I pray the Lord Himself to touch your heart with
His unspeakable power, to bring light into your soul by holy thoughts, that you
may have the spring of consolation within.”1
Basil in one of his discourses alleges,
by way of excuse for recurring to a subject left unfinished the day before, a
characteristic point in his own mental disposition. He is by nature an enemy to
anything unfinished.2 This extreme love of completeness is the
secret of his persevering labour, and of the manysided activity which struck Gregory of Nazianzus, and
which, indeed, has rarely been exceeded. Among us, if a man be a student and a
scholar, we do not at the same time expect him to take a ruling share in the
practical affairs of the Church, and fight for her against the secular power;
if a man be a philanthropist and a founder of hospitals, we do not wonder that he is not a great
leader of religious thought or a popular preacher. But Basil displayed all
these forms of activity in the highest degree. Add to all his asceticism.
Though we are, perhaps, not very strict in applying the Apostle’s prohibition,
“if any will not work, neither shall he eat,” we at least use without stint
the positive permission implied by his words and if any is willing to work for
us. we think it only his right that he should eat abundantly of the very best.
But Basil did all his work of studying, preaching, travelling, visiting,
hospital-building and hospital nursing, and contending with governors,
emperors, and heretics, upon one meal of vegetables and water in the day; and
that, too, in spite of constant ill health hanging about him from youth to
age. We feel compelled to believe that there never has been an age of the world
so rich in great intellects and great hearts that Basil would not have
justified his title to a high place among them, nor are there many
life-histories to which we should more confidently point as examples of the
triumph of mind over matter, the spirit over the flesh.
X
A PICTURE OF THE TIMES.
The idea which we derive from Basil’s
works of the condition of the government in the Eastern Empire is by no means favourable. The sentiment of patriotism, as applied to the
Empire at large, does not appear to have existed in his mind. The misfortunes
of the Imperial arms under Julian, the threatening inroads of barbarians under
Valens, are alluded to much in the same way as we should mention troubles of
foreign powers; they are warnings of the uncertainty of human things, and
lamentable events in themselves. Conquering armies, he tells us, have been
conquered in their turn, and become spectacles of misery; great and victorious
cities have been reduced to slavery. The age just past has afforded examples of
every kind of calamity which the history of the world records. But the writer
shows no sense of personal connection with them. He does love his country ; but
it is Pontus, Cappadocia, or even Caesarea, to which he applies the term. It
is well known that the Greek race never extended its idea of political union
above the city; and certainly there was nothing in such governments as those of
Constantius and Valens to enlist either the imagination or
interest of the people in a wider conception of patriotism.
Basil had not, perhaps, personally very
much to endure under Valens. But the failure to harm was, as the history of the
affair proves, an example of the weakness and timidity of the Emperor and his
officers rather than of their justice. And when his relations to them became
amicable, the subjects of his letters to them give a very low notion of the
equity and regularity of the administration. Now he writes to Aburgius on occasion of the division of the province,
begging him by all his love for his native country of Cappadocia to assist her
in her distress, which is such that no one who had visited her in former times
would know her again. Now he intercedes for an unfortunate old man who has been
exempted by an imperial order from public service on account of age, but finds
the boon immediately undone when the prefect claims his orphan grandson, aged
four years, for some service or other to the council.2 Now it is a
request that oaths may not be demanded of the rural population in the exaction
of the tribute, since it is a mere compulsion to perjury. Now the restoration
is requested of some corn taken from a poor presbyter by some officer of the
government, either on his own account or acting under orders. And now time is
requested for getting in by a general subscription the gold which is to be paid
as a tax for equipping the military. Or the widow Julitta is condoled with for the oppressionsexercised on her by some official who has cast off
all shame in his dealings with Christians, and she is informed that though
Basil is afraid to take the liberty of writing directly to such a great man as
the prefect, he has written to Helladius, a
confidential member of his household, to make interest for her. Or Modestus,
the prefect, Basil’s former opponent, is urgently pressed in the name of a poor
down-trodden population to have the tribute of iron required from the miners
of Mount Taurus reduced, that they may not be so utterly overwhelmed with
poverty as to be rendered useless citizens to the State.
It is not to be wondered at that under
such a government the misery of the people should be very great. Basil writes,
on occasion of the division of the province, that the order of society is quite
broken up, that on account of the treatment dealt out to the magistrates the
members of the civic administration have fled to the country, and their town,
which formerly had been the resort of learned men as well as a place of wealth,
had become a lamentable spectacle of decay.3 It must, however, we
may remark, have recovered under succeeding emperors, for Caesarea, when sacked
by Sapor the Persian, possessed 400,000 inhabitants. For the present the
distress was widespread. Individuals met with reverses which reduced them from
affluence to an abject condition; among whom Maximus, a man of great ability,
and formerly prefect, having lost his whole paternal property and all that he
had acquired by his own exertions, had become a beggar.1 Basil is
afraid, when writing to Eusebius in his exile, to entrust the messenger with
anything of value, lest it should be the cause of his murder at the hands of
some of the robbers and deserters by whom the roads are infested.2 We shall hereafter read Basil’s description of the horrors of the famine which
afflicted this unfortunate country; and he also describes a grievous flood
'which has taken place in consequence of a sudden thaw after a great fall of
snow.3
Amid these miseries of the poor, we find
the greatest excesses of luxury and selfishness among the rich. There was, as
usual in such states of society, the ill-omened trade of keeping back corn till
prices should rise to famine point; and Basil warns the rich against being
“traffickers in human misery.” The legitimate methods of trade were not
developed. Basil mentions that he has known of bankers in Alexandria who
received money and gave interest; plainly implying that such a
system did not exist in Cappadocia. The methods of investment, which in modern
times are so close at hand, being wanting, rich people were left,—if they did
not execute public works, or strive for popularity by shows of wild beasts,—to
squander their money in luxury, or to lay it out at usurious interest by
lending it to their needy or extravagant neighbours. And we shall see, in
several quotations from Basil’s sermons, how prolific a source of sin and
misery was the recklessness of his people in incurring debt. He compares the
usurers with their monthly demands of interest, to the demons who inflict
periodic attacks of epilepsy.1 Meanwhile, others spend their money
upon numberless carriages or litters borne by men, and covered with gold and
silver. Innumerable horses are kept, and their pedigrees are esteemed
according to the nobility of their ancestors, just as those of men. Some are
for riding about town, some for hunting, some for journeys. Their reins, and
bits, and collars are of silver, adorned with gold. Purple saddle-cloths deck
the horses, like bridegrooms; there are multitudes of mules paired according to
their colours, and their drivers in order one after
another. Troops of servants of all kinds— overseers, stewards, gardeners ;
skilled workmen of every trade, whether of necessity or luxury; cooks,
confectioners, cupbearers, huntsmen, statuaries, painters; artists of every
species of pleasure. Troops of camels, some for burdens, some for pasture;
troops of horses, herds of cows, flocks of sheep and of swine, and their
keepers ; lands enough to feed all these, and render a revenue to increase the
riches of their master. Baths in the city, and baths in the country. Houses
shining with marbles of all kinds; one encrusted with Phrygian stone, another
with Laconian or Thessalian; and some of their houses arranged to keep you warm
in winter, others to keep you cool in summer. Pavements floored with mosaic,
ceilings covered with gold ; and whatever part of the walls is not inlaid with
marbles is adorned with pictures. And we may be sure that the living was not
inferior to the magnificence of the houses. Sea and land were traversed in the
search for cooks and table attendants, who were brought like a kind of tribute
to the great people, and suffered miseries in no way more endurable than the
torments in Hades, constantly stirring the furnace, bearing water, and pouring
it into a cask with holes; for there is no end to their toil. The ladies
required jewels of all kinds —pearls, emeralds, jacinths,
gold lace, and gold ornaments, and spent upon these things not a passing hour,
but nights and days. But sometimes Basil was able to gather from among these
luxurious rich such converts as the two deaconesses, daughters of the Count
Terentius.
Among the multitude, the barbarous
practice of exposing children to perish if the parents thought them too
expensive to rear was by no means extinct; and boys were frequently
sold to slavery for their father’s debts. The common talk of the people in the
forum was of the most corrupting character. The religion of the common people
was largely mixed with astrology and belief in charms. Basil reproaches even
Christians as having recourse in the sickness of their children to some
magician, who will hang a talisman round the patient’s neck.
No wonder that amidst such corruptions
in general society the morality of the Church should have been far below the Gospel
standard. The mass of the Christian population is represented to us as
strangely alternating between self-denial and excess. The restraint of Church
fasts is submitted to with a strictness scarcely known among ourselves; but it
is succeeded by disgraceful outbreaks of drunkenness and impurity. Even in the
midst of the fast Basil gives as a reason for protracting his sermon, that many
of the congregation, when they are dismissed, will at once resort to the
gaming-table, where they will experience all those alternations of fortune and
all those exhibitions of passion which high play calls out. To what purpose, he
asks, is it to fast if your soul be filled with such
sinful impulses as these? Nay, even in the churches themselves,
miserable men but ill reflect the meaning of that glorious verse, which says
that “in His temple doth every man speak of His honour.”
Instead of remembering and confessing their sins in God’s house, they smilingly
greet one another, and shake hands, and turn the house of prayer into a place
of immoderate loquacity.
XI
THE CLOSING YEARS
The expulsion of Gregory Nyssen from his
see by the eunuch Demosthenes, and the substitution for him of “a slave worth a
few oboli,” draws from Basil the vehement statement that the episcopate is
fallen into the hands of born slaves. Indeed, one extraordinary case is on
record, in which a bishop was literally a slave. We have a portion (though
unhappily not the conclusion) of Basil’s correspondence with Simplicia,
a great lady, who having been a large benefactress to the Church, became so
proud as to maintain a claim to the ownership of a man, who, though belonging
to a family of servile origin attached to her house, had been advanced to the
episcopate.
Even among the clergy the greatest
abuses prevail; and such a thing is known as a bishop going about without
either clergy or people. One case in the lower clergy gives us a notion of the
class of people with whom Basil had sometimes to deal. A certain Glycerius had
been ordained deacon by him. His qualifications were not high, yet he had
considerable aptitude for routine work. But after ordination he wholly
neglected his duty, “just as if none whatever had been assigned to him.” Worse
still, he collected together a number of poor girls, some unwilling and some of
their own accord; gave himself the airs of a patriarch, adopted this leadership
as a way of making a livelihood, and caused the greatest disturbance in the
Church, despising the commands of his presbyter, a man of age and character, of
his chorepiscopus, and even of Basil himself. And when he was threatened with
punishment for the bad example of disobedience which he was setting to several
young men, he took to flight with his band. Certainly it was a most scandalous
exhibition, when in the midst of a great crowd of persons this choir of young
women was introduced dancing alternately with the youths, to the dismay of the
pious and the amusement of the evil-disposed. And when the parents
attempted to rescue these unhappy girls out of his hands, they were assailed
with insult by this hopeful youth. Basil writes to Gregory, in whose diocese
this worthy had fixed himself for the time being, begging that he may be
induced to return, or at least send back such of the maidens as might wish to
come back: if he declines, he is to be degraded from the ministry. The next
letter is to Glycerius himself; by no means too sharp a rebuke for the
occasion, and encouraging him to return, with the promise of a kind reception
if he repents. Another letter to Gregory follows: the girls have not yet returned,
and we know not the conclusion of the affair.
Two epistles to Amphilochius, Bishop of
Iconium, give us a conception of the steps by which church order was attempted
to be restored in a district where everything had gone to confusion. It would
be better if bishops could be appointed to all the sees in the district; but if good men cannot be found for all, the best plan will be
to send one bishop to preside over the whole province, provided that he be a
man of resolution and courage, and one who, if he finds himself unable for all
the work, will engage others to his aid. If this cannot be done, it will be
wiser to commence with the small towns and villages and work upwards from
them, than to appoint a bishop of the province who might possibly be jealous of
the restoration of the minor sees, when such a measure should become possible.
In his own diocese Basil found most
serious abuses prevalent. The chorepiscopi were wont to accept money for
ordination, cloaking their simony under the pretext that they did not receive
the fee until after the ordination had been performed. Basil makes no parley
with such persons; they are roundly informed that they shall be excommunicated
in case of persistence. We find our saint lamenting the decay of primitive
discipline in terms which we ourselves might use, and with reason even greater
than we possess. According to the ancient canons, no one should be ordained
except after examination into his character, had by the presbyters and deacons
of his neighbourhood, and reported through the
chorepiscopi to the bishop of the diocese. But now the chorepiscopi were
themselves accustomed to ordain whomsoever the presbyters chose to send
forward, without examination of character, and often simply for the purpose of
escaping military service. So that there were in many villages a multitude of
clergy, not one of them all fitted for his office: this is to be absolutely
altered for the future, and none to be ordained without submission of his name
to Basil. We have a severe letter to a presbyter reproving him for having a female
dwelling in the house; it was not indeed a bad case, for the priest was seventy
years of age, and Basil does not suspect anything wrong. We perceive plainly,
in such cases, that the mulier subintroducta may have been often only a servant whom the priest employed for household
convenience; but the rule against it was stringent and needful for the protection
of the celibate life against suspicion, and she must be dismissed and placed in
a convent on pain of anathema.
When Basil takes a general view of the
condition of the whole Church, it is gloomy indeed. Sometimes he compares it to
a ship driven about by the fiercest storms, while the crew are quarrelling with
one another; and sometimes to an old robe, which it is very easy to tear
wherever you touch it, but impossible to restore to its primitive strength and
soundness. And yet we must by no means suppose that discipline was
altogether extinct, or that church punishments were either unused or lightly
regarded. On the contrary, Basil speaks of the ecclesiastical penalties as
being equally effectual with those of the State. What the corporal punishments
of the tribunals could not perform, he has known to be effected by the
tremendous judgments of God. And we find an example of this in a case of
abduction, where Basil gives direction for the excommunication not only of the
guilty man, but of the whole village which has harboured him. The penances which are prescribed in the canonical letters of Basil are of
much severity. For fornication four years’ penance is to be undergone: for one
year the offender is to be expelled from the prayers, and to weep at the church
door; in the second he is to be classed among the “hearers”; in the third among
the “penitents”; and during the fourth he is to stand with the people but abstain from
the oblation; finally, he is to be admitted to communion. The
extreme comparative severity to women in the case of such sins which modern
society displays, is observed in these canons : the man who has sinned is to be
received back by his wife on repentance, the wife by her husband, never. Basil
gives these directions from the ancient authorities, but confesses that he
cannot see the reason of them. A widow who marries again is by the apostle’s
prescription to be despised; but no law against remarriage is imposed upon
men. For them the punishment of digamy suffices : that is to say, a penance of
one year. While second marriages are thus marked with a certain stigma, third
marriages are regarded as unlawful by the canons; Basil speaks of them as
existing but only as blots upon the Church. A presbyter who unknowingly
involves himself in an unlawful marriage is to retain his seat among the
clergy, but not to be permitted to give the benediction. This canon of itself
implies that the marriage of the clergy, though doubtless frowned upon, and in
the case of bishops becoming constantly less usual, was neither prohibited nor
unused. The allusions in the epistles of St. Basil would lead us to suppose
that the present practice of the East—marriage for the parish priests and
celibacy for the bishops—represents pretty nearly the state of things in his
time. The question of marriage with a deceased wife’s sister is carefully
argued by Basil in an epistle to Diodorus, who had accused him of authorizing these unions. He decides
against them on the sufficient ground that the voice of the Church is against
them. The law of Moses does indeed say nothing applicable to marriage with the
sister of a wife after the latter’s death. But the principle that by marriage
you acquire the same relations as your wife is decisive.
In one point Basil increases the
stringency of the ancient canons. The elder fathers had directed that a virgin
who, after dedicating herself to God and professing a life of chastity, should
marry, might be received after penance of a year. But in Basil’s time, the
monastic tendency having made a large advance, it seemed both possible and
needful to go further; he
directs that the marriage is to be counted as adultery, and the offender not to
be admitted to communion until she has ceased to live with her husband.
Professions of celibacy are not to be accepted from girls of tender years, nor
from children brought by their parents or brothers, without any deliberate
choice of their own. Sixteen or seventeen is the earliest age at which such
self-dedication is to be accepted. No vows of celibacy by men are known, save
of those who enrol themselves among monks, in whose
case such an engagement is tacitly implied : and Basil is of opinion that it
would be better to require of them a categorical profession clear and explicit,
in order that if they marry they also may be punished as adulterers. This is an
interesting canon, as showing the steps by which monastic vows became usual,2 but the monastic system of Basil must be treated at large. Something of a
passion for vows must have prevailed, since we find a prohibition of ridiculous
ones, such as not to eat swine’s flesh.
For murder we find prescribed in another
epistle of this class the penance of twenty years’ prohibition from communion:
for adultery, that of fifteen; for apostasy, a man was to be repelled his whole
life through, save that he might be communicated at death. But when we read of
these very lengthened periods, we cannot but doubt whether they can have been
in all cases really imposed and submitted to. And there are indications in the
epistles of St. Basil that the system of discipline as it existed in his time
must have admitted large modifications in practice. The Church by her canons
marked her sense of the enormity of the sin; but in case of earnest repentance
the Nicene council allowed the bishop to relax the rigour of the law. “If any one of those who have fallen into the prementioned crimes
is very earnest and diligent in his repentance, he who is intrusted by God with the power of binding and loosing will not be to blame or without
Scripture precedent if he regards the seriousness of the repentance as a reason
for abridging the period of penance.” And this was Basil’s own practice. He
“lays down these rules in order that the fruits of repentance may be well
tested; but he is used to judge such matters not merely by time, but by the
manner in which the penance is performed.” In truth, the state of
the Church
was daily making the ancient canons more and more difficult to maintain; and in
writing to Peter, bishop of Alexandria, Basil considers it matter of
thankfulness to find that in that place at all events some remains of the
primitive discipline still existed.
In circumstances so sad it cut Basil to
the heart that the Western bishops should show so little interest in the case
of their unhappy brethren. Not indeed but that the list of churches with which
Basil was in communion and correspondence included the best part of the
Christian world. Sanctissimus on one occasion even
brought from the West assurances of friendship; but this was all. For thirteen
long years the contest against heresy had lasted, during which period Basil
declares that more evils had happened than were recorded to have taken place
since the foundation of the Christian Church. The people had abandoned their
houses of prayer and assembled together in desert and solitary places; women
and little children were exposed to storms and snows, winds and wintry ice, and
heats of summer; and this they had done that they might not be partakers in the
evil leaven of Arianism. The ministries of the Church were in many places
wholly in Arian hands. Baptisms, the conducting forth of those going on
journeys, the visitation of the sick, the consolation of the sorrowing, the
teaching of the young; all these duties, which then as now constituted the
staple employment of the Christian ministry, were exercised by the Arians,
leaving little hope that the succeeding generation of Christian people brought up
under such influences would be better than the present. How comes it then that
no letters of consolation, no brotherly visit, none of those things which the
law of Christian kindness demanded, should have come from the Western bishops ?
The miserable condition of the East is known to all the world, and he writes to
the Italians as already aware of the miseries which assailed their brethren.
They should inform their emperor of the troubles, or if this were impossible,
they should send some delegates who should visit and console the afflicted.1 We have seen in the narrative of Basil’s life that Valentinian did in fact
interpose by promoting a council in Illyria. But it had no decisive effect in favour of the distracted East, in which peace was not
restored until Basil, who had striven for it so earnestly and longed for it so
passionately, was in his grave.
The decree of that Illyrian council,
while implying the duty of the civil power to interfere for the maintenance of
truth, yet lays down, as we have seen, with much stringency, the limits which
the law of God imposes upon that interference. The same principles are
expressed in the epistles of St. Basil. On the one hand we have a letter to the
magistrates of an Armenian town, congratulating them that, amid their
occupation with public cares, they do not forget or undervalue matters
ecclesiastical, but are each as anxious about them as about their own concerns
and the occupations on which their lives depend; and begs them to excuse the
bishops for having been obliged in the difficulty of the times to take a course
which might seem doubtful. But at the same time the principle is laid clearly
down, that ecclesiastical administration is conducted by those who are intrusted with the government of the Church, and is
confirmed by the people.
Amid all defects we find that the
worship of the Church was very hearty. If the sea be a beautiful thing, is not
this crowded congregation more so, in which the mingled voice of men, women,
and children follows our prayer to God? At the feast of a martyr strangers from
all sides were wont to assemble at his grave and wait from over-night to midday
beguiling the time with hymns; indeed, the antiphonal method of chanting used
under the influence of Basil, who seems to have been very fond of music, was a
subject of suspicion and accusation to churches where different methods
prevailed. The good old custom was still observed of using at the
lighting of the lamps the form, We praise the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.
The constant tradition of the Church has
been that large reforms, not only musical but liturgical, were due to Basil
himself. M. de Broglie is of opinion that the general character of these
reforms was a separation of the offices in which all the faithful took part
from those especially reserved forpriests. And he believes that the extremely long
form in which the Liturgy of St. Basil has reached us is that which was
intended for the clergy. The character of that liturgy may perhaps be thus
roughly described for the English reader. He must suppose a service far too
long to be used in combination with any other or with a sermon. He must suppose
the sacrificial idea which is expressed in the first of our post-communion
collects to be transferred to the ante-communion, applied distinctly to the
elements as representing the sacrifice of Christ, and made the centre for intercessions, supplications, memorials, and
ritual of a rich variety. He must suppose that an invocation of the Holy
Spirit, uttered at a point subsequent to the recital of the words of
Institution, effects the consecration, which with us is performed by those
words alone. And he must suppose the sacramental idea of participation to come
in at the conclusion, as the feast upon the completed sacrifice, instead of
being, as with us, the first and leading idea of the service.
XII
THE END
It is of a piece with Basil’s habitual silence on the
general affairs of the empire that he should seem to be insensible of the shock
caused by the approach of the Goths in 378. A letter to Eusebius in exile in
Thrace does show at least a consciousness of a disturbed state of the country,
and he is afraid of exposing his courier to needless danger by entrusting him
with a present for his friend. But this is all. He may have written letters showing
an interest in the fortunes of the empire which have not been preserved. But
his whole soul was absorbed in the cause of Catholic truth, and in the fate of
the Church. His youth had been steeped in culture, but the work of his ripe
manhood left no time for the literary amusement of the dilettante. So it may be
that the intense earnestness with which he said to himself, “This one thing I
do,” of his work as a shepherd of souls, and a fighter for the truth, and his
knowledge that for the doing of this work his time was short, accounts for the
absence from his correspondence of many a topic of more than contemporary
interest. At all events, it is not difficult to descry that the turn in the
stream of civil history was of vital moment to the cause which Basil held dear.
The approach of the enemy was fraught with important consequences to the
Church. The imperial attention was diverted from persecution of the Catholics
to defence of the realm. Then came the disaster of Adrianople, and the terrible
end of the unfortunate Valens. Gratian, a sensible lad, of Catholic sympathies,
restored the exiled bishops, and Basil, in the few months of life yet left him,
may have once more embraced his faithful friend Eusebius. The end drew rapidly
near. Basil was only fifty, but he was an old man. Work, sickness, and trouble
had worn him out. His health had never been good. A chronic liver complaint was
a constant cause of distress and depression.
In 373 he had been at death’s door. Indeed, the news
of his death was actually circulated, and bishops arrived at Caesarea with the
probable object of arranging the succession. He had submitted to the treatment
of a course of natural hot baths, but with small beneficial result. By 376, as
he playfully reminds Amphilochius, he had lost all his teeth. At last the
powerful mind and the fiery enthusiasm of duty were no longer able to stimulate
the energies of the feeble frame.
The winter of 378-9 dealt the last blow, and with the
first day of what, to us, is now the new year, the great spirit fled. Gregory,
alas! was not at the bedside. But he has left us a narrative which bears the
stamp of truth. For some time the bystanders thought that the dying bishop had
ceased to breathe. Then the old strength blazed out at the last. He spoke with
vigour, and even ordained some of the faithful who were with him. Then he lay
once more feeble and evidently passing away. Crowds surrounded his residence,
praying eagerly for his restoration to them, and willing to give their lives
for his. With a few final words of advice and exhortation, he said: “Into thy
hands I commend my spirit,” and so ended.
The funeral was a scene of intense excitement and
rapturous reverence. Crowds filled every open space, and every gallery and
window; Jews and Pagans joined with Christians in lamentation, and the cries
and groans of the agitated oriental multitude drowned the music of the hymns
which were sung. The press was so great that several fatal accidents added to
the universal gloom. Basil was buried in the “sepulchre of his fathers”—a
phrase which may possibly mean in the ancestral tomb of his family at Caesarea.
So passed away a leader of men in whose case the epithet ‘great’ is no conventional compliment. He shared with his illustrious brother primate of Alexandria the honour of rallying the Catholic forces in the darkest days of the Arian depression. He was great as foremost champion of a great cause, great in contemporary and posthumous influence, great in industry and self-denial, great as a literary controversialist. The estimate formed of him by his contemporaries is expressed in the generous, if somewhat turgid, eloquence of the laudatory oration of the slighted Gregory of Nazianzus. Yet nothing in Gregory’s eulogy goes beyond the expressions of the prelate who has seemed to some to be “the wisest and holiest man in the East in the succeeding century.” Basil is described by the saintly and learned Theodoret in terms that might seem exaggerated when applied to any but his master, as the light not of Cappadocia only, but of the world. To Sophronius he is the “glory of the Church.” To Isidore of Pelusium, he seems to speak as one inspired. To the Council of Chalcedon he is emphatically a minister of grace to the second council of Nicaea a layer of the foundations of orthodoxy. His death lacks the splendid triumph of the martyrdoms of Polycarp and Cyprian. His life lacks the vivid incidents which make the adventures of Athanasius an enthralling romance. He does not attract the sympathy evoked by the unsophisticated simplicity of Gregory his friend or of Gregory his brother. There does not linger about his memory the close personal interest that binds humanity to Augustine, or the winning loyalty and tenderness that charm far off centuries into affection for Theodoret. Sometimes he seems a hard, almost a sour man. Sometimes there is a jarring reminder of his jealousy for his own dignity. Evidently he was not a man who could be thwarted without a rupture of pleasant relations, or slighted with impunity. In any subordinate position he was not easy to get on with. But a man of strong will, convinced that he is championing a righteous cause, will not hesitate to sacrifice, among other things, the amenities that come of amiable absence of self-assertion. To Basil, to assert himself was to assert the truth of Christ and of His Church. And in the main the identification was a true one. Basil was human, and occasionally, as in the famous dispute with Anthimus, so disastrously fatal to the typical friendship of the earlier manhood, he may have failed to perceive that the Catholic cause would not suffer from the existence of two metropolitans in Cappadocia. But the great archbishop could be an affectionate friend, thirsty for sympathy. And he was right in his estimate of his position. Broadly speaking, Basil, more powerfully than any contemporary official, worker, or writer in the Church, did represent and defend through all the populous provinces of the empire which stretched from the Balkans to the Mediterranean, from the Aegean to the Euphrates, the cause whose failure or success has been discerned, even by thinkers of no favourable predisposition, to have meant death or life to the Church. St. Basil is duly canonized in the grateful memory, no less than in the official bead-roll, of Christendom, and we may be permitted to regret that the existing Kalendar of the Anglican liturgy has not found room for so illustrious a Doctor in its somewhat niggard list. For the omission some amends have lately been made in the erection of a statue of the great archbishop of Caesarea under the dome of the Cathedral of St. Paul in London.
The extant works of St. Basil may be conveniently
classified as follows:
I. Dogmatic.
Adversus Eunomium. Against Eunomius
De Spiritu Sancto.
II. Exegetic.
Hexaemeron.
Homiliae on Psalms.
Commentary on Isaiah
III. Ascetic.
Tractatus praevii.
Procemium de Judicio Dei and De Fide.
Moralia.
Regales fusius tractates,
and Regulae brevius tractates.
IV. Homiletic. XXIV Homilies
Dogmatic
Moral.
Panegyric.
V. Letters.
Dogmatic.
Historic.
Dogmatic.
Moral.
Disciplinary.
Consolatory.
Commendatory.
Familiar.
VI. Liturgic.
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