Council of Tyana.
368. Semiarian Council in Caria. Famine in Cappadocia
369. Death of Emmelia. Basil visits Samosata.
370. Death of Eusebius of Cæsarea
Election and consecration of Basil to the see of Cæsarea.
Basil makes visitation tour.
371. Basil threatened by arian bishops and by modestus.
Valens, travelling slowly from Nicomedia to Cæsarea, arrives at the end of the year.
372. Valens attends great service at Cæsarea on the Epiphany, Jan. 6.
Interviews between Basil and Valens.
Death of Galates.
Valens endows Ptochotrophium and quits Cæsarea.
Basil visits Eusebius at Samosata.
Claim of Anthimus to metropolitan dignity at Tyana.
Basil resists Anthimus.
Basil Forces Gregory of Nazianzus to be consecrated bishop of Sasima, and consecrates his brother Gregory to Nyssa. Consequent estrangement of Basil and Gregory of Nazianzus.
Basil in Armenia. Creed signed by Eustathius.
373. St. Epiphanius writes the "Ancoratus."
Death of Athanasius.
Basil visited by Jovinus of Perrha, and by Sanctissimus of Antioch.
374. Death of Auxentius and consecration of Ambrose at Milan.
Basil writes the "De Spiritu Sancto."
Eusebius of Samosata banished to Thrace.
Death of Gregory, bp. of Nazianzus, the elder.
375. Death of Valentinian. Gratian and Valentinian II. emperors.
Synod of Illyria, and Letter to the Orientals.
Semiarian Council of Cyzicus.
Demosthenes harasses the Catholics.
Gregory of Nyssa deposed.
376. Synod of Iconium.
Open denunciation of Eustathius by Basil.
378. Death of Valens, Aug. 9.
Eusebius of Samosata and Meletius return from exile.
379. Death of Basil, Jan. 1.
Theodosius Augustus.
Prolegomena.
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Sketch of the Life and Works of Saint Basil.
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I. Life.
I.--Parentage and Birth.
Under the persecution of the second Maximinus, [1] a Christian gentleman of good position and fair estate in Pontus [2] and Macrina his wife, suffered severe hardships. [3] They escaped with their lives, and appear to have retained, or recovered, some of their property. [4] Of their children the names of two only have survived: Gregory [5] and Basil. [6] The former became bishop of one of the sees of Cappadocia. The latter acquired a high reputation in Pontus and the neighboring districts as an advocate of eminence, [7] and as a teacher of rhetoric. His character in the Church for probity and piety stood very high. [8] He married an orphaned gentlewoman named Emmelia, whose father had suffered impoverishment and death for Christ's sake, and who was herself a conspicuous example of high-minded and gentle Christian womanhood. Of this happy union were born ten children, [9] five boys and five girls. One of the boys appears to have died in infancy, for on the death of the elder Basil four sons and five daughters were left to share the considerable wealth which he left behind him. [10] Of the nine survivors the eldest was a daughter, named, after her grandmother, Macrina. The eldest of the sons was Basil, the second Naucratius, and the third Gregory. Peter, the youngest of the whole family, was born shortly before his father's death. Of this remarkable group the eldest is commemorated as Saint Macrina in the biography written by her brother Gregory. Naucratius died in early manhood, [11] about the time of the ordination of Basil as reader. The three remaining brothers occupied respectively the sees of Cæsarea, Nyssa, and Sebasteia.
As to the date of St. Basil's birth opinions have varied between 316 and 330. The later, which is supported by Garnier, Tillemont, Maran, [12] Fessler, [13] and Böhringer, may probably be accepted as approximately correct. [14] It is true that Basil calls himself an old man in 374, [15] but he was prematurely worn out with work and bad health, and to his friends wrote freely and without concealment of his infirmities. There appears no reason to question the date 329 or 330.
Two cities, Cæsarea in Cappadocia and Neocæsarea 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. [16] 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. [17] Assenting, then, to the considerations which have been held to afford reasonable ground for assigning Cæsarea as the birthplace, we may adopt the popular estimation of Basil as one of "The Three Cappadocians," [18] 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. [19] 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. [20] 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.
[1] Of sufferers in this supreme struggle of heathenism to delay the official recognition of the victory of the Gospel over the empire, the Reformed Kalendar of the English Church preserves the memory of St. Blaise (Blasius), bishop of Sebasteia in Armenia, St. George, St. Agnes, St. Lucy, St. Margaret of Antioch, St. Katharine of Alexandria.
[2] Greg. Naz., Or. xliii. (xx.). N.B. The reff. to the orations and letters of Greg. Naz. are to the Ordo novus in Migne.
[3] Id.
[4] Greg. Nyss., Vit. Mac. 178, 191.
[5] Bishop of an unknown see. Of the foolish duplicity of Gregory of Nyssa in fabricating a letter from him, see the mention in Epp. lviii., lix., lx.
[6] Basileios, Basilius=royal or kingly. The name was a common one. Fabricius catalogues "alii Basilii ultra xxx.," all of some fame. The derivation of Basileus is uncertain, and the connexion of the last syllable with leus=leos=laos, people, almost certainly wrong. The root may be ÖBA, with the idea that the leader makes the followers march. With the type of name, cf. Melchi and the compounds of Melech (e.g. Abimelech) in Scripture, and King, LeRoy, Koenig, among modern names.
[7] Greg. Nyss., Vit. Mac. 392.
[8] Greg. Nyss., Vit. Mac. 186.
[9] Greg. Nyss., Vit. Mac. 182.
[10] Greg. Naz., Or. xliii. (xx.).
[11] Ib. 181, 191.
[12] 329. Prudent Maran, the Ben. Ed. of Basil, was a Benedictine exiled for opposing the Bull Unigenitus. 1762.
[13] "Natus. c. 330."
[14] Gregory of Nazianzus, so called, was born during the episcopate of his father, Gregory, bishop of Nazianzus. Gregory the elder died in 373, after holding the see forty-five years. The birth of Gregory the younger cannot therefore be put before 328, and Basil was a little younger than his friend. (Greg. Naz., Ep. xxxiii.) But the birth of Gregory in his father's episcopate has naturally been contested. Vide D.C.B. ii. p. 748, and L. Montaut, Revue Critique on Greg. of N. 1878.
[15] Ep. clxii.
[16] Gregory of Nazianzus calls Basil a Cappadocian in Ep. vi., and speaks of their both belonging to the same patris. In his Homily In Gordium martyrem, Basil mentions the adornment of Cæsarea as being his own adornment. In Epp. lxxvi. and xcvi. he calls Cappadocia his patris. In Ep. lxxiv., Cæsarea. In Ep. li. it is doubtful whether it is Pontus, whence he writes, which is his patris, or Cæsarea, of which he is writing. In Ep. lxxxvii. it is apparently Pontus. Gregory of Nyssa (Orat. I. in xl. Mart.) calls Sebaste the patris of his forefathers, possibly because Sebaste had at one time been under the jurisdiction of Cappadocia. So in the N.T. patris is the place of the early life and education of our Lord.
[17] Maran, Vit. Bas. i.
[18] Böhringer.
[19] Kappadoches, Koetes, Kilikes, tria kappa kakista. On Basil's own estimate of the Cappadocian character, cf. p. 153, n. cf. also Isidore of Pelusium, i. Epp. 351, 352, 281.
[20] The edict of Milan was issued in 313.
II.--Education.
The place most closely connected with St. Basil's early years is neither Cæsarea nor Neocæsarea, but an insignificant village not far from the latter place, where he was brought up by his admirable grandmother Macrina. [21] In this neighbourhood his family had considerable property, and here he afterwards resided. The estate was at Annesi on the river Iris (Jekil-Irmak), [22] and lay in the neighbourhood of scenery of romantic beauty. Basil's own description [23] of his retreat on the opposite side of the Iris matches the reference of Gregory of Nazianzus [24] 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 (cf. Letter CX. § 1) was "not far from Neocæsarea." As a matter of fact, the Iris nowhere winds nearer to Neocæsarea 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 Cæsarea, Basil's usual place of residence, Annesi is near Neocæsarea. 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. [25]
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. [26] Here, then, Basil was taught the rudiments of religion by his grandmother, [27] and by his father, [28] in accordance with the teaching of the great Gregory the Wonder-worker. [29] Here he learned the Catholic faith.
At an early age he seems to have been sent to school at Cæsarea, [30] and there to have formed the acquaintance of an Eusebius, otherwise unknown, [31] Hesychius, [32] and Gregory of Nazianzus, [33] and to have conceived a boyish admiration for Dianius the archbishop. [34]
From Cæsarea Basil went to Constantinople, and there studied rhetoric and philosophy with success. Socrates [35] and Sozomen [36] say that he worked at Antioch under Libanius. It may be that both these writers have confounded Basil of Cæsarea with the Basil to whom Chrysostom dedicated his De Sacerdotio, and who was perhaps the bishop of Raphanea, who signed the creed of Constantinople. [37]
There is no corroboration of a sojourn of Basil of Cæsarea at Antioch. Libanius was at Constantinople in 347, [38] and there Basil may have attended his lectures. [39]
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, [40] 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, [41] 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. [42] 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. [43] Himerius, a pagan, and Prohæresius, an Armenian Christian, are mentioned among the well-known professors whose classes Basil attended. [44] Among early friendships, formed possibly during his university career, Basil's own letters name those with Terentius [45] and Sophronius. [46]