XL. deals with the abuse of holy places and solemn assemblies. Christians ought not to appear in places sacred to martyrs or in their neighbourhood for any other reason than to pray and commemorate the sacred dead. Anything like a worldly festival or common-mart at such times is like the sacrilege of the money changers in the Temple precincts. [561]
LI. gives directions for monastic discipline. "Let the superintendent exert discipline after the manner of a physician treating his patients. He is not angry with the sick, but fights with the disease, and sets himself to combat their bad symptoms. If need be, he must heal the sickness of the soul by severer treatment; for example, love of vain glory by the imposition of lowly tasks; foolish talking, by silence; immoderate sleep, by watching and prayer; idleness, by toil; gluttony, by fasting; murmuring, by seclusion, so that no brothers may work with the offender, nor admit him to participation in their works, till by his penitence that needeth not to be ashamed he appear to be rid of his complaint."
LV. expounds at some length the doctrine of original sin, to which disease and death are traced.
The 313 Regulæ brevius tractatæ are, like the Regulæ fusius tractatæ, in the form of questions and answers. Fessler singles out as a striking specimen XXXIV.
Q. "How is any one to avoid the sin of man-pleasing, and looking to the praises of men?"
A. "There must be a full conviction of the presence of God, an earnest intention to please Him, and a burning desire for the blessings promised by the Lord. No one before his Master's very eyes is excited into dishonouring his Master and bringing condemnation on himself, to please a fellow servant."
XLVII. points out that it is a grave error to be silent when a brother sins.
XLIX. tells us that vain gloriousness (to perpereuesthai. Cf. 1 Cor. xiii. 4) consists in taking things not for use, but for ostentation; and L. illustrates this principle in the case of dress.
Q. "When a man has abandoned all more expensive clothing, does he sin, and, if so, how, if he wishes his cheap upper garment or shoes to be becoming to him?"
A. "If he so wishes in order to gratify men, he is obviously guilty of the sin of man-pleasing. He is alienated from God, and is guilty of vain glory even in these cheap belongings."
LXIV. is a somewhat lengthy comment on Matt. xvii. 6. To "make to offend," or "to scandalize," is to induce another to break the law, as the serpent Eve, and Eve Adam.
LXXXIII. is pithy.
Q. "If a man is generally in the right, and falls into one sin, how are we to treat him?
A. "As the Lord treated Peter."
CXXVIII. is on fasting.
Q. "Ought any one to be allowed to exercise abstinence beyond his strength, so that he is hindered in the performance of his duty?"
A. "This question does not seem to me to be properly worded. Temperance [562] does not consist in abstinence from earthly food, [563] wherein lies the neglecting of the body' [564] condemned by the Apostles, but in complete departure from one's own wishes. And how great is the danger of our falling away from the Lord's commandment on account of our own wishes is clear from the words of the Apostle, fulfilling the desires of the flesh, and of the mind, and were by nature the children of wrath.'" [565] The numbers in the Coenobium are not to fall below ten, the number of the eaters of the Paschal supper. [566] Nothing is to be considered individual and personal property. [567] Even a man's thoughts are not his own. [568] Private friendships are harmful to the general interests of the community. [569] At meals there is to be a reading, which is to be thought more of than mere material food. [570] The cultivation of the ground is the most suitable occupation for the ascetic life. [571] No fees are to be taken for the charge of children entrusted to the monks. [572] Such children are not to be pledged to join the community till they are old enough to understand what they are about. [573]
[530] De Jud. Dei. § 8.
[531] cf. Ceillier VI. viii. 3.
[532] houtos phronodmen kai houtos Baptizomen eis Toiada homoousion, kata ten entolen autou tou kuriou hemon 'Iesou Christou eipontos poreuthentes matheteusate k.t.l. §; the co-essential Trinity being described as involved in the baptismal formula.
[533] § 1.
[534] § 1.
[535] sunkatathesis adiakritos ton akousthenton en plerophoria tes aletheias ton keruchthenton Theou chariti. § 1.
[536] § 2.
[537] The rest of the clause seems to be rather in the way of explanation and assertion, and here he explains, as cited before, that the baptismal formula involves the homoousion.
[538] Ath., De Syn. § 31, in this series, p. 467.
[539] Reg. i.
[540] Reg. ix.
[541] Reg. xi.
[542] Reg. xxxv.
[543] Reg. xxviii.
[544] Reg. lxxx. § 22. Fessler (De Pat. Sæc. iv. p. 514) notes the similarity of a Homily, De perfectione vitæ Monachorum, published under the name of St. Basil in a book published by C. F. Matthæi at Moscow in 1775, entitled Joannis Xiphilini et Basilii M. aliquot orationes. He describes it as quite unworthy in style of St. Basil.
[545] Combefis, however, refused to accept them.
[546] In this series, p. 448.
[547] With this may be compared the uncompromising denunciation in Letter cclxxxviii., and what is said in the first of the three Tractatus Prævii. It has been represented that St. Basil introduced the practice of irrevocable vows. cf. Dr. Travers Smith, St. Basil, p. 223. De Broglie, L'Eglise et l'empire, v. 180: "Avant lui, c'était, aux yeux de beaucoup de ceux même qui s'y destinaient, une vocation libre, affaire de goût et de zèle, pouvant être dilaissée à volonté, comme elle avait été embrassée par chois. Le sceau de la perpetiuté obligatoire, ce fut Basile qui l'imprima; c'est à lui réellement que remonte, comme règlé commune, et comme habitude générale, l'institution des voeux perpétuels. Helyot, Hist. des ordres monastiques, i. § 3, Bultean, Hist. des moines d'orient, p. 402, Montalembert, Hist. des moines d'occident, i. 105, s'accordent à reconnaitre que l'usage général des voeux perpétuels remonte à St. Basil." To St. Basil's posthumous influence the system may be due. But it seems questionable whether St. Basil's Rule included formal vows of perpetual obligation in the more modern sense. I am not quite sure that the passages cited fully bear this out. Is the earnest exhortation not to quit the holier life consistent with a binding pledge? Would not a more distinctly authoritative tone be adopted? cf. Letters xlv. and xlvi. It is plain that a reminder was needed, and that the plea was possible that the profession had not the binding force of matrimony. The line taken is rather that a monk or nun ought to remain in his or her profession, and that it is a grievous sin to abandon it, than that there is an irrevocable contract. So in the Sermo asceticus (it is not universally accepted), printed by Garnier between the Moralia and the Regulæ, it is said: "Before the profession of the religious life, any one is at liberty to get the good of this life, in accordance with law and custom, and to give himself to the yoke of wedlock. But when he has been enlisted, of his own consent, it is fitting (prosekei) that he keep himself for God, as one of the sacred offerings, so that he may not risk incurring the damnation of sacrilege, by defiling in the service of this world the body consecrated by promise to God." This prosekei is repeated in the Regulæ. Basil's monk, says Fialon (Et. Hist., p. 49) was irrevocably bound by the laws of the Church, by public opinion, and, still more, by his conscience. It is to the last that the founder of the organisation seems to appeal. In Letter xlvi. the reproach is not addressed merely to a "religieuse échappé de son cloitre," as De Broglie has it, but to a nun guilty of unchastity. Vows of virginity were among the earliest of religious obligations. (cf. J. Martyr, Apol. i. 15, Athenvaras, Legat. 32, Origen, C. Celsum. vii. 48.) Basil (Can. xviii.) punishes a breach of the vow of virginity as he does adultery, but it was not till the Benedictine rule was established in Europe that it was generally regarded as absolutely irrevocable. (cf. D.C.A. s.v. "Nun," ii. p. 1411, and H. C. Lea's History of Celibacy, Philadelphia, 1867.) As a matter of fact, Basil's coenobitic monasticism, in comparison with the "wilder and more dreamy asceticism which prevailed in Egypt and Syria" (Milman, Hist. Christ. iii. 109), was "far more moderate and practical." It was a community of self-denying practical beneficence. Work and worship were to aid one another. This was the highest life, and to quit it was desertion of and disloyalty to neighbour and God. To Basil, is it not rather the violation of holiness than the technical breach of a formal vow which is sacrilege? Lea (p. 101) quotes Epiphanius (Panar. 61) as saying that it was better for a lapsed monk to take a lawful wife and be reconciled to the church through Penance. Basil in Can. lx. (p. 256) contemplates a similar reconciliation.
[548] Supported by ', B, C, and L.
[549] iii. 21.
[550] to proestoti. cf. Just. Mart. Apol. i. § 87.
[551] 2 Thess. iii. 10.
[552] Ps. lxxvii. 3, LXX.
[553] Ps. v. 3.
[554] Ps. lv. 17.
[555] Ps. xci. 6, LXX. daimonion mesembrinon. cf. Jer. Taylor, Serm. ii. pt. 2: "Suidas" (Col. 1227) "tells of certain empusæ that used to appear at noon, at such times as the Greeks did celebrate the funerals of the dead; and at this time some of the Russians do fear the noon-day devil, which appeareth like a mourning widow to reapers of hay and corn, and uses to break their arms and legs unless they worship her."
[556] Acts iii. 1.
[557] cf. Pythag. Aur. Carm. 40 (quoted by Jer. Taylor in Holy Living and Holy Dying): med' hupnon malakoisin ep' ommasi prosdexasthai, prin ton hemerinon ergon tris hekaston epelthein, pe pareben; ti d' erexa; ti moi deon ouk etelesthe.
[558] Acts xvi. 25.
[559] Ps. cxix. 62.
[560] Ps. cxix. 148.
[561] cf. Letterclxix. and notes on this case in the Prolegomena. It is curious to notice in the Oriental church a survival of something akin to the irreverence deprecated by St. Basil. A modern traveller in Russia has told me that on visiting a great cemetery on the day which the Greek church observes, like November 2 in the Latin, in memory of the dead, he found a vast and cheerful picnic going on.
[562] enkrateia. Gal. v. 23.
[563] aloga bromata. Combefis translates "terreni cibi." Garnier "nihil ad rem pertinentium."
[564] Col. ii. 23.
[565] Eph. ii. 3.
[566] Sermo Asceticus, 3.
[567] Reg. brev. tract. lxxxv., but see note on p.
[568] Prooem. in Reg. fus. tract.
[569] Sermo Asceticus. 5. The sacrifice of Gregory of Nazianzus may have been due to the idea that all private interests must be subordinated to those of the Church.
[570] Reg. brev. tract. clxxx.
[571] Reg. fus. tract. xxxviii.
[572] Reg. brev. tract. ccciv.
[573] Reg. fus. tract. xv. After the Regulæ are printed, in Garnier's Ed. 34, Constitutiones Monasticæ, with the note that their genuineness is more suspicious than that of any of the ascetic writings. They treat of the details of monastic life, of the virtues to be cultivated in it and the vices to be avoided. Sozomen (H.E. iii. 14) has been supposed to refer to them. All later criticism has been unfavourable to them. cf. Maran, Vit. Bas. xliii. 7; Ceillier VI. viii. 3; Fessler, p. 524. It may be remarked generally that the asceticism of St. Basil is eminently practical. He has no notion of mortification for mortification's sake,--no praise for the self-advertising and vain-glorious rigour of the Stylites. Neglecting the body, or "not sparing the body" by exaggerated mortification, in is cclviii. condemned as Manichæism. It is of course always an objection to exclusive exaltation of the ascetic life that it is a kind of moral docetism, and ignores the fact that Christianity has not repudiated all concern with the body, but is designed to elevate and to purify it. (cf. Böhringer vii. p. 150.) Basil may be not unjustly criticised from this point of view, and accused of the very Manichæism which he distinctly condemns. But it will be remembered that he recognises the holiness of marriage and family life, and if he thinks virginity and coenobitism a higher life, has no mercy for the dilettante asceticism of a morbid or indolent "incivisme." Valens, from the point of view of a master of legions, might deplore monastic celibacy, and press Egyptian monks by thousands into the ranks of his army. (cf. Milman, Hist. Christ. iii. 47.) Basil from his point of view was equally positive that he was making useful citizens, and that his industrious associates, of clean and frugal lives, were doing good service. "En effet, le moine basilien, n'est pas, comme le cénobite d'Égypte, séparé du monde par un mur infranchissable Les poissons meurent,' disait Saint Antoine, quand on les tire de l'eau, et les moines s'énervent dans les villes; rentrons vîte dans les montagnes, comme les poissons dans leau.' (Montalembert, Moines d'Occident, i. 61.) Les moines basiliens vivent aussi dans la solitude pour gagner le ciel, mais ils ne veulent pas le gagner seuls....Les principaux, au moins, doivent se mêler à la société pour l'instruire. Cet homme à la chevelure négligée, à la demarche posie, dont l'oeil nes s'égare jamais, ouvre son monastère à ses sembables, ou va les trouver, du moment qu'il s'agit de leur edification. Son contact fortifie le clergé; il entre lui-même dans les ordres, et devient collaborateur de l'évêque. Il va aux fètes des martyrs et prêche dans les églises. Il entre dans les maisons, prend part aux conversations, aux repas, et, tout en evitant les longs entretiens et les liaisons aux les femmes, et le directeur et le compagnon de piété des âmes....Le moine ne doit pas seulement soulager les moeux de l'âme. Les maisons des pauvres, dont se couvrait une parlie de l'Asie Mineure, étatent des asiles ouverts toutes les souffrances physiques....Pour Basile, ces deux institutions, le monastère et la maisons des pauvres, quoique séparées et distinctes, n'en formaient qu'une. A ses yeux, les secours corporels n'etaient qu'un moyen d'arriver à l'âme. Pendant que la main du moine servait les voyageurs, nourissait les pauvres, pausait les malades, ses lèvres leur distribuatent une aumône plus précieuse, celle de la parole de Dieu." Fialon, Ét Historique, pp. 51-53. A high ideal! Perhaps never more nearly realized than in the Cappadocian coenobia of the fourth century.