Basil

Basil of Caesarea, known throughout the churches as Basil the Great, was a fourth-century bishop, theologian, and organizer of monastic life in the Greek-speaking East. He was born at Caesarea Mazaca in Cappadocia, a city of the Roman Empire, into a family of means and of strong Christian tradition. His grandmother Macrina the Elder had endured persecution; his father Basil the Elder taught rhetoric; his mother Emmelia came from a similarly committed household. Among his brothers and sisters were Macrina the Younger, who led a community of ascetic women on the family estates, Gregory, later bishop of Nyssa, and Peter, later bishop of Sebaste. This kin network, together with the Cappadocian landscape of estates and towns, shaped his sense of church and of social obligation.

He studied in Caesarea, then in Constantinople, and for a substantial period at Athens, where he formed a close friendship with Gregory of Nazianzus. After returning home he taught rhetoric for a short time, then received baptism and undertook a journey to monastic settlements in Egypt, Palestine, Syria, and Mesopotamia. He withdrew to a retreat in Pontus, near the river Iris, and there lived in ascetic discipline while gathering companions. The Longer and Shorter Rules and related ascetical writings that circulated under his name became the chief guide for communal monasticism in the Byzantine East, distinct in emphasis from the more eremitical patterns he had observed in Egypt.

As a priest in Caesarea he assisted Bishop Eusebius, became known as a preacher, and took a leading part in famine relief. In 370 the church of Caesarea elected him bishop, and with that office he became metropolitan of Cappadocia. His years as bishop were marked by conflict with Arian imperial policy under Valens, by the civil partition of Cappadocia which threatened his metropolitan rights, and by strained relations among Nicene bishops. He wrote against Eunomius, composed the treatise On the Holy Spirit in defense of the Spirit's divinity and of the church's doxological practice, and sought communion with Athanasius and with the bishops of the West. He appointed allies to sees, including his brother Gregory at Nyssa, and worked to restore a Nicene consensus that would only be secured after his death, at Constantinople in 381.

Alongside controversy he built up the charitable and liturgical life of his church. Outside Caesarea he established a complex of buildings for the sick, the poor, and travelers, later called the Basiliad, which became a model of episcopal philanthropy. He left hundreds of letters, homilies on the six days of creation (the Hexaemeron) and on the psalms, and moral addresses. A Eucharistic formulary known as the Liturgy of Saint Basil is used in the Byzantine rite on his feast, on the Sundays of Lent, and on other appointed days, though the precise relation of the received text to his own hand remains a matter of historical discussion.

Basil died at Caesarea on 1 January 379, after years of ill health, and was buried in his city. Gregory of Nazianzus delivered a funeral oration that already treated him as a standard of episcopal and monastic virtue. The East commemorates him on 1 January and, with Gregory of Nazianzus and John Chrysostom, as one of the Three Holy Hierarchs on 30 January. The Latin Church keeps his feast on 2 January and numbers him among the Doctors of the Church. He is regarded as a patron of monks, of those who administer hospitals, of reformers, of education, and of Cappadocia.