Basil

Basil of Caesarea, known as Basil the Great, was born in the early fourth century at Caesarea Mazaca in Cappadocia, in the eastern Roman Empire, into a family of substantial means and deep Christian commitment. His exact year of birth is not recorded; later writers infer a date around 329 or 330 from the tradition that he was about fifty when he died. His grandmother Macrina the Elder had been formed in the tradition of Gregory Thaumaturgus, and his parents, Basil the Elder and Emmelia, raised a large household several of whose members the Church later numbered among the saints, including Macrina the Younger, Gregory of Nyssa, and Peter of Sebaste. Basil received his first education at home and in Caesarea, then studied in Constantinople and for several years at Athens, where he formed a close and lasting friendship with Gregory of Nazianzus. After a short period as a teacher of rhetoric in his native city he underwent a conversion, received baptism, and distributed a large part of his inheritance to the poor.

He then traveled through the monastic settlements of Egypt, Palestine, Coele-Syria, and Mesopotamia to observe both eremitical and cenobitic life. Returning to Pontus, he founded a community on the family estate at Annesi beside the Iris River, opposite the retreat of his mother and sister. There he composed the Moral Rules and the Longer and Shorter Rules, which became the principal legislative texts of Eastern monasticism. These writings stress life in common, obedience, liturgical prayer, work, and practical charity rather than extreme individual austerity. In the mid-360s Bishop Eusebius of Caesarea ordained him to the priesthood. Basil assisted in the administration of the diocese and in the defense of Nicene doctrine against Arianizing pressure at court and in the local churches.

Upon Eusebius’s death in 370, Basil was elected bishop of Caesarea and metropolitan of Cappadocia, despite opposition from some local clergy and from the imperial court. As bishop he resisted the emperor Valens, who favored Homoian Arianism, and he labored to keep the churches of Asia Minor in communion with Athanasius of Alexandria and with the West. His principal dogmatic works, the three books Against Eunomius and the treatise On the Holy Spirit, argued for the full divinity of the Son and of the Holy Spirit and helped prepare the theological ground for the Council of Constantinople in 381, which he did not live to see. He reorganized the vast diocese after the civil division of Cappadocia, appointed orthodox bishops including his brother Gregory at Nyssa, and maintained an extensive correspondence that remains a major source for the ecclesiastical history of the period. He did not hold the office of patriarch of any of the ancient patriarchal sees.

Basil’s pastoral work included the foundation of the Basiliad, a large philanthropic complex outside Caesarea that combined a hospital, a hospice for travelers and the poor, and workshops, and that became a model of organized Christian charity in the Greek East. He is also associated with liturgical reform; the anaphora known as the Liturgy of Saint Basil remains in use in the Byzantine rite on his feast, on the Sundays of Lent, and on other solemn days, though the precise extent of his personal authorship is debated. Worn by illness, ascetic practice, and the cares of office, he died at Caesarea on 1 January 379. Gregory of Nazianzus and Gregory of Nyssa delivered orations that fixed his reputation. The Eastern churches commemorate him on 1 January and, together with Gregory of Nazianzus and John Chrysostom, as one of the Three Holy Hierarchs on 30 January; the Roman calendar keeps his feast on 2 January. He is honored as a Doctor of the Church. He was never married and had no children; his sanctity was recognized by acclamation in antiquity rather than by a later formal process of canonization.