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THE FATHERS OF THE CHURCH A NEW TRANSLATION VOLUME 9 THE FATHERS OF THE CHURCH A NEW TRANSLATION EDITORIAL BOARD Roy JOSEPH DEFERRARI The Catholic University 0/ America Editorial Director RUDOLPH ARBESMANN, O.S.A. BERNARD M. PEEBLES Fordham University The Catholic University 0/ America STEPHAN KUTTNER ROBERT P. RUSSELL, O.S.A. The Catholic University 0/ America Villanova College MARTIN R. P. MCGtfIRE ANSELM STRITTMATTER, O.S.B. The Catholic University 0/ America St. Anselm's Priory WILFRID PARSONS, SJ. JAMES EDWARD TOBIN Georgetown University Queens College GERALD G. WALSH, S.J. Fordham University SAINT BASIL ASCETICAL WORKS Translated by SISTER M. MONICA WAGNER, C. S. C. The Catholic University of America Press Washington 17, D. C. 1962 NIHIL OBSTAT: JOHN M. A. FEARNS, S.T.D. Censor Librorum IMPRIMATUR: + FRANCIS CARDINAL SPELLMAN Archbishop ofN ew York The Nihil obstat and Imprimatur are official declarations that a book or pamphlet is free of doctrinal or moral error. No implication is contained therein that those who have granted the Nihil obstat and Imprimatur agree with the contents, opinions, or statements expressed. Copyright © 1950 THE CATHOLIC UNIVERSI1Y OF AMERICA PRESS All rights reserved Reprinted 1962, 1990 First short-run reprint 1999 ISBN 0-8132-0966-8 INTRODUCTION i\1 HATEVER MAY HAVE BEEN the factors responsible for the marked ebullience of the ascetical movement in the Church during the fourth century, the impulse to withdraw from society and enter a life of rigorous austerity in deserts or mountain fastnesses was widely experienced and it constitutes a dominant spiritual phenomenon of the age. An incident casually introduced by St. Augustine in the eighth book of his Confessions illustrates the far-reaching and impetuous force of this ascetical urge. During a conver sation in Milan with Augustine and Alypius, Ponticianus, a fellow African and an imperial court official, recalls the mar vels of the life of St. Anthony of Egypt and his followers. Amazed to find his hosts quite unacquainted with the history of so renowned a personage and ignorant as well of the fact that a populous monastery under the care of Bishop Ambrose was established just outside Milan, Ponticianus enlarges upon his theme to relate an instance of a sudden call to the mon astic life which had been experienced by two of his colleagues. Upon merely reading the life of St. Anthony which they had come upon by chance during an afternoon's stroll, both men were so profoundly affected and so transformed inwardly that they determined to embrace then and there the mon astic life, without even a final return to the imperial palace. Both, as it happened, were betrothed and their fiancees, upon hearing of their resolve, also consecrated their lives to God. Such was the environmental context in which providentially appeared and matured the masterful spirit of St. Basil the Great. His family background and his own inborn tendencies were, besides, admirably suited to the spirit of his age. Among v vi SAINT BASIL the nine survlvmg children born to the staunchly Christian and socially prominent Basil (father of the saint) and Em melia, there were three bishops, a monk, and a nun, Macrina, the eldest of the five daughters who became one of the most remarkable women of the fourth century. In her later years Emmelia, herself eminently holy, yielded to the persuasion of Macrina and gave up the comforts and privileges of her rank to live in a manner similar to that of her maids. Subse quently, when the family property has been divided among the children the widowed Emmelia, Macrina, the youngest son, Peter, the family servants, and a number of other high born women of Cappadocia and Pont us took up a retired life under a strict monastic regime in the ancestral home on the banks of the Iris opposite St. Basil's Pontic retreat. On this family estate at Annesi near Neo-Caesarea, St. Basil had received his first instruction in religion from his paternal grandmother, Macrina. Earlier, Macrina had been a disciple of St. Gregory Thaumaturgos and a fugitive with her hus band, a wealthy landholder and a devout Christian, from the persecution of Maximian. To his father, a prominent member of the bar in Caesarea and also a teacher of rhetoric, Basil owed his introduction to liberal studies and to that broad cul ture which later distinguished him. His subsequent training in Caesarea, the literary as well as the civil capital of Central Asia Minor, won him a local reputation for excellence in rhetoric and philosophy. More advanced study followed at Constantinople and finally at Athens, now only a little pro vincial city but an intellectual and academic metropolis. During his sojourn in Athens, St. Basil and his famous in separable friend, St. Gregory of Nazianzus, had often planned the monastic retreat which they promised each other one day to share. In 358, this dream was realized in the forest solitude INTRODUCTION Vll on the banks of the Iris, where Basil and Gregory collaborated over the Philocalia, a compilation of selected excerpts from Origen, and also in the drawing up of some monastic rules. Between the close of his university career in Athens in about 355 and his first retirement to the hermitage on the Iris, Basil had enjoyed a short but brilliant career as a teacher of rhetoric in Neo-Caesarea. His instinctive yearning for the monastic life, however, supported by the urging of his sister, Macrina, who feared (and with some reason according to St. Gregory of Nyssa) the effect of worldly success upon her gifted brother, led him to renounce his professional career and, after receiving Baptism, to dedicate himself thenceforward to God. In Epistle 223, we have Saint Basil's own account of his 'conversion': 1 'Having lavished much time on the vanity and having con sumed almost all my youth in the futility, which were mine while I occupied myself with the acquirement of the precepts of that wisdom made foolish by God, when one day arising as from a deep sleep I looked out upon the marvelous light of the truth of the Gospel, and beheld the uselessness of the wisdom "of the princes of this world that come to nought," bemoaning much my piteous life, I prayed that there be given me a guidance to the introduction to the teachings of religion. And before all things my care was to make some amendment in my character, which had for a long time been perverted by association with the wicked. And accordingly, having read the Gospel and having perceived therein that the greatest in centive to perfection is the selling of one's goods and the shar ing of them with the needy of the brethren, and the being entirely without thought of this life, and that the soul should 1 The following excerpt is from the translation by Roy J. Deferrari, Saint Basil, The Letters III (Loeb Classical Library, London and New York 1930). viii SAINT BASIL have no sympathetic concern with the things of this world, I prayed that I might find some one of the brethren who had taken this way of life, so as to traverse with him this life's brief flood. 'And indeed I found many men in Alexandria and many throughout the rest of Egypt, and others in Palestine and in Coele-Syria and Mesopotamia, at whose continence in living I marvelled, and I marvelled at their steadfastness in suffer ings, I was amazed at their vigour in prayers, at how they gained the mastery over sleep, being bowed down by no neces sity of nature, ever preserving exalted and unshackled the purpose of their soul, in hunger and thirst, in cold and naked ness, not concerning themselves with the body, nor deigning to waste a thought upon it; but as if passing their lives in alien flesh, they showed in deed what it is to sojourn here below, and what to have citizenship in heaven. Having marvelled at all this and deeming the lives of these men blessed, because by deed they show that they bear about in their body the mortification of Jesus, I prayed that I myself also, in so far as was attainable by me, might be an emulator of these men.' St. Basil's journey in search of a guide in the way of the monastic life took him to Egypt as an obvious main objective. Here the Christian Church was eminent both for orthodoxy and asceticism and here also was to be found the cradle of Christian eremetical or semi-eremetical life in its two lines of development: the Antonian and Pachomian systems. The first originated in the life and example of the Coptic solitary, St. Anthony, who, in spite of himself, attracted numerous disciples. Colonies of such hermits spread throughout Egypt and the East, but even the largest settlements remained essen tially eremetical. The system of Pachomius, a younger contem porary of Anthony, while it also involved an element of vol- INTRODUCTION ix untary, individual effort, especially as regards personal interior life, in its external framework it represents the earliest system atic effort toward a corporate and stable monasticism. Pacho mian coenobitism, considerably corrected and modified, was the model of the monastic system propagated by St. Basil. After something over a year spent in Eastern travel, Basil returned home to take up his own life of ascetical rigor in his Pontic solitude. Here he would realize his monastic ideals in a daily round of prayer, study, and agricultural labors. The disciples who flocked to Basil when he had settled in his re treat had not been directly inspired by his personal influence, however, although his prestige undoubtedly gave exceptional persuasiveness to his example. Monasteries had already been established in Pontus as well as in Roman Armenia and Paphlagonia by Eustathius of Sebaste, who was St. Basil's master in the ascetical life and his intimate friend until a breach on doctrinal grounds pennanently ruptured the inti macy. Precisely how much Basil owed to his predecessor in the development of his monastic ideals is difficult to assess, but it is undeniable that his influence was of capital impor tance in the formation of St. Basil's ascetical doctrine and even in the practical organization of his monasteries. It was probably at the advice of Eustathius that he undertook his extensive Eastern travels and at his return he placed himself under the direction of the Bishop of Sebaste. Perhaps it may safely be asserted that the creation of true coenobitical monachism, receptive of both sexes and all classes, was substantially the work of St. Basil. Such features as the common house, the common table, prayer in common, all of which became constant and permanent in Western mon asticism, may be considered original with him in the sense that he regulated and systematized these elements. The Antonian