Although we haven't really finished John Cashin, because one never really finishes studying any of these, because I'm not prepared to do anything more on him right now, we're going to go into Basil of Caesarea. And what I'd like to do is just share with you the article that's found in the Diccionary de Spiritualité. I've really just begun my own deeper reading into Basil and so this is what I'm doing now is just a repetition of somebody else's work and maybe as we go through I'll make comments that I see that are questionable from other things that I've done. We'll take a look first of all at his life and works and then more specifically his spiritual doctrine. Basil was born around 329 or 330 in Caesarea in Cappadocia, you know where Cappadocia is up there in Turkey. Notice about 329 or 330, well, he's born before Anthony dies, Anthony dies in 356, but he's in that same sort of century where Anthony's death is.

[01:14]

And his family is famous for its asceticism and virtue. His elder sister Makrina made a vow of virginity after the death of her fiancé. And his mother Emilia following the example and advice of Makaina, the daughter, withdrew to Alesi on the Pontus River to practice asceticism after the death of Basil the elder." So you've got his mother and his sister living sort of an ascetical life. And then in 351, when they went, the younger brother Peter also went with them. And later on, Peter becomes a bishop himself. Basil has two brothers who are bishops besides himself. Gregory of Nyssa is also his brother. And that's the same year that Basil departed for school in Athens. Basil had gone to school in Caesarea and then he'd gone to Constantinople and then eventually he went to Athens. And in Athens is where he met, well, at least he was closely related with Gregory Nazianzus, who became his lifelong friend.

[02:20]

Now some people say he met Gregory Nazianzus already in Constantinople, but in Athens they probably talked about spiritual things and developed a very deep friendship. In 352, another brother, Naucratius, with his servant, withdrew to the solitude of the Pontus to live an austere life. So you see, the whole family sort of has this thrust towards solitary life or an ascetic life. Basil returned from Athens in his school to Cappadocia, and when he did, he entered into contact with a man, a bishop, named Eustathius of Sebaste. Now, this Eustathius later on becomes suspect for some of his ascetic doctrine, but probably much of Basil's asceticism is the doctrine of Eustathius, or even a reaction against Eustathius, who was sort of a very rigid ascetic. This man, just atheist, certainly influenced Basil, and Basil, with his council, began a long pilgrimage to study asceticism in Egypt, Syria, and Mesopotamia.

[03:33]

So he took one of these trips, and we've seen this with other people. For instance, John Cassian took a long trip to visit Egypt. Palladius moved around to visit with different monks, and here you find Basil doing the same thing. And so he wants to visit the famous solitaries and the famous monasteries in Egypt, Syria, and Mesopotamia. It seems to have been a very fruitful trip, and Basil became aware of the various forms of ascetic life, so the pluralism. He also notes in his comments on his trip that there were excesses in some monks. That's one of the things Basil seems to avoid, this exaggerated, for instance, of Syrian monasticism. He also sees the need for prudence and wisdom, and the dangers of complete solitude. And Basil's going to be against, really, hermits, or against complete solitude. He's much more in favor of a community way of life. He saw the need for a rule which was at once flexible and precise.

[04:36]

And so returning from this pilgrimage, he was well prepared to set up his life of asceticism. Now, one of the interesting points about Basil, as a number of other people in this particular time, He had been baptized on his return from Athens before he set out on this trip. And I don't remember how old he was at that time, but he wasn't baptized as a child, and he was baptized after his education. The custom is the same way. Augustine is baptized when 28 or 29. And it seemed to have been a custom at this time to put off baptism until you were sure that you were going to live a good Christian life. But Basil is baptized, and then he goes on this pilgrimage trip, visiting the ascetics, and he comes home and he sets up his own ascetic way of life. So in 358, he went to the banks of the Iris River in Pontus and established himself there in a community life with some friends. And there's a letter that we have, letter 223, written much later in 375, which reports the beginnings of this religious life and his first experiences.

[05:48]

Some other letters are contemporary with this experiment. Letters 2, 14, and 22. We have the volume of these letters in, not Ancient Christian Writers, but the other one, The Fathers of the Church, Incorporated. You find the letters in there. And they're numbered according to these numbers. I think it's letter 2, which is one of the very famous ones, about the solitude on the banks of the Iris. They're filled with enthusiasm of his experiences. And also, possibly, these letters are his first attempt to codify a rule. And Basil shows himself, as he progresses, to be a born organizer and legislator. He's really a great administrator, because he becomes a bishop later on. In 364, Basil begins what we call the redaction of his rules, and throughout his life he seems to be correcting these rules, and that's why we have, well, at least three versions of the rules that he has.

[06:53]

He's always correcting them by his experience. In 365 he began to be occupied with the affairs of the Church, and then in 370 he became Bishop of Caesarea. following Eusebius of Caesarea who had ordained him priest. He always kept his nostalgia for solitude, and as a bishop he practiced a rigorous asceticism. He founded at Caesarea a large hospital under the supervision of monks, and this is one of the things about the monks at Basel, they run schools and hospitals very similar to the Syrian monks. In 372, he had to pronounce Eustathius of Sebas, his old mentor, a heretic, because Eustathius didn't admit the divinity of the Holy Spirit. And then Basil broke communion with Eustathius, and this caused him some serious problems. He died in 379 at the age of 50. So that, briefly, is his life. He's written quite a bit, but what we're interested in for monastic doctrine is what we call his ascetical writings.

[08:08]

And generally, there's 11 or 12 works that are included in his ascetical writings. The ones I'd like to mention now, without going into all the problem of authenticity, are the rules themselves. We have a work called the Moralia, or the Morals. This seems to have been, in many ways, an early edition of what later came to be the rules, and it's a series of questions and answers on a setting doctrine, and the question is posed and then the answer is given from scripture citations. Then in the Greek text you have two rules, one called the longer rule and the shorter rule. The longer rule is called longer because the question is posed and then the answer is given and it's a rather prolonged answer. It's probably earlier than the shorter rules. I think the longer rules have 55 questions and answers. The shorter rules have 213 or something like that.

[09:10]

I'm sorry, I don't have the details right now. But it's much shorter answers to all of the questions. But one of them, they seem to be redactions of the same thing. Now there's a rule also in Latin that is not found in the Greek text. Maybe I've mentioned that rule to you before. But Rufinus translated, or paraphrased, the Greek rules of Basil into Latin. And people usually thought that Rufinus had taken both this longer rule and the shorter rule and combined them and came up with 203 questions, paraphrasing two redactions of the rule. But Jean Ribermont has shown that that's not the case, that what the Latin rule is, is a Latin translation of a Greek redaction which has been lost. Redaction of the longer rule? Well, the chronology goes, the Moralia would be first, then the Latin rule, which the Greek text has lost, then the shorter rules, and then the longer rules.

[10:19]

I'm not sure if it's shorter or longer, I may have said it wrong. But anyhow, the Latin text, see, is earlier than the other two versions. And probably the reason it was lost in Greek is because Basil himself wanted to discard it. Because he had changed it, he had redacted his rules. And so it wasn't kept in the Greek manuscripts, but Ribemont has shown that there's a Syriac translation and a Latin translation, and they're not translations of each other. They both seem to indicate a Greek original. And that's the one that Benedict would have known, because I don't think Benedict knew Greek. And when he talks about the rule of our holy father Basil, he's probably talking about this translation of refiners of the Greek text which is now lost, but we have the Latin text. And there's some difference and development. I'm reading an article now on core responsibility in Basilian monasticism, and it's very interesting, and if I have a chance I hope to go through with it in the future, that this first redaction, the Latin which is lost, there's no strong

[11:36]

image of a superior there, as it comes out in the later rules. So as things develop, the superior takes on more functions that originally Basil saw sort of a communal responsibility, but with a superior. But it isn't such an absolute superior as you would find later on. He's also written some things like The Renunciation of the World, which some people say may not be actually his. There's also a text called The Admonition to a Spiritual Son, which may be also from Basel, at least it's attributed to Basel, and that has been shown to be one of the sources for the prologue of the Rule of Benedict. Now whether it's actually Basil, some people think it's actually Basil, some people deny that it is. We're still talking about Refinas' work? No, we're talking about two other works. The Renunciation of the World, which is another ascetic work, and then the Admonition to the Spiritual Son.

[12:39]

That's different works. I missed the link between what Refinas had translated out in Greek. Yeah, no, I don't know whether Refinas translated the Admonizio or not, but it was an early Latin translation. And whether it was actually Basel or not is a question too. But it is a source for the prologue. So it was in existence, and it could go back to Basel. But the main ascetical works that refer to monasticism are the Moralia, and then the Latin rule, and the two Greek rules. Now, the Greek rules, at least the longer rule, has been translated in Basel's ascetic works in Fathers of the Church Incorporated, and also the Moros. but not the shorter rules, and I don't know of any translation of the Latin rule of Rufinus. It's a pity because that's the text which we'd really like to take a look at. But this problem of the rules of Basel is very questionable, and there's been a lot of dispute on it.

[13:40]

But it's Grébeau-Mont who's done the most studies, and he's written a lot of articles on Baselian monasticism. One of the problems here with that, though, is that Basel never uses the technical term monk or monastery. He's talking about a fraternity of Christian ascetics. And he doesn't use the technical monokos, the Greek term. whether then you could say he's really monastic or not. If it's a question of terminology, he's not. But certainly what he's presenting is a monastic way of life. A number of his homilies are very important also. I think some of these have been translated as sermons. And then his letters. There are 366 letters published so far of Basil. Let's take a look at his spiritual doctrine. The general principles of a spiritual doctrine. The goal of human existence is God, nothing else.

[14:45]

Because God is the first and most perfect of all good. Basil repeats this in a number of his homilies. And God must be sought in all things and before all things. The whole thing of the rule of Benedictus, seek God. Basil has this thrust too. And so evil is what is in opposition to God. That is sin. We're often inclined towards sin and we have to try to combat against it. And so one of the things that comes up in Basil's spirituality is this combat against the devil and against sin. Basil says that to make progress in the spiritual life, one has first of all to begin with the knowledge of oneself. He quotes Deuteronomy, be attentive to yourself. This is very similar to the whole Greek philosophical idea, know yourself. Basil knows Greek philosophy and so it may be a combination of Greek ideas and also scriptural ideas.

[15:50]

And one must be resolute in a fight against one's passions. And so life is a battle, a combat, and only he who runs the race will win the prize. Glory will result after the hardship of the combat, and then you will gain the crown. Now that, I think, in some ways is very similar to what we've seen in Anthony and in the Desert Fathers. Life as a combat. But there you have the idea that the combat is against the devil, primarily. It may be here that Basil, with the same idea of combat, also is linked up with Greek philosophy again, you know, gaining the prize and the struggle and asceticism. So, sort of a combination of Greek philosophy and scriptural ideas. Basil's homilies are full of wisdom, and he describes the phases of the spiritual combat. But his exhortations are very practical. For instance, one of his practical exhortations in a homily is dedicated to

[16:53]

Be careful not to get drunk, so don't be inebriated. And this may have been one of the sermons that he gave at Cesarea at the beginning of Lent, when he was bishop, warning the people to avoid inebriation. Another one of his homilies has for its object envy, and he says that this is a sadness provoked by the good fortune of one's neighbor. Another homily is against anger. Impurity is not an exclusive theme of any one discourse, but he has a description of the dangers of it to the soul throughout his homilies. So he treats of the various virtues and the vices. Now, nothing systematically like John Cashion would have done in the eight capital vices that he treats. But against the vices, then Basil presents the virtues. He's especially enamored with humility. which he presents as the greatest means of salvation for man. It's very similar to the rule of Benedict, where humility seems to be the peak virtue.

[18:00]

Humility is the remedy for one's evil and it's also the return to the primitive state. Now, in Greek spirituality, especially like in Gregory and Nysa and Gregory and Madison and also in Basil, The goal of asceticism seems to be to relive the life of paradise, to return to the primitive state. Now in some ways we've seen that in Anthony too, because even in the desert, in his deep asceticism and solitude, he became a perfect full man, with all of the beauty of the original man, you might say. But this return to paradise is a strong theme in spirituality. Basil dedicates an entire homily to the virtue of humility. It's strange that humility would bring us back to paradise, but then if you think, see, what has brought us out of paradise is pride, and so humility will take us back. Basil constantly seems to be combining pagan philosophy with the doctrines of the teachings of Christ.

[19:10]

He's really a Hellenist in that sense. You only come to the perfection, which is the goal of life, through effort. And one must make unceasing advances in the ways of virtue. And he compares perfection to a ladder, which one ascends by degrees." Now, it would be very interesting to compare that text with Chapter 7 of the Rule of Benevolent and see if it's just an image which is used or whether it's really dependent upon the text. Basil also seems to employ a threefold division of the spiritual life. The beginners in the spiritual life, those who are in progress or process, and the perfect one in the spiritual life. This sort of fits into that classical division of purgative, illuminative, and unitive ways. But Basil talks about beginning, progress, and perfection.

[20:14]

At the beginning, man is a slave to fear. Then he becomes sort of a mercenary, and he practices virtue out of hope for a reward. And finally, he comes to love. Remember, it's at the end of chapter 7 of the Rule of Benedict, where he says, fear, which we began to practice virtue out of fear, will slowly give way to love. And he also has, Benedict has this idea of mercenary reward, too. He says, for the reward of virtue, but then also for the love of Christ. So in some ways you see the same sort of progress in Benedict as you see in Basil. Basil demands of those who want to seek perfection that they live monastic life, what we would call monastic life, that is the perfect life. And so he merely tolerates marriage, he doesn't really praise it. For instance, there's a certain tendency in which marriage

[21:18]

you sort of look down upon, but this is sort of common among the early fathers, because marriage is going to have a lot of difficulties, especially with regard to chastity, whereas the ascetic life, the chaste life, you're going to be freed from this, and you can, as Basil says, enter the company of the holy armor, arming of Christ's disciples, the society of the monks. Basil certainly doesn't require that all Christians leave the world to embrace the life of monastic asceticism, although he considers it the perfect life. Now, remember what we said about Syrian Christianity originally. In order to be a Christian, you had to give up marriage. And this is not as extreme as that. But you find these early fathers, like even John Chrysostom, the perfect Christian life is the monastic way of life. It's almost developing this whole problem of the dual standard, that there's a perfect way of life, that monks live, and then other Christians live sort of an imperfect way of life.

[22:22]

And there's something of that in Basil too. I don't see too much of that in Benedict myself, but you wouldn't expect that to develop in a rule. But compared to the solitaries of Egypt, Basil's spiritual doctrine is moderate and prudent. He portrays the monk as a virtuous man, but one who doesn't necessarily work any prodigies. In fact, Basil's sort of suspicious of prodigies. Recall the Lousiac history where people are doing quite spectacular things, curing people, prophesying. We don't find this in Basil. Basil is content that the monk make progress each day by the disciplined way of life, by his ordinary routine, and thus that he acquire perfection sort of from the common life. So nothing really extraordinary in the life for Basil. With regard to his monastic life,

[23:23]

Basel was influenced by Egypt, there's no doubt about that. Now there's a real question about how much he's dependent upon Poconius. Some people maintain that when he was in Egypt he went to the Poconian monasteries and got acquainted with it and then came back to Cappadocia and set up his own community life in sort of contrast to what he saw in Poconian monasticism and also taking certain things of Poconian monasticism. This is really questioned now, it's disputed, how much influence Pacomian monasticism has had on Basil. For instance, if you just consider that Basil may not have gone to Pacomian monasticism, but only heard it from northern Egypt, like Paschen did, then his influence wouldn't be direct. On the other hand, the rule of Pacomius, you recall, was translated into Latin by Rufinus in 404, So it was probably available in Greek earlier, but it may not have been written before 376, which, if I'm not mistaken, is the date of the death of Orsiasius.

[24:31]

So it wouldn't even have been in existence for Basil to have known, who died in 379. So the whole relationship between Basil and Pocumius is very questionable and fuzzy and confusing. But some people go so far as to say that he is definitely dependent upon him. Well, it could maybe be dependent on his ideas, and the dates you give would certainly say they didn't meet each other in person, probably. Well, even whether he went to Tebiat itself, Joel, see, that's the question, whether he went down there. It's the same problem that comes up with John Cashin. See, John Cashin quotes what goes on down in Pacomian monasticism, but as I mentioned to you, that Cassian may not be a good witness to what actually took place in the Tebiad. And the same way with Lausiac history. Remember, when we saw Palladius going down into Egypt, it's questionable whether he ever got lower than Lycopolis, whether he ever got down to the Tebiad or not.

[25:34]

What you get the impression of is that most people, when they talk about Egyptian monasticism at this time, are mostly familiar with that around Alexandria. and Antonian monasticism, the Mesquite, the Mitri, and the Desert of the Cells. And Proconius seems to have been so far down that people had heard about him that whether there was any direct contact is really questionable. Basil is not for the solitary life, and in that he's in agreement with Bokomian monasticism. He retires from the world, he quits the peopled villages and separates himself from relatives and friends, but he's not in favor of the eremitic life. And one of the things that he says is, Whose feet will the hermit wash? And since washing one's feet is one of the Gospel commands, well, the hermit doesn't have anybody's feet to wash, but the one in the community has his brother's feet to wash.

[26:38]

And Basil also says that in community, if you live in community, you fulfill all the Gospel precepts, because while you're doing one, your brother's doing another, and you all share in it. But the hermit can only do one at a time. so he can't possibly fulfill all of the gospel precepts. Basil insists over and over again on the advantage of community life. Now in the community a superior holds the authority and he exercises it immediately over all the members of the community. One of the pictures you certainly get is that Basil's community is small compared to the Pacomian community. Remember the huge organization in Pacomian monasticism because of thousands of monks, and the superior wouldn't have been able to have immediate contact with everyone. Well, you get the idea in the Basilian community that the superior has contact with each monk. When he's gone from the community, the superior, then a person named the second takes his place.

[27:46]

Basel's community sort of resembles a family. The older monks watch over the younger ones. And it's very important to have what we would call a spiritual director. This holds a primary place in Basel's spirituality. Very similar to what you would find in the desert of an elder and a younger. But within the community, you need an elder who is your director. Because Basil says, no one knows what is good for himself. And so younger monks must confide in an elder monk. And he calls this elder monk a presbyteros, what we call a priest. Now, it's really disputed whether this presbyteros is a priest or not, and just what function they have in the community, or whether it's just a Greek word for elder. And in Greek, the word for elder is presbyteros. So it doesn't necessarily mean somebody who is priestly. The first virtue practiced by the monks must be, of course, humility.

[28:52]

Superiors themselves have to be humble and they are servants of the community. Also, the inferiors in the community must be humble. They must obey without discussion and they can make... observations to the superior if the superior has given them a command which is impossible. Now that's an important note because we notice in the Rule of Benedict that chapter on if you've given an impossible command, which you don't find in the Rule of the Master, which is Benedict's source. So it may be that this is something that he gleaned from Basil. And the obedience of the monks has no limits other than the law of God itself. With regard to the other virtues, there's no need to insist on them, but, for instance, the virtues of poverty, mortification, renunciation, all of these virtues anyone who wants to live an ascetic life must practice. And Basel says that work safeguards virtues.

[30:01]

An essential characteristic of Basilian asceticism is work, then. This is a necessary part of the spirituality. Basil hates nothing as much as laziness. And he says that the monks are assigned their work, and they're assigned this work in relationship to their strengths and their aptitude, so the superior takes into account what the person can do. And whatever is spoken of to be done, has to be done with zeal. Now, besides manual labor, there's also intellectual labor, or what we would call study of sacred scripture. And Basil recommends this over and over again, very similar to Kokomel in the Gnosticism, with this great emphasis on the study and meditation of scripture. A great number of the rules contain explanations of difficult passage of Scripture. In fact, the rules are nothing more than a collage of Scripture texts.

[31:06]

Prayer is also a great duty of a monk. One is to pray constantly. But monastic prayer, or community prayer, is regulated as all the other aspects of life are regulated. And so Basil is already a witness to the cycle of canonical hours, which were already fixed at his time. I don't know if you've taken that work out of Patrick or not, and there's some problem there too, how many hours there were because of different texts. But there is a matins, or vigils, in which the first movements of the heart should be offered to God. There's church, sex, and no, prayer at the end of the day, and prayer at the beginning of night, and then prayer in the middle of the night. All the monks attend these hours in the same place. And if they're on a journey, to interrupt their work or their journey, to pray at the designated hours. This seems to be a constant theme in the early... If you're outside of a monastery, you still say the hours at the regular time.

[32:13]

What this consists of, this celebration of these hours, is recitation of prayers and chanting of psalms. And Basil wants to have a variety here, in this recitation and the use of psalms in order to avoid distraction and to renew enthusiasm. Prayer has as its goal union with God. And one of the ways that the monk or any man is led to union with God is by reflecting on the marvels of creation. And so Basil has a work called the Hexameron. Now, that's a classical name in this period for treating up the six days of creation. And you'll find a number of the fathers with their Hexameron. In the Latin, sometimes they call it decreazione, the creation of the world. But Basil has this, which is a description of the universe, but more than that, it's a meditation on the wonders of creation.

[33:22]

Basil knows that God is ineffable, that he can't be spoken, that he escapes all of our understanding. Nevertheless, we can know him and serve him and thus give him glory. But this knowledge of God is more than intellectual knowledge. It's an experiential knowledge, a knowledge which one receives because one loves. Basil doesn't speak very often of contemplation. It's not because he's not drawn to a life of intimate union with God, but he has a lot of activity in his monastic life, which has to keep him, the monk keeps busy, and so he doesn't oppose action and contemplation. He just doesn't use the term contemplation too much, or speak of that. The monk is constantly to be praying, to be in union with God. But Basil doesn't seem to work as

[34:25]

a contrast or an opposition to this union with God, so he doesn't oppose action and prayer. Because the soul penetrated by faith always finds its union with God, and it seeks nothing else but union with God, who is the beginning and the end for the soul. Basil really is nothing extraordinary in his spirituality. He's very practical, he's very moderate, he's a very fervent man himself. And he wants to give himself completely. Now, because of his education and his abilities, he was called to govern other people. But he always kept this desire for what we would call a monastic life. And he is really a man of prudence, of balance, and of harmony. And analysis of his rules shows this beautiful moderation that he has. Do you have any comments or questions?

[35:28]

Anything that you would like me to talk about with regard to Basil or anything else we've discussed? Have you gone into Basil with with Father Dominic with regard to... We cover it every now and then. I mean, with something that Deva Gawai mentions, you know, that there's similarity. But we usually deal, but it's always from the longer rule. I wish somebody would translate the Latin rule so it would be available to us. One of the things I'm convinced of, and that's why I want to do more work on Basel, is that He's the only one Benedict calls by name, Holy Father Basil. Now what does this mean? Is this just because everybody considered Basil the father of monasticism in the East and therefore Benedict is just using the name because it's a name which is attributed to Basil? Or does it give an indication that Benedict really considers him and his spirituality the foundation for his own spirituality?

[36:36]

And I think it's very important to study Basil more, and maybe with that we can begin to interpret the rule of Benedict better, because it's going to put us in a different perspective than if you study the Egyptian fathers, and right away with the idea of community and solitude, the idea of work. many different things. The concept of obedience, I think, is very important here. And maybe some of the difficulty with the place of the abbot and what is authority in the rule of Benedict could be seen in a different light by studying the superior and authority in the rule of Basil. That's why I think Basil is so important. But I'm still beginning that area myself. But I see it's a rich area for investigation. I hope for the Summer Institute on Obedience and Authority to go through the Rule of Basel and find out more about authority and obedience there, try to help see what that will throw light on the Rule of Benefit throughout.

[37:46]

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