Basil of Caesarea
330 – 379 · Bishop of Caesarea Mazaca
Also known as Basil the Great
Feast: 2 January (Catholic) · 1 January (Orthodox)
Bishop of Caesarea in Cappadocia, founder of cenobitic monastic rules in the East, author of On the Holy Spirit. One of the three Cappadocian Fathers.
Basil organised the Christian East. He wrote the rule that every Eastern monastery still uses, founded a complex of hospitals and shelters that became the prototype for Christian welfare, and at the same time fought the Arian controversy down to its details. He's the reason Eastern monasticism stayed inside the city rather than fleeing to the desert — a more sustainable model than Antony's. He died young (49). His brother Gregory of Nyssa and his friend Gregory of Nazianzus carried the work to Constantinople 381 and Trinitarian orthodoxy as we have it.
Notable works
- ·On the Holy Spirit · 375
- ·Hexaemeron (Homilies on the Six Days of Creation) · 378
- ·Long Rules and Short Rules · 370
- ·Letters · 370
Primary sources
- ·Basil, Epistulae
- ·Gregory of Nazianzus, Oratio 43 (Funeral oration on Basil)
- ·Jerome, De Viris Illustribus 116
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