Makers Of Christianity From Jesus To Charlemagne by Shirley Jackson Case

Author:Shirley Jackson Case
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Henry Holt Company
Published: 1933-12-31T16:00:00+00:00

BASIL

Eastern Asia Minor produced several outstanding Christians during the latter part of the fourth century. Three names are especially notable: Gregory of Nazianzus, Basil of Caesarea (in Cappadocia) and the tatter's younger brother, Gregory of Nyssa. They are frequently referred to as the three distinguished "Cappadocians."

The territory of Cappadocia, which had been made a Roman province early in the first century A.D., embraced the upland plain in the eastern section of the peninsula of Asia Minor. Conditions of life in these regions were somewhat distinctive. Commercial enterprise, favored under Roman administration, had resulted in the growth of a few cities, the largest of which was Caesarea. In the fourth century it was an active business and manufacturing center, the cultural metropolis of the province, with perhaps half a million population. But it hardly rivaled in importance the better known cities of Rome, Carthage, Alexandria, Antioch (in Syria), and Constantinople, which Constantine had made the new capital of the Empire. The country districts in Cappadocia were in possession of large landowners, who constituted a kind of feudal aristocracy living in prosperity on estates worked by peasants who were virtually bound to the soil. It was from this feudal class, who had leisure and means for acquiring the best education available in the Roman world, that some of Christianity's ablest leaders came. Basil belonged in this category.

The date of Basil's birth is commonly placed about the year 330. He was one of nine surviving children, five sons and four daughters and his oldest sister, Macrina, of whom a younger brother, Gregory of Nyssa, wrote a charming little biography, was one of the most distinguished women of the ancient church. For three generations the family had been devoted to Christianity. The country had been extensively evangelized by an admiring pupil of Origen, an earlier Gregory surnamed "Thaumaturgus," who in 240 A.D., became bishop at Neo-Caesarea in the province of Pontus lying north of Cappadocia. For some thirty years, he served the church so faithfully that tradition declared he had found only seventeen Christians in the city at the beginning of his ministry, while only seventeen heathen could be found there at the time of the bishop's death.

Basil's father, who bore the same name, was a prosperous lawyer and rhetorician at Caesarea, and an earnest Christian who owned a large estate in Pontus at Annesi on the river Iris, not far from Neo-Caesarea. Basil, a frail child, was placed under the care of his paternal grandmother who resided at the family home in Annesi. There he was taught the Christian religion as the grandmother had learned it from Gregory Thaumaturgus. When he reached a suitable age, the youth was brought by his father to Caesarea for further schooling. He made rapid progress, showing unusual aptitude for both philosophy and rhetoric. Having fully availed himself of such educational facilities as were afforded by Caesarea, where his studies were carried on under his father's supervision, he was sent to Constantinople. Later, moving on to Athens, he spent five years at the world's most famous university.

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