St. Basil the Great.
Lat. St. Basilius Magnus. Ital. San Basilio Magno. Fr. St. Basile. (June 14, A.D. 380.)
St. Basil, called the Great, was born at Cesarea in Cappadocia, in the year 328. He was one of a family of saints. His father St. Basil, his mother St. Emmelie, his two brothers St. Gregory of Nyssa and St. Peter of Sebaste, and his sister St. Macrina, were all distinguished for their sanctity, and renowned in the Greek calendar. The St. Basil who takes rank as the second luminary of the Eastern Church, and whose dogmatical and theological works influenced the faith of his own age, and consequently of ours, was the greatest of all. But, notwithstanding his importance in the Greek Church, he figures so seldom in the productions of Western Art, that I shall content myself with relating just so much of his life and actions as may render the few representations of him interesting and intelligible.
He owed his first education to his grandmother St. Macrina the elder, a woman of singular capacity and attainments, to whom he has in various parts of his works acknowledged his obligations. For several years he pursued his studies in profane learning, philosophy, law, and eloquence, at Constantinople, and afterwards at Athens, where he had two companions and fellow-students of very opposite character: Gregory of Nazianzen, afterwards the Saint; and Julian, afterwards the Apostate.
The success of the youthful Basil in all his studies, and the reputation he had obtained as an eloquent pleader, for a time swelled his heart with vanity, and would have endangered his salvation but for the influence of his sister, St. Macrina, who in this emergency preserved him from himself, and elevated his mind to far higher aims than those of mere worldly science and worldly distinction. From that period, and he was then not more than twenty-eight, Basil turned his thoughts solely to the edification of the Christian Church; but first he spent some years in retreat among the hermits of the desert, as was the fashion of that day, living, as they did, in abstinence, poverty, and abstracted study; acknowledging neither country, family, home, nor friends, nor fortune, nor worldly interests of any kind, but with his thoughts fixed solely on eternal life in another world. In these austerities he, as was also usual, consumed and ruined his bodily health; and remained to the end of his life a feeble wretched invalid,—a circumstance which was supposed to contribute greatly to his sanctity. He was ordained priest in 362, and bishop of Cesarea in 370; his ordination on the 14th of June being kept as one of the great feasts of the Eastern Church.
On the episcopal throne he led the same life of abstinence and humility as in a cavern of the desert; and contended for the doctrine of the Trinity against the Arians, but with less of vehemence, and more of charity, than the other Doctors engaged in the same controversy. The principal event of his life was his opposition to the Emperor Valens, who professed Arianism, and required that, in the Church of Cesarea, Basil should perform the rites according to the custom of the Arians. The bishop refused: he was threatened with exile, confiscation, death: he persisted. The emperor, fearing a tumult, resolved to appear in the church on the day of the Epiphany, but not to communicate. He came, hoping to overawe the impracticable bishop, surrounded by all his state, his courtiers, his guards. He found Basil so intent on his sacred office as to take not the slightest notice of him; those of the clergy around him continued to chant the service, keeping their eyes fixed in the profoundest awe and respect on the countenance of their bishop. Valens, in a situation new to him, became agitated: he had brought his oblation; he advanced with it; but the ministers at the altar, not knowing whether Basil would accept it, dared not take it from his hands. Valens stood there for a moment in sight of all the people, rejected before the altar,—he lost his presence of mind, trembled, swooned, and would have fallen to the earth, if one of the attendants had not received him in his arms. A conference afterwards took place between Basil and the emperor; but the latter remained unconverted, and some concessions to the Catholics was all that the bishop obtained.
St. Basil died in 379, worn out by disease, and leaving behind him many theological writings. His epistles, above all, are celebrated, not only as models of orthodoxy, but of style.
Of St. Basil, as of St. Gregory and St. John Chrysostom, we have the story of the Holy Ghost, in visible form as a dove of wonderful whiteness, perched on his shoulder, and inspiring his words when he preached. St. Basil is also celebrated as the founder of Monachism in the East. He was the first who enjoined the vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience; and his Rule became the model of all other monastic Orders. There is, in fact, no other Order in the Greek Church, and when either monks or nuns appear in a Greek or a Russian picture they must be Basilicans, and no other: the habit is a plain black tunic with a cowl, the tunic fastened round the waist with a girdle of cord or leather. Such is the dress of the Greek caloyer, and it never varies.
The devotional figures of St. Basil represent him, or ought to represent him, in the Greek pontificals, bareheaded, and with a thin worn countenance, as he appears in the etching of the Greek Fathers.
‘The Emperor Valens in the church at Cesarea,’ an admirably picturesque subject, has received as little justice as the scene between Ambrose and Theodosius. When the French painter Subleyras was at Rome in 1745, he raised himself to name and fame by his portrait of Benedict XIV.,[295] and received, through the interest of his friend Cardinal Valenti, the commission to paint a picture for one of the mosaics in St. Peter’s. The subject selected was the Emperor Valens fainting in presence of St. Basil. We have all the pomp of the scene:—the altar, the incense, the richly attired priests on one side; on the other, the Imperial court. It is not easy to find fault, for the picture is well drawn, well composed, in the mannered taste of that time; well coloured, rather tenderly than forcibly; and Lanzi is enthusiastic in his praise of the draperies; yet, as a whole, it leaves the mind unimpressed. As usual, the original sketch for this picture far excels the large composition.[296]
The prayers of St. Basil were supposed by the Armenian Christians, partly from his sanctity, and partly from his intellectual endowments, to have a peculiar, almost resistless, power; so that he not only redeemed souls from purgatory, but even lost angels from the abyss of hell. ‘On the sixth day of the creation, when the rebellious angels fell from heaven through that opening in the firmament which the Armenians call Arocea, and we the Galaxy, one unlucky angel, who had no participation in their sin, but seems to have been entangled in the crowd, fell with them.’ (A moral, I presume, on the consequences of keeping bad company.) ‘And this unfortunate angel was not restored till he had obtained, it is not said how, the prayers of St. Basil. His condition meantime, from the sixth day of the creation to the fourth century of the Christian era, must have been even more uncomfortable than that of Klopstock’s repentant demon in “The Messiah.”’
There are many other beautiful legendary stories of St. Basil, but, as I have never met with them in any form of Art, I pass them over here. One of the most striking has been versified by Southey in his ballad-poem, ‘All for Love.’ It would afford a great variety of picturesque subjects.