_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.