Gregory as a writer of letters
THE LETTERS: A GENERAL INTRODUCTION
Gregory as a writer of letters How few of Gregory's letters have survived when compared with the many letters of Basil and of Gregory Nazianzen! Yet, as Teske points out,1 one cannot deduce from this fact that Gregory was somehow much more reticent about writing letters than he was about writing his many other works. Hints that he was in fact a frequent letter writer occur throughout the letters of all three Cappadocians.
In the very earliest record of his existence, Basil, in letter 14.1, mentions that his brother has written to him expressing his desire to meet with him. Yet, though there must have been many other letters between the two brothers over the years, not one has survived from Gregory to his brother, and alas, only one from Basil to his brother, letter 58, which is a somewhat embarrassing monument to their brotherly relations. The letters of Gregory Nazianzen to the younger Gregory were clearly written in the context of years of correspondence between the two men. And yet again, not one letter of the younger Gregory to the elder has survived. In letter 74, Gregory
Nazianzen urges him to write and to keep him abreast of his affairs.
Would that we had just one of Gregory's news-bulletins to such a confidant as Gregory Nazianzen!
Other letters and treatises show that Gregory often wrote in response to specific enquiries, which were more often than not requests for help in doctrinal and theological matters. Letter 19 was written in reply to a letter of enquiry during a critical episode of his life (see 19.4). Of letters of intercession to civil authorities on behalf of the disadvantaged, so prominent a function of bishops in late antiquity, only one survives, letter 7. But there must have been many other such letters, specially if Gregory had any influence with Theodosius' court in the 380s. A great deal then has been lost.
In fact Gregory was so much of a letter writer that the epistolary style tended to inform much of his writing that might be classed
1 Dörte Teske (intro. tr. & annot.), Gregor von Nyssa: Briefe (Stuttgart: Anton Hierseman, 1997), 1.