Gregory chooses a secular career, 364
biography bishop, and the occasion was the council of 360. Gregory seems to have heard him reading his On true virginity,26 which canvasses the very same topic.27
The evidence is clear enough that around the year 360 Gregory was frequenting Annisa and moving in Basil's circle and, through Eustathius of Sebasteia, had entrée into Homoiousian circles. He was being initiated into their theological and ecclesial concerns, and participating in their ascetic interests.
Gregory chooses a secular career, 364 If we saw the hint of a religious crisis in Gregory's youth, an impulse of adolescent rebellion perhaps, Gregory underwent a more serious religious crisis in the mid 360s. Despite his beginnings in a life oriented to asceticism and the clerical path, Nazianzen's letter 11 makes it clear that Gregory at some stage chose instead to follow a secular career. The context of such a decision is the Emperor Julian's famous law of 17 June 362, which forbade the rhetorical profession to Christians, and after Julian's death in July 363, its abrogation on 11 January 364 under Jovian,28 when the rhetorical profession once again became possible for Christians. This gives us a terminus a quo for Gregory's decision for a change of life-style. It would not have taken place during Julian's time, because in his letter 11, Nazianzen does not suggest Gregory's apostasy from the faith, though no doubt a lurking suspicion of it contributed to the scandal his decision evoked.
When he wrote this letter Gregory Nazianzen appears to having been visiting Basil, Macrina, Peter and the monastic community at Annisa in the period of 363–365. These were the very years Basil had withdrawn from the presbyterate of Eusebius of Caesarea. Paradoxically, Basil had but lately come north from Cappadocia, whereas his brother Gregory now went in the reverse direction. No doubt
Gregory Nazianzen, in sending letter 11, hoped that the younger Gregory would be more likely to listen to an older friend than to his own siblings—whose spokesman to some extent he was. But 26 PG 30 669–809; attributed falsely to St Basil.
27 On Virginity 22. See Aubineau, Traité de la Virginité, pp. 137–142 and notes, 513.
28 Codex Theodos. 13.3.5–6, ed. Th. Mommsen and P. M. Meyer 1.2 (Berlin, 1954), 741–742.
biography
despite the conjectures of commentators such as Tillemont,29 there is no evidence that his remonstrance had any effect whatever. Gregory continued in the profession of rhetoric in Caesarea until he became a bishop.
One might speculate on the motives of Gregory's decision. It is surely significant that in 364 he would have been in his late twenties, the canonical age for ordination to the presbyterate at 30 years looming near. Perhaps the very approach to such a moment helped precipitate the crisis. With the resurgence of the Anomoian theological party in Julian's reign, there was even more doctrinal turbulence in the Church than before if possible—an outcome deliberately compassed by Julian. Gregory of Nyssa, who, as we have seen, had witnessed the distasteful council of Constantinople in 360, may have had little stomach for facing even more such turmoil at this stage, for it is certain that engagement in it would have been expected of him if he had become a priest, given his education, social standing and the church circles in which he moved.
Socially Julian had stirred up an enthusiasm for traditional Hellenism—a sort of neo-conservatism or archaism—and this movement remained au courant for some time after his death.30 Gregory allowed himself to be caught up in this enthusiasm at precisely this moment.
His comments to Libanius in letter 13.4 may be taken to describe his dispositions in 364: 'I devoted myself assiduously to the whole course of study and became enamoured of the beauty that is yours
[i.e. Rhetoric]'.
Gregory Nazianzen however suggests a more worldly motive: ambition, and this may be close to the mark. Perhaps the younger Gregory still felt somewhat disadvantaged by the greater opportunities enjoyed by his brother and by Nazianzen himself, and felt he had something to prove. The inchoate monastic life for men in which he had dabbled was not yet on a firm canonical basis, and there were examples to hand of baptised celibates pursuing secular careers, beginning with Caesarius. When the opportunity presented itself (an invitation from his old school?), he took, in a sense, the line of least resistance,
29 Tillemont, Mémoires 9.564. Aubineau, op. cit., p. 78, remarks that Tillemont was affected by the contemporary concerns of Vincent de Paul and Ollier for the adequate training of candidates for the priesthood.
30 See the comments of Aubineau, op. cit., p. 64.
biography and one very congenial for one so attracted to Hellenism. He stepped aside from the path to the priesthood and decided to follow his father's example and become a professor of rhetoric. And so Gregory commenced the life of a teacher of the higher curriculum, only not in Neocaesarea, but in Caesarea.
Nevertheless, Gregory was far from renouncing his Christian faith and perhaps, at least initially, his commitment to celibacy, but proposed to combine his religious faith with participation in civil life and a secular career. Publicly, he would cut the figure of a Christian rhetor. Spiritually he would be something of a 'monk in the world', to use later terms.
Contemporary examples of Christian rhetors were Prohairesius in Athens and Marius Victorinus in Rome, and of course, in an earlier generation there was the example of Basil of Neocaesarea,
Gregory's own father.
As to a 'monk in the world', the writings of the Cappadocian fathers yield some interesting examples of would-be secular ascetics.
The outstanding case is Caesarius, Gregory Nazianzen's brother. In fact Gregory wrote two letters to his brother at widely spaced intervals, each revealing sentiments similar to those of letter 11 to Gregory of Nyssa. Compare Nazianzen Letter 7, written during the reign of Emperor Julian, in which he anxiously warns his brother
Caesarius, who was then as Gregory of Nyssa became, a baptised celibate in a secular profession (a physician), but whose faith was at risk in the current circumstances. Compare also letter 20, written in 368, in which he implores Caesarius to quit the secular life altogether. Compare also Basil's Letter 26 to Caesarius (Def. 1.155).
In letter 116, Basil writes to Firminus in the army, enquiring after his asceticism (Def. 2.233). Firminus in his reply, Letter 117 (Def.
2.235) speaks of keeping his 'virginity'.
The trajectory of the young Amphilochius, a nephew of Gregory Nazianzen, shows aspects similar to those of Gregory's course. He was a devout Christian and professional man (a lawyer) who desired to turn to the ascetic life, and was persuaded to put himself under Basil's direction; he eventually became bishop of Iconium and the great confidant of Basil's final years.
Gregory's case differs from the above in that he took up the life of a secular ascetic after he had already lived in a quasi-monastic setting and was disposing himself for priesthood. Yet even here there is a curious parallel. Gregory Nazianzen's letter 177 to Eudoxius