Letter 104 (372)
THE FATHERS SPEAK
SAINT BASIL TO THE EPARCH MODESTOS,
LETTER 104 (372)
The very fact of writing to a man of your condition, even if there is no other reason, brings the greatest honor to those who write, since conversing with pre-eminent men brings renown to those who are deemed worthy. While struggling for my entire country, I have to present to Your Magnanimity the request through which I entreat you to receive me with your customary benignity. and to extend YOUT hand to your country now falling on its knees.
Here is the object of my petition. The ancient census had exempted from taxes men consecrated to God: priests and deacons. But now the assessors, as if they had received no authoritative instruction from you, did assess them, with the exception of a few who were exempt anyway by reason of their age. We beg that at least the same exemption be granted as a monument of your kindness for al1 time to come, that we may help you remember. Grant, then, that the ministers in sacred orders be treated according to the older system of taxation, lest the exemption become a per· sonal favor to those presently inscribed, for in that case the benefit might pass on to their heirs, and such people are not always worthy of the ministry! In accordance with the formula of free inscription, there ought to be a sort of clergy exemption, so that those in charge of the church taxes would exempt at each time the clerics who serve at the altar.
Saint Gregory, in leiter 98, writes to the assessors of public revenue on behalf of a poor churchman in charge of a shrine dedicated to the martyrs, probably the Forty
Martyrs of Sebastaea (Sivas). He enumerates the titles of that cleric, a certain Theoteknos (not to be confused with the layman of letter 78), for a reduction of taxes.
Priests and Hierarchs: Shepherds of Sheep
GREGORY OF NAZIANZUS TO THE ADMINISTRATORS
OF THE TOWN OF NAZIANZUS, LETTER 98
(date uncertain, before his retirement) It seems to me that if you cut in two the duffel bag of Diogenes and lay your hands on Diogenes himself, counting as a valuable asset his cloak, his staff, his flight from all possessions under pretense of philosophy, his loitering from door to door, his happy.go-Iucky living, just as it happensit alI looks just as when you pretend to levy a tax on the earnings of brother Theoteknos. What shall I say first, or what is essential for his justification? That he is a deacon, that he is poor, a foreigner, that he converses with other people rather than with us, that his life is respectable, that he is in sacred orders, serving at the shrine of the martyrs and dwelling at their threshold? Know also that he practices hospitality above his means; he is wrong only because, alone among the people of your region, he forces them to be honest. But what is the most important of all these things?
It is up to you to decide! For those reasons spare him, strike a compromise with him and do not take the decision of procuring a shabby advantage for the public treasury at your own great detriment, by refusing to "clothe him who is naked," as it is said, but by stripping him.
Gregory (letter 211) writes to Kyriakos, a provincial magistrate, to obtain an exoneration from real estate taxes in favor of Sakerdos, a brother in the priesthood, who is administering an important home for poor people.