Letter 207 (375)
Monastic Ideal
father of western monasticism (cf. Saint Basile, les regles monastiques, editions de Maredsous, 1969).
The clerics of Neo-Caesaraea do not seem to have appreciated Basil's warning against a variety of sectarians who went along peddling "their follies with a stuttering tongue," under a deceptive appearance of piety. In part of letter 207,
Basil attacks their untraditional practices and their display of unwarranted asceticism, extolling by contrast the common life of his monks and their liturgical service in conformity with the common usage of "all the Churches of God."
BASIL, TO THE CLERICS OF NEO-CAESARAEA,
LETTER 207 (375)
... If you ask these troublemakers for the cause of their implacable and relentless assaults, it is that they read psalms and sing hymns on modes different from the usage that has prevailed among you, and similar reasons which had better be kept hidden .... In order to answer to their accusations about psalmody, with which our calumniators impress most simple-minded people, I shall say this: The practices that have obtained today in all the Churches of God are concordant and in mutual harmony. Here at home the people rise at night and go to the house of prayer. In grief and contrition they confess their sins to God with shedding tears.
Then, standing up after the prayers, they begin the psalmody and, divided now into two choirs, they sing antiphonally; thus they strengthen their attention to the sentences from Scripture ["(0: llCc"(la], and make their unstable hearts more steady. Then one single reader is in charge of intoning the hymns, and the others respond. In this way, they pass the night, alternating psalmody with prayers. At dawn, all of them together, with one single heart and mouth, send up to
THE FATHERS SPEAK
the Lord the psalm of penitence [L~<; £.E,0ll0A.oy~aE(uC; lVCXA.!l0C;, i.e. Ps 51, vulg. 50], and everyone makes David's words of repentance his very owo. Now if this is your reason for turning away from liS, you should turn away from the Egyptians as well, the Libyans of both Libyas, the Thebans, the Palestinians, the Arabs, the Phoenicians, the Syrians, and the people beyond the Euphrates; in short, all among whom vigils, prayers. and psalmody are held in honor. You object that these practices did not exist in the time of the great
Gregory [the Wonderworker]; well, neither did those litanies for which you care so much! I do not say this to accuse you;
I would like to see yOll living in tears and incessant repentance. As for ourselves, we do not do anything else but pray for the remission of our sins.
Orthodox Christians will easily recognize in Basil's sketch the basic structure of their Office of the Vigil (Great Vespers and Matins): the introductory prayers; the Psalter, divided into twelve stanzas (Ka8[olla1:o); the psalms ("I call upon Thee, hear me 0 Lord"); in the early dawn, the "Miserere" and the praises; at daybreak, the first hour.
That Basil's brethren and sisters in his monasteries were not all angels we know already from the foregoing. Now here is a downright rllffian, against whom Basil solicits the intervention of the provincial governor: a runaway "solitary" had sacked Basil's familial home at Neo-Caesaraea, after having assaulted the women who guarded the door. The fellow belonged with common jailbirds rather than in a monastic community.