Letter 243 (376)
Priests and Hierarchs: Shepherds of Sheep
Letter 243 is Basil's appeal to the bishops in the Occident, to keep or renew contacts and make a common front against the spread of the A rian heresy or against the intrigants who threatened to wreck eastern Churches, under emperors hostile to Nicene Orthodoxy. Letter 92 (not given here), written four years earlier and signed by thirty-two bishops from Cappadocia, Armenia, and Syria, most of whom have not been identified with certainty, is a similar appeal to the Italians and Gauls.
BASIL TO THE BISHOPS OF ITALY AND GAUL,
LETTER 243 (376)
To the brethren truly beloved of God and most desired, our concelebrants [auAAEr!ouPYo'lC;] who are of one soul with us, to the bishops of Gaul and Italy, Basil, bishop of Caesaraea of Cappadocia. Our Lord Jesus Christ, who has deigned to call the entire Church "his own body" and who has admitted each one of us as members, has given us also to be in harmonious intimacy a11 unto all as members should.
For this reason, although we are separated from one another by the distance between our homes, we are close to one another, considering our union .... You will sympathize with the afflictions unto which we have been delivered because of our sins, and we shall rejoice all the more with you for the glorious peace which the Lord gave you. Already several times we have appealed to your love, for help and sympathy, but since our chastisement was not made fuU, you were not permitted to stand up to succor us. We seek above all that the ruler who reigns over your land be enlightened by your piety on our disorders, and if this is too difficult a task, we pray that some of your people come to visit and comfort the afflicted ones and have under their eyes the misery of the East. This misery your ears cannot perceive,
THE FATHERS SPEAK
because no words can be found to make you see clearly our condition.
A persecution has raged over us, most venerable brethren, and of all persecutions the most cruel. The shepherds are banished and the flocks shattered. And here is the worst: while those who are mistreated accept their sufferings in the certainty of martyrdom, yet the people do not range these athletes among the martyrs, because their persecutors assume for themselves the name of Christians. Nowadays there is only one crime that is punished most harshly. to wit: a scrupulous faithfulness to the traditions of the Fathers. For this reason pious men are exiled from the land of their ancestors and emigrate to desert places .. . . No evildoer should be condemned' without proof, but some bishops have been convicted and tortured while no proof whatever was brought in support of the accusations. Some of them did not even know who their accusers were; they saw no court of law. It is not even upon the word of calumniators that they were condemned; yet, they were violently abducted at impossible hours of the night, exiled into foreign lands, and exposed to die, being left to suffer in desert places. What follows is known to everyone, even if we keep silence: the exile of priests, the exile of deacons, the enslaving of the entire clergy .... Do not consider only your own situation, that you lay at anchor in safe harbors because the grace of God has provided you with a shelter from the windstorms of this perversity. But do stretch your hands to the churches beaten by the tempests, lest they succumb some day in the shipwreck of the faith for having been abandoned. Weep on us, because the Only-begotten Son is blasphemed, and there is none to contradict. The Holy Spirit is rejected, and anyone who could refute the impious is exiled. Polytheism has prevailed. There is among those people a great god and a lesser god; they do not regard "the Son" as the proper noun of a nature [q>UOEW<; ovo!la], but as a common noun.
The Holy Spirit does not close the circle of the Holy Trinity for them; it partakes not of the divine and blessed nature, but it is added to the Father and the Son, perchance and haphazardly, as something from the world of creatures. They
Priests and Hierarchs: Shepherds of Sheep
feed impious doctrines to the churches' little children, and what will they do? Their baptisms, their rites for the dead, their visitations of the sick, their comforting those who mourn, their relieving those who are oppressed, their many helps, their partaking of the mysteries, all these acts, being perfonned by these people, turn into fetters binding people to the heretics. Still a little time, and even if there is some freedom left, there will be no hope any more that those who will have been for so long prisoners of imposture might again be reclaimed unto the acknowledgement of the truth.
The following three letters (195, 227, and 228), all written in 375, that is some five years after Basil's elevation to the metropolitan see of Caesaraea, show his concern for the welfare of the Orthodox in Armenia. He thought of visiting his friend Euphronios, the bishop 0/ Colonia in Lesser
Armenia, in spite of his failing health; it meant a voyage on inexistant or next-to-impassable roads. Euphronios was to be canonically transferred to the more important see of Nicopolis, and the prospect of this move met with a considerable emotion on the part of the Colonians, who planned to bring their grievance before the courts. This would have accomplished nothing, but would not have failed to indispose the authorities and serve the evil designs of politicoes who had set the entire Asia Minor and Syria into utter confusion, as many orthodox bishops were driven out of their Churches and sent into exile. For the time being Basil, whose personal authority overawed even the heretics, would advise Euphronios by letters, provided he could find reliable messengers to whom they might be entrusted. Letters 229 and 230, not given here, close the series; Basil exhorts the clerics and the magistrates of Nicopolis to cooperate with him in his efforts to pacify the Colonians, lest inconsiderate comments or rash decisions exacerbate their resentment at losing their pastor.
THE FATHERS SPEAK
BASIL TO EUPHRONIOS, BISHOP OF COLONIA
IN ARMENIA. LETTER 195 (375)
Colonia, which the Lord gave you that you would govern the Church, is at a great distance from localities served by roads. That is why, even if we write to our other brethren in Lesser Annenia. we hesitate to send letters to Your Piety, despairing to have someone who could carry them into such far-away places. We hope now that you will come in person, or that our letter will be delivered unto you by the bishops to whom we have entrusted it. So we are writing to Your
Piety and we greet YOll by letter. We let you know that apparently we are still on this earth, and we beg you to pray for us, that the Lord would allay our sufferings and remove from us, like a passing cloud, the burden of pain which weighs our heart down. And so it shall be, if the Lord grants it to the most God-beloved bishops who are now in exile. being condemned for their piety, to come back soon.
BASIL TO THE CLERICS OF COLONIA, LETTER 227 (375)
Is there anything as beautiful and precious in the eyes of God and men as perfect charity? It is the fullness of the Law, as we have learned from our Master. Therefore we approve the ardor of your disposition toward your pastor. For a child who loves his father, to be deprived of him is unbearable; and for a church of Christ, the parting from a pastor and a teacher cannot be endured. It is the proof of a fair and right intention you give by your overwhelming affection for your bishop, and this happy disposition toward your spiritual father, kept within reasonable limits, is to be praised; if, however, it becomes excessive, it is no longer to be approved