Page images
PDF
EPUB

at this day before his ethics; the second his discourses de Institutione Monachorum, wherein he represents the character of a Christian, pressing on towards perfection; and these as a kind of preface to his ὅροι κατὰ πλάτος, or Regulæ fusius disputata, consisting of fifty-five questions propounded by the monastics, with St. Basil's answers: which are followed by three hundred and thirteen ὅροι κατὰ ἐπιτομὴν, or shorter rules delivered in the same way; exactly according to the account which Photius has given of them; so that there can be no doubt but they are the same. In the copy by which the Venice edition of anno 1553 was printed, there was a scholium added, implying that that manuscript had been transcribed from a most ancient copy brought out of Pontus, and the places where Basil had lived an ascetic life, and had been compared with the copy found in St. Basil's own hospital at Cæsarea, out of which were added twenty-seven chapters more, together with the penalties that were to be inflicted upon delinquent monks. These constitutions, Rufinus tells us," he designed to turn into Latin, for the benefit of the Western monks, and he afterwards performed it, though he contracted them into a narrower compass. Of some affinity with these, are his 'HOɩà, or Morals, containing eighty divine rules, each backed with apt select texts of scripture, for the conduct and government of a holy life.

66

66

V. Under this head of canonical tracts, I may take leave to place his liturgy, which, as to the substance of it, I make no doubt to be truly his. For seeing Nazianzen expressly tells us," that after his return to Cæsarea, he not only drew up rules for the monastic life, which he delivered both by word and writing, but also composed εὐχῶν διατάξεις, " orders and forms of prayers,” and appointed εὐκοσμίας τοῦ βήματος, “ decent rites and ornaments for the altar;" and since himself elsewhere gives us an account of the form of public service used in the oratories of his institution,* answerable to this liturgy, and agreeable (as he tells us) to all the churches of God, I can see no reason why it should be robbed of the title which it has always claimed to so great a hand. Not but that, in its present frame and constitution, it is much changed from its original simplicity, having received several additions and interpolations in after-times, as a stream, though never so clear at the fountain-head, contracts * Epist. ccvii. s. 4.

u Lib. ii. c. 9.

w Orat. xx. p. 340.

e

planted herself in a village on the other side of the river Iris, that so she might receive the comfort of his frequent visits, and whence, in a time of scarcity, or upon any particular occasion, she was wont to supply him with necessary provisions. Broken at last with extreme age, she fell into her last sickness; her daughter Macrina, the eldest, and her son Peter, the youngest of her ten children, were then with her, and assisted her in her last hours. Having prayed for, and blessed her children that were absent, she took the two present, one sitting on the one side of the bed and the other on the other, by the hand, and thus delivered them up to God: "To thee, O Lord, I here devote and offer up both the first-fruits and the tenth of my children; this the first, the other the tenth and last of the fruit of my womb. Both are thine by law, both due as gifts and offerings unto thee. Let both therefore be entirely consecrated to thyself." And so having given order for her burial, that she might be interred in the sepulchre of her family, (which was done accordingly,) she died, a little before Basil's advancement to the see of Cæsarea; who bewailed her death, as the loss of the only comfort of his life, the news whereof put him into a relapse that had near cost his life.

II. Of the ten children which she had, four only besides Basil survive in story: Macrina, Naucratius, Gregory, and Peter. Macrina was eldest, borrowing her name from her good grandmother Macrina, sometime scholar to St. Gregory Thaumaturgus. Her mother was particularly solicitous about her education; and being a child of acute and excellent parts, besides family-affairs, she especially trained her up in the knowledge of the scriptures, and particularly of those rules which Solomon has laid down for the good government of the life. She often read the Psalter, which she committed to memory, and repeated upon all occasions; when she went to bed, or arose in the morning, or betook herself to, or left off any work, when she sat down to, or rose from meals, or went to her devotions, she always used to sing a psalm. Such was her course even before she was twelve years of age. Her piety increased with her years, and her beauty with both, which made her so much courted, that her father, to prevent importunities, provided her a suitable match, but the d Greg. Naz. Ep. viii. p. 733.

c Basil. Ep. ccxxiii. s. 5.
Greg. Nyss. de vit. Macrin.

[blocks in formation]

gentleman died before the consummation; and she, not sorry for the occasion, thenceforth resolved upon a single life, and to be assistant to her mother in educating the other children which she performed with great care and diligence, persuading her brother Basil, then newly returned from the university, to lay aside the lofty opinion of his great learning, and to embrace the humble and difficult way of virtue, and to form himself to the strictness of a retired life. Her father being dead, and the rest of the family disposed of, she withdrew from common converse; and together with a company of pious maids, over whom she presided as governess, spent her whole time in circles of devotion, and in the strictest exercises of piety and virtue. Her brother Nyssen (who had not seen her of eight years) undertook a journey to visit her, and in the way had some obscure intimations in his dream concerning her death, which he then knew not what to make of. Coming to the place, he found her sick, administered assistances proper to her dying circumstances, and after her decease saw her interred with great solemnity: after which he at large wrote her Life, worthy the perusal of the learned reader. She is said to have been infected with Origen's opinion but finding it reported by no other than Nicephorus,h I suppose he mistook her for her grandmother Macrina, auditor of St. Gregory, who had had Origen for his tutor.

III. Basil's next brother was Naucratius,i (or, as Constantine Porphyrogenneta calls him,* Pancratius,) a youth of an amiable shape, strong body, and no less admirable endowments of mind. At twenty-two years of age he had given signal evidence of his eloquence and abilities in his public orations, to the great applause and admiration of the theatre; when on a sudden he threw up all, and retired into the wilderness, settling himself in a convenient solitude near the river Iris, where he enjoyed the company of none but a few mortified old men, whom he provided for by hunting, (whereat he was dexterous,) and was ready upon all occasions to attend his mother. Five years he spent in this retirement, when going out one day to hunt, accompanied with none but his dear Chrysaphius, (whom of all his domestics he had chosen to be the constant companion of his life,) they were both brought home dead: a loss that infinitely afflicted his h Lib. xi. c. 19. k Lib. i. them. ii.

* Ext. in append. Oper. ejus Ann. 1618.

i Greg. Nyss. vit. Macrin.

p.

182.

mother, and fell heavy (though she bore it with a masculine patience) upon his sister Macrina, who loved him above all the rest. Next him was Gregory, a person of excellent learning and great eloquence, made afterwards bishop of Nyssa in Cappadocia, banished and persecuted by the Arians, who, notwithstanding all their malicious attempts against him, lived to a great age, till near the conclusion of this century, though the particular time of his death cannot be recovered.

IV. The last of the brothers, and indeed of all the children,' (his father dying as soon as he was born,) was Peter, who was much beholden for the advantages of his education to the care and tenderness of his sister Macrina, who seasoned his early years with religious principles, and the knowledge of divine things, and so filled up all his hours, that he had little leisure to divert to vain useless studies. She was father and master, tutor and guardian to him, whom she so improved by her prudent counsels and instructions, that he quickly arrived to the utmost perfection of true philosophy. He had parts capable of any science, especially a genius for mechanic arts, which without any help he made himself master of, beyond what others with long time and pains are wont to do. And though he attained not an equal accuracy and perfection in external literature with his brothers, yet in the improvements of virtue he was equal to them to which end he gave up himself to a solitary and ascetic life, joining himself to the retired conversation of his mother and sister, with whom he spent a good part of his life. He was peculiarly remarkable for his hospitality and charity, and when, in a time of great famine, multitudes that had heard of his liberal temper flocked to him into the desert, he made such plentiful provisions for them, that the place seemed no longer to be a wilderness, but a populous city. Basil being promoted to the bishopric of Cæsarea, ordained him presbyter, as afterwards he was made bishop of Sebastea, (that probably that was situate in Cappadocia, or, as Stephanus, according to the division in his time, in Armenia, there being several cities of that and the like denomination, Sebaste, Sebastea, Sebastopolis, in the Eastern parts,) though when this was, or how long he sat, or how he discharged the affairs of that see, we are wholly left in the dark. Nothing of his writings remain, but one short epistle to his brother

1 Greg. Nyss. vit. Macrin. p. 185.

Nyssen, who at his request had undertaken to answer Eunomius's book against Basil, and had desired his advice how to proceed in that affair. By this account that we have given, we see it true what Nazianzen observed in his funeral oration upon Basil,TM that however his parents were renowned for many noble virtues and honourable qualities, yet this was the greatest, the most glorious of all, that they were so happy in their children. And perhaps it is an instance hardly to be paralleled in any age, for three brothers, all men of note and eminency, to be bishops at the same time.

[blocks in formation]

Ascetica, seu de Institut. Monach. Sermones De laudibus eremi, seu vitæ solitariæ (frag

duo.

Regulæ fusius disputatæ.

Regulæ breviores.

Constitutiones Monasticæ.

Epistola ad Chilonem Anachoretam.

mentum ex oper. Petri Damiani.) Admonitio ad filium Spiritualem. Lat. Precatio cum sacris operaretur.

Fragmentum Epistolæ ad Julianum Imp.

« PreviousContinue »