Basil the Great (ca. 330-379)
“You who dress your walls, and let your fellow-creatures go bare, what will you answer to the Judge?” (sermon, ca. 370).
Basil the Great in church.
In the fourth century, Basil is a champion of orthodox Christianity—a fervent defender of the Nicean creed which he upholds despite the threats of pagans and Arians. Twice he has faced down powerful emperors who demanded he adapt Christianity to their whims. Both times he has been in danger of violence or death. He has scorned these threats.
Scion of a godly family—which has already produced a number of saints—well-educated, and well-traveled—Basil is a master of men and of literature. He assigns bishops and directs monks; he writes books, sermons (homilies), and letters. Hundreds of his short works will survive for centuries.
He has turned his great abilities to the organization of a useful kind of monasticism, which deplores asceticism and emphasizes practical charity. He has opened the first hospitals in the Christian world, and hostels for Christian travelers and for people who need a night’s shelter. As one who sees the whole person, his thought encompasses both abstract and concrete: not only does he defend dogma but he encourages the use of art and ladles soup for the hungry.
His homilies address his deepest concerns. In one he will insist that Christian youth should be allowed to read pagan literature, browsing like a honeybee for nectar and discarding everything worthless. In other homilies he challenges the rich to help the poor.
Homily number seven is of that sort. Great wealth has accumulated in the eastern empire and in Caesarea, an administrative center of Cappadocia. Many in the church loll in their riches. Basil feels that their emphasis is on the wrong treasure. In homily number seven he challenges the superfluities of the rich—the horses for which they maintain pedigrees, their richly caparisoned mules, their vast lands and herds, their hordes of household servants, their cooks and confectioners, their entertainers, their mosaics and gilded ceilings. All of this is frivolous from a Christian point of view. His counsel in a similar sermon (homily six) was to seek eternal treasure.
In homily seven he urges the rich to remember God, the omniscient watcher who judges their neglect of their fellow men: “You who dress your walls, and let your fellow-creatures go bare, what will you answer to the Judge? You who harness your horses with splendor, and despise your brother if he is ill-dressed; who let your wheat rot, and will not feed the hungry; who hide your gold, and despise the distressed? And, if you have a wealth-loving wife, the plague is twice as bad. She keeps your luxury ablaze; she increases your love of pleasure; she gives the goad to your superfluous appetites; her heart is set on stones—pearls, emeralds, and sapphires. Gold she works and gold she weaves, and increases the mischief with never-ending frivolities. And her interest in all these things is no mere by-play: it is the care of night and day. Then what innumerable flatterers wait upon their idle wants! They must have their dyers of bright colors, their goldsmiths, their perfumers, their weavers, their embroiderers. With all their behests they do not leave their husbands breathing time.”
In short, he satirizes the fancies of the wealthy and warns them of their eternal peril. He attempts to point people to the things that matter for eternity.
—Dan Graves
Dig a Little Deeper
- Aland, Kurt. Saints and Sinners; Men and Ideas in the Early Church. Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1970.
- Basil. “Homily VII” in Letters and Selected Works from A Selected Library of the Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church, 2d Series, edited by Philip Schaff. Edinburgh, T&T Clark, 1894.
- “Basil, St. ‘the Great.’” Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, edited by F. L. Cross and E. A. Livingstone. Oxford, 1999.
- McSorley, Joseph. “St. Basil the Great.” The Catholic Encyclopedia. New York: Robert Appleton, 1914.
- Morison, E. F. St. Basil and His Rule; a Study in Early Monasticism. London: Oxford University Press, 1912.
