Basil, from
his multiplied trials, may be called the Jeremiah or Job of the fourth century,
though occupying the honoured place of a ruler in the Church at a time when
heathen violence was over. He had a sickly constitution, to which he added the
rigour of an ascetic life. He was surrounded by jealousies and dissensions at
home; he was accused of heterodoxy abroad; he was insulted and roughly treated
by great men; and he laboured, apparently without fruit, in the endeavour to
restore unity to Christendom and stability to its Churches. If temporal
afflictions work out for the saints "an exceeding weight of glory,"
who is higher in the kingdom of heaven than Basil?
As to his
austerities, we know something of them from his own picture what a monk's life
should be, and from Gregory's description of them. In a letter to the latter
(Ep. 2), Basil limits the food of his recluses to bread, water, herbs, with but
one meal a day, and allows of sleep only till midnight, when they were to rise
for prayer. And he says to the emperor Julian, "Cookery with us is idle;
no knife is familiar with blood; our daintiest meal is vegetables with coarsest
bread and vapid wine."—Ep. 41. Gregory, in like manner, when expecting a
visit from Basil, writes to Amphilochius to send him "some fine pot-herbs,
if he did not wish to find Basil hungry and cross." - Ep. 12. And in his
account of him, after his death, he says, that "he had but one inner and
one outer garment; his bed was the ground; little sleep, no bath; his food
bread and salt, his drink [13] the running stream." - Orat. 20. He slept
in a hair-shirt, or other rough garment; the sun was his fire; and he braved
the severest frosts in the severe climate of Cappadocia. Even when Bishop he
was supported by the continual charity of his friends. He kept nothing.
His
constitution was naturally weak, or rather sickly. What his principal malady
was, is told us in the following passage of his history, which furnishes at the
same time another instance of the collisions in which he was involved with the
civil power. A widow of rank being importuned with a proposal of marriage from
a powerful quarter, fled for refuge to the altar. St. Basil received her. This
brought him into trouble with the Vicar of Pontus, whose jurisdiction extended
over Cappadocia, and who in extreme indignation summoned him. When he had
presented himself, the magistrate gave orders to pull off his outer garment.
His inner garment, which remained, did not conceal his emaciated body. The
brutal persecutor threatened to tear out his liver. Basil smiled and answered,
"Thanks for your intention: where it is at present, it has been no slight
annoyance." However, though it is hardly to the point here to mention it,
the Vicar got the worst of it. The city rose, - Cæsarea, I suppose; the people
swarmed about the Court, says Gregory, as bees smoked out of their home. The
armourers, for whom the place was famous, the weavers, nay the women, with any
weapon which came to hand, with clubs, stones, firebrands, spindles, besieged
the Vicar, who was only saved from immediate death by the interposition of his
prisoner.
But to return: on one occasion he gives the
following account of his maladies to Eusebius, Bishop of Samosata.
"What
was my state of mind, think you, when I received your [14] piety's letter? When
I thought of the feelings which its language expressed, I was eager to fly
straight to Syria; but when I thought of the bodily illness, under which I lay
bound, I saw myself unequal, not only to flying, but to turning even on my bed.
This is the fiftieth day of my illness, on which our beloved and excellent
brother and deacon Elpidius has arrived. I am much reduced by the fever, which,
failing what it might feed on, lingers in this dry flesh as in an expiring
wick, and so has brought on a wasting and tedious illness. Next, my old plague,
the liver, coming upon it, has kept me from taking nourishment, prevented
sleep, and held me on the confines of life and death, granting just life enough
to feel its inflictions. In consequence I have had recourse to the hot springs,
and have availed myself of aid from medical men." - Ep. 138.
The fever
here mentioned seems to have been an epidemic, and so far unusual; but his
ordinary state of health will be understood from the following letter, written
to the same friend in the beginning of his illness, in which he describes the
fever as almost a change for the better.
"In what
state the good Isaaces has found me, he himself will best explain to you;
though his tongue cannot be tragic enough to describe my sufferings, so great
was my illness. Yet any one who knows me ever so little, will be able to
conjecture what it was. For, if when I am called well, I am weaker even than
persons who are given over, you may fancy what I was when I was thus ill.
However, since disease is my natural state, it would follow (let a fever have
its jest) that in this change of habit, my health became especially flourishing.
But it is the scourge of the Lord which goes on increasing my pain according to
my deserts; therefore I have received illness upon illness, so that now even a
child may see that this shell of mine must for certain fail, unless perchance
God's mercy, vouchsafing to me in His long-suffering time for repentance, now,
as often before, extricate me from evils beyond human cure. This shall be as it
is pleasing to Him and good for myself." - Ep. 136.
Eusebius
seems to have been especially the confidant of his bodily sufferings. Five
years before, he writes to [15] him a similar description in answer to a
similar call. "When," he says, "by God's grace and the aid of
your prayers, I seemed to be somewhat recovering from my illness, and had
rallied my strength, then the winter came upon me, keeping me in-doors and
confining me where I was. It was, indeed, much milder than usual, yet enough to
prevent, not only my travelling during it, but even my putting out my head even
a little from my room."—Ep. 27. And nine years later than this, and three
years before his death, he says, that for a time "all remaining hope of
life had left him." "I cannot number," he adds, "the
various affections which have befallen me, my weakness, the violence of the fever,
and the bad state of my constitution."—Ep. 198. One especial effect of his
complaints was to hinder his travelling, which, as his presence was continually
needed, accounts for his frequently insisting on them. To Amphilochius, bishop
of Iconium, he writes in the same year: "The remains of my illness are
sufficient to keep me from the least motion. I went in a carriage as far as the
Martyrs, and had very nearly a relapse; so I am obliged to beg you to excuse
me. If the matter could be put off for a few days, then, by God's grace, I will
be with you, and share your counsels."—Ep. 202. To a friend, whom at an
earlier date he was urging to visit him in his retreat, he says, "You must
not answer with Diogenes to Alexander, It is no farther from you to me, than
from me to you. For my sickness almost makes me like a plant, confined ever to
one spot; besides, to pass life in hiding I account among the first of
goods."—Ep. 9. He elsewhere speaks of his state of health as "bodily
weakness, natural to him from childhood to age, and chastening him according to
the just judgment of an Allwise Governor." - Ep. 203. At forty-five he
calls himself an [16] old man; and by the next year he had lost his teeth. He
died at the age of fifty.
Yet, in spite
of his infirmities, he does not seem at all to have spared himself the fatigue
of travelling. He writes to Meletius, bishop of Antioch, -
"Many
other journeys from my own country have engaged me. I crossed over to Pisidia,
to arrange, in conjunction with the bishops there, the affairs of our Isaurian
brethren. The journey to Pontus followed, Eustathius having put Dazimon into
sufficient confusion, and persuaded many there to separate from my church. I
went as far as my brother Peter's cottage near Neocæsarea. On my return, when I
was very ill from the rains and from despondency, letters arrived forthwith
from the East," etc. - Ep. 216.
