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Translated by Bl. Jackson.
St Basil the Great Resources Online and in Print
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This Part: 128 Pages
Page 102
XXX. As to those guilty of abduction we have no ancient rule, but I have expressed my own judgment. The period is three years; [2711] the culprits and their accomplices to be excluded from service. The act committed without violence is not liable to punishment, whenever it has not been preceded by violation or robbery. The widow is independent, and to follow or not is in her own power. We must, therefore, pay no heed to excuses.
XXXI. A woman whose husband has gone away and disappeared, and who marries another, before she has evidence of his death, commits adultery. Clerics who are guilty of the sin unto death [2712] are degraded from their order, but not excluded from the communion of the laity. Thou shalt not punish twice for the same fault. [2713]
XXXIII. Let an indictment for murder be preferred against the woman who gives birth to a child on the road and pays no attention to it.
XXXIV. Women who had committed adultery, and confessed their fault through piety, or were in any way convicted, were not allowed by our fathers to be publicly exposed, that we might not cause their death after conviction. But they ordered that they should be excluded from communion till they had fulfilled their term of penance.
XXXV. In the case of a man deserted by his wife, the cause of the desertion must be taken into account. If she appear to have abandoned him without reason, he is deserving of pardon, but the wife of punishment. Pardon will be given to him that he may communicate with the Church.
XXXVI. Soldiers' wives who have married in their husbands' absence will come under the same principle as wives who, when their husbands have been on a journey, have not waited their return. Their case, however, does admit of some concession on the ground of there being greater reason to suspect death.
[2711] The Ben. Ed. point out that in Canon xxii. four years is the allotted period, as in the case of fornicators.
[2712] St. Basil on Isaiah iv. calls sins wilfully committed after full knowledge "sins unto death." But in the same commentary he applies the same designation to sins which lead to hell. The sense to be applied to the phrase in Canon xxxii. is to be learnt, according to the Ben. note, from Canons lxix. and lxx., where a less punishment is assigned to mere wilful sins unto death than in Canon xxxii.
[2713] Nahum i. 9, LXX.
Reference address : https://www.elpenor.org/basil/letters-2.asp?pg=102
