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Translated by Bl. Jackson.
St Basil the Great Resources Online and in Print
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This Part: 129 Pages
Page 4
LII. The woman who has given birth to a child and abandoned it in the road, if she was able to save it and neglected it, or thought by this means to hide her sin, or was moved by some brutal and inhuman motive, is to be judged as in a case of murder. If, on the other hand, she was unable to provide for it. and the child perish from exposure and want of the necessities of life, the mother is to be pardoned.
LIII. The widowed slave is not guilty of a serious fall if she adopts a second marriage under colour of rape. She is not on this ground open to accusation. It is rather the object than the pretext which must be taken into account, but it is clear that she is exposed to the punishment of digamy. [2830]
LIV. I know that I have already written to your reverence, so far as I can, on the distinctions to be observed in cases of involuntary homicide, [2831] and on this point I can say no more. It rests with your intelligence to increase or lessen the severity of the punishment as each individual case may require.
LV. Assailants of robbers, if they are outside, are prohibited from the communion of the good thing. [2832] If they are clerics they are degraded from their orders. For, it is said, "All they that take the sword shall perish with the sword." [2833]
LVI. The intentional homicide, who has afterwards repented, will be excommunicated from the sacrament [2834] for twenty years. The twenty years will be appointed for him as follows: for four he ought to weep, standing outside the door of the house of prayer, beseeching the faithful as they enter in to offer prayer in his behalf, and confessing his own sin. After four years he will be admitted among the hearers, and during five years will go out with them. During seven years he will go out with the kneelers, [2835] praying. During four years he will only stand with the faithful, and will not take part in the oblation. On the completion of this period he will be admitted to participation of the sacrament.
[2830] cf. Can. xxx. p. 239.
[2831] i.e. in Canon viii. p. 226 and Canon xi. p. 228.
[2832] Here reading, punctuation, and sense are obscure. The Ben. Ed. have exo men ontes, tes koinonias eirgontai, and render "Si sint quidem laici, a boni communione arcentur." But exo ontes, standing alone, more naturally means non-Christians. Balsamon and Zonaras in Pandects have exo men ontes tes 'Ekklesias eirgontai tes koinonias tou agathou.
[2833] Matt. xxvi. 52.
[2834] hagiasmasi. The Ben. Ed. render Sacramento. In the Sept. (e.g. Amos vii. 13) the word=sanctuary. In patristic usage both S. and P. are found for the Lord's Supper, or the consecrated elements; e.g. hagiasma in Greg. Nyss., Ep. Canon. Can. v. The plural as in this place "frequentius." (Suicer s.v.)
[2835] meta ton en hupoptosei. The hupopiptontes or substrati constituted the third and chief station in the oriental system of penance, the first and second being the prosklaiontes, flentes or weepers, and the akroomenos, audientes, or hearers. In the Western Church it is the substrati who are commonly referred to as being in penitence, and the Latin versions of the Canons of Ancyra by Dionysius Exiguus and Martin of Braga render hupopiptontes and hupoptosis by poenitentis and poenitentia. In Basil's Canon xxii. p. 238, this station is specially styled metanoia. cf. D.C.A. ii. 1593. "Metanoia notat poenitentiam eorum qui ob delicta sua in ecclesia epitimiois esophronizonto (Zonaras, Ad. Can. v. Conc. Antioch, p. 327), quique dicebantur oi en metanoia ontes. Chrysostom, Hom. iii. in Epist. ad Eph. in S. Coenae communione clamabat kerux, hosoi en metanoi& 139; apelthete pantes." Suicer s.v.
Reference address : https://www.elpenor.org/basil/letters-3.asp?pg=4
