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130 Pages
Page 23
It was at the close of this same year 371 [166] that Basil and his diocese suffered most severely from the hostility of the imperial government. Valens had never lost his antipathy to Cappadocia. In 370 he determined on dividing it into two provinces. Podandus, a poor little town at the foot of Mt. Taurus, was to be the chief seat of the new province, and thither half the executive was to be transferred. Basil depicts in lively terms the dismay and dejection of Caesarea. [167] He even thought of proceeding in person to the court to plead the cause of his people, and his conduct is in itself a censure of those who would confine the sympathies of ecclesiastics within rigidly clerical limits. The division was insisted on. But, eventually, Tyana was substituted for Podandus as the new capital; and it has been conjectured [168] that possibly the act of kindness of the prefect mentioned in Ep. LXXVIII. may have been this transfer, due to the intervention of Basil and his influential friends.
But the imperial Arian was not content with this administrative mutilation. At the close of the year 371, flushed with successes against the barbarians, [169] fresh from the baptism of Endoxius, and eager to impose his creed on his subjects, Valens was travelling leisurely towards Syria. He is said to have shrunk from an encounter with the famous primate of Caesarea, for he feared lest one strong man's firmness might lead others to resist. [170] Before him went Modestus, Prefect of the Praetorium, the minister of his severities, [171] and before Modestus, like the skirmishers in front of an advancing army, had come a troop of Arian bishops with Euippius, in all probability, at their head. [172] Modestus found on his arrival that Basil was making a firm stand, and summoned the archbishop to his presence with the hope of overawing him. He met with a dignity, if not with a pride, which was more than a match for his own. Modestus claimed submission in the name of the emperor. Basil refused it in the name of God. Modestus threatened impoverishment, exile, torture, death. Basil retorted that none of these threats frightened him: he had nothing to be confiscated except a few rags and a few books; banishment could not send him beyond the lands of God; torture had no terrors for a body already dead; death could only come as a friend to hasten his last journey home. Modestus exclaimed in amazement that he had never been so spoken to before. "Perhaps," replied Basil, "you never met a bishop before." The prefect hastened to his master and reported that ordinary means of intimidation appeared unlikely to move this undaunted prelate. The archbishop must be owned victorious, or crushed by more brutal violence. But Valens, like all weak natures, oscillated between compulsion and compliance. He so far abated his pretensions to force heresy on Cappadocia, as to consent to attend the services at the Church on the Festival of the Epiphany. [173] The Church was crowded. A mighty chant thundered over the sea of heads. At the end of the basilica, facing the multitude, stood Basil, statue-like, erect as Samuel among the prophets at Naioth, [174] and quite indifferent to the interruption of the imperial approach. The whole scene seemed rather of heaven than of earth, and the orderly enthusiasm of the worship to be rather of angels than of men. Valens half fainted, and staggered as he advanced to make his offering at God's Table. On the following day Basil admitted him within the curtain of the sanctuary, and conversed with him at length on sacred subjects. [175]
[166] Maran, Vit. Bas. xx. 1.
[167] Epp. lxxiv., lxxv, lxxvi.
[168] Maran, Vit. Bas. xix. 3.
[169] Greg. Nyss., C. Eunom. i.
[170] Theod. iv. 16.
[171] Soc. iv. 16.
[172] cf. Epp. lxviii., cxxviii., ccxliv. and ccli., and Maran, Vit. Bas. xx. 1; possibly the bishops were in Cappadocia as early as the Eupsychian celebration.
[173] Jan. 6, 372. At this time in the Eastern Church the celebrations of the Nativity and of the Epiphany were combined. cf. D.C.A. i. 617.
[174] 1 Sam. xix. 20.
[175] Greg. Naz., Or. xliii., Greg. Nyss., Adv. Eunom. i., Soz. vi. 16, Theod. iv. 16. De Broglie well combines the variations which are not quite easy to harmonize in detail. On the admission within the sanctuary, cf. the concession of Ambrose to Theodosius in Theod. v. 18.
Reference address : https://www.elpenor.org/basil/life-works.asp?pg=23
