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St Basil the Great Resources Online and in Print
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130 Pages
Page 33
If we accept the explanation given of Letter CLXIX. in a note on a previous page, [238] Gregory the elder, bishop of Nazianzus, must be numbered among those of Basil's correspondents letters to whom have been preserved. The whole episode referred to in that and in the two following letters is curiously illustrative of outbursts of fanaticism and folly which might have been expected to occur in Cappadocia in the fourth century, as well as in soberer regions in several other centuries when they have occurred. It has been clothed with fresh interest by the very vivid narrative of Professor Ramsay, and by the skill with which he uses the scanty morsels of evidence available to construct the theory which he holds about it. [239] This theory is that the correspondence indicates a determined attempt on the part of the rigidly orthodox archbishop to crush proceedings which were really "only keeping up the customary ceremonial of a great religious meeting," and, as such, were winked at, if not approved of, by the bishop to whom the letter of remonstrance is addressed, and the presbyter who was Glycerius' superior. Valuable information is furnished by Professor Ramsay concerning the great annual festival in honour of Zeus of Venasa (or Venese), whose shrine was richly endowed, and the inscription discovered on a Cappadocian hill-top, "Great Zeus in heaven, be propitious to me." But the "evident sympathy" of the bishop and the presbyter is rather a strained inference from the extant letters; and the fact that in the days when paganism prevailed in Cappadocia Venasa was a great religious centre, and the scene of rites in which women played an important part, is no conclusive proof that wild dances performed by an insubordinate deacon were tolerated, perhaps encouraged, because they represented a popular old pagan observance. Glycerius may have played the patriarch, without meaning to adopt, or travesty, the style of the former high priest of Zeus. Cappadocia was one of the most Christian districts of the empire long before Basil was appointed to the exarchate of Caesarea, and Basil is not likely to have been the first occupant of the see who would strongly disapprove of and endeavour to repress, any such manifestations as those which are described. [240] That the bishop whom Basil addresses and the presbyter served by Glycerius should have desired to deal leniently with the offender individually does not convict them of accepting the unseemly proceedings of Glycerius and his troupe as a pardonable, if not desirable, survival of a picturesque national custom. [241]
[238] S: viii.
[239] Ramsay's Church of the Roman Empire, chap. xviii.
[240] The description of Caesarea, as being "Christian to a man" (pandemei christianizontas. Soz. v. 4), would apply pretty generally to all the province.
[241] In the chapter in which Professor Ramsay discusses the story of Glycerius he asks how it was that, while Phrygia was heretical, Cappadocia, in the fourth century, was orthodox: "Can any reason be suggested why this great Cappadocian leader followed the Roman Church, whereas all the most striking figures in Phrygian ecclesiastical history opposed it?" In Phrygia was the great centre of Montanism, a form of religionism not unfavourable to excesses such as those of Glycerius. But in Letter cciv., placed in 375, Basil claims both the Phrygias, i.e. Pacatiana and Salutaris, as being in communion with him. By the "Roman Church," followed by Cappadocia and opposed by Phrygia, must be meant either the ecclesiastical system of the Roman Empire, or the Church at Rome regarded as holding a kind of hegemony of Churches. If the former, it will be remembered that Cappadocia boldly withstood the creed patronized and pressed by imperial authority, when the influence of Valens made Arianism the official religion of Rome. If the latter, the phrase seems a misleading anachronism. In the fourth century there was no following or opposing the Church of Rome as we understand the phrase. To the bishop of Rome was conceded a certain personal precedence, as bishop of the capital, and he was beginning to claim more. In the West there was the dignity of the only western apostolic see, and the Church of Rome, as a society, was eminently orthodox and respectable. But, as important ecclesiastical centres, Antioch and Alexandria were far ahead of Rome, and the pope of Alexandria occupied a greater place than the pope of Rome. What Basil was eager to follow was not any local church, but the Faith which he understood to be the true and Catholic Faith, i.e., the Faith of Nicaea. There was no church of Rome in the sense of one organized oecumenical society governed by a central Italian authority. Basil has no idea of any such thing as a Roman supremacy. cf. Letter ccxiv. and note.
Reference address : https://www.elpenor.org/basil/life-works.asp?pg=33
