Nicene and Post-Nicene Church Fathers Series 2 - The Still Small ...

evoked by the unsophisticated simplicity of Gregory his friend or of Gregory his brother.
There does not linger about his memory the close personal interest that binds humanity to
Augustine, or the winning loyalty and tenderness that charm far off centuries into affection
for Theodoret. Sometimes he seems a hard, almost a sour man. 294 Sometimes there is a
jarring reminder of his jealousy for his own dignity. 295 Evidently he was not a man who
could be thwarted without a rupture of pleasant relations, or slighted with impunity. In
any subordinate position he was not easy to get on with. 296 But a man of strong will, convicted
that he is championing a righteous cause, will not hesitate to sacrifice, among other
things, the amenities that come of amiable absence of self-assertion. To Basil, to assert
himself was to assert the truth of Christ and of His Church. And in the main the identification
was a true one. Basil was human, and occasionally, as in the famous dispute with
Anthimus, so disastrously fatal to the typical friendship of the earlier manhood, he may
have failed to perceive that the Catholic cause would not suffer from the existence of two
metropolitans in Cappadocia. But the great archbishop could be an affectionate friend,
thirsty for sympathy. 297 And he was right in his estimate of his position. Broadly speaking,
Basil, more powerfully than any contemporary official, worker, or writer in the Church, did
represent and defend through all the populous provinces of the empire which stretched
from the Balkans to the Mediterranean, from the Ægean to the Euphrates, the cause whose
failure or success has been discerned, even by thinkers of no favourable predisposition, to
have meant death or life to the Church. 298 St. Basil is duly canonized in the grateful memory,
no less than in the official bead-roll, of Christendom, and we may be permitted to regret
that the existing Kalendar of the Anglican liturgy has not found room for so illustrious a
Doctor in its somewhat niggard list. 299 For the omission some amends have lately 300 been
294 cf. Ep. xxv.
295 cf. xcviii.
296 e.g. his relations with his predecessor.
297 Ep. xci.
298 e.g. T. Carlyle. “He perceived Christianity itself to have been at stake. If the Arians had won, it would
have dwindled away into a legend.” J. A. Froude, Life of Carlyle in London, ii. 462.
299 In the Greek Kalendar January 1, the day of the death, is observed in honour of the saint. In the West St.
Basil’s day is June 14, the traditional date of the consecration. The martyrologies of Jerome and Bede do not
contain the name. The first mention is ascribed by the Bollandists to Usuard. (Usuard’s martyrology was
composed for Charles the Bold at Paris.) In the tenth century a third day was consecrated in the East to the
common commemoration of SS. Basil, Gregory of Nazianzus, and John Chrysostom.
300 1894.
Troubles of the Closing Years.
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