NPNF2-08. Basil: Letters and Select Works - Holy Bible Institute

Basil as Archbishop.It was at the close of this same year 371 166 that Basil and his diocese suffered mostseverely from the hostility of the imperial government. Valens had never lost his antipathyto Cappadocia. In 370 he determined on dividing it into two provinces. Podandus, a poorlittle town at the foot of Mt. Taurus, was to be the chief seat of the new province, andthither half the executive was to be transferred. Basil depicts in lively terms the dismay anddejection of Cæsarea. 167 He even thought of proceeding in person to the court to plead thecause of his people, and his conduct is in itself a censure of those who would confine thesympathies 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 conjectured168 that possibly the act of kindness of the prefect mentioned in Ep. LXXVIII. mayhave 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 closeof the year 371, flushed with successes against the barbarians, 169 fresh from the baptism ofEndoxius, and eager to impose his creed on his subjects, Valens was travelling leisurely towardsSyria. He is said to have shrunk from an encounter with the famous primate ofCæsarea, for he feared lest one strong man’s firmness might lead others to resist. 170 Beforehim went Modestus, Prefect of the Prætorium, the minister of his severities, 171 and beforeModestus, like the skirmishers in front of an advancing army, had come a troop of Arianbishops with Euippius, in all probability, at their head. 172 Modestus found on his arrivalthat Basil was making a firm stand, and summoned the archbishop to his presence with thehope of overawing him. He met with a dignity, if not with a pride, which was more than amatch for his own. Modestus claimed submission in the name of the emperor. Basil refusedit in the name of God. Modestus threatened impoverishment, exile, torture, death. Basilretorted that none of these threats frightened him: he had nothing to be confiscated excepta few rags and a few books; banishment could not send him beyond the lands of God; torturexxivout how in Ign. ad Eph. xviii, the word has “already reached its first stage on the way to the sense of ‘dissimulation,’which was afterwards connected with it, and which led to disastrous consequences in the theology and practiceof a later age.” On “Reserve” as taught by later casuists, see Scavini, Theolog. Mor. ii. 23, the letters of Pascal,and Jer. Taylor, Ductor Dubit. iii. 2.166 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 Cappadociaas early as the Eupsychian celebration.32