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

Unbroken Friendships.canonical epistles, 235 also addressed to Amphilochius. Indeed, so great was the affectionateconfidence of the great administrator and theologian 236 in his younger brother, that, wheninfirmities were closing round him, he asked Amphilochius to aid him in the administrationof the archdiocese. 237If we accept the explanation given of Letter CLXIX. in a note on a previous page, 238Gregory the elder, bishop of Nazianzus, must be numbered among those of Basil’s correspondentsletters to whom have been preserved. The whole episode referred to in that andin the two following letters is curiously illustrative of outbursts of fanaticism and folly whichmight have been expected to occur in Cappadocia in the fourth century, as well as insoberer regions in several other centuries when they have occurred. It has been clothedwith fresh interest by the very vivid narrative of Professor Ramsay, and by the skill withwhich he uses the scanty morsels of evidence available to construct the theory which heholds about it. 239 This theory is that the correspondence indicates a determined attempton the part of the rigidly orthodox archbishop to crush proceedings which were really “onlykeeping up the customary ceremonial of a great religious meeting,” and, as such, were winkedat, if not approved of, by the bishop to whom the letter of remonstrance is addressed, andthe presbyter who was Glycerius’ superior. Valuable information is furnished by ProfessorRamsay concerning the great annual festival in honour of Zeus of Venasa (or Venese), whoseshrine was richly endowed, and the inscription discovered on a Cappadocian hill-top, “GreatZeus in heaven, be propitious to me.” But the “evident sympathy” of the bishop and thepresbyter is rather a strained inference from the extant letters; and the fact that in the dayswhen paganism prevailed in Cappadocia Venasa was a great religious centre, and the sceneof rites in which women played an important part, is no conclusive proof that wild dancesperformed by an insubordinate deacon were tolerated, perhaps encouraged, because theyrepresented 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. Cappadociawas one of the most Christian districts of the empire long before Basil was appointed to theexarchate of Cæsarea, and Basil is not likely to have been the first occupant of the see whowould strongly disapprove of and endeavour to repress, any such manifestations as thosewhich are described. 240 That the bishop whom Basil addresses and the presbyter served byxxix235 Epp. clxxxviii., cxcix., ccxvii.236 “Pace Eunomii,” whom Greg. of Nyssa quotes. C. Eunom. i.237 Ep. cc., cci.238 § viii.239 Ramsay’s Church of the Roman Empire, chap. xviii.240 The description of Cæsarea, as being “Christian to a man” (πανδημεὶ χριστιανίζοντας. Soz. v. 4), wouldapply pretty generally to all the province.44