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

Unbroken Friendships.Glycerius should have desired to deal leniently with the offender individually does notconvict them of accepting the unseemly proceedings of Glycerius and his troupe as a pardonable,if not desirable, survival of a picturesque national custom. 241Among other bishops of the period with whom Basil communicated by letter are Abramius,or Abraham, of Batnæ in Oshoene, 242 the illustrious Athanasius, 243 and Ambrose, 244Athanasius of Ancyra; 245 Barses of Edessa, 246 who died in exile in Egypt; Elpidius, 247 ofsome unknown see on the Levantine seaboard, who supported Basil in the controversy withEustathius; the learned Epiphanius of Salamis; 248 Meletius, 249 the exiled bishop of Antioch;241 In the chapter in which Professor Ramsay discusses the story of Glycerius he asks how it was that, whilePhrygia was heretical, Cappadocia, in the fourth century, was orthodox: “Can any reason be suggested why thisgreat Cappadocian leader followed the Roman Church, whereas all the most striking figures in Phrygian ecclesiasticalhistory opposed it?” In Phrygia was the great centre of Montanism, a form of religionism not unfavourableto 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 Cappadociaand opposed by Phrygia, must be meant either the ecclesiastical system of the Roman Empire, or the Church atRome regarded as holding a kind of hegemony of Churches. If the former, it will be remembered that Cappadociaboldly withstood the creed patronized and pressed by imperial authority, when the influence of Valens madeArianism the official religion of Rome. If the latter, the phrase seems a misleading anachronism. In the fourthcentury there was no following or opposing the Church of Rome as we understand the phrase. To the bishopof Rome was conceded a certain personal precedence, as bishop of the capital, and he was beginning to claimmore. 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 werefar ahead of Rome, and the pope of Alexandria occupied a greater place than the pope of Rome. What Basil waseager 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 Nicæa. There was no church of Rome in the sense of one organized œcumenical society governedby a central Italian authority. Basil has no idea of any such thing as a Roman supremacy. cf. Letter ccxiv. andnote.242 Ep. cxxxii.243 Epp. lxi., lxvi., lxvii., lxix., lxxx., lxxxii.244 Ep. cxcvii.245 Ep. xxiv.246 Epp. cclxiv., cclxvii.247 Epp. ccli., ccv., ccvi.248 Ep. cclviii.249 Epp. lvii., lxviii., lxxxix., cxx., cxxix., ccxvi.45