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

Troubles of the Closing Years.The winter of 378–9 dealt the last blow, and with the first day of what, to us, is now thenew year, the great spirit fled. Gregory, alas! was not at the bedside. But he has left us anarrative which bears the stamp of truth. For some time the bystanders thought that thedying bishop had ceased to breathe. Then the old strength blazed out at the last. He spokewith vigour, and even ordained some of the faithful who were with him. Then he lay oncemore feeble and evidently passing away. Crowds surrounded his residence, praying eagerlyfor his restoration to them, and willing to give their lives for his. With a few final words ofadvice and exhortation, he said: “Into thy hands I commend my spirit,” and so ended.The funeral was a scene of intense excitement and rapturous reverence. Crowds filledevery open space, and every gallery and window; Jews and Pagans joined with Christiansin lamentation, and the cries and groans of the agitated oriental multitude drowned themusic of the hymns which were sung. The press was so great that several fatal accidentsadded to the universal gloom. Basil was buried in the “sepulchre of his fathers”—a phrasewhich may possibly mean in the ancestral tomb of his family at Cæsarea.So passed away a leader of men in whose case the epithet ‘great’ is no conventionalcompliment. He shared with his illustrious brother primate of Alexandria the honour ofrallying the Catholic forces in the darkest days of the Arian depression. He was great asforemost champion of a great cause, great in contemporary and posthumous influence,great in industry and self-denial, great as a literary controversialist. The estimate formedof him by his contemporaries is expressed in the generous, if somewhat turgid, eloquenceof the laudatory oration of the slighted Gregory of Nazianzus. Yet nothing in Gregory’seulogy goes beyond the expressions of the prelate who has seemed to some to be “the wisestand holiest man in the East in the succeeding century.” 287 Basil is described by the saintlyand learned Theodoret 288 in terms that might seem exaggerated when applied to any buthis master, as the light not of Cappadocia only, but of the world. 289 To Sophronius 290 heis the “glory of the Church.” To Isidore of Pelusium, 291 he seems to speak as one inspired.To the Council of Chalcedon he is emphatically a minister of grace; 292 to the second councilof Nicæa a layer of the foundations of orthodoxy. 293 His death lacks the splendid triumphof the martyrdoms of Polycarp and Cyprian. His life lacks the vivid incidents which makethe adventures of Athanasius an enthralling romance. He does not attract the sympathyxxxii287 Kingsley, Hypatia, chap. xxx.288 cf. Gibbon, chap. xxi.289 Theod., H.E. iv. 16, and Ep. cxlvi.290 Apud Photium Cod. 231.291 Ep. lxi.292 cf. Ceillier, vi. 8, 1.293 Ib.50