Saint Basil the Great, Archbishop of Caesarea
Archbishop of Caesarea in Cappadocia, Great Hierarch and Universal Teacher
- Feast day
- January 1
- Lived
- c. 330–379
- Patronage
- Hospital work, care of the poor, monastics, students
Saint Basil the Great is one of the Three Holy Hierarchs, an architect of Orthodox theology in the fourth century, the organiser of coenobitic monasticism in the East, and the author of the Divine Liturgy that bears his name.
Life
Basil was born into a family of saints in Cappadocia: his grandmother Macrina the Elder, his parents Basil and Emmelia, his sister Macrina the Younger, and his brothers Gregory of Nyssa and Peter of Sebaste are all commemorated by the Church. He studied in Constantinople and Athens, where he formed a lifelong friendship with Saint Gregory the Theologian.
Abandoning a brilliant secular career, he withdrew to the Pontus to live as a monk, and there compiled the ascetical rules that still shape Orthodox monasticism. Elected archbishop of Caesarea in 370, he confronted the Arian emperor Valens without flinching, and defended the divinity of the Holy Spirit against those who denied it.
The Basiliad and social work
Basil built outside Caesarea a complex of hospital, hospice, poorhouse and workshops known as the Basiliad — effectively the first Christian hospital city, in which he himself served the sick, including lepers whom others refused to touch. His homilies against usury and hoarding grain during famine remain among the sharpest social teaching of the Fathers.
Liturgy and writings
The Liturgy of Saint Basil the Great is served ten times a year in the Orthodox Church: on the Sundays of Great Lent, Holy Thursday, Holy Saturday, the eves of Nativity and Theophany, and on his feast, January 1. His treatise On the Holy Spirit and the Hexaemeron homilies on the six days of creation are read to this day.