Page:The Greek and Eastern churches.djvu/99

Rh spent five years in the desert of Pontus, where he founded monastic establishments. He slept in a hair shirt, he had but one meal a day, and he lived only on a vegetable diet. The sun was his only fire. His constitution was not robust; and on one occasion, when the governor of Pontus threatened to tear out his liver, Basil replied, "Thanks for your intention; where it is at present it has been no slight annoyance."

Basil's monasteries were schools of Nicene orthodoxy, at which the clergy who had been banished from their churches took refuge and trained up a generation of men faithful to the oppressed faith, and Basil himself was indefatigable in labouring for its restoration. It seemed as though the mantle of Athanasius had fallen on his shoulders. Throughout the East he was recognised as the champion of the Nicene cause. At length some Church troubles led his friend Gregory to urge his recall, and on the death of the bishop he was elected to the bishopric of Cæsarea ( 370).

Basil's commanding character was now felt most powerfully all over Syria and Asia Minor. When the prefect Modestus proposed to the bishops of his district the alternatives of Arianism or deprivation in accordance with the orders of the emperor Valens, he came to Basil and urged him to yield to the will of his "Sovereign." "I have a sovereign," he answered, "whose will is otherwise, nor can I bring myself to worship any creature" (alluding to the Arian Christ). The prefect threatened confiscation, exile, torture. "Think of some other threat," was the fearless man's reply; "these have no influence on me." Modestus was constrained to respect the great bishop's firmness, and he appealed to the emperor, who soon after visited Cæsarea, where, awed by the presence of Basil—the old writers add, by the miracles he wrought—he was generous enough to dismiss the bishop and his friends without punishment. Basil did not live to see the restoration of the Nicene faith. He died in the year 379.

The principal extant works of Basil consist of homilies entitled Hexæmeron, on the six days of creation; five books