Amphilochius of Iconium

Amphilochius was born in Cappadocia about 340 into a family that produced more than its share of bishops. Gregory of Nazianzus was his cousin. Basil of Caesarea was his mentor and close friend. He trained as a rhetorician and practiced law in Constantinople for several years before giving it up, going home to care for his aged father, and living quietly. In 373 Basil had him made bishop of Iconium, the city Paul and Barnabas had preached in — modern Konya, in Turkey. He was young for it and said so. Basil wrote him letter after letter, part encouragement and part instruction, and those letters became some of the most important canonical texts in the Eastern church. When Amphilochius asked Basil to explain the doctrine of the Holy Spirit, Basil answered with the treatise On the Holy Spirit, one of the decisive books of the fourth century, and dedicated it to him. Amphilochius was at the Council of Constantinople in 381 that completed the creed. He fought Arianism in his own province, and he pressed the emperor Theodosius to bar Arian assemblies. Theodoret tells a story about that campaign: Amphilochius came before the emperor and paid full honor to Theodosius but pointedly ignored his son Arcadius, who had just been made co-emperor. When Theodosius objected, Amphilochius replied that if the emperor could not bear to see his son slighted, he should understand how God the Father regards those who dishonor his Son. The Arian meetings were banned shortly after. He presided about 390 at the Council of Side, which condemned the Messalians — a movement that held that prayer alone saves, that the sacraments and the moral struggle are irrelevant, and that a demon dwells in every soul until expelled by ecstatic prayer. His best-known surviving work is the Iambics to Seleucus, a poem of advice to a young man, which ends by listing the books of the Bible in verse so they could be memorized. It is one of the earliest full canon lists in the East, and it is candid about which books were still disputed — it notes that some receive Hebrews and some do not, and that opinion on Revelation was divided. He died sometime after 394. Most of his sermons are lost or survive in fragments. Sources: Basil of Caesarea, Letters and On the Holy Spirit; Theodoret of Cyrus, Ecclesiastical History; Jerome, On Illustrious Men; The Catholic Encyclopedia (1913), s.v. "Amphilochius".