Voices and influences
Basil of Caesarea
He built a whole town for the sick and the poor outside his city, and wrote the book that settled the church's confession of the Holy Spirit.
Summary
This site quotes Basil of Caesarea 207 times across 38 books, and lists 0 works.
- Lived died 379.
- Quoted here most in Psalms: 54 of 207.
Basil of Caesarea
- Lived
- died 379
- Tradition
- Patristic
5 of 207 quotations
Own words
Quoted in full, because Basil of Caesarea died in 379 and these works are out of copyright. Each citation below names its edition and its year. A citation naming a modernised text means that edition makes its own editorial changes, and that edition's terms are not in this site's record.
The people were murmuring because there was no water. Moses merely had said to his people, "Can we bring you forth water out of this rock?"
PREFACE ON THE JUDGMENT OF GOD, 379
The rest of the quotation
Thus he wavered only slightly, yet for this alone he immediately received the threat that he should not enter into the land of promise, which was at that time the chief of all the promises made to the Jews.
Numbers 20:10 Then Moses and Aaron gathered the assembly in front of the rock, and Moses said to them, “Listen now, you rebels, must we bring you water out of this rock?” BSB
Why do you grieve, my friend, when you yourself have suffered no misfortune? Why are you hostile to someone who is enjoying prosperity, when he has in no way caused your own possessions to decrease?
CONCERNING ENVY, 379
The rest of the quotation
If you are vexed even upon receiving a kindness [from the object of your spite], are you not quite clearly envious of your own good? Saul is an example of this. He made David's great favors to himself a motive for enmity with him.
1 Samuel 18:7 And as the women danced, they sang out: “Saul has slain his thousands, and David his tens of thousands.” BSB
These words seem to contain some boastfulness and to be very much like the prayer of the Pharisee who was exalting himself, but, if one considers them reasonably, the prophet will be seen to be far from such a disposition.… "According to my justice" [means]…
HOMILIES ON THE PSALMS 11:6 (PS 7), 379
The rest of the quotation
according to that attainable by people and possible for those living in the flesh. "And according to my innocence," [in this] he names his innocence as if it were simplicity and ignorance of things useful to know according to the saying in the Proverbs: "The innocent believes every word."
Psalms 7:8 The LORD judges the peoples; vindicate me, O LORD, according to my righteousness and integrity. BSB
Do not be so poorly disposed toward God as to think that he is too weak to avenge, for he is also strong. What reason is there, then, that swift vengeance is not inflicted on the sinner?
HOMILIES ON THE PSALMS 11:7 (PS 7), 379
The rest of the quotation
Because he is patient, "he is not angry every day."
Psalms 7:11 God is a righteous judge and a God who feels indignation each day. BSB
Mere abstinence from evil is not a characteristic of a perfect person, but for one recently instructed in basic principles it is fitting to turn aside from the impulse to evil and, being delivered from the habits of a depraved life as from a bad…
HOMILIES ON THE PSALMS 16:10 (PS 34), 379
The rest of the quotation
road, to pursue the performance of good.
Psalms 34:14 Turn away from evil and do good; seek peace and pursue it. BSB
Influence, on the record
This site quotes Basil of Caesarea 207 times across 38 books.
This site’s own count of what it does with the voice
The life, in order
The life told as one accountfrom this site's record
Basil was born about 330 at Caesarea in Cappadocia, in the middle of what is now Turkey, into a wealthy landowning family that produced more saints than most centuries do. His grandmother Macrina the Elder had hidden in the woods for years during persecution. His mother Emmelia raised ten children. His older sister Macrina the Younger turned the family estate into a monastic community and was, by his brother's account, the strongest mind in the house. His brother Gregory became bishop of Nyssa; another brother, Peter, bishop of Sebaste. He was given the best education money could buy — Caesarea, then Constantinople, then Athens, where he studied for several years alongside Gregory of Nazianzus. The two became lifelong friends there, and Gregory later wrote that they knew only two streets in the city, the one to the church and the one to the school. Basil came home about 356 brilliant, credentialed, and pleased with himself. He says so. He began teaching rhetoric, and Macrina went at him about it until he saw it — that he had spent years acquiring an impressive nothing. He was baptized, gave away his share of the property, and went traveling through Egypt, Palestine, Syria and Mesopotamia to see how the monks actually lived. Then he settled by the river Iris in Pontus to live the same way, and wrote to Gregory to come join him. Gregory came, complained about the vegetables, and helped him work. What came out of those years shaped Eastern monasticism permanently. Basil looked at the solitary hermits and asked a blunt question: whose feet are you going to wash? He built his rule around community — monks living together, under obedience, at fixed hours of prayer, doing real work, and running orphanages and schools for the surrounding countryside. His Longer and Shorter Rules are still the foundation of monastic life in the Orthodox churches, and Benedict, writing his own rule in Italy two centuries later, tells his monks to go read Basil. He was ordained priest about 362 and made archbishop of Caesarea in 370, with authority over a large and difficult province. The famine came first. In 368 the harvest failed across Cappadocia, and grain speculators sat on their stocks waiting for prices to climb. Basil sold his remaining inheritance, opened a soup kitchen, and preached the sermons that made his name — telling the rich to their faces that the bread in their storehouse belongs to the hungry, the coat in their chest to the naked, the shoes rotting in their closet to the barefoot. Then he built something permanent. Outside the city walls he laid out what people called the Basiliad: a hospital with staffed wards, a hospice, a home for the poor, a house for travelers, workshops to train the able-bodied in a trade, and a separate quarter for lepers — whom he served himself, and embraced in public, at a time when leprosy meant expulsion from human society. Gregory of Nazianzus called it a new city. It is the ancestor of the hospital as an institution. He held Cappadocia against the Arian emperor Valens, who was systematically deposing Nicene bishops. The prefect Modestus was sent to break him and threatened confiscation, exile, torture and death. Basil answered that a man who owns nothing cannot be confiscated, that every land is God's so exile is no exile, that the first blow would finish a body as worn as his, and that death would only send him home sooner. Modestus said no one had ever spoken to him that way. Basil replied, Perhaps you have never met a bishop. Valens came to Caesarea himself at Epiphany, walked into the packed church, and — the story goes — was shaken enough that his hands trembled when he brought his offering forward. The exile order was signed and then torn up. His great book is On the Holy Spirit, written about 375. Nicaea had settled the Son. It had said almost nothing about the Spirit, and men were now teaching that the Spirit is a creature, a servant of God rather than God. Basil answered from the church's own practice: we are baptized into the name of Father, Son and Holy Spirit; we glorify the Spirit with the Father and the Son. What the church prays is what the church believes. That argument, carried by his friend Gregory to the Council of Constantinople in 381, is why the creed recited every Sunday says the Holy Spirit is the Lord and Giver of life, who with the Father and the Son together is worshiped and glorified. Basil did not live to see it. Worn out by fasting, illness and work, he died on 1 January 379, aged about forty-nine, two years before the council settled what he had fought for. The whole city, Jews and pagans included, turned out for the funeral. Sources: Gregory of Nazianzus, Oration 43: Funeral Oration on Basil the Great; Basil, On the Holy Spirit; Basil, Letters; Gregory of Nyssa, Life of Macrina; Philip Schaff, ed., Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Series II, vol. 8.
207 quotations across 38 books
Where this voice is quoted
For the Mighty One has done great things for me. Holy is His name.
“(in Ps. 33.) But holy is the name of God called, not because in its letters it contains any significant power, but because in whatever way we look at God we distinguish his purity and holiness.”
He has filled the hungry with good things, but has sent the rich away empty.
“(ubi sup.) These words regulate our conduct even with respect to sensible things, teaching the uncertainty of all worldly possessions, which are as shortlived as the wave which is dashed about to and fro by the violence of the wind.”
the oath He swore to our father Abraham, to grant us
“(Hom. in Ps. 29. et in Ps. 14. App. op.) But let no one, hearing that the Lord had sworn to Abraham, be tempted to swear.”
Then He went down to Nazareth with them and was obedient to them. But His mother treasured up all these things in her heart.
“(in Const. Mon. 4.) But from His very first years being obedient to His parents, He endured all bodily labours, humbly and reverently.”
and Levi got up, left everything, and followed Him.
“(Reg. fus. tract. 8.) He not only gave up the profits of the customs, but also despised the dangers which might occur to himself and his family from leaving the accounts of the receipts uncompleted.”
Jesus replied, “Can you make the guests of the bridegroom fast while He is with them?
“The children of the Bridegroom also cannot fast, i. e. refuse nourishment to the soul, but live on every word which proceedeth out of the mouth of God.”
Rejoice in that day and leap for joy, because great is your reward in heaven. For their fathers treated the prophets in the same way.
“(Hom. 6. in Hex.) Again, great has sometimes a positive signification, as the heaven is great, and the earth is great; but sometimes it has relation to something else, as a great ox or great horse, on comparing two things of like nature.”
Woe to you who are well fed now, for you will hunger. Woe to you who laugh now, for you will mourn and weep.
“(Reg. fus. tract. 16-19.) Now it is plain that the rule of abstinence is necessary, because the Apostle mentions it among the fruits of the Spirit. (Gal. 5:23.)”
Why do you look at the speck in your brother’s eye, but fail to notice the beam in your own eye?
“(Hom. 9, in Hexameron.) In truth, self knowledge seems the most important of all. For not only the eye, looking at outward things, fails to exercise its sight upon itself, but our understanding also, though very quick in apprehending the sin of another, is slow…”
He is like a man building a house, who dug down deep and laid his foundation on the rock.
“(in Princ. Prov.) But lay your foundations upon a rock, that is, lean upon the faith of Christ, so as to persevere immoveable in adversity, whether it come from man or God.”
Still other seed fell on good soil, where it sprang up and produced a crop—a hundredfold.”
“What should we say concerning this: "He who has ears to hear, let him hear"? It is evident that some possess ears better able to hear the words of God. What does he say to those who do not have those ears?”
Nevertheless, do not rejoice that the spirits submit to you, but rejoice that your names are written in heaven.”
“(in Esai. 4.) There are some who are written indeed not in life, but according to Jeremiah in the earth, (Jer. 17:13.)”
He answered, “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind’ and ‘Love your neighbor…
“(in Ps. 44.) By saying, with all thy mind, he does not admit of any division of love to other things, for whatever love you cast on lower things necessarily takes away from the whole.”
So Jesus told them, “When you pray, say: ‘Father, hallowed be Your name. Your kingdom come.
“(Const. Monast. cap. 1.) There are two kinds of prayer, one composed of praise with humiliation, the other of petitions, and more subdued.”
Give us each day our daily bread.
“(in Reg. brev. ad inter. 252.) As if He said, For thy daily bread, namely, that which serves for our daily wants, trust not to thyself, but fly to God for it, making known to Him the necessities of thy nature.”
I tell you, even though he will not get up to provide for him because of his friendship, yet because of the man’s persistence, he will get up and give…
“(Const. Mon. c. 1.) For perhaps He delays purposely, to redouble your earnestness and coming to him, and that you may know what the gift of God is, and may anxiously guard what is given.”
For as Jonah was a sign to the Ninevites, so the Son of Man will be a sign to this generation.
“(in Esai. 7.) A sign is a thing brought openly to view, containing in itself the manifestation of something hidden, as the sign of Jonas represents the descent to hell, the ascension of Christ, and His resurrection from the dead.”
Then he said, ‘This is what I will do: I will tear down my barns and will build bigger ones, and there I will store up all my grain and…
“(ubi sup.) But if thou confessest that those things have come to thee from God, is God then unjust in distributing to us unequally. Why dost thou abound while another begs?”
But God said to him, ‘You fool! This very night your life will be required of you. Then who will own what you have accumulated?’
“(Hom. in loc.) But he was permitted to deliberate in every thing, and to manifest his purpose, that he might receive a sentence such as his inclinations deserved.”
For the Gentiles of the world strive after all these things, and your Father knows that you need them.
“And that you may understand an elation of this kind, remember the vanity of your own youth; if at any time while by yourself you have thought about life and promotions, passing rapidly from one dignity to another, have grasped riches, have built palaces, benefitted…”
Sell your possessions and give to the poor. Provide yourselves with purses that will not wear out, an inexhaustible treasure in heaven, where no thief approaches and no moth destroys.
“(reg. brev. ad int. 92.) But some one will ask, upon what grounds ought we to sell that which we have? Is it that these things are by nature hurtful, or because of the temptation to our souls?”
You also must be ready, because the Son of Man will come at an hour you do not expect.”
“What is the mark of a Christian? It is to watch daily and hourly and to stand prepared in that state of total responsiveness pleasing to God, knowing that the Lord will come at an hour that he does not expect.”
The master of that servant will come on a day he does not expect and at an hour he does not anticipate.
“(in lib. de Sp. San. c. 16.) The body indeed is not divided, so that one part indeed should be exposed to torments, the other escape.”
Then Jesus said to the crowds, “As soon as you see a cloud rising in the west, you say, ‘A shower is coming,’ and that is what happens.
“(in Hexam. Hom. 6, 4.) Now we must observe, that conjectures concerning the stars are necessary to the life of man, as long as we do lot push our searches into their signs beyond due limits.”
“Make every effort to enter through the narrow door. For many, I tell you, will try to enter and will not be able.
“(in reg. ad int. 240.) For as in earthly life the departure from right is exceeding broad, so he who goes out of the path which leads to the kingdom of heaven, finds himself in a vast extent of error. (int. 241.).”