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
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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
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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
Let the assembled peoples gather around You; take Your seat over them on high.
“"And a congregation of people shall surround you." It is evident that if one unjust person is chastened, many will be converted. Punish, therefore, the wickedness of this person, in order that a great congregation of people may surround you.”
The LORD judges the peoples; vindicate me, O LORD, according to my righteousness and integrity.
“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]…”
My shield is with God, who saves the upright in heart.
“My help is not from wealth or from corporal resources or from my own power and strength nor from human ties of kinship, but "my help is from God."”
God is a righteous judge and a God who feels indignation each day.
“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?”
If one does not repent, God will sharpen His sword; He has bent and strung His bow. He has prepared His deadly weapons; He ordains His arrows with fire.
“Just as men who are polishing up their arms indicate by this action the attack in war, so Scripture, wishing to bespeak a movement of God toward vengeance, says that he polishes his sword. "He has bent his bow."”
He has dug a hole and hollowed it out; he has fallen into a pit of his own making.
“We do not find the name of "pit" ever assigned in the divine Scriptures in the case of something good or a "well" of water in the case of something bad.”
The voice of the LORD is over the waters; the God of glory thunders; the LORD is heard over many waters.
“The waters are also the saints, because rivers flow from within them, that is, spiritual teaching that refreshes the souls of the hearers.”
The voice of the LORD is powerful; the voice of the LORD is majestic.
“The voice of the Lord is not in the weak and dissolute soul but in that which vigorously and powerfully achieves the good.… Magnificence is virtue extraordinarily great. One who performs great actions becomingly … hears himself called magnificent.”
The voice of the LORD strikes with flames of fire.
“Although fire seems to human intelligence to be incapable of being cut or divided, yet by the command of the Lord it is cut through and divided.”
The LORD sits enthroned over the flood; the LORD is enthroned as King forever.
“God sits in the soul that shines from its washing, as if he were making it a throne for himself.”
Sing to the LORD, O you His saints, and praise His holy name.
“One does not sing to the Lord by simply uttering the words of the psalm with his mouth, but all who send up the psalmody from a clean heart and who are holy, maintaining righteousness toward God, these are able to sing to God, harmoniously…”
In prosperity I said, “I will never be shaken.”
“As the prosperity of a city is dependent on the supply of goods for sale in the market, and as we say that a country is prosperous that produces much fruit, so also there is a certain prosperity of the soul when it has been…”
O LORD, You favored me; You made my mountain stand strong. When You hid Your face, I was dismayed.
“God is said to turn away his face when in times of troubles he permits us to be delivered up to trials, in order that the strength of him who is struggling may be known.… We pray always for the face of God to shine…”
You turned my mourning into dancing; You peeled off my sackcloth and clothed me with joy,
“The joy of God is not found in just any soul but, if someone has mourned much and deeply his own sin with loud lamentations and continual weepings, as if he were bewailing his own death, the mourning of such a one is turned into…”
that my heart may sing Your praises and not be silent. O LORD my God, I will give thanks forever.
“When you granted me pardon because of my repentance and led me back into glory, taking away the shame of my sins, for this I shall give praise to you for all eternity.”
Rejoice in the LORD, O righteous ones; it is fitting for the upright to praise Him.
“"Rejoice," therefore, "in the Lord, O you righteous," not when the interests of your home are flourishing, not when you are in good health of body, not when your fields are filled with all sorts of fruits, but when you have the Lord—such immeasurable Beauty…”
Praise the LORD with the harp; make music to Him with ten strings.
“It is necessary to praise the Lord on the harp; that is, to render harmoniously the actions of the body.”
Sing to Him a new song; play skillfully with a shout of joy.
“The loud noise is a certain inarticulate sound, when those who are fighting side by side in a war shout out in unison with each other. Sing, then, in harmony and in agreement and in union through charity.”
For the word of the LORD is upright, and all His work is trustworthy.
“"If you see the heavens," he says, "and the order in them," they are a guide to faith, for through themselves they show the Craftsman; and, if you see the orderly arrangement about the earth, again through these things also your faith in God is…”
The LORD loves righteousness and justice; the earth is full of His loving devotion.
“The Judge wishes to have mercy on you and to share his own compassion.… But if he sees your heart unrepentant, your mind proud, your disbelief of the future life and your fearlessness of the judgment, then he desires the judgment for you, just as…”
The LORD frustrates the plans of the nations; He thwarts the devices of the peoples.
“It is possible to refer these things to the time of Jesus' passion when they thought that they were crucifying the King of glory, but he through the economy of the cross was renewing humanity.”
The LORD looks down from heaven; He sees all the sons of men.
“Consider the lofty spectator; consider him who is bending down regarding the affairs of humankind. Wherever you may go, whatever you may do, whether in the darkness or in the daytime, you have the eye of God watching. "From his habitation that he has prepared."”
Surely the eyes of the LORD are on those who fear Him, on those whose hope is in His loving devotion
“He who does not trust in his own good deeds or expect to be justified by his works has, as his only hope of salvation, the mercies of God.”
I sought the LORD, and He answered me; He delivered me from all my fears.
“The whole life of the just person is filled with affliction.… But God delivers his saints from their afflictions. Though he does not leave them without trial, yet he bestows on them patient endurance.”
This poor man called out, and the LORD heard him; He saved him from all his troubles.
“Poverty is not always praiseworthy, but only that which is practiced intentionally according to the evangelical aim. Many are poor in their resources but very grasping in their intention; poverty does not save these; on the contrary, their intention condemns them.”