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
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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
Fear the LORD, you His saints, for those who fear Him lack nothing.
“Unless fear disciplines our life, it is impossible successfully to attain holiness in body.… In him who fears there is not want, that is, he is failing with regard to no virtue who is prevented by fear from every absurd act, since he falls short…”
Young lions go lacking and hungry, but those who seek the LORD lack no good thing.
“Wealth is unstable and like a wave accustomed to change hither and thither by the violence of the wind.… God himself is absolute Good, and they who seek him will not be without him.”
Turn away from evil and do good; seek peace and pursue it.
“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…”
The righteous cry out, and the LORD hears; He delivers them from all their troubles.
“The cry of the just is a spiritual one, having its loudness in the secret recess of the heart, able to reach even to the ears of God.… They sought after nothing petty, nothing earthly, nothing lowly.”
The LORD is near to the brokenhearted; He saves the contrite in spirit.
“He who has despised present things, and has given himself to the word of God and is using his mind for thoughts that are above and are more divine, he would be the one who has a contrite heart and has made it a sacrifice…”
He protects all his bones; not one of them will be broken.
“There should also be certain bones of the inner person in which the bond of union and harmony of spiritual powers is collected.”
Your arrows pierce the hearts of the king’s foes; the nations fall beneath your feet.
“The sharp arrows of the Mighty One are the well-aimed words that touch the hearts of the hearers, striking and wounding their keenly perceptive souls.”
All your garments are fragrant with myrrh and aloes and cassia; from palaces of ivory the harps make you glad.
“The sweet odor of Christ gives forth the fragrance of myrrh because of his passion, and of aloes because he did not remain motionless and inactive for three days and three nights but descended to the lower world to distribute the graces of the resurrection.……”
The daughters of kings are among your honored women; the queen stands at your right hand, adorned with the gold of Ophir.
“The queen … is the soul that is joined with the Word, its Bridegroom; not subjected by sin but sharing the kingdom of Christ, it stands on the right hand of the Savior in gilded clothing, that is to say, adorning itself charmingly and religiously…”
God is our refuge and strength, an ever-present help in times of trouble.
“Do not flee what you do not need to flee, and do not have recourse to him to whom it is unnecessary. But one thing you must flee: sin; and one refuge from evil must be sought: God.”
There is a river whose streams delight the city of God, the holy place where the Most High dwells.
“Some give the definition that a city is an established community, administered according to law. And the definition that has been handed down of the city is in harmony with the celestial city, Jerusalem above.”
The LORD of Hosts is with us; the God of Jacob is our fortress. Selah
“Our protector, he says, is not another God besides him who was handed down by the prophets.”
Come, see the works of the LORD, who brings devastation upon the earth.
“Just as … great distances make the perception of visible objects dim, but a nearer approach offers a clear knowledge of the objects seen, so also in the case of objects of contemplation in the mind, he who has not drawn near to God is…”
Their graves are their eternal homes— their dwellings for endless generations— even though their lands were their namesakes.
“One who is dead through sins does not dwell in a house but a sepulcher, since his soul is dead.… The thoroughly depraved person dwells in a sepulcher and does not even lay down a foundation of penance because of his dead works, but he…”
Cast your burden upon the LORD and He will sustain you; He will never let the righteous be shaken.
“But do not lament a burden that surpasses your strength. For if you were the one destined to bear this responsibility alone, it would not be merely heavy but utterly unendurable.”
You have rejected us, O God; You have broken us; You have been angry; restore us! You have shaken the land and torn it open.
“Therefore, "O God, you have cast us off." You have cast off those who in proportion to their sins removed themselves a distance from you. You have destroyed the accumulations of our wickedness, doing good to us because of our weakness.”
Gilead is Mine, and Manasseh is Mine; Ephraim is My helmet, Judah is My scepter.
“"Gilead is mine, and Manasseh is mine." Gilead is a grandson of Manasseh; this is said in order that he may show that the succession of the patriarchs, from whom is descended Christ according to the flesh, comes down from God.”
Give us aid against the enemy, for the help of man is worthless. With God we will perform with valor, and He will trample our enemies.
“Therefore, let the church of God be saluted and let it be taught to say what we were just saying: "Give us help from trouble; for the help of people is worthless."”
He alone is my rock and my salvation. He is my fortress; I will never be shaken.
“"For he is my God and my savior; he is my protector, I shall be moved no more." The Son, who is from God, is our God.”
How long will you threaten a man? Will all of you throw him down like a leaning wall or a tottering fence?
“"How long do you rush in upon a person? You all kill, as if you were tearing down a leaning wall and a tottering fence."”
They fully intend to cast him down from his lofty perch; they delight in lies; with their mouths they bless, but inwardly they curse. Selah
“"But they have thought to cast away my price; they ran in thirst: they blessed with their mouth but cursed with their heart."”
My salvation and my honor rest on God, my strong rock; my refuge is in God.
“"In God is my salvation and my glory; he is the God of my help, and my hope is in God."”
Trust in Him at all times, O people; pour out your hearts before Him. God is our refuge. Selah
“Since the psalmist is conscious of the use of sincere hope in God, he invites the people to a zeal equal to his own, saying, "Trust in him, all you people; pour out your hearts before him."”
When You send Your Spirit, they are created, and You renew the face of the earth.
“Resurrection from the dead is accomplished by the operation of the Spirit: "You send forth your Spirit, and they are created; and you renew the face of the earth."”
I hurried without hesitating to keep Your commandments.
“Let each of these considerations find entrance into your mind and check the swollen growth of wrath. By such preparations and by acquiring such dispositions, we quiet the leaping and throbbing of the heart and restore it to tranquil steadiness.”