Basil of Seleucia

Basil was metropolitan bishop of Seleucia in Isauria, a rugged province on the southern coast of Asia Minor, from about 440. He lived through the most violent doctrinal decade in the history of the Eastern church, and his record through it is a record of a man who bent, bent again, and then stood. The question was how to speak about Christ. Nestorius had been condemned in 431 for so distinguishing the divine and human in Jesus that he seemed to make two persons. The reaction went too far the other way: Eutyches, an aged archimandrite in Constantinople, taught that after the union there was only one nature, and that Christ's humanity was swallowed up in his divinity. In 448, at the standing synod in Constantinople, Basil voted with the majority to condemn Eutyches, and he stated the orthodox position plainly — one Christ acknowledged in two natures. The next year came the assembly at Ephesus that Pope Leo called the Robber Synod. Dioscorus of Alexandria presided, soldiers and monks were on hand, Leo's letter was never read, and bishops signed under duress. Basil signed. He voted to reinstate Eutyches and to depose Flavian of Constantinople, who was manhandled and died shortly after. Two years later the Council of Chalcedon met, and the acts of that council preserve the scene: Basil was confronted with his own signature and asked to explain it. He said he had been afraid. He recanted, was received back, and signed the Chalcedonian definition — one person in two natures, without confusion, change, division or separation. He held that ground for the rest of his life, and when the emperor Leo I polled the bishops in 457 about whether Chalcedon should stand, Basil answered that it should. He was also a preacher, and about forty of his homilies survive. A long Life and Miracles of Thecla, celebrating the woman whose shrine at Seleucia was one of the great pilgrimage sites of the East, was long attributed to him; most scholars now doubt it. He died some years after Chalcedon. He is remembered for a career that shows what pressure does to a man, and what it costs to come back. Sources: The Acts of the Council of Chalcedon, translated by Richard Price and Michael Gaddis; the acts of the Home Synod of 448; The Catholic Encyclopedia (1913), s.v. "Basil of Seleucia".