The letters of Basil of Caesarea and the role of letter-collections in their transmission

Abstract

The last comprehensive series of critical editions of Basil's works by the Maurist Benedictines was published between 1721 and 1730, and no small advance in methodologies has been made since those days. Throughout the twentieth century, investigation of the transmission of Basil's letters made enormous strides. This chapter examines that scholarly progress and the bearing it has on the possibility of a new critical edition of Basil's works, the proposed 'Basilii Caesariensis Opera'. The first volume of such a series would be dedicated to a new critical edition of Basil's letters, one of the largest corpora of letters in the Greek language from late antiquity.