The Asketikon of St Basil the Great

Abstract

Basil was born in c. AD 329 to an aristocratic Christian family of Neocaesarea, the capital of Pontos Polemoniakos. His father was Basil Senior, an eminent advocate and teacher of rhetoric, his mother Emmelia, of the Cappadocian aristocracy. Eustathius of Sebasteia, a renowned, and indeed controversial ascetic leader, used often to pass through the city on his many journeys to and from the imperial capital, for there, in coming up from Armenia Minor he joined the Via Pontica. He became a friend to the family and they to him. Basil Senior died in the mid-340s, whereupon the mother, Emmelia, transferred the family seat to Annisa, a country estate on the river Iris, just west of its junction with the Lycus. Basil finished his 'middle' studies in Caesarea of Cappadocia, and spent 349-56 in advanced studies, mostly in Athens. He returned home to find the family household in an early stage of transformation into an ascetic community due to the influence of his eldest sister, Makrina. Recalled by her from pursuing a secular career in his father's footsteps, he embraced baptism and ascetic life - regarded in those circles as almost coterminous.