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| St. Basil and Eustathius.
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VIII.—St. Basil
and Eustathius.
It was Basil’s doom to suffer through his
friendships. If the fault lay with himself in the case of
Gregory, the same cannot be said of his rupture with Eustathius of
Sebaste. If in this connexion fault can be laid to his charge at
all, it was the fault of entering into intimacy with an unworthy
man. In the earlier days of the retirement in Pontus the
austerities of Eustathius outweighed in Basil’s mind any
suspicions of his unorthodoxy.207
| 207 Ep.
ccxiii. § 3. He had been in early days a disciple of
Arius at Alexandria. | Basil
delighted in his society, spent days and nights in sweet converse
with him, and introduced him to his mother and the happy family
circle at Annesi.208
And no doubt
under the ascendency of Basil, Eustathius, always ready to be all
things to all men who might be for the time in power and authority,
would appear as a very orthodox ascetic. Basil likens him to
the Ethiopian of immutable blackness, and the leopard who cannot
change his spots.209
But in truth
his skin at various periods shewed every shade which could serve his
purpose, and his spots shifted and changed colour with every change
in his surroundings.210
| 210 cf.
Ep. ccxliv. § 9. Fialon, Et. Hist.
128. | He is the
patristic Proteus. There must have been something singularly
winning in his more than human attractiveness.211
| 211 Ep.
ccxii. § 2. cf. Newman, Hist. Sketches,
iii. 20. | But he signed almost every creed
that went about for signature in his lifetime.212
He was consistent only in
inconsistency. It was long ere Basil was driven to withdraw
his confidence and regard, although his constancy to Eustathius
raised in not a few, and notably in Theodotus of Nicopolis, the
metropolitan of Armenia, doubts as to Basil’s soundness in the
faith. When Basil was in Armenia in 373, a creed was drawn up,
in consultation with Theodotus, to be offered to Eustathius for
signature. It consisted of the Nicene confession, with certain
additions relating to the Macedonian controversy.213
Eustathius signed, together with
Fronto and Severus. But, when another meeting with other
bishops was arranged, he violated his pledge to attend. He
wrote on the subject as though it were one of only small
importance.214
Eusebius
endeavoured, but endeavoured in vain, to make peace.215
Eustathius renounced communion with
Basil, and at last, when an open attack on the archbishop seemed the
paying game, he published an old letter of Basil’s to
Apollinarius, written by “layman to layman,” many years
before, and either introduced, or appended, heretical expressions of
Apollinarius, which were made to pass as Basil’s. In his
virulent hostility he was aided, if not instigated, by Demosthenes
the prefect’s vicar, probably Basil’s old opponent at
Cæsarea in 372.216
His
duplicity and slanders roused Basil’s indignant
denunciation.217
| 217 Epp.
ccxxiii., ccxliv., cclxiii. | Unhappily
they were not everywhere recognized as calumnies. Among the
bitterest of Basil’s trials was the failure to credit him with
honour and orthodoxy on the part of those from whom he might have expected
sympathy and support. An earlier instance of this is the
feeling shewn at the banquet at Nazianzus already referred
to.218
In later
days he was cruelly troubled by the unfriendliness of his old
neighbours at Neocæsarea,219
and this
alienation would be the more distressing inasmuch as Atarbius, the
bishop of that see, appears to have been Basil’s
kinsman.220
He was
under the suspicion of Sabellian unsoundness. He slighted
and slandered Basil on several apparently trivial pretexts, and on
one occasion hastened from Nicopolis for fear of meeting
him.221
He
expressed objection to supposed novelties introduced into the
Church of Cæsarea, to the mode of psalmody practiced there,
and to the encouragement of ascetic life.222
Basil did his utmost to win back
the Neocæsareans from their heretical tendencies and to their
old kindly sentiments towards himself.
The clergy of Pisidia and Pontus, where Eustathius
had been specially successful in alienating the district of Dazimon,
were personally visited and won back to communion.223
| 223 Epp.
cciii. and ccxvi. | But Atarbius and the Neocæsareans
were deaf to all appeal, and remained persistently
irreconcilable.224
| 224 Epp.
lxv., xxvi., ccx. | On his visiting
the old home at Annesi, where his youngest brother Petrus was now
residing, in 375, the Neocæsareans were thrown into a state of
almost ludicrous panic. They fled as from a pursuing
enemy.225
They
accused Basil of seeking to win their regard and support from
motives of the pettiest ambition, and twitted him with travelling
into their neighbourhood uninvited.226
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