The Cappadocian Churches

It was around the year 320, in one of the last persecutions. At Sebaste in Lesser Armenia, forty soldiers were condemned for being Christians.

As our church remembers it, they were stripped and made to stand through a winter night on a frozen lake. A warm bath steamed on the shore. It was offered to any man who would deny the faith and step out of the cold.

The tradition says one of the forty broke before the night ended and went to the warm water. It says a guard set to watch them was moved by what he saw. He took off his own clothes and joined the rest on the ice. He confessed the faith the other man had just abandoned, so the martyrs still numbered forty. All of them died.

Basil and Gregory of NyssaGregory of NyssaBasil's younger brother, born about 335. He was bishop of Nyssa from about 372 and the most speculative thinker of the three.Person both preached on the feast of the Forty. Their mother, Emmelia, is credited with gaining relics of the Forty and enshrining them in the family's estate chapel at Annisa.

Basil and Gregory of NazianzusGregory of NazianzusBorn about 329 or 330, died about 390. Basil's friend from student days, he was briefly bishop of Constantinople.Person met as students, most likely at Athens. Both had gone there for the fullest education their world offered.

Gregory's memory of Athens comes from two works. One is the great funeral speech he gave for Basil, years afterward. The other is his long poem about his life, written later still. He wrote both after the friendship had met real trouble, the wound of Sasima among it. That trouble had not been simply resolved before Basil died. When he rose to praise his dead friend, Gregory chose to remember Athens first.

What grew between them, Gregory said, was one soul lodged in two bodies. They shared lodging, books and purpose. Worldly advancement was not their aim, he says, and they studied together toward one goal, the fullest possible turn toward God.

When their studies ended, both men went home to CappadociaCappadociaA region whose chief town was Caesarea, modern Kayseri in Turkey.Place · pleiades.stoa.org.

Julian spent part of his boyhood at Macellum, an estate in CappadociaCappadociaA region whose chief town was Caesarea, modern Kayseri in Turkey.Place · pleiades.stoa.org. His family had been purged, and he was kept there under Christian tutors he did not choose. As a grown man he rejected that schooling entirely. He turned back to the old gods and to the classical culture.

Julian ruled as emperor from 361 to 363. He issued a school law. Separately, he issued a second, narrower ruling aimed at Christian teachers. Those who taught Homer and the old poets, he ruled, must believe in the gods those texts honored, or stop teaching them. His reasoning survives in his own words. A Christian teacher who explained stories he said he did not believe was dishonest, Julian argued, at the very root of his craft.

The measure struck at the Greek learning, our paideia, which our leaders had spent their lives mastering. They had defended it as compatible with their faith. Julian is also remembered for taking measures against CaesareaCaesareaThe chief town of Cappadocia, modern Kayseri in Turkey. Basil was bishop here from 370, and his poorhouse stood outside its walls.Place · pleiades.stoa.org itself, in the region of his own schooling, because of its Christian loyalties.

Julian died on campaign in Persia in 363. The fury of Gregory of NazianzusGregory of NazianzusBorn about 329 or 330, died about 390. Basil's friend from student days, he was briefly bishop of Constantinople.Person outlived him. Gregory wrote a pair of speeches against the dead emperor, ferocious even for attacks of that kind. They refused Julian any of the honor a dead emperor might expect.

The harvest failed. Drought had struck CaesareaCaesareaThe chief town of Cappadocia, modern Kayseri in Turkey. Basil was bishop here from 370, and his poorhouse stood outside its walls.Place · pleiades.stoa.org and the country around it in the years before Basil became bishop, and grain grew scarce and dear.

Those with full storehouses held their grain back, waiting for the price to climb higher before they would sell.

Basil, a priest then, preached against them and did not soften the charge. To hoard a neighbor's bread while that neighbor starves is theft, he taught, whatever the law calls it. He pointed to the man in the Gospel parable who tore down his barns to build bigger ones. That man learned the lesson too late.

Basil preached against lending at interest for the same reason. To profit from another person's desperate need was the same kind of wrong.

Then the granaries opened. Relief was organized for the hungry, paid for and handed out for as long as the crisis lasted.

As Gregory of NazianzusGregory of NazianzusBorn about 329 or 330, died about 390. Basil's friend from student days, he was briefly bishop of Constantinople.Person told it in his funeral speech for Basil, ModestusModestusPrefect of the East under Valens, from about 369 or 370 to 377. Valens sent him to bring Basil into line.Person threatened the bishop with confiscation, exile, torture and death. Modestus was the praetorian prefectprefectModestus held this office as prefect of the East under the emperor Valens. Valens sent him to Caesarea before his own visit there.Term of the emperor ValensValensEmperor in the East from 364 to 378. He split Cappadocia into two provinces in 372.Person, and the emperor had sent him to bring Basil of CaesareaBasil of CaesareaBorn about 329 or 330, he was bishop of Caesarea from 370. The year of his death is disputed, between 377 and 379.Person into line.

This was in 371 and 372. Valens backed a different creed from Basil's. In those same years he split CappadociaCappadociaA region whose chief town was Caesarea, modern Kayseri in Turkey.Place · pleiades.stoa.org into two provinces, with real consequences for the churches. The prefect came ahead of the emperor's own visit.

Basil replied, the story goes, that a man who owns nothing has nothing to confiscate. No place is exile, he said, to one who counts the whole earth as God's. A man already given over to God in this life has nothing left that death can take.

The prefect, astonished, is said to have reported that no one had ever spoken to him that way. Basil is remembered replying that perhaps the prefect had never yet met a bishop.

The next Epiphany, Valens came to CaesareaCaesareaThe chief town of Cappadocia, modern Kayseri in Turkey. Basil was bishop here from 370, and his poorhouse stood outside its walls.Place · pleiades.stoa.org himself. Gregory says he found the church crowded to its doors for the feast. The singing filled the whole building like the sea, and Basil presided in full order, unafraid. The emperor was shaken by what he saw, Gregory says.

According to Gregory, a decree of exile was later signed. It was never carried out, he says, because the emperor's son fell ill. Basil was not removed.

Sasima was a small posting at a dusty crossroads, with little to recommend it.

In 372 CappadociaCappadociaA region whose chief town was Caesarea, modern Kayseri in Turkey.Place · pleiades.stoa.org was divided into two provinces. A rival bishop claimed authority over the new province's land. Basil moved to secure his authority as metropolitan, the chief bishop of the province. He created new sees and consecrated allies to hold them. Sasima was one, and Basil named his close friend, Gregory of NazianzusGregory of NazianzusBorn about 329 or 330, died about 390. Basil's friend from student days, he was briefly bishop of Constantinople.Person, to it.

Gregory felt the appointment as a wound. Gregory's bitter letters and poems tell it, and so does the long poem about his life that he wrote years later. No record from Basil's side survives.

Gregory had been pressed into an office he had not sought. He wrote of the place with open contempt, as a waystation without a people or a spirit of its own. As Gregory understood it, he was sent there more for Basil's need in the fight than for Gregory's own good.

Gregory in effect refused the post. He spent little time at Sasima. He withdrew instead to help his aging father, who was then bishop of Nazianzus.

Basil, bishop of CaesareaCaesareaThe chief town of Cappadocia, modern Kayseri in Turkey. Basil was bishop here from 370, and his poorhouse stood outside its walls.Place · pleiades.stoa.org, prayed with his people in years when the imperial court still pressed its creed on the churches. He gave glorygave gloryGiving glory to God in worship is called a doxology. Basil argued that the words of worship carry what the church believes.Term in two forms. One was to the Father with the Son, together with the Holy Spirit. The other was to the Father through the Son in the Spirit.

Some who heard it objected. His words were new, they said, and contradicted each other. The difference lay in a few small words, and everyone understood that it mattered. To glorify the Spirit together with the Father and the Son places the Spirit on the Creator's side of the line.

His younger friend AmphilochiusAmphilochiusA bishop of Iconium, born about 340 or 345. He was a cousin of Gregory of Nazianzus. Basil wrote On the Holy Spirit for him.Person, bishop of IconiumIconiumA city in Lycaonia. It is now Konya, in Turkey. Amphilochius was its bishop.Place · pleiades.stoa.org, asked Basil to set the whole argument down. The answer became a book. Basil examined the church's giving of glory word by word. Not everything the church holds came to it in writing, he argued. The prayer under attack, he said, had come down to us in that unwritten way.

Pressed to declare in one bare sentence that the Spirit is God, Basil measured his words. He said it in the church's own way, through worship, through the Spirit's rank, and through the Name spoken over the baptized. More urgent voices wanted the plain word spoken. His friends defended his restraint.

Years later, when the bishops gathered again, they wrote the faith the way we had already been singing it. Their creed says the Spirit is worshipped and glorified together with the Father and the Son.

Under the emperor ValensValensEmperor in the East from 364 to 378. He split Cappadocia into two provinces in 372.Person, Gregory of NyssaGregory of NyssaBasil's younger brother, born about 335. He was bishop of Nyssa from about 372 and the most speculative thinker of the three.Person was deposed and driven into exile. He was still a fairly junior bishop, and his see was a minor one. He was charged with mishandling money.

His brother Basil wrote about the affair in letters defending him. In Basil's telling, the charges were trumped up. Hostile bishops of the court's party, who held the Son merely like the Father, had arranged them, he wrote. They used a synod packed against his brother, with no true hearing of the case.

Gregory spent about two years away from his see. He came back only when the political weather changed and Valens eased his pressure on the Nicene bishops of the region. A short note by Gregory himself survives. It records something of his joy at coming back.

In 379, Gregory of NyssaGregory of NyssaBasil's younger brother, born about 335. He was bishop of Nyssa from about 372 and the most speculative thinker of the three.Person traveled to see his sister MacrinaMacrinaBorn about 327 and died in 379. Her own words do not survive. She reaches us only through her brother Gregory of Nyssa's writing.Person. She was the eldest of the family's children, and we called her simply the Teacher. He found her already dying.

She lay on a plank set on the ground instead of a couch. She was wrapped in a rough garment, with no possessions around her.

As she was dying, brother and sister talked about the soul, about the resurrection, and about whether death should be feared. Everything we have of this comes through Gregory's own pen. He wrote a Life of Macrina soon after. He also shaped their last talk into a full dialogue, On the Soul and Resurrection. He staged it at her deathbed, in the manner of Plato's account of the last hours of Socrates. How much of her part there is her own, and how much is his, we cannot say.

Macrina died that evening. Gregory says plainly that he wept, and that he struggled through the funeral rites. A crowd gathered for her burial at the family chapel at Annisa, where earlier generations already lay. Gregory says the company of virgins she had gathered and led came with the crowd.

The house was called Anastasia, which means resurrection. Gregory of NazianzusGregory of NazianzusBorn about 329 or 330, died about 390. Basil's friend from student days, he was briefly bishop of Constantinople.Person gave it that name when he came to ConstantinopleConstantinopleThe capital of the Roman Empire in the East. It was founded in 330 by Constantine. Today it is Istanbul, in Turkey.Place · pleiades.stoa.org in 379 to lead the small Nicene flock there. They worshipped in that private house, because a rival party, long favored by the emperors, still held the city's great churches.

There Gregory preached five sermons, later called the Theological OrationsTheological OrationsFive talks that Gregory of Nazianzus gave in Constantinople. In them he sets out the Trinity and defends it.Term. In them he defended the doctrine of the Trinity to a capital he found mostly hostile to it, or uncaring. By Gregory's own telling, the mission was violent as well. One Easter, a mob attacked the gathering itself.

Then the tide turned, and a new emperor, TheodosiusTheodosiusThe emperor who established Nicene Christianity in 380 and 381.Person, favored the Nicene faith. A council met that would become the Council of ConstantinopleCouncil of ConstantinopleBishops met in Constantinople in 381 and kept the Nicene faith. Gregory of Nazianzus led them for a short time, then resigned.Council of 381. Gregory was made bishop of the city and given the council's presiding chair.

He did not hold the chair long. By his own account, some disputed whether his election was lawful under church rules. He says he was also worn out by the whole contest. He resigned before the council's work was done, and gave a farewell oration on his way out.