Gregory Nazianzen, and Basil's brother, Gregory of Nyssa. The first two were highly educated in the university culture of their day; and, although Gregory of Nyssa was privately trained by Basil, he was even more well-read in classical literature. In these leaders of the Church, therefore, we see men endowed with a first-class liberal education bringing to bear on the problems of theology knowledge of the best things that have been said and done during past ages in the largo outer world. In this respect we may compare them with the Alexandrians, Clement and Origen, a century and a half before, or with such men of the "New Learning" among the Reformers as Erasmus and Melanchthon. Of these three Basil was the most prominent in his own day, since he was a man of affairs as well as a scholar and writer, energetic, courageous, masterful. He was born at Cæsarea, the capital of Cappadocia, in the year 329. Having distinguished himself at school in his native town, he was sent by his father to study at Constantinople and perhaps at Antioch under Libanius—the famous lecturer so much admired by Julian.[1] After this he went to the university of Athens, then the intellectual centre of the civilised world, and there began his life-long friendship with Gregory Nazianzen, the two spending some years together in the delightful atmosphere of rich scholarship and refined thinking which was so congenial to both of them. Here too Basil met the future Emperor Julian and became intimate with that eager student on their common ground of intellectual interests. Flushed with the scholar's fame he had returned to Cæsarea, apparently as yet having no perception of his great mission, when his sister Macrina turned his thoughts to the higher aims, and he was baptised. Then he determined to devote himself to the ascetic life, and appointed a bailiff for his estate—for he was a wealthy landowner and always behaved like an aristocrat. Basil
- ↑ Socrates, iv. 26; Sozomen, vi. 17. But a doubt has been raised on this point, and it has been suggested that his namesake, a friend of Chrysostom, may be confused by the historians with Basil of Cæsarea. See Blomfield Jackson, Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, vol. xiii. p. xv.
