Basil, Bishop of Caesarea, Stands Up to the Emperor

Some time later the emperor visited Cappadocia again and found Basil governing the churches there after the death of Eusebius. He thought of driving him out, but he was held back from his intention against his will. It is said that on the night after he had made his plans, his wife was troubled by a frightful dream, and that his only son, Galates, was carried off by a swift illness. Everyone put the death of this son down to the vengeance of God, as a punishment on his parents for the plots that had been laid against Basil. Valens himself thought so, and after his son’s death he gave the bishop no further trouble. [a]

When the prince was sinking under his illness and close to death, the emperor sent for Basil and asked him to pray to God for his son’s recovery. For as soon as Valens had arrived at Caesarea, the prefect had sent for Basil and ordered him to adopt the emperor’s religious views, threatening him with death if he refused. Basil answered that it would be a great gain to him, and the highest favor anyone could grant him, to be set free as quickly as possible from the slavery of the body. The prefect gave him the rest of the day and the coming night to think it over. He advised him not to rush recklessly into obvious danger, but to come the next day and declare his decision. “I do not need to think it over,” Basil replied. “My decision will be the same tomorrow as it is today. For since I am a creature, I can never be persuaded to worship a being like myself as God. I will not conform to your religion, nor to the emperor’s. “However great your rank, and though you have the honor of ruling no small part of the empire, I must not for those reasons seek to please men and at the same time belittle the divine faith, which neither loss of goods, nor exile, nor a sentence of death would ever drive me to betray. Punishments of that kind have never caused me a single pang of sorrow. I own nothing but a cloak and a few books. I live on the earth as a traveler. And my body is so weak that after the first blow it would be past feeling any torture.” [b]

The prefect admired the courage of this bold answer and reported it to the emperor. On the feast of the Epiphany the emperor went to the church with his officials and his guards, presented gifts at the holy table, and held a conversation with Basil. He praised Basil’s wisdom and the order and good arrangement with which he conducted the priesthood and the church. [c] Not long afterward, however, the slanders of his enemies won out, and Basil was condemned to banishment. The night set for carrying out the decree had come when the emperor’s son suddenly fell ill with a violent and dangerous fever. The father threw himself on the ground and wept over his son while the boy was still alive. Not knowing what else to do to bring about his son’s recovery, he sent some of his attendants to Basil to ask him to come and see the stricken child; he was afraid to summon the bishop himself, because of the wrong he had just done him. As soon as Basil arrived, the boy began to rally, so that many maintain he would have recovered completely if some heretics had not been called in to pray along with Basil for the boy’s healing. It is said that the prefect also fell ill, but that when he repented and prayer was offered to God, he was restored to health. The examples given above are far from enough to convey an idea of Basil’s wonderful gifts. His intense devotion to the life of philosophy and his astonishing powers of eloquence made him very famous. [d]