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The Occasion of St Basil’s Address to Young Me

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 May 2015

Ann Moffatt
Ann Moffatt*
Affiliation:
Australian National University
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Extract

This short document from the fourth century gave guidance to students who were getting an education in the tradition of the ancient Greco-Roman schools. Basil came out more strongly than any other early Church theologian in favour of the view that pagan literature, while not being authoritative, could be studied by Christians at school to their advantage. This view held good for many Christians in the Greek-speaking Byzantine world for the next thousand years and was endorsed in the West at the Renaissance when the Address was published in many editions throughout Europe. Leonardo Bruni first translated it into Latin in 1405, and it paved the way for his translation of classical texts, of Demosthenes, Aeschines, Plutarch and Xenophon, Plato and Aristotle.

Type
Research Article
Information
Antichthon , Volume 6 , 1972 , pp. 74 - 86
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Journal of Law and Jurisprudence 1969

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References

1 Basil, Address to γoung Men, 2. 37.Google Scholar Section and line references are given to the Budé edition, with text and translation by F. Boulenger (Paris, 1952). The translations given here are my own.

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6 1. 8 ff. τη τε παρά της φύσεως οίκειότητι εύθύς μετά τούς γονέας ύμΐν τυγχάνω, ώστε μήτ’ αύτός ϊλαττόν τι πατέρων εύνοιας νέμειν ύμΐν, ύμας δέ νομίζω, εί μή τι ύμών διαμαρτάνω της γνώμης, μή ποθεΐν τούς τεκόντας, πρός έμέ βλέποντας.

7 10. 32 ff. εγώ μέν ούν α κράτιστα είναι κρίνω, τά μέν νυν είρηκα, τά δέ παρά πάντα τον βίον ύμΐν συμβουλεύσω.

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28 F. Boulenger, op. cit., p. 25.

29 R.J. Deferrari, op. cit., Vol. i, p. xxxviii, described his letters as ‘the response of a St Paul to the sterner realities of a crisis rather than the researches of a Pliny the Younger stealing an excuse for display.’

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