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The Ascetic Works of Saint Basil: Author’s Preface and Introduction
W. K. L. Clarke
VII. Spurious Writings
Three documents follow the Shorter Rules in Garnier. They are of little or no importance for our purpose, and are not regarded by any modern writers as being the work of St. Basil. They have, however, considerable affinities with his genuine writings, and are clearly the product of monasteries living after the Basilian Rules.
(i) Poenae (ἐπιτίμια). These, in number, prescribe definite penalties for offences which in the Rules are left to the discretion of the Superior. Thus in B. 44 a monk is liable to ἀφορισμός and ἀσιτία. In the Poenae the time of the ἀφορισμός 18 in several cases fixed at one week. A number of technical terms not found in the genuine St. Basil strike the reader’s attention—archimandrite, hesychast, archihebdomarius, ostiarius, maphorion etc. Forms like ὁ ὄρδινος (Latin ordo) occur. No. runs as follows:1 If anyone knows of a brother wishing to depart from the monastery secretly, and fails to tell the archimandrite, or the Superiors (τοῖς προεστῶσιν, v.l. τοῖς ἡσυχασταῖς) let him be separated (from the brethren).” The Superiors of a monastery seem to be a relic of the original Basilian organisation, which puzzled the scribe (see p. 40).
(11) Poenae in Canonicas.—The faults in these 19 penalties for nuns are nearly all those of speech. For example, a nun who speaks to women from the world after Church services is to be “separated ’ for two weeks.
(iii) Constitutiones Asceticae (ἀσκητικαὶ διατάξεις). These exhortations are addressed to monks living as coenobites or solitaries. The alternative is enough to show that St. Basil is not the writer. In respect of vocabulary and subject-matter they differ from the Rules. The Superior, προεστώς in the Rules, is styled Hegoumenos in the Constitutions. Garnier’s arguments in this respect are convincing, but his effort to show that Eustathius of Sebaste composed them fails. Hustathius preceded Basil, who owed much to him: the Constitutions belong to a later stage of monasticism.
Notes
- See Clarke, pp. 78, 79, 159-162.