ABSTRACT

This chapter describes texts illustrative of Basil Blackwell's ascetic thought. If Silvas is wrong, then Basil's progress toward his mature ascetic thought nonetheless happens, and, on the whole from a simpler to a more complex form, but by a course less direct. The chapter presents the contains excerpts from the Great Asceticon, which is made up of two works, the Longer Rules and the Shorter Rules, as well as excerpts from the Small Asceticon, a single work that exists only in the Latin translation made by Rufinus of Aquileia toward the end of the fourth century. The first excerpt, from the Great Asceticon, is the Prologue of the Longer Rules. Next comes a series of passages from the Small Asceticon that deal with foundation aspects of the ascetic life. Finally, there is a more or less random selection of responses from the Shorter Rules that communicate the range and scope of the questions that arose in Basil's ascetic community.