Basil (2)

Basil bishop of Seleucia in Isauria (not to be confounded with the Basil who was the intimate friend of Chrysostom). At the Council of Constantinople in 448, he gave his vote for the condemnation of Eutyches; but in the following year, at the robber-council of Ephesus, through fear of the threats and violence of Dioscorus, or from actual weakness and fickleness of judgment, he took precisely the opposite ground, and anathematized the doctrine of two natures in Jesus Christ. In the Council of Chalcedon, 451, Basil, together with the other leaders in the assembly at Ephesus, was deposed, but in the fourth session of the council he was restored to his dignity. He wrote Forty-three Homilies; seventeen on the Old, and twenty- six on the New Testament (Dupin reckons only forty). These were published in Greek at Heidelberg (1596, 8vo); Greek and Latin, with notes, by Dausque (Heidelb. 1604, 8vo), to ether with the Oratio in Transfigurationem Domini, in Greek and Latin. The following are supposed to be spurious:

1. A Demonstration of the Coming of Christ, against the Jews, in Latin, ed. by Turrianus (Ingolstadt, 1616, 4to); Greek, in the Heidelberg edition of the Homilies (1596). This is clearly, from its style, not the work of Basil, and is not found in any MS. of his writings.

2. Life and Miracles of St. Thecla, virgin and martyr, which, according to Caveare, is evidently the work of some Greek monk of a late age, edited by Pantinus, Antwerp (1608, Gr. and Lat.). All the above were published in Greek and Latin (Paris, 1622, fol.), with the works of Gregory Thaumaturgus. See Cave, Hist. Lit. anno 448; Dupin, Eccl. Writers, cent. 5, p. 28; Landon, Eccl. Dict. s.v.