The Asketikon of St Basil the Great [Hardcover]

The Asketikon of St Basil the Greatcomprises a new English translation and studies which re-examine the emergence of monasticism in Asia Minor. TheRegula Basilii, translated by Rufinus from Basil's Small Asketikon, is closely compared with the Greek text of the longer edition, as a means to tracing the development of ideas. Silvas concludes that the antecedents of the monastic community of the Great Asketikon are best sought not in some kind of sub-orthodoxmodus vivendiof male and female ascetics living together and increasingly curbed by an emerging neo-Nicene orthodoxy less favourable to women ('homoiousian asceticism'), but in the local domestic ascetic movement in Anatolia as typified in the developments at Annisa under the leadership of Makrina.

1. An introduction to the textual issues
2. The ascetic community in the two versions of Basil's Asketikon
3. The geography behind the history
4. Revisiting the emergence of monasticism in fourth-century Anatolia
5. Rufinus, witness of the Small Asketikon
6. Basil and the Great Asketikon
Conclusion
The Asketikon of St Basil the Great
The Longer Responses
The Shorter Responses

Anna M. Silvas is Australian Research Council Fellow, Department of Classics, History, and Religion, University of New England, Australia.