Letter 59: (The reply to Basil's somewhat angry answer to the last.) This was a case which any wiser man would have foreseen; but I who am very simple and foolish did not fear it in writing to you. My letter grieved you; but in my opinion neither rightly nor justly, but quite unreasonably. And while you did not acknowledge that you were hurt, neither did y...
Gregory to Basil.
This is a situation that any wiser man would have foreseen, but I -- simple and foolish as I am -- did not anticipate it when I wrote to you. My letter grieved you. In my judgment, it should not have, neither rightly nor justly. But I could see that you were hurt, even though you did not admit it directly.
I know you, Basil, better than you know yourself. When you are wounded, your silence is louder than other men's shouts. But I will not apologize for telling you the truth. If your friend cannot speak honestly to you, who can?
Still, I grieve that I have caused you pain, even unintentionally. And I offer you this: come to me, or let me come to you, and let us settle face to face what letters only make worse. Written words are treacherous things -- they carry the message but lose the tone.
Modern English rendering for readability. See the 19th-century translation or original Latin/Greek for scholarly use.
Related Letters
(Written about the same time, in a more serious vein.) What I wrote before about our stay in Pontus was in joke, not in earnest; what I write now is very much in earnest. O that one would place me as in the month of those former days, Job 29:2 in which I luxuriated with you in hard living; since voluntary pain is more valuable than involuntary d...
(An attack had been made in Gregory's presence on the orthodoxy of Basil in respect of the Deity of God the Holy Ghost; and in this letter he gives his friend an account of the way in which he had defended him. Unfortunately Basil was not pleased with the letter, taking it as intended to convey reproach under the guise of friendly sympathy.) Fro...
(Perhaps about a.d. 357 or 358; in answer to a letter which is not now extant.) I have failed, I confess, to keep my promise. I had engaged even at Athens, at the time of our friendship and intimate connection there (for I can find no better word for it), to join you in a life of philosophy.
(The division of the civil Province of Cappadocia into two Provinces in the year 372 was followed by ecclesiastical troubles. Anthimus, the Bishop of Tyana, the civil metropolis of the new division of Cappadocia Secunda, maintained that the Ecclesiastical divisions must necessarily follow the civil, and by consequence claimed for himself that th...