St. Basil’s Address to Young Men. Modern evaluations and interpretations of its pedagogical concepts St Basil’s famous Address to Young Men, on How They Might Derive Benefit from Greek Literature from the time of late antiquity through the Byzantine period up to the modern times has attracted the attention of successive generations of moralists and scholars of different types. While in the Byzantine era and later in Renaissance Europe the treatise was highly estimated for its appreciation for the classical Greek tradition, nowadays the issue of the general meaning of St Basil’s essay is still under discussion. There are still many questions pertinent to this text, e.g. the issue of date and addressees, that can raise doubts among many scholars. Besides, the issue on where to find the source of inspiration for his pedagogical ideas is also a matter of profound importance. The close examination of the treatise done in recent times, first an foremost, by M. Naldini and A. Pastorino reveals that this essay (written probably in the years of his episcopate) can be derived from the spirit of Origen’s paideia.
During the famous famine of 369 Basil, a renown priest of Caesarea, was not hesitant to take up leadership and to successfully face a severe food shortage, which posed a major threat to the inhabitants of Cappadocia. His friend, Gregory of Nazianzus, was careful to point out that Basil’s involvement in the crisis took up a form of gathering the poor, distribution of food to the needy and, far and foremost, alleviation of spiritual suffering caused by hunger of words. In dealing with the wealthy landowners who used to hide grain in their granaries and with the merchants profiteering from this food shortage all he could do was to rely on his rhetorical persuasiveness. In a few sermons (Homilies 6, 8, 9, and also, probably, 7) he issued an appeal to the rich notables to make their grain available to the poor. The vast range of his arguments involved several issues like, to mention only a few, a dignity of human person, private ownership, proper attitude to wealth as such, importance of traditional system of honors connected with the conception of civic euergetism and pagan philanthropy. Basil was eager to make his audience realize the fact that wealth was not given for pleasure but should be reasonably managed and serve as a tool to help the poor and to diminish the scale of social injustice. He also argued that the care of the poor was deeply rooted in the Christian teaching (commandment of love) and practice (observed especially in the first Christian community) and was the best way to gain eternal reward.
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