Javascript must be enabled to use this website. Basil is depicted in icons as thin and ascetic with a long, tapering black beard. In addition to his work as a theologian, Basil was known for his care of saint valentine gifts him poor and underprivileged. Basil established guidelines for monastic life which focus on community life, liturgical prayer, and manual labor.
Together with Pachomius, he is remembered as a father of communal monasticism in Eastern Christianity. Basil, together with his brother Gregory of Nyssa and his friend Gregory of Nazianzus, are collectively referred to as the Cappadocian Fathers. There he met Gregory of Nazianzus. Basil’s life changed radically after he encountered Eustathius of Sebaste, a charismatic bishop and ascetic. Abandoning his legal and teaching career, Basil devoted his life to God. I had wasted much time on follies and spent nearly all of my youth in vain labors, and devotion to the teachings of a wisdom that God had made foolish. Suddenly, I awoke as out of a deep sleep.
I beheld the wonderful light of the Gospel truth, and I recognized the nothingness of the wisdom of the princes of this world. After his baptism, Basil traveled in 357 to Palestine, Egypt, Syria and Mesopotamia to study ascetics and monasticism. Basil instead felt drawn toward communal religious life, and by 358 he was gathering around him a group of like-minded disciples, including his brother Peter. Here Basil wrote about monastic communal life.