[Footnote 15:  The father of Gregory of Nazianzus the Divine, who was bishop, as we shall see, of Sasima and Constantinople in succession, but never of Nazianzus.]

[Sidenote:  Basil’s difficulties.]

Armed with spiritual power which in some sort extended from the Bosphorus to Armenia, Basil could now endeavour to carry out his plan.  Homoean malcontents formed the nucleus of the league, but conservatives began to join it, and Athanasius gave his patriarchal blessing to the scheme.  The difficulties, however, were very great.  The league was full of jealousies.  Athanasius indeed might frankly recognise the soundness of Meletius, though he was committed to Paulinus, but others were less liberal, and Lucifer of Calaris was forming a schism on the question.  Some, again, were lukewarm in the cause and many sunk in worldliness, while others were easily diverted from their purpose.  The sorest trial of all was the selfish coldness of the West.  Basil might find here and there a kindred spirit like Ambrose of Milan after 374; but the confessors of 355 were mostly gathered to their rest, and the church of Rome paid no regard to sufferings which were not likely to reach herself.

Nor was Basil quite the man for such a task as this.  His courage indeed was indomitable.  He ruled Cappadocia from a sick-bed, and bore down opposition by sheer strength of his inflexible determination.  The very pride with which his enemies reproached him was often no more than a strong man’s consciousness of power; and to this unwearied energy he joined an ascetic fervour which secured the devotion of his friends, a knowledge of the world which often turned aside the fury of his enemies, and a flow of warm-hearted rhetoric which never failed to command the admiration of outsiders.  Yet after all we miss the lofty self-respect which marks the later years of Athanasius.  Basil was involved in constant difficulties by his own pride and suspicion.  We cannot, for example, imagine Athanasius turning two presbyters out of doors as ‘spies.’  But the ascetic is usually too full of his own plans to feel sympathy with others, too much in earnest to feign it like a diplomatist.  Basil had enough worldly prudence to keep in the background his belief in the Holy Spirit, but not enough to protect even his closest friends from the outbreaks of his imperious temper.  Small wonder if the great scheme met with many difficulties.

[Sidenote:  Disputes with:  (1.) Anthimus.]

A specimen or two may be given, from which it will be seen that the difficulties were not all of Basil’s making.  When Valens divided Cappadocia in 372, the capital of the new province was fixed at Tyana.  Thereupon Bishop Anthimus argued that ecclesiastical arrangements necessarily follow civil, and claimed the obedience of its bishops as due to him and not to Basil.  Peace was patched up after an unseemly quarrel, and Basil disposed of any future claims from Anthimus by getting the new capital transferred to Podandus.