The Letters.
Without address.
Letter XXXV.
Without address.
I have written to you about many people as belonging to myself; now I mean to write about more. The poor can never fail, and I can never say, no. There is no one more intimately associated with me, nor better able to do me kindnesses wherever he has the ability, than the reverend brother Leontius. So treat his house as if you had found me, not in that poverty in which now by God’s help I am living, but endowed with wealth and landed property. There is no doubt that you would not have made me poor, but would have taken care of what I had, or even added to my possessions. This is the way I ask you to behave in the house of Leontius. You will get your accustomed reward from me; my prayers to the holy God for the trouble you are taking in shewing yourself a good man and true, and in anticipating the supplication of the needy.
Edition and rights
NPNF2-08. Basil: Letters and Select Works. Historical English edition; series volume first published 1895.
Blomfield Jackson, translator
Ancient work and historical English translation: public domain in the United States (published before 1931). Copyright rules vary by country. This is a historical source transcription, not an official Church edition. Modern website material is not reproduced.
Historical footnotes and publisher introductions are omitted. Author-written openings are retained. Paragraph whitespace is normalized. Transcriptions can contain errors; this is not a critical edition. Attribution follows the historical edition, not universal scholarly agreement.
Digitization provenance (not an external reading link): https://www.ccel.org/ccel/s/schaff/npnf208.xml
Source section: ix.xxxvi · Text SHA-256: 945be122ba7646d1b88a0e71b3cafc5dad318604eda09d458428ff5a1cc039df