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Translated by Bl. Jackson.
St Basil the Great Resources Online and in Print
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This Part: 129 Pages
Page 101
Letter CCLXXXIV. [3243]
To the assessor in the case of monks.
Concerning the monks, your excellency has, I believe, already rules in force, so that I need ask for no special favour on their behalf.
It is enough that they share with others the enjoyment of your general beneficence; still I feel it incumbent upon me too to interest myself in their case. I therefore submit it to your more perfect judgment, that men who have long since taken leave of this life, who have mortified their own bodies, so that they have neither money to spend nor bodily service to render in the interests of the common weal, should be exempted from taxation. For if their lives are consistent with their profession, they possess neither money nor bodies; for the former is spent in communicating to the needy; while their bodies are worn away in prayer and fasting.
Men living such lives you will, I know, regard with special reverence; nay you will wish to secure their intervention, since by their life in the Gospel they are able to prevail with God.
Letter CCLXXXV. [3244]
Without Address.
The hearer of this letter is one on whom rests the care of our Church and the management of its property--our beloved son.
Deign to grant him freedom of speech on those points that are referred to your holiness, and attention to the expression of his own views; so shall our Church at length recover herself, and henceforth be released from this many-headed Hydra.
Our property is our poverty; so much so that we are ever in search of one to relieve us of it; for the expenses of the Church property amount to more than any profit that she derives from it.
[3243] Placed in the episcopate.
[3244] Placed in the episcopate.
Reference address : https://elpenor.org/basil/letters-3.asp?pg=101
