Страдание святого священномученика Василия, пресвитера Анкирского

Saint Basil, presbyter of the church in Ancyra, a city in Galatia, diligently tried to teach people the Christian truth and turn them away from the path of the devil and from all his evil deeds; he constantly preached that a terrible time had come, the princes of the hordes of hell had appeared; for Satan has servants clothed in sheep's clothing, but inwardly they are ravenous wolves; They appear to people on the path of this short-lived life in order to snare their souls to destruction, and their insidious machinations are manifesting themselves at the present time. Therefore,” said the saint, “I show everyone the path leading to salvation by Christ God, and I denounce the error of the wicked: if anyone, having left the living and eternally abiding God, turns to idols, the blind, deaf and dumb, he will inherit the flame of unquenchable fire that comes from his gods; therefore, all of us who love Christ and zealously honor Him as the Leader of our faith, desiring to preserve the inalienable treasure in our undefiled spiritual storehouses, will begin to trample under foot the deception of the devil and the idolatrous joyful holidays, we will avoid abominable enemies, strengthened by our Helper Christ, who gives eternal retribution. The saint constantly did this, going around the whole city and convincing everyone to keep the true faith and get rid of future eternal torment. Saint Basil, the presbyter, lived under the Patriarch of Constantinople Eudoxius the Arian, and from him, for his piety, during the Arian Council in Constantinople, he received a ban on performing sacred acts; but then, by a council of two hundred and thirty bishops in Palestine, he was commanded to perform the holy sacraments. Professing the right faith and living a life pleasing to God, he explained the truths of the faith and turned many away from error. Therefore, in those times when every pious Christian was persecuted, he was slandered before King Constantius, the son of Constantine the Great, as if he was embarrassing the people; being tormented for the truth, he taught many to believe correctly, because he himself was constant and firm in the faith and paternal tradition, not deviating in the least from pious confession. When Julian the Apostate 2073 ascended the throne and began to destroy human souls by issuing insane laws about vile idol sacrifices, then in the Galatian country, at his command, people bowed to idols for a whole year and three months. Saint Basil, seeing the destruction of human souls, prayed to God for his city of Ancyra, saying: – O Savior of the world, Christ, the unfading Light, the treasure of eternal repositories, who by the will of the Father drives away darkness and by His Spirit makes up everything! Look with Your holy and terrible eye and destroy the nasty magic of those who resist Your holy will; let their weak plan be dispelled and not hinder the soul that forever abides in You - God! The idolaters, hearing that Saint Basil was praying so loudly, became very angry with him, and one of them, named Macarius, ran and grabbed him with the words: - Why are you going around the whole city, confusing the people and abolishing the law of worship issued by the king? - May God crush your lips, captive of the devil! It is not I who abolish your law, but He who is in heaven, by invisible power, destroys it and destroys it, and destroys you all, until you are completely exhausted and inherit the eternal death prepared for you. The wicked people, full of rage, took him to the hegemon Saturninus, saying: “This man is confusing our city and seducing and misleading many, and now he has reached such insolence that he orders the destruction of altars and does not hesitate to blaspheme the king. Hegemon Saturninus asked the saint: -Who are you that you dare to do such a thing? – I am a Christian; This name is most honorable to me. – Why don’t you do what a Christian needs? “You are right in advising me, hegemon.” In fact, it is necessary that the good deeds of a Christian become obvious to everyone, as the Holy Gospel teaches: “let your light so shine before people, so that they may see your good deeds and glorify your Father in heaven” (Matthew 5:16). - Why are you embarrassing our city and blaspheming the king everywhere, as if he violated good laws? - I do not blaspheme your king; but I know the Highest King: He is God, living in heaven, His worthy servants - our fathers - worship everywhere in purity of heart; He can destroy your reckless institutional wickedness in a short time. “Don’t you consider the law prescribed by our king to be fair?” “How can a law be fair that commands, like a mad dog that devours meat near the altar and barks in front of it, to lay a human body on the altar, to shed blood and to slaughter infants as a sacrifice to demons? How can such a law be called fair? - Stop lying, proud man, and submit to the king! “I have obeyed the Heavenly King until now and now I obey, and I will never deviate from my holy faith in Him. “Who are you talking to me about,” said Saturninus, “the Heavenly King, Whom do you obey?” “I’m talking,” answered the saint, “about the One who sits in heaven and sees everything; and the king whom you praise is the king of the earth and will immediately, like a man, fall and be in the hands of the Great King. Hearing this, Saturninus became angry and ordered the saint to be undressed, hanged and his body planed with iron tools. He, hanging and enduring torment, prayed to God like this: – I thank You, Lord God of ages, that You have deigned me to suffer for You and to find the path of life, following which I can see the heirs of Your promises. When they were whittling the saint, the hegemon said: - Vasily, now you have suffered such terrible torment, submit to the king. - O frantic man and alien to Christian hope! I have already said that I obey my God as the True King, I believe in Him, and I cannot depart from Him. When the servants who were whittling the saint were tired, Saturninus ordered them to stop and said again to the saint: – Agree with us and make sacrifices to our gods. – I will not worship vain gods and will not be a participant in sacrifices that kill souls. Then the hegemon ordered to take the martyr to prison; On the way there, a Greek named Philix met the saint and said to him: - How is it, Vasily, that you yourself are going to your death? Wouldn't it be better for you to become a friend to the gods and receive the gifts promised by the king? After all, you will suffer cruelly for a long time, and according to your deserts: you yourself wished it. - Go away, libertine and wicked, you do not know the true promises of the Eternal King of Heavenly Christ and are not worthy to know them: how can you see the light of truth in the darkness and recognize the darkness that surrounds you? With these words Saint Basil entered the prison. Hegemon Saturninus sent a letter to King Julian and informed him of the incident with Presbyter Vasily. The king immediately sent to Ancyra a certain Elpides, a teacher of unbelief, who was formerly a Christian, and then became an apostate, and with him he sent another wicked man, also a former Christian and who later fell away from heavenly treasures, named Pigasius. On the road to Ankyra, in Nicomedia, they found Asklipius, a priest of idols, and, taking him with them, the three of them, like three commanders of the devil’s army, came to the city of Ankyra; and Saint Basil, sitting in prison, did not cease day and night to praise and glorify God. The next day Pigasius came to Saint Basil in prison and, greeting him, said: - There is no joy for you, a criminal and a deceiver, there is no salvation for you, which you once drank from the source of Christ; now you are a rotten swamp, devouring sacrificial meat; before you were a communicant of the Divine Mysteries, now you sit in the first place at the demonic meal; formerly you were a teacher of truth, now you are the leader of destruction; Previously you celebrated holidays with the saints, now you rejoice with Satan’s servants; Previously you led the lost from darkness to light, now you yourself are completely enveloped in darkness. How did you destroy your hope and lose your spiritual treasure? What will you do when you die? Having said this, Saint Basil turned to the Lord with the following prayer: “Glorify yourself, O God, who is known by Your servants and who brings to the light those who wish to see You, their God, who glorifies those who hope in You, who fills with shame those who hate Your law, who is praised by the inhabitants of heaven and revered by people on earth.” Deign, O Most High God, to throw off all the bonds of the devil from the soul of Your servant, so that I may avoid those who hate the truth and boast of catching and defeating me! Pigasius, having heard this, left him in embarrassment, returned to his friends and conveyed to them all the words of Vasily; then they became angry when they saw Pigasius embarrassed, and they went and told the hegemon about this. The hegemon immediately ordered the saint to be brought to torture; The holy martyr, standing at the trial, said to the hegemon: - Do what you want to do. Elpidy, hearing that Vasily spoke so boldly, said to the judge: - This lawless man has gone mad! If now, after suffering, he agrees to worship the gods, he will be pardoned; if he doesn’t want to, then leave him to be tormented by the king himself. The angry hegemon ordered the saint to be hanged naked again and his ribs were whittled with iron for a long time, and then he was again locked in prison, shackled in heavy chains. A few days later, King Julian, setting off for the eastern countries, arrived in Ancyra; the devil's servants came out to meet him with an idol called Hecate 2074; entering the chamber, he summoned the idol priests and rewarded them with gold. The next day, during the spectacles, Elpidius reminded the king about Vasily, and the king, leaving the spectacles, ordered Vasily to be brought to his chamber. And Saint Basil came and appeared before the king with a bright face, in wonderful beauty. And Julian said to him: – I’ll tell you in order who I am. Firstly, I am called a Christian, and the name of Christ is eternal and above the human mind; then, people call me Vasily; If I keep the name of Christ given to me blameless, then I will receive an immortal reward from Christ on the day of judgment. - Do not be mistaken, Vasily, because I know your sacraments well: you believe in the One who suffered a shameful death under Pontius Pilate. - It’s not I who am mistaken: you are mistaken, king, having become an apostate and having lost the Kingdom of Heaven. I believe in my Christ, whom you rejected, who gave you this earthly kingdom; but it will soon be taken away from you, so that you will know which God you have angered. “You’re going crazy, crazy,” said Julian, “it won’t be the way you want!” “You do not remember the rewards prepared for the servants of Christ, you were not ashamed of the altar that saved you from murder when they were trying to kill you, an eight-year-old child, and you were hidden in a sacred place; you did not fulfill the law, which you often preached with your own lips when you were a cleric! For this, Christ, the Great King, will not remember you in His eternal Kingdom, but this temporary kingdom will soon be taken away from you; your body will not be worthy of burial when you cast out your soul in a severe illness. (This was predicted by the saint about the imminent death of Julian, whose corpse, after burial, the earth threw out of its bowels). - Unholy! I wanted to let you go, but because you shamelessly repeat your crazy words and reject my advice, and even dishonor me with various reproaches, my Majesty commands that seven belts be cut out of your skin every day. He ordered Frumentin, the chief of the shield bearers, to take Vasily and tear off part of his skin every day, cutting out seven belts. Frumentin diligently carried out the order, and the saint valiantly endured such torment for Christ. When, within a few days, all his skin had already been torn off and was hanging with straps over his shoulders both in front and behind, the sufferer said to the chief: “I would now like to go to the king and talk to him.” The chief was very happy with his words, thinking that he wanted to worship idols, he went to the king and told him this: - Lord King! Vasily could not bear the torment and wants to submit to your majesty. The king went to the church of Asclepius and ordered the martyr to be brought there. Presenting himself before the king, Saint Basil said to him: -Where are your priests and prophets who are usually with you? Did they tell you why I came to you? “I think that you are a smart person, you understand your position, you want to unite with us and from now on you will make sacrifices to the gods.” - Know, king, that those whom you call gods are nothing; These are deaf and blind idols, and they drag those who believe in them to hell. Having said this, he tore off one of the belts hanging on his body and threw it in the king’s face with the words: “Take it, Julian, and eat it, if you enjoy such food; my life is Christ, and to die for Him is gain for me: He is my Helper, in Him I believe, for Him I endure these torments! Rumors immediately spread among Christians everywhere about such a courageous act of Saint Basil, and everyone glorified him for such a glorious confession of Christ and for the courageous deed with which he shamed the tormentor. Frumentin, the commander of the regiment of shield-bearers, who brought the holy martyr Basil to the king, seeing what Vasily did, how he tore the belt from his body and threw it in Julian’s face with daring words, was ashamed and afraid of the king’s anger: he saw how the king changed his face with anger, and the king was angry not so much with the martyr as with him, because he had brought the prisoner to such dishonor the royal face. He immediately grabbed the martyr, hiding from the king, brought him to the praetorium and, breathing fierce rage, ordered to torture him even more than he had been torturing him all these days, and not only tore off all the skin from the martyr, but so wounded his entire body that his entrails were exposed. Saint Basil, amid such torment, prayed to God like this: - Blessed, Lord God, is the hope of Christians, who raises up the fallen, who restores the downtrodden, who frees those who hope in You from corruption, who knows our suffering, the Good and Generous, the Merciful and Long-suffering, look down from the high throne of Your glory, let me end my life faithfully and honor me with Your eternal and immortal Kingdom! Then, when evening had already come, Frumentin ordered the saint to be imprisoned, and Julian left the city very early in the morning, without honoring him with a meeting, and went to Antioch. Frumentinus, seeing how the king was angry with him because of Vasily, became even more furious with Saint Basil and, bringing him from prison, said to him: - Well, the craziest of all people! Will you make sacrifices to the gods, as the king ordered, or not? What have you decided: to obey the royal command or to die in torture? The holy martyr Basil answered him: - Mad and wicked! You forgot how many belts you tore from my body yesterday and in the days preceding it, how everyone, looking at me, was moved and cried, seeing the torment you subjected me to, blasphemer! And you see: again, by the grace of my Christ, I stand healthy before you. Servant of the devils, ferocious and inhuman! Tell your tormentor King Julian what power Christ God has, which he abandoned; he, seduced by the devil, destroyed his soul; I will no longer remember how Christ God delivered him from death, protecting him with His holy priests under the Divine altar of the holy church; he forgot her good deeds, denied himself and fled from her. I hope in my Christ that he will soon reward him according to his deserts, and the accursed apostate will perish in agony! - You're going crazy, crazy! The invincible Lord Julian, out of his love for mankind and mercy towards you, commanded you to celebrate the holiday with us, make sacrifices and smoke fragrant censers; You didn’t want to obey, but, on the contrary, you boldly first dishonored the king, and then brought me into trouble; I will repay you what you deserve with such torment that you will quickly lose your life. With these words, Frumentin ordered the iron rods to be heated and the saint to be stabbed in the shoulders and stomach with them. In such torment, Saint Basil fell to the ground, loudly praying to God and saying: - My light, Christ! My hope, Jesus! A quiet pier for those driven by the waves! I thank You, Lord God of my fathers, for You tore my soul out of the underworld and kept Your name unsullied in me! May I end my life victoriously and inherit eternal peace, according to the promise given to my fathers from You, the Great Bishop Jesus Christ, our Lord! Now receive in peace my soul, which remains invariably in this confession! You are merciful, and great is Your mercy, Who lives and abides forever and ever, Amen. Having made such a prayer, when the martyr’s belly was already pierced with red-hot rods, he seemed to fall into a sweet sleep, surrendering his soul into the hands of God. Thus Saint Basil died as a martyr on January 28th. Soon after the murder and death of Julian the apostate, on March 22, Christians clearly paid respect to the long-suffering body of the martyr, and on this day they established his memory. His valiant suffering strengthened all Christians in faith in Jesus Christ our Lord, whose glory and kingdom are endless forever. Amen. Having fulfilled the lawful course and kept the faith, Hieromartyr Basil, for the sake of the torment of the crowns, you were vouchsafed and an unshakable pillar appeared to the Church, the Son, the Father of the Self and the Spirit confessed, the Trinity Undivided, pray to those who honor you to be delivered from troubles, and we call you: Rejoice, Vasily the God-Wise. Julian the Apostate reigned from 361 to 363. Hecate is the deity of moonlight. You might be interested in: