Basil of Seleucia

Holy Hierarch Basil of Seleucia was archbishop of Seleucia on the Calycadnus in Isauria and an ecclesiastical writer of the 5th century. He became bishop between 432 and 447, and in 448 took part in the synod of Constantinople called by Patriarch Flavian to examine the faith of the archimandrite Eutyches. There he accepted the condemnation of Eutyches. In 449, at the Second Council of Ephesus, under pressure from Dioscorus of Alexandria, he voted for the rehabilitation of Eutyches and for the deposition of the Patriarch of Constantinople. At Chalcedon he said he had felt obliged to submit to the authority of the other bishops at Ephesus; then he accepted the condemnation of both Eutyches and Dioscorus.

His personal confession remained the same: one Christ, fully man and fully God. He is among those who gave the formula in the definition of Chalcedon, "made known in two natures". After Chalcedon he remained a zealous opponent of the Miaphysite party, and in 458 he joined the bishops of Isauria in a request to the Emperor Leo I to put the decrees of Chalcedon into effect and to depose Timothy Aelurus, who had installed himself in 457 on the see of Alexandria. This is the last sure report about him; his death is thought to have followed soon after, between 458 and 460, although other sources place it after 468.

He was a determined opponent of Nestorianism. From his surviving writings, perhaps too rhetorical and involved, one sees a man of great literary gift. Among them a homily on the Annunciation is a witness to a developed Marian theology. He is honored as a saint of the undivided Church.