Basil the Elder

Basil the Elder was the father of Saint Basil the Great, a Christian lawyer and rhetorician, raised in Caesarea (according to the Romanian-⁠language source, in Neocaesarea in Pontus) and who died in the year 350. He is venerated as a saint and commemorated on 30 May, together with his mother, Macrina the Elder, and his wife, Emmelia of Caesarea.

Basil was the son of a Christian and of Macrina the Elder. It is said that, with his family, he moved to a mountainous area on the shore of the Black Sea to escape the persecution of Christians in the time of the emperor Galerius (305 to 314). He grew up in Neocaesarea (today Niksar, in Turkey), in the region of Pontus; the English-⁠language source says Caesarea Mazaca. According to tradition, he was a lawyer and rhetorician known chiefly for his virtues.

He married Emmelia, a virtuous woman from a wealthy family, and settled in Caesarea of Cappadocia. There Basil and Emmelia, with the help of his mother, founded a family that had a great influence on the history of Christianity. Of their nine children (other sources say ten), five are remembered by name and regarded as saints: Basil the Great, Gregory of Nyssa, Peter of Sebaste, Naucratius and Macrina the Younger. After the death of Basil the Elder, the family property was turned into a monastic community for virgins.