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| - That St. Basil composed a Liturgy, or rather reformed an existing Liturgy, is beyond doubt, since besides the constant tradition of the Byzantine Church there are many testimonies in ancient writings to establish the fact. In a treatise on the tradition of the Divine liturgy attributed to St. Proclus, Archbishop of Constantinople (434-446), it is stated that when St. Basil noticed the slothfulness and degeneracy of men, how they were wearied by the length of the liturgy, he shortened it in order to cure their sloth. More certain testimony to the existence of a liturgical text which went under the name of St. Basil is given in a letter of Peter the Deacon, one of the Scythian monks sent to Rome to settle certain dogmatic questions. Writing about the year 520 to the African bishops in exile
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abstract
| - That St. Basil composed a Liturgy, or rather reformed an existing Liturgy, is beyond doubt, since besides the constant tradition of the Byzantine Church there are many testimonies in ancient writings to establish the fact. In a treatise on the tradition of the Divine liturgy attributed to St. Proclus, Archbishop of Constantinople (434-446), it is stated that when St. Basil noticed the slothfulness and degeneracy of men, how they were wearied by the length of the liturgy, he shortened it in order to cure their sloth. More certain testimony to the existence of a liturgical text which went under the name of St. Basil is given in a letter of Peter the Deacon, one of the Scythian monks sent to Rome to settle certain dogmatic questions. Writing about the year 520 to the African bishops in exile in Sardinia, Peter, an Oriental, mentions a Liturgy of St. Basil, which was known and used throughout the entire East, and even quotes a passage from it: "Hence, also, Blessed Basil, Bishop of Cæsaria, in a prayer of the holy altar, with which almost the entire East is familiar, says among other things: Grant us, O Lord, Thy strength and protection; make the evil good and preserve the just in their righteousness. For Thou canst do all things and there is no one who may oppose Thee; for when Thou desirest, Thou savest, and no one resists Thy will." Leontius of Byzantium, writing about the middle of the sixth century, censures Theodore of Mopsuestia because he was not content with the liturgies handed down by the Fathers to the churches, but composed a Liturgy of his own, showing thereby no reverence either for that of the Apostles, or for that composed in the same spirit by St. Basil. The Quinisext Council, or "Council In Trullo" (692), in its thirty-second canon draws an argument from the written Liturgy of the archbishop of the church of the Cæsareans, St. Basil, whose glory has spread through the whole world. Finally, in the Barberini library there is a manuscript of the latter part of the eighth, or the early part of the ninth, century which contains a Greek Liturgy entitled the "Liturgy of St. Basil".
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