The Asketikon of St Basil the Great comprises a new English translation and studies which re-examine the emergence of monasticism in Asia Minor. The Regula Basilii, translated by Rufinus from Basil's Small Asketikon, is closely compared with the Greek text of the longer edition, as a means to tracing the development of ideas. Silvas concludes that the antecedents of the monastic community of the Great Asketikon are best sought not in some kind of sub-orthodox modus vivendi of male and female ascetics living together and increasingly curbed by an emerging neo-Nicene orthodoxy less favourable to women ('homoiousian asceticism'), but in the local domestic ascetic movement in Anatolia as typified in the developments at Annisa under the leadership of Makrina.

• 1: An introduction to the textual issues


• 2: The ascetic community in the two versions of Basil's Asketikon


• 3: The geography behind the history


• 4: Revisiting the emergence of monasticism in fourth-century Anatolia


• 5: Rufinus, witness of the Small Asketikon


• 6: Basil and the Great Asketikon


• Conclusion


• The Asketikon of St Basil the Great


• The Longer Responses


• The Shorter Responses

Anna M. Silvas is Australian Research Council Fellow, Department of Classics, History, and Religion, University of New England, Australia.