Membership

 In 314, Cappadocia was the largest province of the Roman Empire, and was part of the Diocese of Pontus. The region suffered famine in 368 described as “the most severe ever remembered” by Gregory of Nazianzus:

The city was in distress and there was no source of assistance…The hardest part of all such distress is the insensibility and insatiability of those who possess supplies…Such are the buyers and sellers of corn … by his word and advice [basil] open the stores of those who possessed them, and so, according to the Scripture, dealt food to the hungry and satisfied the poor with bread…He gathered together the victims of the famine…and obtaining contributions of all sorts of food which can relieve famine, set before them basins of soup and such meat as was found preserved among us, on which the poor live…Such was our young furnisher of corn, and second Joseph…[But unlike Joseph, Basil’s] services were gratuitous and his succour of the famine gained no profit, having only one object, to win kindly feelings by kindly treatment, and to gain by his rations of corn the heavenly blessings”.