The Teaching of the Twelve Apostles, also known by the first word of its Greek title, the Didache, is a very ancient text, most likely contemporary with some of the books later included in the New Testament. Scholars typically date it to the latter half of the first century or the first half of the second century. Its author and place of origin are unknown, though some scholars associate it with Syria. The text, as we have it, is the end result of a complex process of redaction. Initially, the document was likely a compilation of various traditional sources deemed useful to introducing converts to a Jewish-Christian community’s way of life, which was then altered and expanded over time as community standards changed and developed. Its first part (1–6) is a prebaptismal catechesis composed of moral precepts derived from an independent and preexisting Jewish source known as the “Two Ways.” Its second (7–10) and third (11–15) parts are a collection of liturgical and disciplinary rules for the developing Christian community concerning baptism, fasting, prayer, the communal meal, traveling apostles, prophets, teachers, hospitality, reconciliation, communal leadership, and fraternal correction. The final part (15–16), whose ending is lost, describes the eschatological expectation that early Christians held.

Local, provincial, or ecumenical councils offered rare opportunities for bishops and other clergy members to weigh in on normative practice and establish precedents for ecclesiastical polity. While it remains debatable whether councils were effective in prescribing (or proscribing) Christian conduct and beliefs – be they among the heady echelons of clergy members or among the vast majority of laypeople – they nevertheless offer precious windows into which matters Christian leaders considered most urgent and immediate. Conciliar canons from late antiquity, and any historical period, resound with the bias and agenda of the dominant majority, and so treating them as windows through which modern readers can see what religious life was like “on the ground” for everyday Christians is problematic at best. By design, the canons convey the voice of the victors, so figuring out objections to them can be a challenge – and we can be sure that alternatives to the conciliar decisions existed. What conciliar canons do provide, then, is an indication of debates that raged among Christian groups in particular localities – debates about theology, clerical authority, communal organization and identity, ritual performance, and ascetic behavior.

The perspective and content of this poem are best understood in light of its author’s career. The poem was likely written in late 381 or early 382, months after Gregory had returned to Cappadocia from a twenty-month stint in Constantinople. He had been sent to the imperial capital, in all likelihood, by bishops who gathered at Antioch in the autumn of 379; his action item was the establishment of a pro-Nicene community in a Homoian-dominated city. In 380, Emperor Theodosius arrived and, as the first pro-Nicene emperor in nearly two decades, he deposed the city’s Homoian bishop Demophilus, made Gregory Constantinople’s de facto bishop, and convened the Council of Constantinople in May 381. More than 150 bishops attended the council, over which Gregory briefly presided, and collectively they tackled issues both theological and practical. The success of the council, then, depended on him having a political tact and finesse that he simply did not have. After alienating allies and hardening the opposition from adversaries, Gregory resigned from both his presidency and episcopate, only to lambaste the bishops at the council after he settled back in Cappadocia.

Whereas Poem 2.1.12, “On Himself and Concerning the Bishops,” unleashes Gregory’s invective against, in his view, corrupt, ambitious, and self-centered clergy members, Oration 43.1, “Funeral Oration for Basil the Great, Bishop of Cappadocian Caesarea,” presents a radically positive image of a bishop. The text is a long eulogy for Bishop Basil of Caesarea (ca. 329–378) delivered three years after his death, which makes it almost precisely contemporaneous to Poem 2.1.12. Basil was Gregory’s friend, and the careers of the two men overlapped significantly: they shared some of the same education at Athens; they practiced asceticism together in the early 360s on Basil’s property in Pontus; they were ordained to the priesthood around the same time; and both were thrust into the politics of provincial church life almost immediately after their ordinations. While their relationship was perhaps more complicated than Gregory’s idealized portrait suggests, here readers get a sense for the lifestyle, ascetic regimen, theology, and pastoral concern that Gregory valued in Christian leaders. The sections translated here pertain to Basil’s episcopacy (the sections about his education, monastic retreat, and priesthood have been omitted for brevity).