The emperor Valens, guided by Eudoxius, was opposed by a struggle to establish bishops supporting the Nicene creed and to marginalize those dissenting. In Asia Minor central to this endeavour became Basil, bishop of Caesarea, metropolis of Cappadocia from autumn 370. He was born into an aristocratic landowning family with close attachment to the Church at Neocaesarea in Pontus, where his father was a successful advocate and the family included more than one bishop. At Neocaesarea the church proudly remembered the evangelization of Pontus by Origen's pupil Gregory the Wonderworker (Thaumaturgos), and treasured his creed and liturgy with such precision that their style of worship had come to seem very old-fashioned a century later (Basil, De Spir. S. 74). When Basil's monks chanted the psalms antiphonally, people at Neocaesarea were censorious of the innovation, which seemed a defiance of authority (ep. 207). Basil had a high-class education at Athens and heard Libanius lecturing at Constantinople. Letters exchanged between Basil and Libanius were known to Severus of Antioch about ad 500 (PO II i. 13); the authenticity of at least some among those transmitted has been reasonably doubted. His sister Macrina, whom he never mentions, was given a biography by his younger brother Gregory of Nyssa, which fused Neoplatonic aspirations with Christian holiness and portrayed her as an ideal saint. Basil had a past closely associated with the monastic (and homoiousian) movement in Asia Minor, where a leading figure was Eustathius bishop of Sebaste, in whose company in 356 he went on a tour of monasteries in Mesopotamia, Palestine, and Egypt.
Baptized by Bishop Dianios of Caesarea (prominent at the eastern synod of Serdica and no friend to the Nicene creed) for whom he had deep reverence, in the 360s he was ordained presbyter and began to compose rules for monasteries, dominated by texts from scripture. He retreated to family property with lovely scenery at Annisi not far from Caesarea, and there with his friend Gregory of Nazianzos compiled the extant Philokalia, gathering Origen's principal discussions of biblical interpretation; this could answer some of the objections to scripture in Porphyry and Julian and at the same