Section 04: The Hexaemeron
The Hexaemeron — nine homilies on the “six days” of creation (Genesis 1), preached by St. Basil during one Lent near the end of his life — is the founding text of the Christian Hexaemeral tradition and the most influential work of patristic cosmology. This section treats the homilies as preaching and exegesis, and the creation theology they articulate: creation from nothing, the meaning of “the beginning,” the goodness of matter, and creation as a school for the soul.
Tradition: Pan-Orthodox (Church Father)
Overview
The word hexaēmeron (ἑξαήμερον) means “the six days.” Basil’s nine homilies on Genesis 1 gave the genre its classic Christian form — a day-by-day exposition of the creation account that is at once exegesis, natural philosophy, and moral instruction — in the service of a single confession: that the cosmos is the free work of a good God and a book in which the attentive soul reads its Maker. The two files treat, in turn, the homilies as a preached event and the creation theology they contain. A caution runs through both: a set of homilies On the Origin of Man (sometimes counted as a tenth and eleventh homily of the Hexaemeron) is of disputed authorship and is frequently assigned to Basil’s brother Gregory of Nyssa (CPG 3215).
Files in This Section
| File | Description |
|---|---|
| The Hexaemeron Homilies | The nine Lenten homilies (c. 378): their preaching setting, day-by-day structure, Basil’s exegetical stance (“I take all in the literal sense”), the science of his day, his critique of allegorical excess, and the disputed-authorship note on the appended anthropology homilies. |
| Basil’s Cosmology | The creation theology: creatio ex nihilo, time and “the beginning,” the creation of the angelic world, the goodness of matter, and creation as pedagogy; reception in Ambrose’s Latin dependence; and modern use in creation debates. |
Why It Matters
The Hexaemeron is where Orthodox theology first thinks systematically about the natural world — not as an end in itself but as the first chapter of God’s self-disclosure: nature is good because it is made; the creation account is received in its plain sense without being flattened into a science manual or a cipher for allegory; and the proper end of contemplating creatures is the glorification of the Creator.
See Also
- Patristic Sources — Fr. Seraphim Rose’s reading of Basil and the other Hexaemeral Fathers, with which this section is kept consistent
- The Cappadocian Family — Gregory of Nyssa, to whom the disputed anthropology homilies are often assigned
References
- Basil the Great. Exegetic Homilies (the Hexaemeron). Trans. Agnes Clare Way, Fathers of the Church 46. Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1963.
- Basil the Great. The Hexaemeron. Trans. Blomfield Jackson, Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Series II, vol. 8 (verification anchor).