BASSIANUS OF LODI

In the June volume “Lives of the Saints” by Demetrius of Rostov, the memory of Saint Bassianus of Lodi (320–409) is placed on the day of his celebration in the Orthodox Church, June 23 (10). In 2024, the saint’s memory falls on the Day of Pentecost. As a bishop, Bassianus was the successor of the Apostles, and in his life and ministry the grace of the Spirit was especially visible.

Like his contemporaries Jerome, Paulinus and Augustine, Bassianus was a great convert of his time. Like them, in an effort to renounce the world, he abandoned his career plans and wanted to hide in ascetic obscurity, but soon, against his own will to renounce, he was elected by his contemporaries to serve the Church.

An ancient epitaph has been preserved, according to which he “ruled his Church for 35 years and 20 days.” At the age of 90 - an absolutely amazing longevity for those times - “having left his body to the earth, Bassianus joyfully ascended to heaven, under the Consuls Honorius and Theodosius.” By consuls we mean the emperors Honorius (395–423) and Theodosius the Younger (401–450). The providential scrupulousness with which all the days of Bassianus’s bishopric were then counted is amazing.

Obviously, at that time, “to rule one’s Church” meant to be a bishop. No analogue of modern autocephaly yet existed; the diocese was, in a way, an analogue of the local church. Then, in the ancient tradition, the movement of bishops from a diocese to another was almost unthinkable. Moreover, each new bishop was appointed, that is, elected, from deacons, laity, or even from the unbaptized. Thus, from among the unbaptized, a contemporary of Bassianus, Ambrose (340–397), was elected bishop of Milan in 374. In the same year, 374, Bassian himself became bishop of the city of Lodi, not far from Milan.

The appointment of Bassianus as the first bishop of Lodi is associated with the fact that from 355 to 374 Auxentius was bishop of Milan. Being an opponent of the Council of Nicaea, that is, formally, a heretic and an Arian, this predecessor of Ambrose at the See of Milan had a very strong position in the face of the powers that be and seemed unsinkable. Despite repeated attempts to remove him through excommunications and conciliar condemnations, Auxentius remained in the diocese until his death.

After this, the Orthodox community deleted him from the diptychs of the Catholic bishops of Milan, and representatives of Nicene Orthodoxy decided to surround the Milan See with small Orthodox dioceses. A similar method of opposing Arianism, but on the other side of the Roman Universe, was then chosen by a contemporary of those events, the great Cappadocian, Archbishop Basil of Caesarea (330-379). It is noteworthy that Auxentius was also from Cappadocia.

Ambrose and Bassianus were interlocutors, participated together in church councils and put their signatures on one of the letters to Pope Sirius (334–394). It was the same Pope who, in his encyclical of 385, affirmed the need for celibacy for clergy. In 390, Bassianus participated in the Council of Milan convened by Ambrose, at which Jovinian (+ c. 405), who had criticized St Jerome (340–420), was condemned. A convinced ascetic, Jovinian, in his writings, denied the religious significance of virginity, abstinence and celibacy.

Concluding his magnum opus about Simeon the New Theologian, our contemporary Archbishop Vasily (Krivoshein) quotes a Greek proverb: “The poor saint has no doxology.” Unlike his great, famous and not forgotten contemporaries - Ambrose, Jerome and Augustine - Bassianus of Lodi is, alas, completely forgotten in Eastern Orthodoxy.

Thus, the presentation of the life of Bassianus by Demetrius of Rostov, unfortunately, is replete with anachronisms. Even the chronology of his bishopric has not been observed. So, instead of a reliable thirty-five years (374–409), according to this version of life, it lasted only five years. Other details are also characteristic. “After the consecration of the church, a meal was arranged for the glory of God, at which the saints talked about what was useful for the Church of God. After the meal and friendly conversation, the arriving bishops went to their places, and Saint Bassianus escorted each of them with honor”. This episode with the “bishop’s meal” refers to the consecration of the Basilica of the Holy Apostles, erected by Bassianus in 387 in Lodi. Ambrose and Bishop Felix of Como (+391) participated in the consecration of this temple.

However, Ambrose, a man who, according to the literal testimony of Augustine’s Confessions, never closed the door of his office in order to maintain utmost transparency before the people, did not leave himself a single minute of free time to completely belong not to himself, but to the people, it is difficult to imagine himself in the image of the “Prince of the Church”, as his life describes him in the episode just cited.

This combination of archaic, ahistorical, hypertrophied solemnity with imagery devoid of specific chronological contexts, in fact, neutralizes meanings and deprives the “poor saints of praise,” and thus dooms them to oblivion.

It is historically known that in April of the same year 387, on Easter, Ambrose baptized Augustine in Milan. 10 years later, in April 397, when Augustine had already been bishop in Carthaginian Africa for several years, Ambrose died in Milan, and Bassianus participated in his burial. He himself died soon after.

The details of Bassianus’s biography before his episcopacy are remarkable and historical. He was the son of the ruler of Syracuse, Sergius. Having gone to study in Rome in order to subsequently inherit a high position, he converted to Christianity under the influence of the preaching of a priest with the symbolic name Jordan.

The father’s servants who accompanied Bassianus turned out to be spies and immediately informed him of his son’s conversion. A convinced pagan, Sergius tried to achieve the return of his son to Sicily in order to force him to renounce there. But Bassianus fled from Rome to Ravenna, where for some time he hid as a guest of another “forgotten” famous saint, Bishop Ursus of Ravenna (+396).

All roads lead to Rome. This ancient axiom of eternal ambition was refuted with amazing persistence by the ancient Church Fathers.

In 385, Jerome fled Rome, in 387, the year when Bassianus and Ambrose consecrated the basilica in Lodi, Augustine “followed” him. Both of them, like Bassianus a decade earlier, left Rome, never to return there again. They left it as an example of the fact that it is simply necessary to flee from the great ecclesiastical capitals…

Finally, Ambrose and Bassianus rest not far from each other. After all, Milan and Lodi are separated from each other by only about 30 kilometers. Another 30 kilometers from Lodi, in the city of Pavia, Augustine rests.

“The poor man of God did not leave any will, because he had nothing,” his biographer Possidius wrote about the last days of the bishop. Ambrose, Bassianus and Augustine were bishops, and therefore “successors of the Apostles”. This phrase has many definitions. Thus, the first Christians called the Church “apostolic” because it was poor.