The Hexaemeron (Homilies on the Six Days of Creation)

Saint Basil the Great · c. 378 AD

Ante-Nicene Fathers (Roberts–Donaldson), Roberts, Donaldson, and Coxe (eds.), Ante-Nicene Fathers, Buffalo: Christian Literature Publishing, 1885–1887; digitized by CCEL.

Archbishop of Caesarea in Cappadocia; brother of St Gregory of Nyssa and St Macrina; intimate friend of St Gregory the Theologian. One of the Three Holy Hierarchs of the Orthodox Church (with St Gregory the Theologian and St John Chrysostom). His Divine Liturgy is celebrated on the Sundays of Great Lent, the Eves of Nativity and Theophany, and Pascha. The author of On the Holy Spirit and the Hexaemeron homilies, and of the great monastic Rules that founded Eastern coenobitic monasticism.

Contents

1. In the Beginning God made the Heaven and the Earth(1 chapter)
2. “The Earth was Invisible and Unfinished.”(1 chapter)
3. On the Firmament(1 chapter)
4. Upon the gathering together of the waters(1 chapter)
5. The Germination of the Earth(1 chapter)
6. The creation of luminous bodies(1 chapter)
7. The creation of moving creatures(1 chapter)
8. The creation of fowl and water animals(1 chapter)
9. The creation of terrestrial animals(1 chapter)