foundation · 358 · Neocaesarea
He had been to Egypt, Palestine, Syria and Mesopotamia to look at monks, and came home unconvinced by the heroic solitary model: whose feet, he asked, will you wash if you live alone? He gave away his inheritance and settled on the family estate at Annisa by the Iris, where his sister Macrina had already turned the household into an ascetic community — and Gregory of Nazianzus came to keep him company and complained about the vegetables. What came out of it is a rule built on common life, obedience to a superior, manual work, fixed hours of prayer and care of the poor and the sick, with the extremes deliberately trimmed. It is still the rule of Eastern monasticism. His only event before this was a council held four years before he was born.
To find out whether the ascetic life could be lived in community without either the extremity of Egypt or the vanity he thought solitude encouraged.
The Longer and Shorter Rules — the constitution of Eastern monasticism, and the reason Basilian houses look nothing like Antony's desert.