The First Christian Social Entrepreneur? Basil’s “New City” in 4th century Caesarea

An early representation of Basil, perhaps at the Basiliad

In popular usage today, the term “entrepreneur” seems to mean little more than someone who started their own business. The term is much wider, however, and history reveals a noble line of social entrepreneurs, many of them Christian.

According to this article, a social entrepreneur ‘is usually a creative individual who questions established norms and their own gifting, spirit and dynamism to enrich society in preference to themselves.’ We’re talking about a blend of philanthropist, visionary, business thinker and ‘go-getter’ – and for a Christian, a strong faith.

Christian social care is as old as Christianity itself, of course.  The Bible states that caring for widows and orphans is foundational to godliness (James 1:27). Perhaps the first instance of a more visionary enterprise was Basil the Great‘s Basiliad in 4th century Caesarea.

This was a ground-breaking philanthropic foundation where the poor, the diseased, orphans and the aged could receive food, shelter, and medical care free of charge. It was staffed by monks and nuns who lived out their monastic vocation through a life of service, working with physicians and other lay people.

In his funeral address for Basil, his great friend Gregory, bishop of Nazianzus, said: Go forth a little way from the city, and behold the new city, the storehouse of piety, the common treasury of the wealthy… where disease is regarded in a religious light, and disaster is thought a blessing, and sympathy is put to the test. Oration 43, Available online at www.newadvent.org/fathers)

This ‘New City’ was the culmination of Basil’s social vision, the fruit of a lifetime of effort to develop a more just and humane social order within the region of Caesarea, where he grew up and later served as a priest and a bishop.

Image: thegreathospital.co.uk

In this article, Thomas Heyne writes: ‘It appears that some facility (at least a soup kitchen of sorts) existed in 369. By 372 it had professional medical personnel, and by 373 it was sufficiently complete that he could invite fellow leaders to visit.  We know that this “new city” housed lepers, as well as other sick, the travellers, and strangers.  It was staffed both by professional physicians, as well as by clergy in the adjoining church (not unlike later Christian hospitals).  And we know, based on Gregory’s reference to the “common treasury of the wealthy”, that the poor were financed by donations from the rich.’

This line continued primarily through Christian hospitals, only really broadening to other areas with the coming of the Industrial Revolution in the 18th century. As poverty increased and health deteriorated through the factories, a window of opportunity opened for Christian social entrepreneurs. Suddenly prison reform, schools for poor children, cooperative societies, trustee savings banks and suchlike were big on the agenda, and gifted Christian men and women stood up with vision and application to see them through.