Life of Saint Basil the Younger

The Life of Saint Basil the Younger is a 10th-century Byzantine Greek text. It is a hagiography of St. Basil the Younger written by his disciple Gregory, and is noted for its detailed account of the 21 aerial toll houses that Theodora, a follower of Basil the Younger, passed through during her ascension to heaven.

St. Basil the Younger with his disciple Gregory. Illustration from an early 19th-century manuscript.

Death of Theodora, spiritual student of Basil the Younger, and visions of spiritual trials. Russian handmade lubok from the late 19th century.

Twenty tollhouses that Theodora passed through. Fresco from Rila Monastery.

Quotes

Sullivan, Denis F.; Talbot, Alice-Mary Maffry; McGrath, Stamatina Fatalas-Papadopoulos (2014). The Life of Saint Basil the Younger. Washington, D.C.: Dumbarton Oaks Studies. ISBN 978-0-88402-397-5. 

• Our lord and our common father Basil, the chosen of the Lord, then spoke to those handsome young men who were my guides, saying this, “My lords and fellow servants, when you have completed what is appropriate for this soul, deposit it there in the divine resting place made ready and prepared for me by the Lord”; and after he said this, he departed from our presence. Those handsome young men lifted me up, and raising their holy and fiery feet from the ground, like clouds or wind-driven ships on the sea, they journeyed upward on the road to the east, carrying me lightly through the air.
  • paragraph 11, p. 209

• For when my soul was breaking free, I saw clearly multitudes of Ethiopians standing around my bed, creating a disturbance and commotion, exacting payment for my deceptions and lawless vanities, howling like dogs and wolves, enraged like a bitter sea, producing false settlements, jeering, foaming rabidly, screaming, howling, squealing like pigs, examining my actions, carrying around documents in their hands, contorting in mockery their black and gloomy and dark faces, the mere sight of which alone seemed to me most terrifying and more bitter than even the Gehenna of fire. For it would be better for a living person to fall into that Gehenna of fire than to hear and see such things.
  • paragraph 6, p. 201

• So those radiant and handsome young men explained to me about that tollhouse as we approached it along the road which we were ascending, and we found its official in charge most savage and unbending ... His attendants and terrible tax collectors, who were most harsh and merciless, came out to meet us swarming like ants, and gnashing and grinding their teeth at me. They were carrying many documents in their hands, questioning, interrogating, and investigating carefully the charges against me, to see if they could find the deeds of heartlessness which they needed to drag me down into their harsh dungeons.
  By Christ's grace they did not find anything against me that they hoped for, but rather goodness toward everyone and fairness, compassion and abundant alms-giving. For if ever I gave someone a piece of bread, or an obol, or a cup of wine or even of water, or I brought a stranger into my room, or shared another’s grief, or mourned with someone in mourning, and visited the sick, or went to a jail to visit the brethren dreadfully confined in it, and encouraged them with words of exhortation to bear their miseries with patience, or in short if I acted as my will and my hand enabled me, my good protectors and guides pointed all these charitable deeds out to them. When those bloodsucking and harsh Ethiopians saw this evidence, they were completely overcome with shame and, letting us go, disappeared from sight.
  • paragraph 40, p. 249