BASILIUS UND AUGUSTIN ÜBER NATUR UND LANDSCHAFT – EIN VERGLEICH
BASIL THE GREAT AND AUGUSTINE ON NATURE AND LANDSCAPE – A COMPARISON

Summary/Abstract: Basil the Great and Augustine on Nature and Landscape – a Comparison. The present paper is divided by the author in two parts. The first part deals with the cosmology elements found in the work of Saint Augustine, namely the Augustinian view about journey (the esthetics and the metaphor of the journey), about nature and landscape. A central element of this first part is the refutation of the charges brought to Saint Augustine, according to which the great Father of the Church was interested only in God and soul, nature being excluded, on different grounds, from this equation. The second material of this paper consists in an analysis of a fragment of a letter written by Saint Basil the Great, in which the landscape where he secluded himself (Iris, in the province of Pontus) in order to live a life of prayer and quietude is described. More precisely, what it is reviewed here is the way in which this description was perceived during the history, from Alexander von Humboldt to the modern patristic research (Hans von Campenhausen, O. Dreyer), and the motive which determined Saint Basil to act in this way.

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