CHURCH AND POLITICS THE CHRISTIAN LEADERSHIP IN THE 4th CENTURY CAPPADOCIA

In the triumph of Christianity after Constantine's victory at the Milvian Bridge some of the members of the curial aristocracy of the Roman Empire entered the Church and they became the fourth century Christian bishops. Most of them, like Saint Basil the Great, Saint Gregory the Elder, Saint Gregory of Nazianzus were by birth members of the eastern empire's municipal aristocracy, the so called curial class. Their education was founded on three traditional values: civic patriotism, devotion to Greek paideia and a strong sense of the importance of family ties and tradition. The implication of the Cappadocian Fathers in the social and political life, in civic and patriotic actions speaks about the 'human aspect' of their holiness, about their aristocratic background as premise of the Christian leadership in the 4 th century. Being aristocrats, they had the possibility to choose a leading position in their social class, but they did not because they understood with so much eagerness that only the imperatives of the Christian Gospel can give the true aristocracy, the Christ's aristocracy.