ONE HUNDRED FIFTY FIRST

Gregory's response to the perceived betrayal was, in fact, passive resistance: he apparently never took up residence in Sasima, and ostentatiously refused to engage himself either in the affairs of the district where it was located or in Basil's ecclesio-political struggles.  So he writes defiantely to Basil, shortly after his episcopal ordination:

You reproach us with inactivity and laziness, because we have not taken posession of your Sasima, and are not making motions of a duly episcopal kind or helping arm all of you for your struggles, like some scrap of food thrown in the midst of the dogs!  For me, the main form of action is inaction.  And to let you know one of my good qualities: I am so ambitious about my inactivity as to think it should be a law for anybody aspiring to magnanimity in this whole affair.  So much so, that if everyone were to imitate us, there would be no dispute among the Churches, nor would the faith be swept away in the flood by becoming the weapon of each one's private ambitions!

— Brian Daley, S.J, Gregory of Nazianzus