Admonitio ad filium spiritualem

During the Middle Ages, it was believed to be a translation by Rufinus of Aquileia of a Greek original by Basil of Caesarea.

[2] Lucas Holstenius was the first to print the text when he included it in an appendix to his edition of Benedict of Aniane's Codex regularum in 1661.

"[1] Pseudo-Basil's chief sources seem to have been the Vita sancti Antonii, the Latin version of the biography of Anthony the Great by Athanasius of Alexandria; Rufinus' translation of the Regula sancti Basilii; and the twenty-fifth epistle of Paulinus of Nola.

[1] Alcuin of York, an Anglo-Saxon scholar in Charlemagne's court, quotes the Latin text in his letters.

[3] Patriarch Paulinus of Aquileia's Liber exhortationis, a mirror for princes written for Duke Eric of Friuli, is indebted to the Pseudo-Basilian description of spiritual warfare.