Portraits From the Past: Macrina the Younger

Historical Context

The fourth century was a period of remarkable theological conflict. Although the Council of Nicaea condemned Arianism in 325 A.D., the decades that followed required extraordinary men to defend and articulate Nicene orthodoxy.

Among them were Basil of Caesarea, Gregory of Nyssa, and Gregory of Nazianzus — together known as the Cappadocian Fathers. Basil and Gregory of Nyssa were brothers; Gregory of Nazianzus, though no relation, was their close friend and fellow defender of Nicene theology.

The Cappadocian Fathers’ story is important and noteworthy in its own right. But behind two of those men stood a lesser-known figure—a woman whose influence is often overlooked. Her name was Macrina, and she was their sister.

Much of what follows is drawn from Gregory of Nyssa’s biography of Macrina.

Early Life

Macrina was born around 327 A.D. in Annesi, a region of Pontus in modern-day Turkey. She was the eldest of ten children born to Basil the Elder and Emmelia, a devout Christian family. She was named after her paternal grandmother, a woman who had confessed Christ under persecution. Before her birth, her mother received a vision in which the child was called “Thecla,” the name of the famous virgin martyr, signaling, Gregory suggests, the kind of life she would live.

Her education was entirely her mother’s work, and it was entirely based on the Scriptures. The common practice of educating children through Greek literature was deliberately set aside. In its place, Macrina was formed by the Psalms, the gospels, and the broader sweep of inspired Scripture.

Gregory tells us the Psalter was her constant companion: “at stated times she recited every part of it. When she rose from bed, or engaged in household duties, or rested, or partook of food, or retired from table, when she went to bed or rose in the night for prayer, the Psalter was her constant companion, like a good fellow-traveller that never deserted her.”

Betrothal and Consecrated Life

Gregory tells us that “around her twelfth year, her father selected a young man of good birth and remarkable steadiness as her future husband.” Before the marriage could take place, the young man died. Macrina refused every subsequent suitor due to a remarkable theological argument.

Gregory records her reasoning: “It was absurd and unlawful not to be faithful to the marriage that had been arranged for her by her father.” Her betrothed, she maintained, “was not dead, but that she considered him who lived to God, thanks to the hope of the resurrection, to be absent only, not dead.”

It was not faithfulness to a memory she was preserving, but faithfulness to a person she expected to see again. She refused to marry another because, according to the resurrection, her betrothed was not dead and gone; he was simply absent.

With this resolution fixed, she devoted herself entirely to her mother and the household, becoming not merely a daughter but a constant companion and guide.

The Woman Who Shaped Basil

Of all that can be said of Macrina, nothing is more instructive than her influence over her brother Basil. Basil had been sent away for the finest education the age could offer, and he returned thoroughly impressed with himself. Gregory does not soften the description. Basil came back “puffed up beyond measure with the pride of oratory and looked down on the local dignitaries, excelling in his own estimation all the men of leading and position.”

Macrina took him in hand.

Gregory tells us that with remarkable speed she drew Basil toward the Christian life, so that “he forsook the glories of this world and despised fame gained by speaking, and deserted it for this busy life where one toils with one’s hands.” Basil abandoned his ambitions for public life. He gave up his property. He turned toward the ascetic and theological life that would make him one of the most significant figures in the history of the Church.

The man who would defend Trinitarian orthodoxy and stand as a pillar of Nicene theology was redirected by his sister before he did any such thing.

She was the tool God used to make him into the man we remember today.

The Community at Annesi

Macrina did not stop with Basil. She persuaded her mother, Emmelia, to dissolve the distinctions of rank that had governed their household. Mistress and servants were to live as equals: the same type of food, the same kind of bed, rooted in their same standing before God. What had been a wealthy household became a community of Christian fellowship and shared life on the banks of the River Iris.

Gregory describes the quality of that common life in striking terms: “no anger or jealousy, no hatred or pride, was observed in their midst, nor anything else of this nature, since they had cast away all vain desires for honour and glory, all vanity, arrogance and the like. Continence was their luxury, and obscurity their glory.”

The spirit of this community is seen clearly in Macrina’s relationship with her younger siblings.

Shortly after the birth of her youngest brother Peter, their father died. Macrina became to Peter what Gregory describes as “father, teacher, tutor, mother, giver of all good advice,” raising him from infancy in holy studies so that he grew into a man who, Gregory says, “seemed in no whit inferior to the great Basil himself” and who was later ordained to the priesthood.

Strength Under Grief

The life of Macrina would continue to be marked by death and sorrow. Her brother Naucratius died suddenly and unexpectedly in his early twenties. The news reached their mother, who collapsed entirely under the weight of it. It was Macrina who held the family together. Gregory describes her in that moment as “the prop of her mother’s weakness,” raising her “up from the abyss of grief” and by her own steadfastness teaching “her mother’s soul to be brave.”

Gregory presents Macrina as remarkably steadfast in the face of grief. She was tested again with the death of their mother, and again with the death of Basil himself. In each trial, the metal of her soul, Gregory says, was “proved to be unadulterated and undefiled.”

Her Death

Gregory visited Macrina shortly after Basil’s death, having been separated from her for nearly eight years while serving as the bishop of Nyssa. He found her dying, lying not on a bed but on a board on the floor, her strength drained by fever.

Yet when she saw him she raised herself to honor his rank and lifted her hand to God in thanksgiving.

What followed was a conversation Gregory could barely describe. Fevered and near death, Macrina spoke about the nature of the soul, the reason for life in the flesh, the origin of death, and the hope of the resurrection. Gregory says her words flowed “like a fountain whose water streams down uninterruptedly,” and that it “almost seemed as if my soul were lifted by the help of her words away from mortal nature and placed within the heavenly sanctuary.”

Macrina died in 379 A.D., surrounded by the community she had built.

Concluding Thoughts

Macrina held no ecclesiastical office. She preached no sermons and wrote no treatises. She sought no platform and cultivated no public reputation for its own sake. And yet the hand of her influence is visible on some of the most significant theological works of the fourth century.

The Scriptures are not surprised by this. Lois and Eunice formed Timothy before Paul ever found him (2 Tim. 1:5). The woman of Proverbs 31 shapes a household whose influence reaches the city gates.

The pattern of faithful women forming faithful men, and thereby shaping the Church, runs through the whole of human history.

Macrina is a rebuke to two errors at once. She rebukes those who would diminish the influence of godly women, as though ministry were a matter of office alone. And she rebukes those who would insist that influence requires ordination, as though the only significant work is done from the pulpit. Her life was significant because it was faithful, hidden, devoted, and thoroughly shaped by Scripture.

The Church has always needed women like Macrina. Many of the men whose names fill our history books were first shaped by women whose names are scarcely remembered. The Church still needs such women today.

Further Reading

The Life of Saint Macrina — Gregory of Nyssa | https://amzn.to/3SvYw4p

2,000 Years of Christ’s Power Vol. 1 — Nick Needham | https://amzn.to/4q3fbaT

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