Macrina the Younger: Philosopher of God, Gregory of Nyssa,The Life of Macrina, On the Soul and the Resurrection

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M ACRINA THE Y OUNGER, PHILOSOPHER OF G OD

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MEDIEVAL WOMEN: TEXTS AND CONTEXTS Editorial Board under the auspices of the Centre for Medieval Studies, University of Hull Renate Blumenfeld-Kosinski, University of Pittsburgh Juliette Dor, Université de Liège Constant J. Mews, Monash University Anneke Mulder-Bakker, Rijksuniversiteit Groningen Barbara Newman, Northwestern University Gabriella Signori, Universität Konstanz Nicholas Watson, Harvard University Jocelyn Wogan-Browne, Fordham University

Previously published volumes in this series are listed at the back of this book.

V O LU M E 22

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M ACRINA THE Y OUNGER, PHILOSOPHER OF G OD Anna M. Silvas

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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Macrina the Younger, philosopher of God. – (Medieval women : texts and contexts ; v. 22) 1. Macrina, the Younger, Saint, ca. 330-379 or 380 2. Macrina, the Younger, Saint, ca. 330-379 or 380 – Sources 3. Christian women saints – Biography – Sources 4. Christian saints – Biography – Sources I. Gregory, of Nyssa, Saint, ca. 335–ca. 394 II. Silvas, Anna 230.1'4'092 ISBN-13: 9782503523903

© 2008, Brepols Publishers n.v., Turnhout, Belgium All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher. D/2008/0095/30 ISBN: 978-2-503-52390-3 Printed in the E.U. on acid-free paper

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a Dedicated to Barbara Shea, a dear friend and sister in the Lord

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C ONTENTS

Preface and Acknowledgments

ix

Abbreviations

xii

General Introduction

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1

Testimonies of St Basil the Great

55

Epigrams of St Gregory the Theologian

79

Gregory of Nyssa, Letter 19

83

The Life of Macrina, Introduction

93

Gregory of Nyssa, The Life of Macrina

109

On the Soul and the Resurrection, Introduction

149

Gregory of Nyssa, On the Soul and the Resurrection

171

Macrina, A Letter Writer?

247

Bibliography

249

General Index

257

Index of Scriptural Citations and Allusions

260

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P REFACE AND A CKNOWLEDGMENTS

‘H

e became renowned everywhere under the sun and by his reputation eclipsed all those who were illustrious for virtue’ (VSM 8.4). So Gregory of Nyssa describes his brother, St Basil the Great, hinting that in his shadow were others of outstanding virtue who deserved to be better known. Macrina their eldest sister was one of them. He begins The Life of Macrina by describing her as one ‘who had raised herself by philosophy to the highest summit of human virtue’, and that if her life were to remain ‘veiled in silence’, it would have passed by ineffectually (VSM 1.5). He resolved therefore to bring into the light by means of his literary craft the life of virtue and the Christian intellectual calibre of his remarkable sister, St Macrina (c. 327–79), called the Younger to distinguish her from her grandmother, St Macrina the Elder (c. 275–c. 340s). The aim of the present book is to renew Gregory’s purpose again for an Englishspeaking readership, by gathering all the documents relating to Macrina, translating them afresh, and supplying scholarly commentary. In 1998 the author presented to an English-speaking readership a comprehensive collection of the biographical sources concerning two great women of the twelfth century in Jutta and Hildegard: The Biographical Sources. In the succeeding years her attention turned to the beginnings of Christian monasticism in fourthcentury AD Asia Minor. This research culminated in a comprehensive study published as The Asketikon of St Basil the Great. The probing of Basil’s personal development as a Christian ascetic and the earliest development of his teaching on the ascetic life soon highlighted the figure of his elder sister, Macrina, and the transformations of the family household at Annisa under her guidance. The more one looked into it, the clearer it became that this household was not less than the crucible of those changes in Basil’s thinking that took place between 358, when he began his ascetic life in the retreat by the river Iris, and 365/66, when he was

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Preface and Acknowledgments

presenting an already well worked out doctrine of ‘cenobitic’ or ‘common life’ monasticism in his Small Asketikon. Credit must be given to Macrina, that woman ‘illustrious for virtue’, who anticipated and led the way for Basil and has a just claim thereby to be called ‘Mother of Greek Monasticism’. Atttention also turned to the person of Macrina’s younger brother and biographer, resulting in my book St Gregory of Nyssa: The Letters. Especially important for our understanding of Gregory’s chronology is his Letter 19, which is also the earliest documentation of Macrina’s existence, written less than a year after her death. This important letter had never before appeared in English. It seemed timely that the author attempt to do for Macrina what had been done for Jutta and Hildegard. The opportunity came, thanks to an Australian Research Council Postdoctoral Fellowship. The result is the present book in which all the sources of Macrina’s life have been collected for the first time, translated afresh from Greek into English, and supplemented with up-to-date introductions and notes. The sources include 1. testimonies of St Basil, who, though his surviving works never mention Macrina by name, attests Macrina’s influence in his vigorous defence of female asceticism; 2. the Epigrams of Gregory Nazianzen on Macrina and her family which attest Macrina’s existence and her outstanding qualities independently of Gregory of Nyssa; 3. Gregory of Nyssa’s Letter 19, here presented for the first time in English and accompanied by a detailed consideration of chronology; 4. Gregory of Nyssa’s The Life of Macrina, a jewel of fourth-century Christian biography; and 5. the dialogue On the Soul and the Resurrection in which Macrina appears as ‘the Teacher’ expounding Christian doctrine with reasoned argument. Introducing the book is a study of Macrina’s life and family, the contemporary history of the Church, and the emergence of Christian monasticism in Asia Minor. It describes the gradual transformation of the family household of Annisa into the proto-monastic community that is reflected in Basil’s Small Asketikon (c. 365). Macrina’s title of ‘Philosopher’ deserves comment. It is intended here in the sense that it was used in Christian circles in Macrina and Gregory’s day. This sense of it began with Socratic teaching that it is futile to seek truth through dialectical reasoning without a commitment to seeking the good through the cultivation of virtue at the same time. Traditional Hellenism used ‘philosopher’ to mean someone who has committed himself to a way of life involving both intellectual and

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Preface and Acknowledgements

xi

moral endeavour. In the first three Christian centuries the goal was to present the claims of the ‘Christian Philosophy’ to a Graeco-Roman world with a longdeveloped tradition of philosophy. In the fourth and fifth centuries ‘philosophy’ tended to be used by Christian writers for the Christian ascetic life and, as it developed, for the Christian monastic life. The seeking of the good and the seeking of God that it implies is both an intellectual quest and a life-changing moral praxis. I express my gratitude for the support received from the University of New England and the School of Classics, History, and Religion in carrying out this task. Thanks are due also to Oxford University Press for permission to reuse some of my material in The Asketikon of St Basil the Great, and to Brill for permission to reissue my translation of Letter 19. Of the many individual persons who deserve thanks, I mention in particular Professor G. H. R. Horsley, Professor Ekkehard Mühlenberg, Carol Handebo, Margaret Watts, Stephen Mitchell, Constant and Maryna Mews, and Anna Terentieva who painted the wonderfully intuitive icon of St Macrina on the front cover. I am indeed grateful for the excellent editor of my text, Deborah A. Oosterhouse. Next to last, thanks to the three holy siblings themselves, Macrina, Gregory, and Basil, for their constant presence and inspiration. Lastly, and most importantly, thanks be to God most High through whose mercies this work was brought to completion. Anna M. Silvas The University of New England Armidale, NSW, Australia

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A BBREVIATIONS

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Clark

Gillian Clark, Women in Late Antiquity (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993).

Courtonne

Yves Courtonne, ed. and trans., Saint Basile Correspondance, vol. I : Lettres I–C, vol. II : Lettres CI–CCXVIII, vol. III : Lettres CCXIX– CCCLXVI, 2nd edn (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 2003).

Deferrari

R . J. Deferrari, ed. and trans., Saint Basil — The Letters in Four Volumes, Loeb Classical Library (Cambridge, M A : Harvard University Press, 1926–34).

Elm

Susanna Elm, Virgins of God (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994).

GNO

Gregorii Nysseni opera, gen. ed. Werner Jaeger (Leiden: Brill, 1958–96). Volumes and sub-volumes are cited by relevant numbers.

LR

The Longer Responses of Basil’s Great Asketikon, translated in Silvas, Asketikon, pp. 153–269.

Maraval, Vie

Pierre Maraval, ed. and trans., Grégoire de Nysse: Vie de Sainte Macrine, Sources Chrétiennes, 178 (Paris: Cerf, 1971).

McCauley

Leo P. McCauley and others, trans, Funeral Orations by Saint Gregory Nazianzen and Saint Ambrose, Fathers of the Church, 22, 2nd edn (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 1968), Oratio 43: ‘On St Basil the Great’, pp. 27–99.

NPNF 2

Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, ed. by Philip Schaff and Henry Wace, 2nd series (1895; repr. Peabody: Hendrickson Publishers, 1995); cited by volume number; vol. V , ed. by W illiam Moore and trans. by Henry Austin, is dedicated to Gregory of Nyssa.

PG

Patrologia Graeca, Patrologia Cursus Completus, Series Graeco-Latina, ed. by Jacques-Paul Migne, 161 vols (Paris, 1857–66).

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Abbreviations

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RBas

Regula Basilii, Rufinus’s Latin translation of Basil’s Small Asketikon, Klaus Zelzer, ed., Basili Regula – A Rufino Latine Versa, Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum, 86 (Vienna: Hoelder-Pichler-Tempsky, 1986), translated and embedded in Silvas, Asketikon, pp. 271–451.

Silvas, Gregory

Anna M. Silvas, trans., Gregory of Nyssa: The Letters (Leiden: Brill, 2007).

Silvas, Asketikon

Anna M. Silvas, The Asketikon of St Basil the Great (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005).

SR

The Shorter Responses of Basil’s Great Asketikon, translated in Silvas, Asketikon, pp. 271–451.

VSM

Vita Sanctae Macrinae (The Life of Macrina) as translated in this volume.

Woods Callahan

V irginia Woods Callahan, ed. and trans., Saint Gregory of Nyssa: Ascetical Works, Fathers of the Church, 58 (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 1967), ‘The Life of Macrina’, pp. 161–91.

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G ENERAL INTRODUCTION

T

he holy woman known in Christian tradition as Saint Macrina the Younger (c. 327–79) was the descendant of resolutely Christian forbears, the first-born among some famous siblings, and the leader of a family outstanding for its contribution to Christian history, piety, and culture. Macrina’s mother, Emmelia, came from Cappadocia, and her father, Basil the Elder, was a native of Neocaesarea, the capital of the Roman province of Pontus Polemoniacus, just south of the Black Sea. Socially, her parents were of the landed aristocracy. Moreover, both sides of the family were known for an early and tested commitment to Christianity. According to the VSM 22.3, Emmelia’s propator, that is, her ‘forefather’, died a martyr. Perhaps this was a grandfather who died under the Decian persecutions. It was with such a background in view that Gregory Nazianzen remarked of Emmelia in Epigram 162 that her ‘stock was so great’. The Christian credentials on the other side were scarcely less significant. Basil the Elder’s mother was no less than Macrina the Elder, later known as Saint. She and her husband endured much for their faith during the last savage persecution of Christians in the eastern Roman Empire under Maximin Daia (c. 306–13).1 We do not know the name of Macrina the Elder’s husband, probably due to his early death. It was quite possibly Naucratius or Gregory, since these names appear among the grandsons after Basil.

First-Born of a Family Basil the Elder and Emmelia had ten children, nine of whom survived infancy. Macrina, their first-born, was born in about 327 and Peter, the last-born, by about 1

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Gregory Nazianzen, Oratio 43.5–6 (McCauley, pp. 30–31).

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General Introduction

345, coinciding with his father’s death. Of these siblings at least four were accorded recognition as saints by posterity: Macrina the Younger and three of her brothers who became bishops, two of them renowned as Fathers of the Church: Basil of Caesarea, subtitled ‘the Great’ and described as the ‘shining light of the whole world’;2 and Gregory of Nyssa, called by one enthusiastic participant in the Second Council of Nicaea ‘Father of the Fathers’, nominated by one modern scholar as ‘the founder of Mystical Theology’, and endorsed by Pope Benedict XVI who calls him ‘a great “Father of Mysticism”’.3 The youngest born, St Peter II of Sebasteia, was not a writer, but Gregory of Nyssa repeatedly calls him ‘the great Peter’, for he seems to have continued Basil’s profile as a monastic leader (VSM 40). Naucratius, the second-born son, though he died so young, was in fact the first of the brothers to dedicate himself to God in the ascetic life. Another daughter, Theosebia,4 if she is to be identified with the Theosebia of Gregory Nazianzen’s Letter 197,5 as the present author believes, was praised for the maturity of her Christian witness. The hub of these siblings in religious terms was the first-born, Macrina, who, in various ways and at different times, became a spiritual mother and teacher to her own mother, Emmelia, and to each of her four brothers.

The Domestic Ascetic Movement Before investigating the history of this particular family, we need to appreciate the wider context of the devout aristocratic Christian family in the fourth century AD, both in Anatolia (Asia Minor) and throughout the Mediterranean world. I have

2

Âáóßëgéïò Ò ìÝãáò, Ò ô­ò ïÆêïõìÝíçò öùóôÞñ, Theodoret, Church History 4.16 (NPNF2, III, 119); and in Theodoret Letter 146, Ò ôäí Êáððáäïêäí, ìëëïí ä¥ ô­ò ïÆêïõìÝí­ öùóôÞñ — ‘the shining light of the Cappadocians, or rather, of the whole world’. 3

He was called ‘Ò ôäí ÐáôÝñùí ÐáôÞñ’ by Epiphanius the Deacon at the seventh ecumenical council, Nicaea II (787), 6th session, in J. D. Mansi, ed., Sacrorum Conciliorum Nova et Amplissima Collectio, 31 vols (Florence–Venice, 1757–98), XIII, 203–364 (col. 293E). Jean Daniélou, Platonisme et théologie mystique: Essai sur la doctrine spirituelle de saint Grégoire de Nysse (Paris: Aubier, 1944), p. 6. Benedict XVI, ‘St Gregory of Nyssa’, L’Osservatore Romano, 36 (September 2007), 15. 4

See The Epigrams of St Gregory the Theologian, trans. by W. R . Paton, complete text with English translation, The Greek Anthology, Book VIII, Loeb Classical Library (London: Heinemann, 1917), Epigrams 161, 164. 5

A translation and a study of this letter, detailing reasons for not identifying her as Gregory’s wife, appears in Silvas, Gregory, pp. 98–101.

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used the term ‘domestic ascetic movement’ elsewhere6 to describe the well-known phenomenon, not so much of individuals, typically women, living an ascetic life within their natural family,7 but of the commitment of the entire family to pursuing a life of Christian piety. This trend manifested itself first of all when spouses — with the wife typically in the lead — chose an early adult baptism and took its implications seriously. This was not the case of the many who in the post-Constantinian era enrolled themselves as catechumens when at least a nominal Christianity was becoming a civil convenience. These typically postponed their baptism till death, providing the Cappadocian Fathers with an occasion and audience for what was a genre of homily, the protreptic, aimed at persuading reluctant and tardy catechumens to commit themselves to baptism. It was far otherwise with devout married Christians who embraced baptism early of their own accord. In their households the values of the Graeco-Roman civic politeia mingled with and gradually yielded to more explicitly Christian virtues. The cultural shift is seen especially in the fostering at home of the Scriptures and church traditions,8 in the practice of hospitality, personal frugality, and a Gospel charity9 in which the ruling idea is no longer philanthropy with a view to winning civic kudos, but self-effacing succour of the poor in imitation of Christ.10

6

See the discussion in Silvas, Asketikon, pp. 7583.

7

This is the limited perspective of ‘familial asceticism’ in E. Amand de Mendieta’s study, ‘La Virginité chez Eusèbe d’ Emèse et l’ascéticisme familial dans la première moitié du IV e siècle’, Revue d’histoire ecclésiastique, 50 (1955), 777–820 (pp. 800–05). 8

In On Judgement (De Iudicio, PG 31.653–76 (653A)), for example, Basil speaks of learning the Scriptures from his parents ‘from infancy’ (•ðÎ âñÝöïõò) and in Letter 223 of learning the traditions of the Church of Neocaesarea from his grandmother Macrina ‘from childhood’ (¦ê ðáéäÎò). VSM 4 likewise shows Emmelia’s care to have her daughter Macrina educated in the Scriptures. This cultivation of the Scriptures was not simply a literary exercise of latter day ‘Biblereading’, but very much part of an oral culture: the Scriptures were chanted, at home as in the liturgy, their memorization being facilitated in this way. 9

A striking example of this occurs in the First Greek Life of Pachomius, 4–5 in Pachomian Koinonia, 1, ed. and trans. by A. Veilleux (Kalamazoo: Cistercian Publications, 1980), p. 300. A twenty-year old Pachomius, pressed into military service and held in prison, was so affected by ‘some merciful Christians’ who tended to their distress, it led to his conversion and gave to his piety a lifelong communitarian cast. Later on, the Emperor Julian felt constrained to borrow some features of Christian charity in his projected neo-pagan revival. 10

Stephen Mitchell examines these cultural shifts, focussing especially on Basil’s grandparents, in Anatolia: Land, Men and Gods in Asia Minor, 2 vols (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993), II, 82. See also Evelyne Patlagean, Pauvreté économique et pauvreté sociale à Byzance, 4 e—7 e siècles

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In such ways devout families redefined themselves as Christian in relation to civil society. Elena Giannerelli comments: ‘We have here one of the most interesting phenomena of fourth-century Christianity in east and west: entire families, above all aristocratic families, giving themselves over to ascesis inside their own households, in which the female element has a leading function.’11 Such families were the seed-beds of a latent Christian radicalism. It is not surprising that in times of crisis martyrs and confessors came from their ranks and in times of peace virgins. While they did not normally cross the line into an ostentatious break with society’s demands, yet when really put to the test they were willing to do so. Most importantly they left to their posterity memories of actually having done so. Basil’s appeal in Letter 240 to the presbyters of Nicopolis shows that this heritage of family piety was a widespread phenomenon: You are children of confessors and children of martyrs, who strove unto blood against sin. Let each of you use his own kin as example of constancy on behalf of piety.12

This is the Christian heritage relayed by Macrina the Elder and her husband.13 Their story, Gregory Nazianzen assures us, was ‘but one chosen out of many’ and ‘typical of the rest’.14 The all too brief allusion to heroic resistance on the mother’s side of the family also bears this out.15 These Christian couples and their families put up an unfussy but firm resistance in times of coercively anti-Christian policies. They played an indispensable role as a leaven of the Christianization of Anatolia. It was their children or, perhaps more pertinently, their grandchildren who fastened on this latent radicalism and explored its potential as a life option, precisely in the mid- to late fourth century when the Church was becoming increasingly accommodated to the imperial and civic politeia.

(Paris: Mouton, 1977). ‘One of her major points is that whatever “revolution” Christian charity represented took place within a context provided by traditional patterns of social dependence’: Philip Rousseau, Basil of Caesarea (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994), p. 136, n. 11. 11

Elena Giannerelli, ‘Macrina e sua Madre: Santità e Paradosso’, in Studia Patristica, 20 (1989), 224–30 (p. 226). 12

Letter 240, Deferrari, III, 420–29 (p. 423). Basil as bishop was keen to appeal to the martyr heroes as a means of rallying the whole Church. Hence the importance he attached to the annual synod at Caesarea in honour of Eupsychius, a very recent martyr, a married layman who had been executed at Caesarea in Julian’s reign. See Letters 100, 142, 176, 252, 282. 13

See Gregory Nazianzen, Oratio 43.58 on Basil’s paternal grandparents (McCauley, pp. 30–33).

14

Gregory Nazianzen, Oratio 43.8 (McCauley, p. 33).

15

His mother’s grandfather had been killed and his property confiscated, ‘by the anger of the emperor’, evidently in Cappadocia. See VSM 22.3.

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What of the intermediate generation, the children of these Christian confessors, who were in their turn to become the parents of virgins and ascetics? As Mitchell comments: The elder Gregory [father of Gregory Nazianzen] and the elder Basil [father of Macrina and Basil] were members of the first Christian generation to grow up under Constantine; they may even have been the personalities in Eusebius’s mind when he spoke of the Cappadocians who were a match for anyone in their Christian education and learning [Eusebius, Life of Constantine, 4.43].16

Palladius provides another example of devout Christian spouses in his married friends at Ancyra, Verus, and Bosporia (Lausiac History 66).17 Everything he tells of their way of life, the abrogation of class distinctions in their household, their withdrawal to the country, and their practical charity to the poor, is equally compatible with their adopting celibacy or not. Like Macrina the Elder and her husband, this couple show that the very way baptized Christian spouses recalibrated their household along expressly Christian lines took on what one might almost call ‘pre-monastic’ features. The line between devout Christian households and dedicated ascetic communities could, in fact, be quite pervious. Another stage in the domestic ascetic movement was marked by the commitment to ðáñègíßá or vocational celibacy. It is observed most clearly in the households of devout and wealthy widows. In the late 340s and 350s there was Emmelia of Cappadocia herself, who exemplifies the tradition of the devout Christian widow. Frequenting the Annisa community in the 370s was the widow Vetiana, of the senatorial class in Constantinople (VSM 30). The widow Magna of Ancyra, like Emmelia, reordered her household as a devout Christian community (Lausiac History 67). Down in Antioch the devout Anthousa, widowed at twenty years, refused to remarry, drawing the admiration of Libanius the pagan rhetorician.18 In

16

Mitchell, Anatolia, II, 68

17

R . T. Meyer, trans., Palladius: The Lausiac History (New York: Newman Press, 1964).

18

She was St John Chrysostom’s mother. In his Letter To a Young Widow, Chrysostom mentions the praise of his mother by his teacher, the pagan intellectual Libanius. ‘Once when I was still a youth (íÝïò), I know that the sophist who taught me — and he was the most reverent of men towards the gods — expressed admiration for my mother before a large company. Enquiring of those who were sitting about him, as was his custom, he asked who I was. When someone replied that I was the son of a woman who was a widow, he asked me the age of my mother and how long she had been a widow. And when I told him she was forty years of age, of which twenty had passed since she lost my father, he was astonished and uttered a loud exclamation, and turning to those present “Amazing!”, he said, “What women there are among the Christians!” (Âáâáß, §öç, ïÍáé ðáñ ×ñéóôéáíïÃò ãõíáÃêÝò gÆóé)’: Bernard Grillet, trans., and Gérard H. Ettlinger (ed. Greek

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Constantinople towards century’s end, the immensely wealthy and very ascetic Olympias, widowed at twenty-two years of age, resisted strong political and imperial pressures for a second marriage. She eventually became the patroness of bishops, the friend of Saints Gregory Nazianzen, Gregory of Nyssa, Amphilochius, and finally and most loyally John Chrysostom. To her community flocked many other devout widows and virgins known by name.19 Rome harboured a whole class of noble widow ascetics,20 such as St Jerome’s friend Marcella, another young widow who in about 351 refused remarriage and made of her house on the Aventine a centre for the Roman ascetic circle, among them St Paula and her two virgin daughters. Perhaps the most outstanding Roman widow ascetic was the very wealthy St Melania the Elder — though indeed she was no friend of Jerome or Marcella. Leaving the Roman scene and her own son, she sailed for Egypt and Palestine, where she spent her life as a kind of ‘entrepreneur’ in an international monastic network. Another marker of domestic asceticism was when spouses adopted celibacy while still living together. Again, the social consequences were more apparent when they were of the aristocracy and presiding over the ramified household typical of their class. In such a case the household gradually, almost organically, took on the aspects of a celibate Christian community. The records of the late fourth and early fifth centuries are studded with examples of spouses mutually turning to celibacy, with the consequent remaking of their households into monastic-like establishments. Of special interest is a case in Basil’s own circle. In Gregory Nazianzen’s oration for his sister Gorgonia, he says that once his sister had borne children and wished to consecrate herself wholly to God, she persuaded her husband to join her in a life of celibacy.21 It even seems that her husband was a priest22 persuaded to continence text), Jean Chrysostom a une jeune veuve: sur le mariage unique, Sources Chrétiennes, 138 (Paris: Cerf, 1968), 113–59 (p. 120). 19 For example, Elisanthia, Martyria, and Palladia, who all became deaconesses. On Olympias see Elm, pp. 178–80, with many bibliographical references; Elizabeth A. Clark, in Jerome, Chrysostom and Friends (New York: Edwin Mellen Press, 1979), translates the Life of Olympias, pp. 107–57. 20

See Anne Yarbrough, ‘Christianization in the Fourth Century: The Example of Roman Women’, in Church History, 45 (1976), 149–65 (pp. 150–51). She provides two stemmas, one of family descent, the other of spiritual relationship. In the latter case it may be clearly seen that there were generally two clusters of Roman women ascetics, one associated with Jerome (ultimately antiOrigenist), the other with Rufinus, Paulinus of Nola, and to some extent Augustine (interested in Origen and the Greek Fathers). 21 22

Gregory Nazianzen, Oratio 8.8 (McCauley, pp. 105–06).

Gregory Nazianzen, Oratio 8.11, (McCauley, p. 108): ‘Who had such reverence for priests and especially for him who was her fellow soldier and teacher, of whom are the noble seeds and the pair of sons dedicated to God?’

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by his wife. Exemplifying the classic family ascetic evolution their surviving children, two sons, became monks. It would be useful to introduce here Gregory of Nyssa’s supposed marriage to Theosebia, but despite Daniélou’s enthusiastic arguments in its favour,23 it is not in the least certain that the Theosebia of Nazianzen’s Letter 19724 is Gregory’s wife and not his sister as she is explicitly called.25 None of the ‘evidences’ for this marriage assembled by Daniélou are without serious ambiguities. Basil’s correspondence provides another example of celibate spouses in the ‘noble’ Palladius and his wife who, illustrating the typical feminine lead, persuaded him to baptism, which he seems to have followed up by becoming a monk and a priest.26 In Italy at the end of the fourth century were Paulinus and Therasia of Nola. In this case too, the husband embraced baptism and with it the ascetic life at the instance of his wife, Therasia. They lived together in celibacy for years before he

23

See Jean Daniélou, ‘Le Mariage de Grégoire de Nysse et la chronologie de sa vie’, Revue des études Augustiniennes, 2 (1956), 71–78. 24

Gregory Nazianzen, Letter 197, in Saint Grégoire de Nazianze: Correspondance, vol. II: Lettres CIII–CXLIX [sic], ed. and trans. by Paul Gallay, 2nd edn (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 2003), pp. 88–89; NPNF 2, VII, 462. 25

On the question of the identity of the Theosebia in this letter, cf. Gregory Nazianzen’s Epigram 164: ‘And you, Theosebia, child of noble Emmelia, and in truth consort of great Gregory, lie here in holy soil, O support of pious women. At a seasonable age, you departed this life (Âéüôïõ äz òñéïò ¦îgëýèçò).’ That the one author, Nazianzen, should write of two Theosebias, both of whom are ‘yolk-fellows’ of an eminent priest Gregory is to beg too much of coincidence. The Theosebia of the epigram and the Theosebia of Letter 197, each of whom died at a seasonable age, are the same person: Gregory’s celibate, ascetic sister (she is in fact called his ‘sister’) who has shared his household and his life with him (one of the strictly limited forms of priestly cohabitation with a woman, apart from a wife, allowed by the canon law of the time; the other is a mother). In this case, Theosebia’s illustrious ‘brothers’ mentioned by Nazianzen, include Macrina, Basil, Naucratius, Gregory of Nyssa himself, and Peter. Note also that both the epigram and the letter emphasize the ‘good timing’ of Theosebia’s death, something well appreciated by Nazianzen who suffered much from the diminishments of age. As to the term syzygos (yolk-fellow), while is thoroughly attested, especially in its feminine form, as a synonym of ‘spouse’, it also encompasses those who share intimately in the same work (cf. Philippians 4. 3) — even to rivals in gladiatorial contests. The Benedictine editors for their part thought the Theosebia of the letter a deaconess of the church of Nyssa, though such a personage, unrelated, could not have lived in Gregory’s household. Since she has a perfectly acceptable personal bond with Gregory and lived with him, a devout sister seems more likely, who may in addition have been a deaconess with a special ministry to women. 26 See, in the right chronological sequence: Basil, Letter 292, Deferrari, IV , 196–99; Letter 295, Deferrari, IV , 206–09; Letter 258, Deferrari, IV , 34–47 (pp. 38–41); and Deferrari’s hypothesis, IV , 206–07 note.

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became bishop, their household at Nola gradually taking on the aspect of a monastic community. Rufinus and Melania’s great friends, Apronianus and Avita, also adopted celibacy after baptism27 and joined Paulinus and Therasia’s community.28 This was a circle with a strong interest in the Cappadocian Fathers. Other ascetic couples were Aper and Amanda and Eucher (later Bishop of Lyons) and Galla, who retired near the monastery of Honoratus in Lérins.29 The best-known example of spouses turned celibate ascetics, together with all their household, is surely that of Melania the Younger and her husband Valerius Pinian.30 The story of Pinian, whose resistance was gradually but inexorably worn down by his wife — indeed, who might well be described as ‘seduced’ to celibacy by his wife — is the textbook case of Basil’s ‘obstinate being led to concur in the right decision’ (LR 12). As is clear from the above account, women were overwhelmingly the motivators of the domestic ascetic movement, in all stages of its manifestation.31 It is also clear

27

Rufinus addressed the preface to his translation of Basil’s homilies to Apronianus, considering them especially suited to devout women such as his wife in PG 31.1723–94 (col. 1723B). 28

See Paulinus, Carmen 21, The Poems of Paulinus of Nola, trans. by P. G. Walsh (New York: Newman Press, 1975), pp. 173–201, Augustine, Letters 31.6 and 127.9, and Palladius, Lausiac History 41.5 and 54, pp. 119 and 134–36 respectively. In the latter, Melania the Elder instructs Apronianus, simultaneously attracting him to the Christian faith and the practice of celibacy within marriage. Dyan Elliott, Spiritual Marriage (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993), aptly comments on the ‘memorable frieze of a remarkable cast’ in Paulinus, Carmen 21: ‘The community is connected by both blood and purpose. There is no place for regret over the former humiliation of conjugal relations. Marriage, chastity, and even virginity interlock to produce this tranquil vision’ (p. 52). 29

II

See Paulinus, Letters 39 and 44 in Letters of St Paulinus of Nola, trans. by P. G. Walsh, vol. (New York: Newman Press, 1967), pp. 196–201, 234–43. 30

See Palladius, Lausiac History 61.2–3; Denys Gorce, ed., Gerontius: Vita Melaniae Iunioris, Sources Chrétiennes, 90 (Paris: Cerf, 1962), pp. 130–31. 31

The female ‘predilection for chastity’ did not escape contemporary notice. Dyan Elliott, Spiritual Marriage, p. 57, cites Augustine, ‘Placuit continentia mulieri, viro non placet’, in De adulterinis coniugiis, I.4.4, ed. by Zycha and others, Augustine, De fide et symbolo (Vienna: [n.pub.], 1900), p. 351. In short, sexual abstinence is more pleasing to women than to men. John Chrysostom reproved wives who unilaterally withdrew themselves from the marriage bed because it undermined their husbands’ virtue (In epistola I ad Corinthianos homilia XIX, PG 61.153). In a passage rebuking the double moral standard applied to men and to women in law and social custom, Gregory Nazianzen remarks: ‘With regard to chastity, I observe that most men are ill disposed, and that their laws are unequal and irregular.’ Gregory Nazianzen, Oratio 37.6, NPNF2, VII, 338–44 (p. 339).

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that the type of ascetic community which issued from the transformation of a family household was not something entirely different or alien to the domestic realities which preceded it, but the gradual implementation of the radical, ascetic understanding of the Gospel and baptism in a domestic setting. All that we have seen in this section on the domestic ascetic movement suggests that between the households of devout and committed Christian spouses — especially but not exclusively when electing celibacy — and of ascetic ‘brothers’ and ‘sisters’ in community, too sharp a distinction is not to be drawn. The evolution of devout Christian household to monastic community which was taking place all around the Mediterranean is quintessentially typified at the widow Emmelia’s household at Annisa under Macrina’s guidance. Thanks to Gregory of Nyssa’s piety towards his dead sister, we see the process nowhere else in such detail. The way it took several stages over several decades was as if the Christian impulse picked up ‘swell’ from one generation to the next. Perhaps the roots of the Annisa phenomenon ran all the deeper for the length of its maturation, as its influence in the life of the Church was destined to be far-reaching.

Annisa, Neocaesarea, and Pontus Another important factor in the developments at Annisa is the geographic setting.32 The residence of Emmelia and Basil the Elder’s family in Pontus is basic to the family’s history. Yet not a few commentators, even contemporary ones,33 perhaps carelessly repeating older accounts, maintain that the family lived in Caesarea of Cappadocia, that the children were born there, and even that Basil the Elder pursued his career in that city. It will be useful then to set out the evidence for the family’s residence in Neocaesarea in Pontus. The reader is referred to the map facing page one. First of all, Neocaesarea was the hometown of the children’s paternal grandparents, notably Macrina the Elder. Basil reminds the Neocaesareans plainly that his grandmother Macrina was one of their own. Gregory Nazianzen speaks of the Pontic refuge of Basil’s paternal grandparents.34

32

For a more extended treatment of this topic, see Silvas, Asketikon, pp. 38–50.

33

For example, P. J. Fedwick, in Basil of Caesarea, Christian, Humanist, Ascetic (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1980), p. 5, holds, without giving evidence, that Basil was born in Caesarea. 34

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Basil, Letter 204 (Deferrari, III, 168–69); Gregory Nazianzen, Oratio 43.6 (McCauley, p. 30).

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Secondly, Neocaesarea was Basil the Elder’s city and the scene of his professional career as rhetorician and advocate in the courts. In VSM 23.3 Macrina reminds Gregory that their father pursued his career in Pontus: ‘though he surpassed all others in sophistic skill, his fame did not go beyond Pontus’. Hence any idea that Basil the Elder pursued his career in Cappadocia must be ruled out. Neocaesarea was the family’s residence therefore during the 320s until the mid-340s. Thirdly, all the children were born in Neocaesarea, and at least the older ones were partly brought up there. In his Letter 210 (Deferrari, III, 197) to the learned in Neocaesarea, Basil attests that he was brought up in the region of Neocaesarea. He is writing, it is pertinent to note, during a stay with Macrina and Peter at Annisa in the mid-370s. because of my acquaintance with this region from boyhood (¦ê ðáéäüò) — for here I was brought up by my grandmother — and because of my having dwelt here for the most part thereafter, when, on fleeing the troubles of civic life and learning that this was a suitable place for the practice of philosophy, I spent many years and because of my brothers (ôäí •ägëöäí)35 now dwelling here, I [. . .] have gladly come to this retreat.

Basil also says that once past childhood he began formal education under his father, ‘whom Pontus put forward at that time as its common teacher of virtue’. In short Basil lived at home with his father, that is, in the city where his father pursued his career, Neocaesarea.36 Gregory Nazianzen mentions the Armenians who were fellow students with Basil at his father’s school, whom he met later in Athens.37 This too indirectly supports Neocaesarea, which Sebastenes found closer and more quickly accessible than Caesarea. In VSM 10.3, Gregory of Nyssa speaks of the River Iris as passing ‘by way of our regions’, which of course means Pontus, not Cappadocia. Again and again, through the Life of Gregory Thaumaturgus, Gregory of Nyssa speaks as a local: for example, his knowledge of the architecture and local history of Neocaesarea and his intimate acquaintance with the behaviour of the river Lycus, especially his knowledge of a particular tree by the riverside identified by local tradition with an episode in Thaumaturgus’s ministry. So much evidence makes it certain then that the family seat was not Caesarea of Cappadocia but the city of Neocaesarea, the metropolis of Pontus Polemoniacus. 35

The term is wholly inclusive of sisters and is clear evidence that Basil was staying at Macrina and Peter’s monastery at the time of writing.

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36

Gregory Nazianzen, Oratio 43.12 (McCauley, p. 36).

37

Gregory Nazianzen, Oratio 43.17 (McCauley, p. 41).

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After Basil the Elder’s death, there was no further need to remain in the city in support of his career. Emmelia relocated the family to a country estate called Annisa about a day’s journey west of Neocaesarea. It lay just west of the junction of the Lycus with the Iris. The villa stood on the lower slopes of a ridge overlooking the fertile plain of Strabo’s Phanaroea. The great military road connecting Constantinople and the eastern frontier at Satala, the Via Pontica, ran right past or even through the estate. The large province of Cappadocia in the south assumed its importance in the family as the native country of the maternal side of the family. It seems that Basil the Elder did not have any brothers. After his early death, maternal uncles, such as Gregory known as a bishop at the time of Basil’s own election in 370, were willing to assume guardianship of Emmelia’s boys as they pursued their education. Hence the focus of their higher studies switched from Pontus to Cappadocia. Basil travelled south to Caesarea in Cappadocia to further his education only after his father died.38 It was there for the first time that he met Gregory Nazianzen, a native Cappadocian. Today the Turkish town of Uluköy (high town), a few kilometres east of Taºova, marks the site of ancient Annisa. The great Jesuit explorer of the region at the beginning of the twentieth century, de Jerphanion, was the first to identify it.39 The name of the town in fact preserved its identity. It was known as Sonnusa40 until the change to the present name in 1958. The present author has visited the area twice. In September 2003 we also visited a site about two and a half kilometres from the town and about one kilometre from the River Iris, which the Muslim townspeople call ‘the church place’, and which almost certainly marks the spot of the ancient martyrion in which Basil the Elder, Emmelia, and Macrina were buried. An ancient Roman bridge, still in use in the early twentieth century, crosses over the Iris just downstream from the junction of the two rivers, the Iris and the Lycus, before the river plunges north into the gorge country. This bridge is eloquent of Pompey’s progress through this area in 63 BC, as a result of which it came under Roman sway. The new bridge became a link in

38

In Letter 59, Deferrari, II, 2–9 (p. 5), Basil, lately made bishop, writes to his uncle Gregory, a bishop in Cappadocia, who had ‘taken a father’s place’ towards him ‘from the first’. This Bishop Gregory may very well have been Emmelia’s brother. When the fatherless boys came to Caesarea for their senior studies he seems to have taken them under his wing. 39

G. de Jerphanion, ‘Ibora (Gazioura?), Étude de géographie pontique’, in Mélanges de la Faculté Orientale, Université Saint-Joseph, Beyrouth, 5 (1911), 333–54. 40

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Similarly the nearby city of Amisus on the Black Sea coast is today known as Samsun.

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the great Via Pontica as it bypassed Eupatoria (which Pompey renamed ‘Magnopolis’ after himself) and wended its way east to Neocaesarea, today the city of Niksar. In March 2006, the author and her sister, Carmel Silvas, led an expedition to search for the location of Basil’s ascetic retreat. With the help of the Uluköy Council, we were able to identify its very probable location in an area on the northern side of the ridge that extends behind the town all the way to the river. The area is a small sloping plain, facing north and cut off on nearly all sides, not far from the entry of the river into the gorge, some six or seven kilometres from Uluköy. It can only be accessed by foot by climbing over the ridge. All the details in Basil’s Letter 14 and Gregory Nazianzen’s Letters 4–6 are borne out remarkably. Just as the sources indicate, the river really is swift and turbulent and full of fish and it really does go ‘around’ the little plain. The din of the rushing river can indeed be heard at quite a distance up the slope. There is in fact only one entrance, a narrow land bridge down from the top of the ridge which falls away precipitously on both sides.41

Macrina the Elder, Gregory Thaumaturgus, and Origen The paternal grandmother of the family, Macrina the Elder, must have been born after the death of Gregory Thaumaturgus (c. 213–c. 270), evangelizer of that region of Pontus and the first Bishop of Neocaesarea. Yet in her childhood she came into vital contact with his recent legacy. This third-century Gregory had been a disciple of the seminal Christian philosopher and interpreter of the Scriptures, Origen (c. 185–c. 254). Macrina treasured the heritage of Gregory Thaumaturgus in the local church, and conveyed to her family a Christian discourse and habits of reading informed by the tradition of his master, the great Alexandrian. Macrina the Elder and her husband demonstrated the calibre of their Christian faith during the last persecutions visited upon Christians (303–13), which were prosecuted with special savagery in the East. The couple’s property was confiscated (VSM 22.3) and they fled to the forested mountains of Pontus, that is, Strabo’s Paryadres mountains north of the Lycus and Iris rivers. There, according to Gregory of Nazianzus (Oratio 43.5) they endured a precarious life for some seven years, living in part by hunting and fishing. In taking such a course of action, they were but following the bidding of Gregory Thaumaturgus himself, who in the Decian persecutions had encouraged Christians to make a strategic retreat if need

41

For a full account of the expedition, including map and photographs, see my ‘In Quest of Basil’s Retreat: An Expedition to Ancient Pontus’, Antichthon, 41 (2007), 73–95.

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be rather than fight in the front ranks and perhaps finding themselves succumbing through weakness to intimidation. As the teacher of her grandchildren Macrina had a determinative influence over their religious dispositions and their experience of Christianity. When Basil, in the wake of his bitter disillusionment with Eustathius of Sebasteia (of whom much more later), had to rethink the basis of his entire engagement with the ascetic movement in relation to his Christian faith, he held up the figures of his mother and grandmother as the guarantors of his own doctrinal consistency and authenticity. The context was Eustathius’s ‘Homoiousian’ theological stance, which instead of being persuaded to neo-Nicene orthodoxy had curdled into what came to be called pneumatomachianism: The conception concerning God which I received from childhood from my blessed mother and from my grandmother Macrina, this, developed, I have retained within me, for I did not change from one opinion to another with the maturity of reason, but perfected (¦ôgëgßùóá) the first elements handed down (ôò –ñ÷áò ðáñáäïègßóáò) to me by them. (Letter 223, Deferrari, III, 286–313 (pp. 298–99))

The most eloquent testimony to Macrina the Elder’s role in the family’s culture comes in Basil’s Letter 204 to the Neocaesareans. Doctrinally the context is diametrically the opposite to the previous case. In the following letter Basil was dealing with the Sabellianism which was being fomented in Neoceasarea by their bishop Artarbius (who, he laments, is his own kin). He impresses on the Neocaesareans that he had been imbued with the traditions of their great apostle, Gregory, by an outstanding daughter of that city, his own grandmother: And what indeed could be a more palpable proof of our faith, than that we were reared by our grandmother, a blessed woman who came from among yourselves? I mean the renowned 42 Macrina, by whom we were taught the sayings (ô ÕÞìáôá) of the most blessed Gregory, as many as she herself retained, preserved to her time in unbroken memory, and who moulded and formed us while still young in the doctrines of piety. (Letter 204, Deferrari, III, 154–75 (pp. 168–69))

Basil reveals some content of these traditions concerning Gregory received through Macrina in his treatise On the Holy Spirit 74. They but confirm and foreshadow several incidents and themes told at much greater length in the Life of Gregory Thaumaturgus by Gregory of Nyssa. Our concern here is not with the strict historicity of the accounts43 but with the currency of local oral traditions in 42 43

ô¬í ðgñéâüçôïí, lit. ‘noised abroad’, ‘much talked of’, ‘famous’.

The historicity of the Life is discounted by scholars today. Stephen Mitchell, ‘The Life and Lives of Gregory Thaumaturgus’, Portraits of Spiritual Authority, ed. by J. W. Drijvers and J. W.

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the family. Many of the episodes in the Life of Gregory Thaumaturgus, although of course rhetorically enhanced, were not invented, but replayed well-known local stories, like folk-tales that told ‘this is what he did here, this is what he did there’.44 When Basil recalls Macrina the Elder’s role as a religious instructor of the family in the passages above, he is concerned above all with her doctrine and theology. From the contrasting contexts of these two letters, both of which call on the memory of Macrina the Elder, it is evident that, to Basil, his grandmother represented a doctrine of God that avoided the extremes of Sabellianism (which began by stressing the oneness in the Trinity) and even of moderate Arianism (which began by stressing the threeness). It is in the light of Macrina’s role as mediator of the tradition of Gregory Thaumaturgus, and through him also of Origen, that we can read with fresh eyes the famous passage in Gregory of Nyssa’s Life of Gregory Thaumaturgus where he purports to record a statement of the great man’s Trinitarian faith.45 There can be little doubt that Gregory takes advantage of Basil’s remarks about the doctrinal tradition inherited through their grandmother. Basil declared that Macrina had transmitted ô ÕÞìáôá, the ‘sayings’, the ‘phrases’ of Gregory that Macrina taught to her family. Gregory uses the same term, ô ÕÞìáôá, to describe the statement of Trinitarian faith. Since Abramowski’s epoch-making article,46 we can no longer

Watt (Leiden: Brill, 1999), pp. 99–138: ‘At all points where this account can be measured against information provided in Gregory’s own works, it is found wanting’ (p. 120); ‘From the 370s onwards almost everything that was set down about Gregory belongs to the realm of legend and should be analysed as such’ (p. 121). 44

Interesting proof of oral traditions independent of the written account is found in Rufinus’s free Latin rendering of Eusebius’s Church History. In Chapter 7, Rufinus replaces Eusebius’s summary of Thaumaturgus’s life with three long chapters in which he includes several stories not found in Gregory of Nyssa’s Life. 45

Gregory of Nyssa intimates that there was a written copy kept in the church at Neocaesarea. Rufinus inserted a Latin translation of the creed in his translation of Eusebius’s Church History, 7.28.2; see Eusebios Die Kirchensgeschichte, ed. by E. Schwarz and T. Mommsen, II.2 (Leipzig, 1908), pp. 952–56; Leon Froideveaux, ‘Le Symbole de saint Gregoire le Thaumaturge’, Recherches de Science Religieuse, 19 (1929), 193–247 (p. 196), and more generally, William Telfer, ‘The Cultus of St. Gregory Thaumaturgus’, Harvard Theological Review, 19 (1936), 225–344, and also St Gregory Thaumaturgus: Life and Works, trans. by Michael Slusser (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 1998); Mitchell, ‘The Life and Lives of Gregory Thaumaturgus’. 46

Luise Abramowski, ‘Das Bekenntnis des Gregor Thaumaturgus bei Gregor von Nyssa und das Problem seiner Echtheit’, Zeitschrift für Kirchengeschichte, 87 (1976), 145–66, demonstrates that the creed did not derive from Gregory Thaumaturgus, but very likely from Gregory of Nyssa himself.

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take the words as found in the Life as authentically those of Thaumaturgus. A study by Van Esbroeck gives some idea of how Gregory may have come to weave together expressions appropriate to Thaumaturgus from Origen, Basil, and Eugenius of Ancyra to fill out what originally may have been a very brief statement by Gregory Thaumaturgus which succinctly expressed both the oneness and threeness in God.47 Gregory of Nyssa’s object was endeavouring to heal the Church of the Neocaesareans of Sabellianism.48 The preamble to the statement of faith is in itself most interesting. The immediate setting is that Gregory Thaumaturgus had been prevailed upon by Phaedimus, Bishop of Amasea, to undertake the inaugural episcopacy for his native city of Neocaesarea. But that meant he would be responsible for expounding and promoting the faith. He must find a way of articulating sound doctrine with confidence. Since there was great confusion in the prevailing free market of ideas — the reference seems to be to third-century Gnosticism and neo-Platonist emanationism — Gregory is kept awake at night full of misgivings about his new doctrinal responsibilities.49 For as he pondered at night concerning the definition of the faith (ôïØ ëüãïõ ô­ò ðßóôgùò) he was disturbed by various thoughts, for indeed there were some at that time who were perverting pious teaching and who often rendered the truth ambiguous through the persuasiveness of their manner with clever arguments. He was lying awake because of this, when there appeared to him as he pondered a kind of waking vision in human form, of aged appearance and of dignified raiment. He gave a great impression of virtue through the grace on his face and the bearing of his form. Gregory was amazed by the sight and sat up in his bed since he understood (ìÜèùí) who he was and why he had come.50 When that one (¦êgßíïõ) had quieted his disturbance of mind, he told him in a gentle voice that he had appeared to him by divine command because of the uncertainties he was experiencing, in order to reveal the truth of the pious faith, and to encourage him to speak up, and to look upon him with joy and wonderment.

47

Michel Van Esbroeck, ‘The Credo of Gregory the Wonderworker and its Influence through Three Centuries’, Studia Patristica, 19 (1989), 255–66. Van Esbroeck studies the variant traditions of the Life in Syriac, Armenian, and Georgian, where versions appear with a much briefer formula than the one in the Greek text today. Not without interest, V. Ryssel in 1894 had proposed that the Syriac version was a source for Gregory of Nyssa. P. Koetschau, however, better explained the permutations of the tradition with the suggestion that there were several independent oral traditions. 48

The background is the rift between Basil and Atarbius, revealed in Letters 204, 207, 210.

49

There are similarities with Gregory of Nyssa’s own situation when first constrained to accept the episcopacy. 50

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This is John the Evangelist, who is referred to further down.

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General Introduction Then that one (¦êgßíïõ) suddenly stretched out his hand, and by the pointing of his fingers indicated to him something which appeared by his side, as if to carry Gregory’s (ôïØôïí) glance along with the direction of his hand so that he could see beside the first apparition another spectacle in womanly form, greater than the human. Again he was amazed and turned aside his face, being unable to bear the sight with his eyes. For indeed the vision was all the more wonderful because it was deep night, and the light in those who appeared to him shone out as if kindled from a bright beacon. Since he was not able to bear the sight with his own eyes, he listened to the speech of those who were appearing to him as they discussed with each other the definition (ëüãïí) of what he was seeking, through whom he was not only instructed in the true knowledge (ô¬í •ëçè­ ãíäóéí) of the faith, but also identified by name those appearing to him through the proper address each used towards the other. For it is said that he heard the apparition in womanly form bidding John the Evangelist to reveal the mystery of the truth to the neophyte,51 and that he (¦êgÃíïí) was willing to speak and that this was a favour from the mother of the Lord, since this was a cause dear to her. And thus he pronounced the measured and well-circumscribed definition and then passed from his eyes (êá ïàôùò gÆðüíôá ôÎí ëüãïí óýììgôñüí ôg êá gÛðgñßãñáðôïí ðÜëéí ìgôáóô­íáé aorist active infinitive ôäí Ðøgùí). And immediately he recorded that divine mystagogy in writing, and after this proclaimed the definition in the assembly (¦êêëçóߑ), and so bequeathed to posterity as it were that divinely given inheritance, through which the people, instructed by these words, have even till now endured every heretical corruption untempted. These are the words of that mystagogy (ô ä¥ ô­ò ìõóôáãùãßáò ÕÞìáôá ¦óôéí).52

And so follows Gregory of Nyssa’s presentation of the creed. Since the archaic Syriac and Georgian versions of the Life present the vision but lack the fully developed creed, the tradition of the vision itself seems to have had an older existence. Could it predate Gregory of Nyssa’s interests in the 380s? Can something of it even have been handed down in the family through Macrina the Elder? Among its many interesting features, attention may be drawn to the figure of the ‘spectacle in womanly form’, who is none other than the Virgin Mary, ‘the mother of the Lord’, transfigured in glory. Her appearance is presaged by the august figure of John, the apostle and evangelist so closely associated with her in the Gospel of John itself ( John 19. 25–27) and in subsequent Christian tradition. Here then is one of ‘womanly form’, albeit such a one, who is vitally concerned with the accuracy of the dogma of the Trinity. This portrayal, together with Macrina the Elder’s role as a transmitter of doctrine, should be remembered when we later come to consider Macrina the Younger as a teacher and apologist for sound doctrine. 51

íÝïò could mean young man, but more likely one just baptized and ordained and needing to find a way of expounding Christian doctrine. 52

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G. Heil, ed., De Vita Gregorii Thaumaturgi, GNO, X .1, 3–57 (pp. 17–18).

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The nascent cult of the Virgin Mary may also have been an influence on Macrina’s emerging vocation. Long before devotion to Mary fully flowered in the Church in the fifth century, she had already been accorded the title Theotokos (God-bearer) in the third-century Alexandrian tradition, which, as we have seen, was transmitted to the family by Macrina the Elder as heir of Gregory Thaumaturgus. The Virgin Mary was without doubt a figure of increasing interest to Gregory of Nyssa, both in his rather daring attempts to account for the manner of Christ’s conception in her womb (Christology), and in the high value he set on virginity for the Lord (ascetic/mystical theology). That Mary’s ‘incorruption’ (virginity) should lend itself so uniquely to the divine dispensation made her the Virgin par excellence.53 There are other hints that the Alexandrian Christian tradition was part of the family’s Christian intellectual inheritance. Basil and Gregory Nazianzen composed their Philocalia, an anthology of texts from Origen’s de Principia, during Basil’s ascetic period at Annisa from 358–62. Obviously, so seminal a work expounding the Christian philosophy was available in the family library at Annisa. To conclude then, Macrina the Elder passed on to her grandchildren, and hence to her granddaughter and namesake in particular, a tradition of tenacious commitment to Christian faith in the face of persecution, a Christian praxis grounded in the local church, and an intellectually engaged piety in the Alexandrian tradition of Gregory Thaumaturgus at Neocaesarea.

St Thecla the Virgin and Macrina’s Vocation Notwithstanding the looming importance of the Virgin Mary in the Christology of Gregory of Nyysa, to the popular mind of third- and fourth-century Christians, the chorus-leader of virgins was not yet the Mother of God but another female figure renowned throughout the Mediterranean world: Saint Thecla. Her story is told in the Acts of Paul and Thecla,54 where she appears initially as a young woman 53

Mary appears in Gregory’s writings when he is considering the nexus of anthropology and incarnation. An outstanding example is Letter 2.19–20 and 24, where he acknowledges her as Theotokos, the God-bearer. See Silvas, Gregory, pp. 123–132 (p. 131). 54

The Acts of Paul and Thecla originally formed part of the longer Acts of Paul. The whole work was attested early, being known to both Hippolytus and Tertullian. It seems to have been composed in the late second century in central/southern Anatolia, incorporating varied elements of local oral tradition and popular culture. In the third century it was deemed on a level with The Shepherd of Hermas: i.e. neither canonical Scripture nor, despite certain peculiarities, essentially heretical. It is a strongly anti-gnostic work, stressing the reality of Christ’s resurrection and

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of Iconium betrothed to a man Thamyris. During a visit of the apostle Paul to the city she listened enraptured to his preaching and was converted simultaneously to Christianity and to celibacy. As Paul was about to leave Iconium she offered to cut her hair and follow him wherever he went. He took her with him to Antioch, but thereafter loses contact with her for long periods. At various times throughout the account Thecla endures contests in the arena from which she emerges miraculously unscathed, thus acquitting herself as a confessor of the faith again and again. She had a female protector in Antioch, through whom she was able to continue unmolested, the aristocratic widow Tryphaena. At the end Thecla ‘instructs her in the word of God’ and converts many maidservants in her household to Christ. ‘With her mother, fiancé, and even Paul virtually absent from the second part of the narrative, Thecla enters into a new familial relationship with a community of women organized in the context of a household.’55 She then travelled to Myra looking for Paul again, wearing her mantle arranged as a man’s cloak, and accompanied by a crowd of young men and maidservants. As she was leaving for her hometown, Iconium, Paul bade her to ‘go and teach the word of God’ there. She left behind some of Tryphaena’s largesse for service of the poor. Arriving home she finds that her former betrothed has died and she bears witness to the Lord before her mother. Finally she left for Seleucia of Isauria, where, having ‘illumined many with the word of God’, she ‘fell asleep with a noble sleep’. The tomb of St Thecla at Seleucia became the site of a famous shrine, where the late second-century author of the Acts of Paul garnered the traditions attaching to her name. A large monastic settlement comprising both monks and virgins grew up around the tomb. Gregory Nazianzen himself spent a long retreat there, from c. 377–79.56 It may well be that Gregory of Nyssa himself visited St Thecla’s

promoting fasting and celibacy for the Lord. Inspired by admiration for its Christian heroine, it took for granted the legitimacy of charismatic holy women in non-sacramental roles of leadership and teaching (which provoked Tertullian’s ire). Throughout the account ‘the women’ appear like a Greek chorus, acclaiming and lamenting what befalls Thecla. Its reputation afterward suffered from its approval by the Manichees. See E. Hennecke and W. Schneemelcher, eds, New Testament Apocrypha (London: SPCK, 1974), vol. II, where a study and translation of the Acts of Paul appears on pp. 322–90, with the Acts of Paul and Thecla on pp. 353–64. 55

Stephen J. Davis, The Cult of Saint Thecla: A Tradition of Women’s Piety in Late Antiquity (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), p. 17. 56

Carmen de vita sua (On his Own Life), PG 37.1029–1166, lines 545–49, in Saint Gregory of Nazianzus Three Poems, trans. by Denis Molaise Meehan (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 1987), p. 92. Gregory Nazianzen also praises Thecla as one who by avoiding marriage escaped the ‘tyranny’ of her betrothed, in In laudem Athanasii oratio 24.10, PG

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monastery at this period during which he was exiled from his see and in hiding from imperial authorities. Aegeria, the Spanish pilgrim, reports her own visit some ten or more years later, when she met for the second time the ‘holy deaconess Marthana’ who appears to have governed both men and women ascetics.57 Thecla’s influence in the life of Macrina is evident in two ways, both because Gregory of Nyssa specifically associates her with the memory of Thecla, and through the likelihood that Macrina very well knew about Thecla through reading.58 This archaic virgin saint was certainly part of the family’s tradition. According to VSM 3, when the time came near for Emmelia to give birth to her first child, she fell into a sleep in which she seemed to be holding in her hands the child that was still in her womb. ‘And one in majesty of form and aspect beyond the human appeared and addressed the child she was carrying by the name of “Thecla” — that Thecla whose fame is so great among the virgins.’59 Gregory spiritualizes the namegiving in the dream, interpreting it to mean not that it was to be the literal name of the girl about to be born, but that she was to share a similar vocation, both through dedication of her virginity to the Lord culminating in communion with God and through her role as a teacher of the word of God and a leader of others. There are parallel themes in the Acts of Paul and Thecla and the VSM, beginning with the presence of a betrothed and a change of mind in favour of virginity before any marriage took place. Only there is a different twist in the VSM, for Macrina does not in any way repudiate her betrothed. Instead, when his death breaks off their projected marriage she makes her very loyalty to him her justification for remaining a ‘virgin widow’. There are other correlations. On the one hand

35.1180D–1181A. This is not typical of Gregory’s discourse on marriage, which is usually quite positive, and sometimes very positive, as in Song in Praise of Virginity 223–77, PG 37.539–43, trans. by Boniface Ramsey in his Beginning to Read the Fathers (New York: DLT, 1985), pp. 138–39. His idea is that for vocational virginity to be really worthwhile, faithful marriage, which it surpasses, must be shown to be very good. 57

For Egeria’s visit to St Thecla’s in AD 380, see George E. Gingras, trans., Egeria: Diary of a Pilgrimage (New York: Newman Press, 1970), Ch. 23, pp. 86–89. 58

The magisterial study of the connections between the Thecla legends and the VSM is by Ruth Albrecht, Das Leben der heiligen Macrina auf dem Hintergrund der Thecla-Traditionen: Studien zu den Ursprungen des weiblichen Mönchtums im 4. Jahrhundert in Kleinasien (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1986). For a more general survey, see Davis, Cult of St Thecla. 59

Gregory of Nyssa also praises St Thecla in his Homilies on the Song of Songs, itself dedicated to the great lady St Olympias. He calls Thecla ‘the apostle Paul’s virgin disciple, whose story was deemed of great importance among the virgins’, Gregori Nysseni In canticum canticorum, ed. by H. Langerbeck, Homily 14, GNO, VI, 405.

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there is Tryphaena the aristocratic widow and mother figure through whom Thecla’s chastity is safeguarded. Together with the maids of her household Tryphaena is converted to Christ and to celibacy through Thecla’s witness and instruction. On the other hand we have Emmelia, the aristocratic widow and indeed Macrina’s own mother, through whom her daughter’s decision for virginity is safeguarded. Emmelia, together with the maids of her household is converted to asceticism and the common life through Macrina’s witness and instruction (VSM 9). The figure of Thecla was known not only through the Acts of Paul and Thecla. Anyone who traces closely the arguments of On the Soul and the Resurrection, in which Macrina appears above all as the teacher, soon realizes that Macrina/Gregory are imitating and responding to the critique of Origen’s ideas about the Resurrection and eschatology in Methodius’s Aglaophon or Concerning the Resurrection. Methodius was a bishop and writer who had died a martyr in about 313. A copy of this work was clearly available in the household whether at Neocaesarea or Annisa. By far Methodius’s most popular writing, however, was the Symposium or Concerning Chastity. In this Platonic-style dialogue he presents St Thecla as the chorus leader of ten virgins, each of whom extols virginity as the perfect Christian life and the pre-eminent way of imitating Christ. At the end of the Symposium Thecla intones a hymn, full of spiritual élan, to Christ the Bridegroom (and at the very end to the feminine figure of the Ecclesia), to which the other virgins reply with the refrain: ‘I keep myself pure for you, O Bridegroom. Bearing my lighted torch I go out to meet you.’60 In the culmination of Gregory’s exposition of spousal virginity for the Lord, his Homilies on the Song of Songs, Langerbeck has detected some seventeen allusions to the Symposium — and there are probably more.61 There can be little doubt therefore that Methodius’s Symposium and his other works were part of the family’s reading matter from a very early period. According to VSM 2, the young Emmelia too had been keen on the ‘pure and incorrupt way of life’, and if so, it is likely that Emmelia herself had been able to read this type of literature in the 320s when it was still relatively new and stirring. Thus the earliest Christian traditions of female virginity associated with the figure of St Thecla were probably having an influence even in the childhood home of Emmelia in Cappadocia.

60

See Méthode d’Olympe: Le banquet, ed. by V.-H. Debidour and H. Musurillo, Sources Chrétiennes, 95 (Paris: Cerf, 1963), pp. 308–09. See also the translation by W. R . Clarke in Ante-Nicene Fathers, ed. by A. Roberts and J. Donaldson, American Edition rev. and annotated by A. Cleveland Coxe, vol. VI (Peabody, MA: Hendrikson, 1995), pp. 305–55. 61

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Gregorii Nysseni In Canticum Canticorum, ed. by H. Langerbeck, GNO, VI, 486.

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The Council of Gangra: Curbing Ascetic Exaggerations Vocational virginity, by renouncing for religious motives the normal social and biological continuum of marriage and childbearing, marked a certain claim for female independence.62 From the second to fourth centuries this religiously based assertion of female personal autonomy and leadership sometimes had disconcerting manifestations, and nowhere more than in Anatolia.63 The well-known ‘New Prophecy’, ‘the Phrygian Heresy’, otherwise known as Montanism, had wandering women prophets among its prominent leaders. Closer to home, Firmilian, a contemporary of Gregory Thaumaturgus and Basil’s predecessor as Bishop of Caesarea in Cappadocia, wrote a letter to Cyprian of Carthage64 in which he told of one such Montanist female prophet, Quintilla, who even ventured the Eucharistic functions of the priesthood, something which the traditions concerning Thecla never remotely broached. Clearly, the freedom that comes in Christ for both women and men on a religious level had to be attuned to sound doctrine and practical considerations of life in this world. In the second quarter of the fourth century yet another kind of socio-religious anarchy was brewing in Anatolia, a movement of hyper-ascetic enthusiasm, and it was not about to be endorsed by the Church. In the year 340 or 341, a Synod met in Gangra,65 the metropolis of Paphlagonia, to consider certain excesses of ascetic enthusiasm that were causing disturbances within Church and society. Prominent among these were the claims of female emancipation advanced on a plea of Christian piety. A covering letter and a list of canons were drawn up and sent to the bishops of Armenia. They named the leader of the ascetic movement then making its influence felt across northern Anatolia, from Bithynia to Armenia: Eustathius, that is, of Sebasteia in Armenia. The preamble and the canons outline the socially 62

This point was stressed by Elizabeth A. Clark, ‘Ascetic Renunciation and Feminine Advancement: A Paradox of Late Ancient Christianity’, Anglican Theological Review, 63 (1981), 240–57. 63

For a well-annotated survey of the early centuries of female asceticism in Anatolia, see Elm, pp. 1–62. 64

See L. de Bayard, ed. and trans., Saint Cyprien: Correspondance, vol. Lettres, 1961), pp. 289–308. 65

II

(Paris: Les Belles

The Greek text with Latin translation appears in Mansi, ed., Sacrorum Conciliorum Nova et Amplissima Collectio, II, cols 1097–1106. See also the critical edition by P.-P. Joannou in Discipline Générale Antique, vol. I. 2 (Rome: Grottaferrata, 1962), pp. 83–99. The Greek text with English translation appears in Silvas, Asketikon, pp. 486–94, where the case for maintaining the earlier dating of 340/41 is argued. An English translation by Henry R . Percival also appears in NPNF2 , XIV , 91–101.

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and ecclesially disruptive tendencies of this movement: the disparagement of marriage, the unilateral adoption of celibacy by ascetic minded spouses — usually wives; the upsetting of husband/wife, parent/child, master/slave relationships on a plea of Christian piety; the provocative stance of ascetics with regard to the local church; their commandeering of church funds for distribution to the poor; their wearing of odd clothing; women behaving as if the ascetic life freed them from sexual differentiation, expressed by cropped hair and the use of male attire.66 The letter from the bishops at Gangra shows that the negotiation of a modus vivendi between Christians aiming at a maximal interpretation of their faith and Christians who followed the ordinary way of life of those in the world was not achieved overnight. The council sternly disciplined these disruptive tendencies in a list of twenty anathemas. The epilogue (or ‘Canon 21’) makes a firm but not unsympathetic appeal to the enthusiasts. The character of its discourse should be noted: it emphasizes the Scriptures, the sense of the ‘Church of God’, and the necessity of being included in it. Most notably it avoids a specialized terminology for the zealous practice of Christian asceticism. Essentially there are not ‘two ways’ of Christian life, but only one way. The same criteria of obedience to the divine commandments apply to all. All of these aspects will later be espoused in Basil’s ascetic discourse, whose great achievement was to find a way of integrating ascetic enthusiasm into the way of life of the Church at large.

Eustathius of Sebasteia That brings us to the figure of Eustathius of Sebasteia (c. 300–79), the inspirer of the ascetic movement across northern Anatolia. Anyone looking in Gregory of Nyssa’s works for a hint of Eustathius’s significance on the life of Macrina or Basil will look in vain. Gregory deleted him from the family’s history for two reasons: firstly because late in life, in the 370s, Eustathius emerged as the leader of the Pneumatomachian heresy and hostile to the neo-Nicene bishops under Basil’s leader-

66

St Jerome’s Letter 22 to Eustochium shows that these ascetic novelties were far from being phenomena peculiar to Anatolia. He ascribes to the urban ascetics of Rome practices very like those censured at Gangra: ‘Other women change their garb and put on men’s dress; they cut their hair short and lift up their chins in shameless fashion; they blush to be what they were born to be — women — and prefer to look like eunuchs [. . .] those men also whom you see loaded with chains and wearing their hair long like a woman’s, in contravention of the Apostle’s precept; and with all this a shaggy goat’s beard, a black cloak and bare feet braving the cold.’ F. A. Wright, trans., Select Letters of St Jerome (London: Heinemann, 1980), pp. 52–159 (p. 117).

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ship, and secondly Eustathius’s alliance with the Arianizing policies of the emperor, Valens, led to some nasty politics of which Gregory himself was the victim, above all in being expelled from his see.67 But that Eustathius had once been an important influence in the family to which Macrina, Basil, and Gregory belonged there can be no doubt, as the following argument shall endeavour to show. Though Socrates says that Eustathius’s father, Eulalius, was Bishop of Caesarea in Cappadocia,68 most scholars from the time of Loofs69 reassign him to Sebasteia. In the early 320s Eustathius was a student in Alexandria and seems to have had some contact with Arius.70 He was surely aware of the experiments in asceticism of the early Egyptian monks. Studies finished, he returned home to Armenia Minor in the second half of the 320s and was eventually ordained a priest by his father.71 But he began to live publicly as a ‘philosopher’ (ascetic) at the same time. He soon attracted a following and incurred the first of several censures perhaps as early as the late 320s, when his own father72 found his son’s attire and public style unseemly for a priest. Eustathius quit his fatherland for a time. His presence in Constantinople in the late 330s is attested, where he was compared (unfavourably) to Eusebius of Nicomedia. The late 330s and early 340s were a watershed in Eustathius’s career. At this time he and his followers in the ascetic movement were being censured not only at Gangra but in several other councils. It took several censures and some ten years or

67

See Basil, Letter 225 (Deferrari, III, 320–25), VSM 17.1, 23.1, and Gregory Nazianzen’s Letter 142: ‘The hand of the Emperor Valens can be detected behind the machinations of Demosthenes, vicar of Pontica, to place Arian sympathizers in the minor Cappadocian sees of Nyssa, Doara and Parnassus.’ Mitchell, Anatolia, II, 78. 68

Socrates, Church History 2.43 (NPNF2 , II, 72–73). The passage is cited shortly below.

69

F. Loofs, Eustathius von Sebaste und die Chronologie der Basilius-Briefe (Halle: Niemeyer, 1898). Tillemont had earlier proposed Antioch as his see. Sebasteia, however, accords with Gangra’s address to the church in Armenia. See Jean Gribomont, ‘Eustathe de Sébaste’, in Dictionnaire de Spiritualité, IV .2 (Paris: Beauchesne, 1961), cols 1708–12 (col. 1709). 70

Athanasius, Historia Arianorum 4.2 (PG 25.697; NPNF2, IV .1, 271); Basil, Letter 263, Deferrari, IV , 88–101 (pp. 94–95). Compare also Letter 244, Deferrari, III, 434–73 (pp. 456–57). 71 Canon 11 of the Council of Neocaesarea in 315 set the minimum age for the ordination of a presbyter at thirty years, ‘for our Lord Jesus Christ was baptized and began to teach in his thirtieth year’: NPNF2 , XIV , 84. This canon was confirmed at ecumenical councils and remained the benchmark for centuries until the Middle Ages, when so many dispensations were being made that the exception became the rule and the minimum age was reset at twenty-five. 72

Socrates, Church History 2.43 (NPNF2 , II, 72–73); Gribomont ‘Eustathe de Sébaste’, col. 1709, following Loofs.

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more before Eustathius began to acquire the art of adapting himself. Sozomen, taking a retrospective from the Arian council of Constantinople in 360, rehearses the censures of Eustathius: Eustathius, they said, was deposed because, when a presbyter, he had been condemned and put away from the communion of prayers by Eulalius, his own father, who was bishop of the church of Caesarea, in Cappadocia; and also because he had been excommunicated by a council held at Neocaesarea, a city of Pontus and after this, by Eusebius, bishop of Constantinople, for the way he had discharged certain duties that had devolved upon him. He had also been deprived of his episcopacy by those who were convened in Gangra (Üö®ñÝè® ô­ò ¦ðéóêïð­ò ðáñ ôäí ¦í ÃÜããñáéò óõígëçëõèüôùí), on account of his having taught, acted and thought contrary to sound doctrine.73 He had been convicted of perjury by the Council of Antioch.74 He had likewise endeavoured to reverse the decrees of those convened at Melitina; and, although he was guilty of many crimes, he had the effrontery to aspire to be judge over others and to stigmatize them as heterodox (êá ðëgßóôïéò ¦ãêëÞìáóé §íï÷ïò êí, äéêáóô¬ò ºîßïõ gÉíáé, êá ©ôgñïäüîïõò ôï×ò –ëëïõò •ðgêÜëgé).75

Eusebius of Constantinople (alias of Nicomedia) died after the Council of Antioch, late in 341.76 This date appears to be an ante quem for three if not four of the censures: one at Sebasteia, his father’s see (rather than Caesarea), one at Neocaesarea, and one at Constantinople by Eusebius, and perhaps one at Antioch. Basil confirms Eustathius’s presence in Constantinople in Eusebius’s lifetime,77 and that he had incurred the latter’s displeasure.78 Though Sozomen presents it as if Eustathius was a bishop at the time of Gangra — giving some handle to a later dating of Gangra — the text of Gangra itself yields no hint that he had any episcopal status at the time. It simply treats him as the leader of an ascetic movement which has upset the bishops and faithful of Paphlagonia, Pontus, and Armenia. All in all, the

73

Sozomen may have confused Gangra with the Council of Melitene in 358 at which there was an unsuccessful attempt to replace Eustathius as Bishop of Sebasteia with Meletius, the very same who was later Bishop of Antioch and Basil’s friend. 74

That is the Council of Antioch in 341: Gribomont ‘Eustathe de Sébaste’, col. 1709.

75

Sozomen, Church History 4.24 (PG 67.1192B; NPNF 2, II, 320).

76

‘He died a short time after that Synod was held’, Socrates, Church History 2.12 (NPNF2,

II, 41). 77 78

Basil, Letter 263, Deferrari, IV , 88–101 (pp. 94–95).

Basil, Letter 244 (Deferrari, III, 470–71): ‘Hermogenes fell asleep and again they [i.e. Eustathius] changed to Eusebius, the chorus leader of the Arian circle [. . .] Falling away from this man for some reason or other, they ran back again to their fatherland.’

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Council of Gangra finds its natural setting amid the spate of indictments incurred by Eustathius towards the year 340. There are other hints of Eustathius’s early career. He was associated with Macedonius and Marathonius, who were of a theological party that ranged itself against both the Arians and old Nicenes. It is a party and tendency later called ‘Homoiousian’, and was active in Constantinople in the 340s.79 Sozomen testifies in Historia Ecclesiastica 4.27 that Marathonius set up ascetic communities of men and women and hospices for the poor in the imperial city and that his director in the ascetic life was no less than Eustathius himself. Rufinus of Aquileia confirms these Macedonius–Eustathius links in his additions to his translation of Eusebius’s Church History, Book 10.26: For very many of those who apparently led a strict life and a great number of monasteries in Constantinople and the neighbouring provinces and noble bishops, followed rather Macedonius’s error.80

To sum up, already by the 330s and early 340s, Eustathius is associated with the Macedonian/Homoiousian theological grouping, has incurred the odium of Homoians (Arians), is known across the breadth of northern Anatolia as an ascetic leader, and is esteemed in some quarters, but regarded with suspicion in others. Eustathius began to accommodate himself, for it is highly unlikely that he would have been rehabilitated with his father in Sebasteia, or had sufficient standing as an episcopal candidate in 355/56 without having demonstrated some willingness to accommodate the caveats of Gangra — to say nothing of the other censures he had incurred.

The Influence of Eustathius on the Child Basil and his Family In the year 375 Basil wrote a letter to Bishop Patrophilus of Aegae, who was puzzled at the rupture between Basil and Eustathius that had now become public:

79 Socrates, Church History 2.12–13, 27, 38 (NPNF 2, II, 41, 54, 65–67), Sozomen Church History, 4.20–21 (NPNF2, II, 315–16). 80

On the three theological groupings in question, see R . P. C. Hanson, The Search for the Christian Doctrine of God (Edinburgh: Clark, 1988), pp. 557–636, 760–72. See Thomas A. Kopecek, A History of Neo-Arianism (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1979), on Aetius, pp. 61–132; on Eunomius, pp. 145–76, 299–543; and R . P. Vaggione, Eunomius: The Extant Works (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987).

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General Introduction You seemed like one at a loss and amazed, because that very Basil who from childhood (¦ê ðáéäüò) had ministered (äïõëgýóáò) to the fellow in such a way, who had done such and such things on such and such occasions, who had taken up war against thousands because of his care (ègñáðgßáò) for one man — has now become different from what he was.81

The perhaps surprising phrase ¦ê ðáéäüò suggests that Basil knew Eustathius in his boyhood, some fifteen years or more before the testimony of his first surviving Letter 1 to Eustathius written in 357.82 Basil uses the same phrase in Letter 29183 to Chorepiscopus Timothy: ‘you are that Timothy whom we knew from childhood (¦ê ðáéäüò) as so intent on the upright and ascetic life as to be accused of lack of moderation in these matters’. In short, Timothy had been something very like a Eustathian enthusiast.84 This passage is all the more valuable in that it is ‘off the cuff’, so to speak — unconnected with any conscious construction of his own past on Basil’s part. These two passages together strengthen the impression that Basil as a boy and hence his whole family had some contact with Eustathius himself and Eustathian-type ascetics. Basil also uses the phrase ¦ê ðáéäüò of the period his grandmother Macrina the Elder was teaching him.85 It refers to his childhood years up to the age at which he began the traditional higher curriculum at his father’s school, that is, about fourteen. If Basil’s birth is placed in 329,86 his childhood acquaintance with Eustathius may have been any time from the mid-330s up to the mid-340s.

81

Basil, Letter 244, Deferrari, III, 448–51.

82

For this dating, see Fedwick, ed., Basil of Caesarea, p. 6.

83

Deferrari, IV , 192–97. Moreover Basil seems to have written this letter from Pontus (p. 197 ‘from Pontus’). One thinks of the batches of letters he sent during his stay at Annisa in 375 or 376, including Letters 210 and 211. 84

The fact that he later became a bishop tends only to confirm the association. Compare the episcopal careers of Eustathius, Macedonius, and Basil of Ancyra, all prominent in the ascetic movement. Timothy also figures in Letter 24, Deferrari, I, 144–49 (p. 149) and in Palladius, Lausiac History 48 (trans. by Meyer, p. 131, n. 453), which tells of a Cappadocian, Elpidius, who became chorbishop of Timothy’s monastery in Palestine. The succession of discipleship continued with the Cappadocian Sisinnius (Lausiac History 49), who eventually returned to Cappadocia in c. 390, to found a ‘community of men and women (•ägëöüôçôá •íäñäí ôg êá ãõíáéêäí)’, i.e. the by then classic ‘Basilian’ type of community. See also Elm, p. 186. 85 86

Basil, Letter 223 (Deferrari, III, 298–99).

Certainly no later. According to VSM 10.1 the second son, Naucratius, was twenty-one years old at the time of his ascetic conversion; the subsequent dating of events in the 350s needs to be coordinated with that. Accordingly, Naucratius’s birth is assigned to 330.

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Basil’s Small Asketikon (RBas 7.7 / LR 15.1) attests the presence and upbringing of children in these ascetic communities. The expansions of Basil’s earlier text found in LR 15 attest his continuing interest in the education of children in the communities. VSM 14.2–3 testifies to Macrina’s education of Peter, the last-born of the family, and VSM 28.5 to the abandoned children that she had brought up in the Annisa community. The Eustathian ascetics were also interested in the evangelization of children, as is testified by Canon 16 of the council of Gangra: If any children, especially those of the faithful, withdraw from their parents on a pretext of piety and will not pay them due honour — as though, indeed, piety had a higher claim on them — let them be anathema.

Thus we may infer that when they were children, Macrina and Basil had some kind of sympathetic contact with Eustathian circles and with Eustathius personally — though there was no question of any abrogation of parental authority. If this were so, Eustathius would have to have appeared in Neocaesarea at that period. Local geography and the Anatolian road system cast light on the situation. Neocaesarea was just ‘up the road’ from Sebasteia, so to speak, the junction where anyone from that part of Armenia Minor might access at its nearest point the great northern road, the Via Pontica. This was an important military highway which resumed on the eastern side of the Bosporus where the Via Egnatia from Rome to Constantinople left off on the western side. It crossed the breadth of northern Anatolia to the frontier of the Roman Empire at Satala just north of the Euphrates. The three provinces mentioned in the Gangra canons are all threaded along this road. This clearly was Eustathius’s main route of communication with the eastern capital, to which he was no stranger. Basil, in Letter 244 emphasizes just how skilfully Eustathius used this major artery of communication across northern Anatolia: so swift was it that within a few days the letter was spread throughout Pontus and was current in Galatia. And some say that the messengers of these glad tidings even passed through Bithynia and reached the Hellespont itself.87

In what circumstances did the child Basil and his family first come to meet Eustathius? Basil the Elder and Emmelia may have made his acquaintance through the ‘Armenians’ who were sent to Basil the Elder’s school in Neocaesarea. Perhaps they offered their home as a stop over for Eustathius on his frequent journeys and in this way he met the children. The Eustathians, we have seen, took an active interest in the religious life of children. The ‘services’ the child Basil rendered him may be the attentions paid to an honoured guest in the home. Or perhaps 87

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Eustathius stayed at an urban ascetic community under his influence, with which the family were on friendly terms. But against this scenario is the fact that Macrina did not seek any such community to pursue her ascetic quest, if there had been one available in Neocaesarea. Chronological considerations are also suggestive. Eustathius’s censure at Neocaesarea has been noted. Since this predated Gangra, it may well be placed in 339, and perhaps even earlier. Eustathius’s influence as a disseminator of exciting ascetic ideas is attested precisely in this city at this time. Corroborating Basil’s passage cited above, Sozomen (Historia Ecclesiastica 3.14) tells of his influence as an ascetic leader across three provinces: Pontus of which Neocaesarea was one metropolis, Paphlagonia of which Gangra was metropolis, and Armenia (Minor) of which Sebasteia was metropolis. Again we have the familiar string of northern provinces along the Via Pontica: It is said that Eustathius, who governed the church of Sebasteia in Armenia, founded a society of monks in Armenia, Paphlagonia and Pontus and became the author of a zealous discipline.

Macrina in the Early 340s In the year 340, Macrina was about twelve years old and approaching puberty; the time had come to settle her marriage prospects. Her father made plans for her future betrothal. VSM 5 says that her father chose a young kinsman, probably a graduate of his own training, who was just beginning a career as an advocate. He would betroth his daughter to him ‘when she should come of age’. But what did that mean? In Roman law seven years was the minimum age for betrothal, and twelve years the minimum age for the marriage of girls. Since Macrina was already twelve and yet had to wait, it is clear that Christians, at least in this area, preferred girls to wait somewhat longer for marriage. In the Great Asketikon88 Basil asserts that profession of virginity should be deferred till the age considered suitable for marriage. In Letter 19989 he nominates sixteen or seventeen years as the earliest suitable age for profession of virginity or marriage. This has an interesting corroboration in the case of Theodoret of Cyrrhus’s mother, who was finally cured of infertility and

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88

LR 15 (RBas 7.3).

89

Canon 18 (Deferrari, III, 108–09).

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conceived him at age thirty after thirteen years of childless marriage.90 Christian girls, therefore, tended to marry in the age bracket fifteen to eighteen rather than twelve to fifteen.91 Thus Macrina, from the age of twelve years, had another three to five years to wait for formal betrothal. At the time of Basil senior’s preliminary arrangements, the young man was at the end of his studies and so about twenty or twenty-one, which would have made him about twenty-four or twenty-six at marriage, a perfectly normal age for young men to marry. In Gregory’s account there appear to be three stages towards marriage: to be promised (between the girl’s father and the potential bridegroom and his family), to be formally betrothed (between the spouses-to-be, with paternal approval), and to be married (between bride and groom, with paternal approval). Maraval suggests that the betrothal of Macrina took place at an earlier age and that her ‘coming of age’ was at twelve years, but the unambiguous sequence of Gregory’s narrative, together with the evidence from Basil above, does not confirm such an interpretation.92 In the precise interval between being promised and being formally betrothed, that is, between about 340 and 343/45, Macrina’s future betrothed died. This time Macrina asserted her own choice for virginity and, says Gregory in a memorable phrase, ‘her decision was more firmly fixed than her age would have warranted’. She decided once and for all to spend the rest of her life ‘by herself’,93 that is, in pursuit of the ‘philosophic’ or ascetic life. But she paradoxically argued her position in a

90 History of the Monks of Syria, 13, PG 82.1407; see A History of the Monks of Syria by Theodoret of Cyrrhus, trans. by R . M. Price (Kalamazoo: Cistercian Publications, 1985), pp. 105–04. 91

This was the suggestion of K. Hopkins, ‘The Age of Roman Girls at Marriage’, Population Studies, 18 (1965), 308–27. Also, see Clark, pp. 13–14, 80–81, and Elm, p. 141, n. 13 for a bibliography on marriageable age. 92

Maraval, Vie, p. 44, nn. 2 and 3, p. 154, n. 1. See the discussion in Clark, pp. 13–15, 76–81. Clark, however, assumes that by the age of twelve Macrina was already betrothed rather than simply promised. 93

Êáèz ©áõôÞí. This traditional phrase derives from Plato (e.g. Phaedo 65) and denoted the pursuit of the ‘philosophical’ life. It was used by Basil in his Letter 2 when referring to the Christian ascetic life. Though Basil eschewed Hellenism in his ascetic discourse, it was continued by the two Gregorys in the Christian sense. See A.-M. Malingrey, ‘Philosophia’: Étude d’un groupe de mots dans la littérature grecque des présocratiques au IV e siècle après J. C. (Paris: Klincksiek, 1961), and K. S. Frank, Angelikos Bios: Begriffsanalystische und Begriffsgeschichte Untersuchungen (Münster: Aschendorffsche Verlh., 1964), pp. 136–39, Elm, pp. 44–45 and Rousseau, Basil of Caesarea, Ch. III, ‘The Philosophic Life’, pp. 61–92 (pp. 70–71, 77–82).

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way that scrupulously maintained the social norms as far as possible, even calling to her aid the authority of her father’s prior decision. She maintained that she had a right if not a duty to conduct herself as a widow, and to maintain loyalty to the one already chosen for her, who had merely ‘gone away on a journey abroad’. There was a certain disfavour in the Church at that time towards the practice of ‘digamy’, that is, marrying a second time even after the death of one’s first spouse.94 Macrina used this tradition to resist all efforts of her family to persuade her to marry, ‘since’, she said, ‘marriage is, by nature, unique, as a birth and a death’. Thus by casting herself as a ‘widow’, she secured her commitment to virginity. It was a strange state of affairs: Macrina upheld the social norms while resolutely bending them to her spiritual purpose. A young girl in her teens she may have been, but she was acquitting herself of strength of mind and of powers of argument and persuasion. In regard to Macrina’s professed motivation, Van Dam rightly remarks ‘it is striking that at the time Macrina did not justify her preference for virginity by linking it with biblical teachings, theological doctrines, or a longing to become the bride of Christ’.95 She certainly seems to have used the authority of her father’s earlier decision against his present wishes, defeating him on his own turf as it were. She had the makings of a good lawyer! Was her argument a ruse, using acceptable social conventions to promote her real religious objective? Nothing in Gregory’s presentation suggests a hint of such pious duplicity. We may be sure that she very much believed that marriage should be a once-only event and that she had a high view of life beyond the grave; she may have maintained a kinship of prayer with the young man for the rest of her life. But the casting of her father’s promise, which never even reached the stage of betrothal, as equivalent to a ‘marriage’ takes some explaining. The social status of a ‘widow’ certainly has something to do with it. In Roman law, a woman remained in her father’s potestas even after marriage and only became legally independent on her father’s death. If he died while she was still young, she was still given some protection in law but was fully accountable when she came of age (at twenty-five years).96 This circumstance when coupled with widowhood was the most socially recognized form of female independence before

94

See Henry R . Percival, ‘Excursus on Second Marriages, Called Digamy’, NPNF2 , XIV , 72–73. Clark points out, pp. 29–20, that even pagan Roman society admired the univira, the woman of one husband only, but that this was an ideal: ‘there was no point in censuring a woman who remarried unless she behaved badly to her children’. 95

Raymond Van Dam, Families and Friends in Late Roman Cappadocia (Philadephia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2003), p. 104. 96

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Christian ideas about vocational virginity came to be fully integrated into Roman law. Confirming the secular status of widows was the religious status of celibate widows in the early Church.97 Ignatius of Antioch even refers to virgins, evidently never married, who had attained the status of widows.98 Though Gregory continues to use ‘parents’ in the plural after reporting the death of the young man, the father of the family seems to have died soon after. A good working date for the death of Basil the Elder is about 344/45.99 In terms of Roman law that left both Emmelia and Macrina free of whatever norms of patria potestas may still have applied. Emmelia was now a êõñßá (presiding lady) and ïÆêïägóðüôéò (head of the house)100 in her own right, the independent mistress of a very wealthy household. This provided Macrina with the best possible ‘protector of her life’ as a virgin. Awareness of her own mother’s crisis between virginity and marriage at the same age possibly added firmness to Macrina’s resolve. Where Emmelia had failed, Macrina prevailed — cleverly with her own mother’s help. Her decision was not an isolated one but had a wider social and religious context. As we have already seen, she was the heir of several influences: the domestic ascetic movement, the latent radicalism of her grandmother, the reading of early Christian literature on virginity and higher spirituality. Moreover there was an air of ascetic enthusiasm across northern Anatolia at that very time, and Eustathius was its preceptor. We have sketched his comings and goings through the city of Neocaesarea from geographical considerations, from the family’s residence in Neocaesarea, and Eustathius’s proven contacts with the family, and his earlier notoriety in the same city. Just as St Athanasius’s visits to Rome, with his inspiring tales of St Anthony of Egypt, stimulated the ascetic movement in that city, so the passages of Eustathius through Neocaesarea were a catalyst to the young girl of high spiritual aspirations.

97

Compare Acts 6. 1–6, 9. 6–42, I Timothy 5. 3–16.

98

Ignatius of Antioch, Epistle to the Smyrnaeans 13.1. See Charlotte Methuen, ‘The “Virgin Widow”: A Problematic Social Role for the Early Church?’, Harvard Theological Review, 90 (1997), 285–99. 99 See VSM 7.4, Gregory Nazianzen, Oratio 43.12 (McCauley, pp. 36–37) and Basil of Caesarea, ed. by Fedwick, p. 5, n. 5. If Basil had begun school under his father at about age fourteen one might place his birth in about 329. 100

For the terms, see Ramsay, ‘A Noble Anatolian Family of the Fourth Century’, Classical Review, 33 (1919), 1–9 (p. 7). Pages 4–9 study an epitaph composed in hexameters by Magna, a Christian lady of Phrygian Antioch. Her expertise in scansion attests a superior education (pp. 4–6). For other examples of women who managed their estates, see Elm, p. 79.

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We can therefore safely conclude that Macrina, as a fervent young girl in Neocaesarea in the early 340s, was well aware of the ascetic enthusiasm inspired by Eustathius, and became the first of the family to commit herself to virginity for life. But she did not repudiate her family for any mixed community of men and women such as Elm connects with Homoiousian asceticism.101 On the contrary, she maintained herself all the more firmly under her mother’s authority. It rather looks like a scrupulous observance of Canon 16 of Gangra. This would not be surprising if Eustathius by this time was accommodating himself to the warnings of Gangra. As outlined above there were influences on Macrina’s choice of virginity other than the Eustathian enthusiasm in the air at the time. Her spirit was already prepared through pondering literature which extolled female virginity for the Lord as in the Acts of Paul and Thecla, Methodius’s Symposium, and the works of Origen, including his inspiring exegeses of the Song of Songs, later so well known to Gregory of Nyssa who emulated his project. Macrina the Elder at the end of the age of martyrs was a living witness of Christian daring and courage. And even her mother Emmelia herself had once been attracted to a life of virginity for the Lord.

Early Transformations at Annisa After Macrina’s choice of virginity and the death of her father there began a series of transformations in the household which were gradually accomplished over two decades. The bereaved family had no need to remain in Neocaesarea in support of Basil the Elder’s career. Emmelia soon transferred the family seat from Neocaesarea to a country estate by the River Iris called Annisa.102 In the Life of Gregory Thaumaturgus Gregory of Nyssa remarks that in his own lifetime a great earthquake had levelled all the buildings in Neocaesarea (except for the cathedral). Such a disruption may have provided the impetus for a permanent move to the countryside. The transfer of the household was accomplished at any rate by the time of the incident reported by Gregory of Nyssa in his second homily On the Forty Martyrs.103 Emmelia, having acquired some precious relics of the Forty Martyrs of

101

See Elm, p. 210.

102

This move can be inferred from Basil’s Letter 223 (Deferrari, III, 302–03), where he describes Eustathius of Sebasteia’s visits to his retreat, and to his mother’s villa nearby. The period is in the 350s. See also Basil’s Letter 210 (Deferrari, III, 196–97), penned while at Annisa in c. 375/76, of his upbringing and his early ascetic life in the same place. 103

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Sebasteia, had a martyrion constructed on the estate in which to enshrine them, where members of the family might also be buried. Gregory describes himself as a neos at the time, a lad at his studies, which suggest a date around 350 or the early 350s. At about this time (351) the second eldest son, Naucratius, took up the ascetic life in a retreat he had discovered in the woods near the estate (see below). The younger Basil meanwhile, after having completed his higher schooling in Caesarea of Cappadocia, departed in about 349 for Constantinople to pursue advanced studies, and in 350 for Athens where he stayed about six years. Initially Emmelia maintained her household along traditional aristocratic lines, for her nine children were still growing up and had yet to be provided for. Macrina stayed by her mother’s side as her inseparable helper. She took up baking bread, a task normally carried out by house slaves, and also shared her mother’s administrative burdens as the mistress of a far-flung property portfolio. Thus her day’s work was a curious mix of humble manual labour and executive responsibility: she also helped manage all her mother’s pressing responsibilities. For she had four sons and five daughters, and paid taxes to three governors, since her property was scattered in that many provinces. In various ways, then, her mother was distracted by responsibilities, for her father had by then departed this life. In all these affairs she shared her mother’s toils, dividing the responsibilities with her and lightening the heavy load of her sorrows. (VSM 7.4)

Meanwhile, the acquaintance with Eustathius of Sebasteia begun in the city during the 330s and 340s continued at the country estate during the 350s and the 360s. Basil in his Letter 223104 reminds Eustathius that he did not just occasionally visit his mother’s household but was a frequent visitor. The point cannot be overemphasized. Eustathius, the renowned leader of ascetic communities, found a ready welcome in the household at Annisa presided over by Emmelia, because he was already well known to the family. Whatever other good qualities he may have had, Eustathius was a political animal and here was a devoutly Christian, wealthy, and no doubt generous aristocratic family, with an outstanding woman at its head, a devout first-born daughter, and young sons who promised much. This was a family worth cultivating. The very location of Annisa lent itself to frequent contacts. Obviously, whenever he travelled to and from Constantinople along the Via Pontica, he simply made a stopover there, a convenient day’s journey from Neocaesarea.105

104 105

Basil, Letter 223 (Deferrari, III, 302–03).

Or to collect Basil on the way to the Council of Constantinople in 360. Rousseau (Basil of Caesarea, p. 99 and esp. n. 11), is also inclined to place Basil in Eustathius’s entourage at this council.

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The second son of the family was Naucratius. He was in his twenty-second year when he graduated from his studies (VSM 10.1), which suggests a date of about 351, and hence his birth to about 330. With a promising career in rhetoric or the law before him, he quit it all for the Christian ascetic life instead, thus becoming the first of the brothers and sisters, by far, to follow Macrina’s lead, for which reason, no doubt, she regarded him as her ‘dearest brother’. To pursue his chosen lifestyle, however, Naucratius did not return to live in the family household. Instead, he discovered a secluded spot in forested hill country on the river Iris, yet still accessible enough to his mother’s household. There he devoted himself to a life of poverty, ‘undistraction’, and work. Certain features in his way of life may be considered ‘Eustathian’.106 For example, he does not live a cut-off existence as a hermit. His former slave Chrysaphius joins him as a ‘brother’ in the same way of life. There is the characteristic note of practical charity to the poor: he undertakes to furnish food for a group of the aged and sick and poor by his own labour, that is, by hunting in the forest107 and by fishing. Exactly following Macrina’s lead, he looks to his mother as his moral and religious safeguard, ‘steering his young manhood’ by obedience to her. His ‘being guided by the divine commandments’ means the study and the sung recitation of Scripture, a very ‘Macrinian’ note. And no doubt when Eustathius came visiting his mother’s household, Naucratius crossed over to the villa to be in attendance, taking part in conferences with the master — if Eustathius himself did not also visit the young ascetic in his own abode, as he seems to have done later with Basil. After five years of living this way, Naucratius and Chrysaphius both perished in an accident while hunting, of which Gregory Nazianzen gives further details.108 By all accounts this tragedy triggered another passage in the life of the household. If Naucratius died at the melting of the snows in the early spring of 356 (probably March), two events are seen to follow soon after.

106

Compare Elm, pp. 80–81, 135.

107

This was quite in the family tradition. Gregory Nazianzen relates that during the persecutions, Macrina the Elder and her husband survived their years in the Pontic forests by obtaining food from hunting (Oratio 43.7–8, McCauley, pp. 31–33). 108

Compare Gregory Nazianzen’s Epigrams 156–58 on Naucratius, where we learn that the accident occurred while he was trying to free a net caught in the river Iris. At a sudden onrush of water he became entangled in the net. On 20 March 2006 the present author stood on the banks of the turbulent river and contemplated the very location where the accident was likely to have happened. See Silvas, ‘In Quest of Basil’s Retreat’.

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Firstly, Emmelia and her household steer towards a new phase of their existence. It would not have been so feasible if the younger children — except Peter — had not grown up by then and been provided for. Emmelia felt at last free to follow her daughter’s lead and commit herself to the ascetic life more fully. The account of these events in the household in VSM 13 immediately follows the report of Naucratius’s death and the way that Macrina steadied her mother in bereavement. It was at this moment that Basil came home from Athens.109 In his Eulogy on St Basil 24, Gregory Nazianzen says that Basil, in resisting those who wanted to keep him in Athens, ‘detailed the reasons of his anxiety to return home’. Certainly something had disturbed Basil and spurred him to make a hasty departure, and the news of Naucratius’s unexpected death may have been the very event. Gregory of Nyssa attests that the tragedy ‘brought misfortune and sorrow upon the entire family’ (VSM 11.2). Gregory Nazianzen, Basil’s companion in Athens, was himself sufficiently affected to devote three epigrams to the tragedy. So Basil cut short his engagements in Athens, it seems in the late spring or early summer of 356. The disarray in the VSM at this point is in itself suggestive. Gregory, having just spoken of Basil’s return and the beginnings of Emmelia’s ascetic ‘conversion’, suddenly remembers the importance of his long dead brother Naucratius in the unfolding of events. He then backtracks to present a short life of Naucratius, after which he resumes his thread, presenting a second, more considered account of the tranformation in Emmelia’s household, which now appears to follow on the tragedy more directly. To sum up the progress of the ascetic life at Annisa thus far. Due to several earlier and wider influences in addition to personal contact with the great ascetic leader, Eustathius, Macrina chose the course of virginity and asceticism in the early to mid-340s. In 351, she gained her first wholehearted disciple in her brother Naucratius, then at the crossroads of his young adult life. Five years later she made good spiritual capital from the shock of his death. Having sent on one disciple from this life to the next, she gained two more: her own mother and her eldest brother. In 356, Emmelia, growing spiritually stronger through this tragedy, was responsive to her daughter’s lead and gradually shed the aristocratic manner for life on a par with the community of virgins. Thus Macrina had her second disciple, her own mother. Now the eldest of the brothers returned home, also at a critical juncture in his life. Macrina was about to make a third conquest, ultimately with great consequences for the universal Church. 109

Ruth Albrecht also analyses the sequence of events in Das Leben der heiligen Macrina vor dem Hintergrund der Thekla-Traditionen (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1986), p. 93.

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Macrina’s Role in Basil’s Vocation In Letter 1, Basil says that after he left Athens he ‘ran past’ (ðáñÝäñáìïí) the city on the Hellespont, that is, Constantinople. This seems to mean he ‘passed through’110 Constantinople as hurriedly as possible, crossed the Bosphorus, and made his way home east along the Via Pontica to his ‘fatherland’, that is, to Annisa in Hellenopontus. Once he had consoled his mother and his siblings over the loss of Naucratius, he made his way down to his old school in Caesarea, where his brother Gregory was pursuing higher studies. There he spent what was left of the year teaching rhetoric. The interval may have lasted only a few months to judge from his Letter 1, Gregory Nazianzen’s Oratio 43.25, and Gregory of Nyssa’s Letter 13.111 He must then have returned to Annisa, perhaps before the onset of winter at the end of 356. It all fits: Naucratius’s death in early spring, the news reaches Athens, Basil returns quickly in late spring, finishes the remainder of the year teaching at Caesarea, and returns home. This was Macrina’s moment. Again, in some vivid phrases, ‘She, however, took him in hand’, says Gregory, ‘and drew him with such speed towards the goal of philosophy’ (VSM 8.3).112 In one respect Gregory’s acccount is inadequate: this was 110

ÐáñÝäñáìïí can be used in the sense of ‘passing through’. Compare the use of the term ðáñáðüìðç to describe the official liturgy of escorting Roman soldiers or officials through one’s city. 111 Gregory of Nyssa Letter 13 to Libanius (Silvas, Gregory, pp. 152–55) bears witness to a short period spent by Basil in the teaching of rhetoric, during which the young Gregory was one of his students: ‘Basil, my father and teacher’, he calls him, saying ‘I enjoyed my brother’s society only for a short time and gained only just enough polish from his divine tongue to be able to discern the ignorance of those who are uninitiated in oratory’. Basil, Letter 210 (Deferrari, III, 199) reveals that the Neocaesareans had at one stage begged Basil to come and teach their sons higher studies. From the tenor of Basil’s refusal, the episode may be placed early in 358, at the beginning of his ascetic life at Annisa. They wanted him for their city’s renown, not only because of his father’s memory among them, but also because they had heard he had performed just such a service in Caesarea after his return from Athens in 356. Civic honour and rivalry was the issue. But of course, much had happened since his brief spell in Caesarea as a rhetor. When Basil says he ‘shunned those who praised and admired me’, he echoes the terms of Macrina’s summons as reported in VSM 8.3. So the Neocaesareans’ invitation is best placed not only after Basil’s spell of teaching in Caesarea, but after his conversion, baptism, and journey to Egypt and Palestine, and back again. 112

It seems that five years earlier Macrina achieved much the same purpose at a very similar juncture in his life with their brother Naucratius. Having finished his higher studies in Caesarea magna cum laude and poised as he was for a career in rhetoric, Naucratius returned home to visit, which was the moment for Macrina to win him over to baptism and the ascetic ideal. Gregory testifies that Naucratius had been ‘her dearest brother’ (VSM 12.4), which must have had to do with their shared religious ideal and practice.

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not a new call, but a re-call. Macrina was not proposing something new to Basil, but recalling him to the piety of their childhood upbringing and to the intention he had formed even in Athens to pursue a life of ‘philosophy’. Only it was being overcome by his absorption in rhetorical excellence thanks to his opportunities in Athens. Surely there was already a ferment in his own heart as he witnessed developments in his mother’s household.113 At any rate Macrina successfully persuaded her brother to make a break once and for all with the conventional life of a catechumen educated in the secular curriculum to the highest degree and setting out on a career. Now that he was at a crossroads in his life, let him not resume by default the life their father had left off, that is, that of the devout Christian aristocrat and professional man, excellent as far as it went. Let him seize the moment instead to embrace baptism and with it the life of Christian ‘philosophy’ — that is, virginity, renunciation, and asceticism — the way of life which both she and Naucratius, but lately dead, had been pursuing for years, and to which their mother, Emmelia, was now disposing herself. It was a life embodied in a family mentor whom both sister and brother had known and admired from their childhood years: Eustathius of Sebasteia. Basil’s own account of these events in Letter 223 says nothing expressly about Macrina. Yet it does reveal that the moment of his conversion, when he turned from ‘pagan eloquence’ to ‘the marvellous light of the Gospel’, distinctly preceded his setting out to look for Eustathius who seems to have gone to Alexandria (Letter 1). If we may read between the lines a little, it was Macrina who opened the ‘marvellous light of the Gospel’ to her younger brother. She used vigorous argument, familiarity with Scripture, and skilful persuasion in terms that a then proud and always formidable intellect could respect. Gregory says that at that period Basil’s sense of superiority led him to disdain all the luminaries of the region. But he did not disdain Macrina. Certainly her seniority contributed to her cachet with Basil, who though he became a ‘father’ to all his younger siblings is never styled that way in relation to his older sister. But more importantly, the way Macrina translated the ‘word’ which was supposed to be his competence after years of elite education, into concrete ‘deed’ which was the province of the long trained virgin ascetic, had

113

See Letter 1, to Eustathius (Deferrari, I, 3): ‘Owing to the fame of your philosophy, I left Athens, scorning everything there’, and Gregory Nazianzen, Letter 1 (Saint Grégoire de Nazianze, ed. and trans. by Gallay, p. 3; NPNF 2, VII, 446): ‘I had engaged even at Athens, at the time of our friendship and intimate association there [. . .] to join you in a life of philosophy (= Christian asceticism)’ and Oratio 43.19 (McCauley, p. 53), on their time together in Athens: ‘philosophy was the object of our zeal.’

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the most powerful effect. Eustathius, therefore, was not the immediate catalyst of Basil’s adult conversion. Macrina’s role, as portrayed by Gregory, is secure. So Basil went off to a year of wandering in pursuit of Eustathius, observing the ascetics of Palestine and Egypt along the way. When he returned, having been baptized at some stage by Bishop Dianius in Caesarea, he settled back at Annisa where he dedicated himself to the ‘philosophical life’, as he himself still referred to it at that early stage (Letters 2 and 14). Essentially he simply took up the same ascetic way of life in the same retreat on the river Iris that Naucratius had vacated. The human resources he had available to him were not inconsiderable. They included Macrina, Emmelia, and the scriptural, ascetic tenor of their household, periods of fellowship with Gregory Nazianzen, influential Christian friends in Neocaesarea such as Olympius and Candidianus, correspondence with Apollinaris,114 and last but not least, visits from Eustathius in person, who not only encouraged him in the ascetic life, but initiated him into disturbing currents in the life of the Church at large.

Comparing the VSM and Basil’s Small Asketikon There were yet further and significant transformations in the household at Annisa. But before we can examine what these were and how they took place, it is necessary to compare the picture of the community presented in the VSM and the features of the community as revealed in the first edition of Basil’s Asketikon, the so-called ‘Little’ or Small Asketikon. The VSM gives us first–hand details about the community at Annisa as it was in the year 379 at Macrina’s death. It was a single community referred to as an •ägëöüôçò (‘fraternity’ including sisters), comprising a women’s section (º ãõíáéêùíÃôéò or Ò ðáñègíþí), a men’s section (Ò •íäñþí),115 some provision for taking in and rearing children (VSM 28.5), and a hospice (îgíïäïêgÃïí)116 for receiving guests and housing lodgers — though they might be invited either to the men’s or women’s quarters as appropriate (VSM 40–41). The men and women ascetics worshipped together in a single church (º ¦êêëçóßá, VSM 18.3), but in

114 Rousseau (Basil of Caesarea, pp. 245–54), fairly establishes the early contact between Basil and Apollinaris, which helped confirm Basil in Nicene allegiance at the time. Apollinaris’s development of a sophisticated heterodox Christology was still in the future.

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115

See VSM 18.3: ¦ê ôïØ •íäñäíïò and 40.3, ¦í ôè •íäñäíé.

116

See SR 155, 286 and LR 15.1 and note.

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distinct choirs. The women and the men dined separately (VSM 40.5, 41.1). The women wore distinguishably feminine attire, notably a veil (VSM 31.4). Macrina lived in the women’s quarters and appears to have been the presiding genius, for Gregory frequently calls her º ìgãÜëç, ‘the great one’ (VSM 18.2, 19.1, 21.7, 23.5, 33.1, 40.6).117 A deaconess Lampadion was in charge of the women’s section under Macrina (VSM 31.1). Peter, Macrina’s youngest brother to whom she had been ‘father, teacher, guardian, mother, counsellor of every good’ (VSM 14.2), headed the men’s section (VSM 40.3). At the same time he had a sacramental ministry to all as priest, for he had been ordained early to the presbyterate by Basil in c. 371 (VSM 16.1). The Annisa community was characterized by a climate of assiduous prayer structured on the sung recitation of the psalms and Scripture. There was industrious work, hospitality, practical ministry to the needy of the district (VSM 14.6), and a spirit of collaboration with the local bishop and his clergy (VSM 36.1), to whom Macrina had entrusted the distribution of her inheritance (VSM 22.5). Offering insight into the community arrangements is the passage where Gregory, very much the episcopal liturgist, organizes the funeral rites. He separates the men and women streaming in from the countryside and assigns them to either the ‘choir (÷ïñè) of virgins’ or the ‘order (ôÜãìáôé) of the monks’ (VSM 35.3)118 and then coaches them into harmonious psalmody. Here is an emphasis, very Basilian one might think — scriptural and apostolic as far as Basil was concerned — on ‘good order’, on the synthesizing of all elements such that none are belittled, none exceed their due bounds, none are confused with others. These are strongly practical reverberations of a neo-Nicene doctrinal perspective: trinitarian, ecclesial, personal, and well ordered. Before one even begins to consider the community in the Small Asketikon, it can be immediately seen that the caveats of the council of Gangra are certainly operative in the Annisa community in 379. The Asketikon has the first place among the many works of Basil concerned with encouraging and directing the ascetic life. The original setting of this work is Basil’s second period in Pontus as an ascetic, 363–65. During his visits to ascetic

117

On this implication of this epithet, see Daniel F. Stramara, ‘Double Monasticism in the Greek East, Fourth through Eighth Centuries’, Journal of Early Christian Studies, 6 (1998), 269–312 (pp. 299–300). 118 The parallelism between ôè ôäí ðáñèÝíùí ÷ïñè and ôè täí ìïíáæüíôùí ôÜãìáôé should be noted. When Gregory uses the formulaic phrase ‘choir of virgins’, the word ‘choir’ means more than simply an ensemble for singing: a rank or order.

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communities, members used to question him about how they ought to live. On certain perhaps planned occasions these questions and answers were taken down by tachygraphers, and the notes eventually worked up into a comprehensive document, called most expressively in the Syriac version, Questions of the Brothers. In fact, Basil gives us an excellent cameo of the primitive setting in Letter 223 to Eustathius himself: Ask yourself: how often did you come to look in on us at the abode by the river Iris, when, moreover our most divinely beloved brother Gregory was present with me, achieving the same purpose in life as myself? [. . .] And how many days did we spend in the villa on the opposite side, at my mother’s, where we lived as friends with friends, with conversation astir among us day and night? [. . .] And all the time were your tachygraphers not present with me as I dictated matters against the heresy?119 Were the most faithful of your disciples not in my presence the whole time? While visiting the brotherhoods (•ägëöüôçôgò) and spending whole nights with them in the prayers, always speaking and hearing things concerning God without contention, did I not furnish precise proofs of my own mind?120

Basil returned to Caesarea towards the end of 365, this time as Eusebius’s senior priest. By all indications the Asketikon, which at this stage we must call the Small Asketikon, was originally intended as a legacy to the ascetic communities of Pontus and to the community of Annisa in particular. The same process of being questioned by ascetics and of answering them and of notes being taken continued for the remainder of Basil’s life, so that the Asketikon was always a ‘work in progress’, being gradually added to and revised till, by the time of Basil’s death, its final version, the Great Asketikon, was well more than twice the length of the Small Asketikon.121 But our concern here is to probe the earliest edition, the Small Asketikon, for the principles and praxis of the Pontic ascetic communities of the mid-360s.122 The following findings are by no means exhaustive.123

119

This refers to Basil’s Contra Eunomium, written in c. 364.

120

Letter 223, Courtonne, III, 8–17 (p. 4, see footnote at line 5), Deferrari, III, 286–313 (pp. 302–05). 121

See Silvas, Asketikon, Ch. 1, pp. 1–18 for an outline of the very complex textual issues and Ch. 6, pp. 130–45 for a summary of the settings and stages in the evolution of the Great Asketikon. 122

It should be noted that the original Greek text of the Small Asketikon has not survived. Its content has to be estimated from a comparison of Rufinus’s Latin translation, the Regula Basili (RBas) with the Greek text of the Great Asketikon. A Syriac translation of the Small Asketikon exists but as yet has received no critical edition. See Silvas, Asketikon, Ch. 5, ‘Rufinus, Witness of the Small Asketikon’, pp. 102–29. 123

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The type of community envisaged is a well-ordered body of Christian men and women distinguishable from the general way of life of Christians and of society at large. They are constituted as a single •ägëöüôçò, ‘brotherhood’, RBas 15.Q (SR 98) of ‘those dedicated to God’, RBas 5.Q (LR 9.Q), which inherently means the profession of virginity or celibacy. The adelphotes has the same comprehensive structure reported of Annisa in the VSM, including men, women, and children who live in regulated separate houses (RBas 7.7, LR 15.1). The acceptance of children is particularly significant. It means that Basil’s circle — and hence Annisa — did not have to wait for the great famine (c. 369) and Macrina’s rescue of orphans for the inclusion of children in their concept of community. They wear a common poor habit, which identifies their profession when they are abroad, RBas 11 (LR 22 and 23). Certain boundaries are observed: the ‘discipline and order of the brothers’ could be upset if visitors or even one of the brothers freely wander into work areas within the community, RBas 101 (SR 141). There is specific mention of women in RBas 132 (SR 153), RBas 174 (SR 220), RBas 197 (SR 108), RBas 198 (SR 109), RBas 199 (SR 110), and RBas 201 (SR 111). Otherwise they are just as much included in the provisions of the Small Asketikon as are the men. They take care of women’s traditional work in spinning, weaving, and cloth making for the entire community (RBas 132). There is a male superior (presbyter/proestos) and a female superior (presbytera/proestosa). The presbyter appears to have some presidency over the whole, probably — this has to be somewhat teased out — because the priesthood gradually comes be attached to his role (RBas 21 and 199). While the presbytera is in some sense subordinate to the presbyter, the latter may not act unilaterally towards the sisters without her, RBas 197 (SR 108), RBas 201 (SR 111). So in practical terms the presbytera acts largely as a co-ordinate superior. Concord between them is maintained by regular consultation, RBas 198 (SR 109). Among the women, there will be a number of office-bearers under the presbytera, such as the sister in charge of the wool-workers (RBas 132). ‘Communion’ is practised both within the community and with the local church, and an ordered hospitality, RBas 31.4 (SR 187). Visitors might stay for a while to learn the way of life — hopefully they will be attracted to a permanent commitment, RBas 87 (SR 97). Moreover, and very importantly, not a few of the caveats of Gangra may be seen to be observed at this stage. For example, just as the concluding paragraph to the Gangra preface deplores the fissiparous individualism of the enthusiasts, so too, the Small Asketikon wages war on all symptoms of individualism and self-pleasing (RBas 3.26/LR 7). Basil inculcates an obedience diametrically opposed to the independent if not to say arrogant manner of the enthusiasts (RBas 70.3/SR 38). Basil

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insists on the necessity of the strictly cenobitic life, that is, the ordered life in communion and the imperatives that flow from it, for the Gospel and the New Testament requires community life, RBas 3 (LR 7). Just as Gangra Preface 5 and Canons 6 and 7 censure the hyper-ascetics’ tendency to assert their independence from bishop, priests, and local congregations, and their commandeering the distribution of Church funds to the poor, so the Small Asketikon promotes collaboration with local church authorities, teaching that distributions of property are to be entrusted to ‘those who preside over the local churches’, that is, the local bishop or his deputy (RBas 31.4 (SR 187)). Such is the similarity between the two texts there may even be verbal echoes. It is likely Basil took some cue from Macrina here, who had made this her practice as far back as the mid-350s (see VSM 22.5). Whereas the hyper-ascetics tended to an ill-disciplined association of men and women ascetics, the Small Asketikon envisages neither separate ‘one-sex’ communities nor ‘mixed’ communities where men and women ascetics live together indifferently. Instead, both sexes are brought together under the umbrella of a single •ägëöüôçò, though they live in separate houses and their meetings are subject to authorization and witness, RBas 174 (SR 220). In line with the misgivings of Gangra Preface 7 and Canons 13 and 17 that women ascetics were adopting male attire, a distinction between male and female dress can be discerned in the Small Asketikon — RBas 143.2 (SR 210) and, implicitly, RBas 11.27–30 (LR 22.3). This was also Macrina’s practice (VSM 31.4). Transparently addressing Canon 16 of Gangra, according to which children were forbidden to secede from their parents on a plea of piety, Basil teaches that children brought to the community must be received from their parents to the testimony of many witnesses, so as not to give a pretext to ‘those of ill-will’, RBas 7.4 (LR 15.1). RBas 144 (SR 50) echoes the misgivings of Gangra Preface 4 and Canon 12 over the ascetics’ use of exaggerated clothing, usually of an ostentatious meanness. This, together with Basil’s care to speak only of the ‘clothing fitting for a Christian’, makes a Gangra reference almost transparent. RBas 87 (SR 97) deals with another tendency of the enthusiasts: ‘ascetic homelessness’.124 Basil takes a pastoral approach. These wanderers would be better won over to stability in the community, but because of potential duplicity, there must be careful discernment in receiving them. 124

They were the spiritual ancestors of the ‘gyrovagues’ or wandering monks so deplored in Regula Benedicti (Rule of St Benedict) 1.10–11.

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RBas 127 (SR 207) addresses another typical temptation of the hyper-ascetics: to consider themselves beyond the necessity of mundane work. Basil on the contrary could hardly insist more strongly than he does on the necessity of diligent work in the communities. Its basis, however, is not that of serving oneself, but of obeying the dominical and apostolic call to serve the needy. For one’s own needs one must trust to the Lord’s provision through the community. The epilogue of the Gangra legislation (or ‘Canon 21’) almost reads as a charter of Basil’s ascetic reform and discourse, if from the perspective of bishops looking on the ascetic movement from without, whereas Basil operated very much from within. A comparison of the linguistic register of the Small Asketikon and of the Gangra legislation shows common features: the same avoidance of specialist terminology, the same focus on the Scriptures, the same promotion of but one Christian ‘way’, the same imperative of inclusion in the one Church of all Christians. To sum up then, a careful comparison of the VSM and the Small Asketikon reveals an overwhelming agreement between the Annisa community and the form of ascetic community taught in the Small Asketikon. That is, most of the features of the community at Annisa in 379 were already in place by about 365. Many of the hyper-ascetic correctives of the council of Gangra were operative even then. Yet the Small Asketikon itself is the culmination of considerable prior development in the conception of the ascetic life. We are now in a position to go back and evaluate the later transformations of the family household at Annisa.

Later Transformations at Annisa When we last left Macrina, she had persuaded her mother to adopt the common life with the virgins, and Basil, when he took up the ascetic life, settled in the retreat in the woods by the River Iris. The later definitive changes at Annisa must therefore have taken place between 356 and 365. The family’s first great passage, in the mid- to late 340s, from a wealthy urban household to an aristocratic country household, was presided over by Emmelia. The agent of later transformations, however, was Macrina. Under her influence, the household steered steadily in an ascetic direction. First there was the emancipation of slaves, then in c. 356 the abrogation of social rank with Emmelia’s adoption of the common life. By about 365 Annisa had emerged as a fully fledged cenobitic community, with an ordered place for ascetic men, women, and children. The presiding genius, the patient but unwavering catalyst of these domestic ‘recalibrations’ was Macrina. If one were to look for a likely turning point of this final transformation, the most suitable moment would seem to be when Peter came to make his profession of virginity.

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Peter’s adolescence and his vocational choice of virginity and the ascetic life took place in the decade 356–65. The evidence for his chronology comes from VSM 14. He was ‘the last offspring of our parents’, whose birth coincided with his father’s death. If this birth and this death are dated to c. 346, Peter would have reached a minimum ‘vowable’ age of sixteen or seventeen in about the year 362/63. This was the very time when Basil became a priest during his first, abortive stay in Caesarea. Peter’s unfolding vocation surely precipitated the final transformation of the household into a fully fledged community comprising both men and women. Consider the following statements in VSM 13.8–14.1: ‘their philosophy continually aided them towards greater purity by multiplying the goods they discovered. She was helped most of all towards this great goal of life by a brother from the same womb, Peter by name’, and at VSM 14.5: ‘at that time, he preferred before all else to be with his sister and mother, co-working with them towards that angelic life’. These two passages indicate that Peter collaborated actively with his mother and sister through all the stages of the household until they achieved a workable, comprehensive form of ascetic community. Only a very few years before, in the late 350s, Basil had found it expedient to retire at a reasonably accessible distance from his mother’s household, just as Naucratius had done. He and his companions adopted a somewhat freelance yet noneremetical type of ascetic life similar to what the Egyptians called ‘sarabaitic’.125 Yet when it came Peter’s turn to make an adult decision, he did not take the track away from the villa and over the ridge to the abode by the river. He stayed as part of the household. As the time of his profession in the early 360s drew near, his position as the youngest son in the family household must have come under review. A form of dedicated community life was worked out in which he could dedicate himself to the Lord for life: he would become a disciple and a brother in a single ordered community comprising distinct sections for men, women, and children. A house for male ascetics was instituted beside the already existing community of virgins. These new arrangements were put into effect between c. 358, when Basil began his ascetic life, and 362–65, when Peter formalized his. Older historical accounts often style Basil as the ‘founder’ of monastic life in Pontus, or at Annisa.126 On the above argument, however, if there was any

125 126

For more on ‘sarabaites’, see Silvas, Asketikon, p. 29, n.19.

Contra the traditional view of Basil as a ‘founder’ of monastic life and Macrina’s contribution as derivative and dependent on his. Elm, p. 81, records such views: ‘Macrina founded a monastery for women on their estate at Annesi, where Basil had already founded a monastery for men [. . .] Macrina was not the head of the community of the women’. See also Jean LaPorte, The

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‘founder’ of the male side of the community at Annisa, or at any rate an agent of its coming into being, it was Peter. The alternative venue for male ascetics at Annisa in the woods by the river became obsolete from the date of Peter’s profession, as any dwellers there transferred to the new house of men and came under the joint rule of Macrina and Peter. By that time, Basil’s teaching ministry among the ascetics of Pontus was in full swing. The Annisa household therefore achieved its final form not at the time of Emmelia’s adoption of community life with the virgins in 356, important a moment though that was, but when a way was found to integrate dedicated men into its ranks. It is a curious thing: the last breakthrough in the development of the Annisa community was not in finding a way to affiliate dedicated women to a community of male ascetics, but rather of incorporating the men in an ascetic community presided over by two women, first Emmelia, widow, and then Macrina, virgin, while Peter eventually took charge of the men. Thus the centrifugal tendencies of freelance ascetic enthusiasm were domesticated through being regrafted into a form of community that was the fruit of the domestic ascetic movement led by women. This cenobitic life of men, women, and children conscientiously intended obedience to the example of the apostolic community in Jerusalem (Acts 2. 43–47, 4. 32–37) and the Pauline teaching that all are members of the one body of Christ (Romans 12. 5), passages cited by Basil in the Small Asketikon at RBas 3 (LR 7). Basil uses a term perfectly expressive of the final transformation at Annisa: óõíôÜãìá (‘ordered gathering, assembly, arrangement’). It occurs in Letter 207 (Deferrari, III, 186–87) in which he describes the community at Annisa — where, in fact, he was staying while writing the letter in the year 375/76. He boasts to the Neocaesareans that ‘we have an assembly of both men and women (ê᠕íäñäí êá ãõíáéêäí óýíôÜãìá) whose citizenship is in heaven’. Elsewhere Basil uses the term tagma, ‘rank’ or ‘order’, when he speaks of a tagma of virgins and a tagma of monks, or male celibates.127 Letter 207 shows that the distinct tagmas have been

Role of Women in Early Christianity (New York: Mellen Press, 1982), p. 86, and ‘some kind of association between men and women was inevitable at first, for women ascetics could not stand alone [. . .] For the actual form which the association took in Cappadocia and Pontos, Basil himself seems to have been responsible [. . .]. His own early experience provided a model for subsequent arrangements’: William K. Lowther Clarke, trans., The Ascetic Works of St Basil (London: SPCK, 1925), pp. 37–38. Really, it was Macrina and Peter’s experience that provided a model for Basil’s (later) arrangements. 127 For the distinct tagmas of men and of women, see LR 34.1 and note. In Letter 199 Basil speaks of ôÎ ôÜãìá ôäí ðáñèÝíùí, the order of virgins (Deferrari, III, 106–07, Canon 18), and ôè ôÜãìáôé ôäí ìïíáæüíôùí, the order of monks (Deferrari, III, 110–11, Canon 19). For the

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brought together in a single syntagma, an ‘ordered assembly,128 which is manifest above all when they gather together ¦ð ôÎí ïÉêïí ô­ò ðñïógõ÷­ò, ‘in the house of prayer’. Finally Basil himself ordained Peter to the presbyterate, possibly as early as 370, to judge from Gregory’s account, which reports Basil’s episcopate and Peter’s presbyterate in one statement (VSM 16.1). Peter, already heading the men’s house at the Annisa monastery, now received the order of priesthood, which enabled him to minister to the whole community in the liturgy and the sacraments. Here the classic polity of the ‘Basilian’ community emerges at Annisa: a male superior, who is a priest-monk, presiding over a monastery of men, women, and children in discrete houses. Basil, as a metropolitan, may have thought it safe to dispense with the rule according to which thirty was the minimum age for presbyteral ordination. And of course there must have been collaboration with the local bishop (of Magnopolis, or Ibora?), who was quite possibly a relative, if not an old friend of the family. If born in c. 345, Peter would have been about twenty-six at the time, about the same age as Naucratius at his death.

The Role of Annisa in the Genesis of ‘Basilian’ Monasticism According to one view, the antecedents of the classic ‘Basilian’ community — what later came to be called somewhat unhappily the ‘double’ monastery — are to be sought in a kind of sub-orthodox modus vivendi of male and female ascetics living together indifferently, increasingly curbed by an emergent neo-Nicene doctrinal position less favourable to women.129 The above study shows, however, that the houses of men, women, and children within the one community, see Silvas, Asketikon, LR 15.1, p. 201, n. 201. 128

In his Oratio 43.62 (McCauley, pp. 79–80), Gregory Nazianzen says that Basil brought the eremitic and ‘mixed’ life into ordered conjunction. Whether Gregory is expressly referring to the above situation or not, it does show the dispositions with which both men and women might be encouraged to gather in a single regulated community. Gregory’s words are ‘he brought them close together yet kept them distinct’. Basil shows a very similar spirit in LR 35, when he discourages the continuance of separate communities in the same locality and begs that they come together in a single community. 129

Such is Elm’s general thesis. See Elm, Ch. 4: ‘Homoiousian Asceticism’, pp. 106–34. Using many texts somewhat ambiguously, she builds up a picture of ‘Homoiousian’ (= Eustathian) communities characterized by the cohabitation of men and women ascetics, i.e. ‘mixed’ communities. For a useful discussion of the terms ‘mixed’, ‘double’, and ‘twin’ monasteries, see Stramara, ‘Double Monasticism in the Greek East’, pp. 271–73.

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antecedents are better sought in the inherent structure of the Christian family household itself, as it gradually took on a more and more explicitly spiritual orientation. This is the fourth-century phenomenon called the ‘domestic ascetic movement’ or ‘family asceticism’ referred to above. It was a sphere of Church life in which orthodox-minded women commonly played the leading role through their spiritual zeal, communitarian sensibility, and doctrinal allegiance. The evolution of devout Christian household to monastic community of which as we saw there were examples all around the Mediterranean world130 was quintessentially typified at Annisa under Macrina’s presiding genius. Without doubt Annisa was the core ‘Pontic ascetic community’ that lay behind all of Basil’s work of reforming the ascetic communities, the house of his own siblings to which he gladly came for a retreat in his last years and wrote Letters 207 and 210. If it was true as Basil mentions in Letter 207 (written from Annisa) that the instances of dedicated female virginity are as yet few and rudimentary, it can only serve to highlight the significance of Macrina’s luminous achievement at Annisa. Thanks to Gregory of Nyssa’s piety towards his dead sister expressed in the VSM, we see the process of domestic transformation in some detail. It took place by stages over several decades, the Christian impulse picking up ‘swell’ from one generation to the next. Perhaps the roots of the Annisa phenomenon ran all the deeper for its long maturation, as its influence in the life of the Church was destined to be far-reaching through Basil’s mission of teaching, writing, and Church leadership. The stages may be summed up as follows: 1. from Macrina the Elder and her husband, the zealous converts and confessors of the faith early in the century 2. to the devout married urban household of Basil the Elder and Emmelia in the 340s offering hospitality and friendship to ascetics 3. to the aristocratic country villa presided over by Emmelia the devout widow in the late 340s and early 350s

130 A few examples: Verus and Bosporia’s gradual transformation of their household in Ancyra, and the widow Magna’s transformation of her household in the same city (Palladius, Lausiac History 66, 67); Gorgonia, sister of Gregory Nazianzen, persuades her husband (a priest) to a life of mutual celibacy and their sons become monks (Gregory Nazianzen, Oratio 8.11, McCauley p. 108); in Rome the young widow Marcella’s transformation of her house on the Aventine into a centre of ascetic influence ( Jerome, Letter 127); at century’s end, the household of Therasia and Paulinus of Nola which became a monastery attracting other ascetic couples (Paulinus, Carmen 21); into the fifth century, the remarkable ascetic evolution of Melania the Younger and her husband Pinian (Palladius, Lausiac History 61.2–3 and others).

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4. to the abolition of class distinctions and the adoption of the common life of virgins in the mid-350s 5. to the incorporation of male celibates at Peter’s profession in the early 360s 6. to the prototypical monastic community in the 360s and 370s, comprising men and women ascetics, children, and guests presided over by Macrina and by Peter as priest and head of the men’s section. One thing we must be absolutely clear about: Macrina did not acquire her monastic life and doctrine from Basil. No, the lines of influence were much rather the other way round. Macrina’s trajectory as a virgin ascetic, a teacher, and a spiritual mother pre-empted, inspired, and illustrated the maturation of Basil’s own cenobitic teaching. She was the mother and preceptress of that monasticism that has come down under Basil’s name. It was not only that she recalled him from a secular career to baptism and the ascetic life. She continued to have a formative influence on Basil during his early ascetic period, helping to wean him from a certain residual Hellenism still evident in his earliest letters on ascetic themes, by representing to him afresh the importance of the Scriptures and by the lived witness of the community at Annisa as she steered it towards its classic form. By the time of Peter’s profession, not only Peter but Basil himself found the earlier freelance type of life for males in the forest hideout on the river, split off from Annisa, no longer tenable in the light of the teaching of Acts on Christian koinonia, and the Pauline teaching on the body of Christ. The domestic ascetic movement, in which women played so prominent a role, acted as a reminder to male ascetics, with their tendency to individualism, of the intrinsically communitarian and ordered basis of the Christian way of life. It certainly seems to have acted this way on Basil, who in that early period (c. 360) was very concerned at the terrible disorder in the contemporary Church; he sought earnestly for a remedy of these ills increasingly in application to scriptural teaching, trying to learn there the principles of koinonia and coherence in the Church. Once ordained a priest, and having returned to Pontus, he almost certainly based himself at Annisa and assumed a leading role among the ascetic communities of the region, many of them under Eustathius’s influence. Both leaders were confirmed by recourse to Annisa as if to the centre of a vital experiment in Christian community, a community fashioned by a great and holy woman: Macrina the Younger, one whom Gregory of Nyssa calls ‘Mother’ and ‘Teacher’ and who has a just claim to the title ‘Mother of Greek Monasticism’. Basil went on to become a major player in the Church through his role as metropolitan of Caesarea and his theological and ecclesiastical-political endeavours. Carrying on the torch from Eustathius, Emmelia, and Macrina, he was able

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through his eminent position to promote the classic synthesis between the ascetic movement, life in the great Church, and the neo-Nicene doctrinal settlement. The result was the canonical form of the cenobitic monastic life. The influence of his great achievement was destined to affect the entire Church, both East and West, since Rufinus’s Latin edition of his Small Asketikon became a major source of and was expressly recommended to zealous monks by the classic monastic rule of the West, The Rule of St Benedict (73.4). Macrina meanwhile remained at the ‘inner face’ of the Church, to some extent (but not entirely) removed from the full rigour of Church politics. There she tended the fulcrum that could move an embattled Church, through a hidden life of humility and spiritual élan communicated for the most part in the local church and a more far-flung circle of familiars and correspondents. We are fortunate that she had a brother and one of such sympathetic mind and literary skills, Gregory of Nyssa, who made it his task to set this ‘light hidden under a bushel’ on a lamp-stand for all in the house of the great Church to see — not that she herself would have considered the achievement of such fame here below as the justification of her life and vocation.

Macrina’s Death and Problems of Chronology131 The dating of the events surrounding Macrina’s death hinges on the dating of Gregory’s itinerary in Letter 19, Basil’s death, and a wider web of events in eastern Anatolia in 377–79. These issues of chronology were under scholarly review from the late 1980s and only now seem to be settling down. Building on the work of recent scholars,132 Pierre Maraval in 1988 argued a case for redating these events, after reassessing the evidence that Valens himself recalled the neo-Nicene exiles before he left Antioch for the war with the Goths in Thrace.133 The chronology he proposed was as follows: Basil died in August 377; Valens repealed the sentences of exile in September/October 377; he then departed An131

This topic is treated more extensively in Silvas, Gregory, pp. 32–39.

132

Alan Booth, ‘The Chronology of Jerome’s Early Years’, Phoenix, 35 (1981), 237–59, who redated Basil’s death to 14 June 377 (pp. 237–39); Rochelle Snee, ‘Valen’s Recall of the Nicene Exiles and Anti-Arian Propaganda’, Greek Roman and Byzantine Studies, 26 (1986), 395–456, who argued that Valens left Antioch in Autumn of 377, recalling the exiles before he did so. 133 Pierre Maraval, ‘La Date de la mort de Basile de Césarée’, Revue des études Augustiniennes, 34 (1988), 25–38. He recapitulated his arguments in his edition of Gregory’s Lettres, pp. 18–23, with most of the bibliography on p. 19, n.1.

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tioch (autumn 377); Gregory returned to Nyssa at the end of 377; the Council of Antioch took place after Easter 378, probably in May; Gregory left Antioch to return to Cappadocia in June 378 and reached Pontus in July; Macrina’s death took place on 19 July134 378; Gregory returned to Nyssa in August 378 and spent more than a year in Nyssa dealing with the incursions of the heretics before the summons to Ibora. Dating for the events in Sebasteia is not very forthcoming, presumably early in 380.135 Other consequences follow for Basil’s and Gregory’s chronology. On the datum of eight full years for Basil’s episcopate, Basil’s election would necessarily have to be backdated to 369. The great famine was backdated likewise to 368, and Emmelia’s death likewise. Of the various historiographical problems involved in such a hypothesis, just one might be mentioned here. Jerome (De viris illustribus 116) attests that Basil died imperante Gratiano, that is, in the reign of Gratian. Jerome’s credentials as a contemporary historian in the area are very considerable. He was present in Antioch itself till 377 and in 381 made the personal acquaintance of Gregory Nazianzen and Gregory of Nyssa during the Council of Constantinople in 381. His testimony must be given full weight. Since he is consistent in recording the emperors of either the western or eastern Roman Empire according to whether the person whose death is being reported died in the eastern or western empire, this detail means only one thing: Basil died in the interval when Gratian was sole ruler of the empire, that is, between the death of Valens on 9 August 378 and the appointment of Theodosius as Augustus of the East on 19 January 379. Maraval’s hypothesis, however, caused ripples among scholars. The consternation and doubt can be seen in the appendix devoted to the topic in Rousseau’s 1994 book Basil of Caesarea, where he concluded: ‘Obscurities and suppositions abound; and one has to retain the feeling that an earlier date for Basil’s death is by no means finally established’.136 Nor was it by any means! In an admirable exercise of collaborative scholarly objectivity, Maraval himself contacted a specialist in the letters of St Basil, JeanRobert Pouchet OSB, and invited him to re-examine the question. In 1992 Pouchet

134

This is Macrina’s feast-day in all the menologies and synaxaries. Maraval considers that the date is confirmed by the fact that in VSM 21 Gregory rests in the shade of the trailing vines, which of course is incompatible with a date in December, as in Diekamp’s reckoning. 135 136

On these latter events, see Maraval, Vie, pp. 28–31.

Rousseau, Basil of Caesarea, Appendix III, ‘The Date of Basil’s Death and of the Hexaemeron’, pp. 360–63.

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published a major essay137 in which he re-examined the internal evidence of Basil’s letters, and argued at length that Basil’s Letter 48 to Eusebius of Samosata contains enough data in itself to establish that Basil was elected Bishop of Caesarea in September 370 at about the same time that Demophilus was elected the (Homoian) Bishop of Constantinople.138 Eight full years of episcopacy and very little more139 lead Pouchet to a date in late September 378 for Basil’s death. Though he disproved Maraval’s dating of Basil’s death to August 377, Pouchet did agree with him that Gregory’s Encomium on his Brother140 which is concerned with the promotion of Basil’s memorial day on 1 January, does not necessarily imply that it was the actual anniversary of his death. Among all the reasons Gregory gives for holding this celebration on this day, he never mentions that it was the day of Basil’s death, surely a prime consideration if it were in fact the case. Martyrs were commemorated on the day of their confession, and Basil did not die a martyr. Indeed he must have been one of the very first non-martyrs to receive a canonical feast-day. Pouchet takes into full account the liturgical evidence for Macrina’s death on 19 July, and Gregory’s description in the VSM 21.2 of his sitting outside in the shade of the trellis vines on the eve of her death. This of course would render a date in November or December quite impossible. Again in agreement with Maraval, Gregory’s statement (VSM 17.1) that the bishops broke up their meeting before the year had passed by must refer not to the Roman year but the local Seleucid year of Antioch which began on 1 October. His proposed chronology is as follows: Basil’s election as bishop Basil’s death Beginning of the Council of Antioch End of the council

mid-September 370 20 September 378 21 May 379 21 June 379

137

Jean Robert Pouchet, ‘La Date de l’election épisopale de saint Basile et celle de sa mort’, Revue d’histoire ecclésiastique, 87 (1992), 5–33. 138

In this Pouchet was not advancing something new. He names on p. 14 many authors of the last three centuries who noted the synchronicity of Basil’s and Demophilus’s elections. He cites Tillemont to say: ‘We do not see any other means of understanding Letter 254 (i.e. 48 in the Benedictine numeration) of Saint Basil [. . .] without placing his election in 370.’ 139

The evidence for this is Gregory Nazianzen’s Epigram 10b, and VSM 16.2, where Gregory says ‘Eight years having passed after this [his election], at the ninth year (ôè ¦íÜôå ¦íéáõôè)’ he died. Since this latter phrase lacks a qualifying phrase typically used elsewhere by Gregory, such as ‘or a little more’, it means the ninth year has advanced but little. 140

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In Basilium fratrem (eulogy for his brother Basil), GNO, X .1, 109–34.

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Gregory leaves Antioch for Cappadocia Gregory arrives in Cappadocia Gregory leaves for Annisa in Pontus He arrives in Annisa Macrina’s death

22 June 379 7 July 379 8 July 379 (about midday) 18 July 379 (in the evening) 19 July 379

Other articles followed, not all of them noting the details of Pouchet’s assessment.141 Maraval himself published a summary article in 2004 reviewing the whole question.142 He had long retracted his earlier position, and did so again here, putting on record his essential agreement with Pouchet’s arguments. In my considered judgement, Pouchet’s thesis, now endorsed by Maraval, is sound. More than that, it is elegant: most of the pieces fall into place naturally and without strain. It would have been good to find cogent fresh argument for the traditional dating of Basil’s death on 1 January 379, but, with all the best will possible in that direction, it must be conceded that Pouchet’s chronology most satisfactorily and comprehensively answers all the major questions concerning the date of Basil’s election as bishop, his last correspondence, Gregory of Nyssa’s journeys, and the date of Macrina’s death. Thankfully, Pouchet’s case for redating Basil’s death is far less drastic than that of Maraval’s in 1988. He brings it forward little more than three months from the traditional dating. Most importantly, a date of late September 378 remains within the narrow window of Gratian’s reign as sole ruler of the empire both West and East. For the purposes of Macrina’s chronology here, we will accept that Valens withdrew his hostility to the neo-Nicene exiles around the time he left Antioch in the spring of 378, that the return of the exiles was probably happening in a piecemeal fashion until given impetus by Gratian’s formal edict in August, that Gregory returned to Nyssa sometime during the summer, or at least by its end, only to wait on Basil’s dying weeks and days, that Basil died in late September, that the council of the neo-Nicene bishops in Antioch took place in May/June 379, and that Macrina died on 19 July 379.

141

For example, T. D. Barnes, ‘The Collapse of the Homoeans in the East’, Studia Patristica, 29 (1997), 3–16. Barnes fails to engage some important points of the debate, but usefully restates the case for dating Valens’s departure from Antioch to spring 378. 142

Pierre Maraval, ‘Retour sur quelques dates concernant Basile de Césarée et Grégoire de Nysse’, Revue d’histoire ecclésiastique, 99 (2004), 153–57.

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From the Earthly Order to Heavenly Citizenship Peter Brown, in a brilliant line, says ‘From her retreat in Pontos, ten days’ journey from Caesarea, Macrina presided over the disintegration of a civic dynasty.’143 That is one modern judgement — from a this-worldly perspective so to speak. From her own intensely anagogical perspective, however, Macrina presided over the patient but thoroughgoing transposition of the natural order into an ‘angelic’ order, whose citizenship (ðïëßôgõìá) was in heaven (Philippians 3. 20).144 That is, what Macrina began with was an aristocratic family household of Pontus, already firmly committed to the Christian faith, and by her own personal ascetic transformation, and by her influence on her mother and her brothers, she gradually remade this earthly household till it became a model of the Christian cenobitic monastery wholly oriented toward the life that is to come, an advance colony of ‘the angelic life’ still on earth. Gregory of Nyssa himself looks back on these spiritual transformations of his own family, achieved through the 350s and 360s, in his On Virginity. This earliest of his works was written probably in 371, in the interval between Basil’s Small Asketikon and the later editions of the Asketikon. His second-last visit to his sister was about the same period as his writing of this book and his ordination as a bishop (late 371). It can be safely extrapolated back from the scenes recorded between them in the VSM that Gregory had at an earlier time sat at his sister’s feet to share discourse on the Christian ascetic and spiritual life. Her teaching and inspiration, along of course with Basil’s, may be considered the ‘ground’ of Gregory’s On Virginity. Once the reader is alerted to the possibility of Macrina’s implicit presence, allusions to his sister almost leap from the page, just as we shall argue for her latent presence in all Basil’s energetic words in defence of female virginity and asceticism. Here then is Gregory, spiritually rereading his family’s history, re-educating himself about the whole meaning of family by looking at his sister’s course, as she mounted from the best that the earthly order had to offer, by a series of gradated departures to the incorruptible Bridegroom: The person planning a spiritual marriage will [. . .] show that he is from a family that is rich in the way that is most desirable, a family respected not because of its earthly possessions,

143 144

Peter Brown, The Body and Society (London: Faber & Faber, 1989), p. 278.

Basil cites the text in LR 5.2, 8.3, Letter 207 (Deferrari, III, 186–87), and Homily on Psalm 45 (PG 29.416–32 (col. 421C), and in Saint Basil: Exegetical Works, trans. by Agnes Clare Way (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 1963), pp. 297–309 (p. 302)). The Church as ‘polis’ is a theme of this homily and also in Homily on Psalms 59.

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General Introduction but because of the abundance of its heavenly treasures. Such a person will not pride himself on having a family that is looked up to because of the good fortune which comes automatically to many, even to the foolish, but the good fortune that comes from the toil and effort of one’s own accomplishments, which only they achieve who are sons of the light (I Thessalonians 5. 5) and children of God (cf. John 1. 12) and called well-born from the risings of the sun (Isaiah 41. 25) through their luminous deeds. He will not concern himself with his bodily strength or his appearance or with exercising his body or fattening his flesh, but quite the opposite; he will perfect the power of the spirit in the weakness of the body. I know the dowry in this wedding does not consist of corruptible things but of what is given us as a gift from the special wealth of the soul [. . .]. It is clear that the eagerness for this kind of marriage is common to both men and women alike, for since, as the apostle says: There is neither male nor female (Galatians 3. 28) and Christ is all things to all human beings (cf. I Corinthians 15. 28), the true lover of wisdom has as his goal the Divine One who is true wisdom and the soul, cleaving to the incorruptible Bridegroom, has a love of true Wisdom which is God.145

145 De virginitate, GNO, VIII.1, 247–343; translation from Woods Callahan, pp. 63–64, slightly adapted. On the closing part of the quotation, see the comments of Stramara, ‘Double Monasticism in the Greek East’. p. 287.

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T ESTIMONIES OF S T B ASIL THE G REAT

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B

asil does not expressly mention his sister in any of his surviving works. Indeed this is surprising and a matter of considerable regret. That sister and brother must have exchanged letters we need have little doubt. One possible occasion, for example, is outlined in the notes to Letter 46 below. Any number of unknown circumstances, however, might explain this gap in the surviving record. Other examples of such gaps occur. Though Basil and Gregory certainly mention their mother, nowhere do they actually name her. We only learn that from the epigrams of Gregory Nazianzen. Though there was a lifelong correspondence between Gregory Nazianzen and Gregory of Nyssa, not a single letter from the younger Gregory to the elder survives, nor for that matter any letter Gregory wrote to his brother Basil. Consider for example the period 376–78, when Gregory was in hiding. The imperial authorities did not know where he was, but Basil knew and was in regular contact with him by letter, and knew his state of mind.1 Caution therefore is indicated when interpreting such apparent silence in the available sources. Nevertheless, we should not imagine that there is nothing in Basil’s writings to cast light on Macrina’s life and work. Several texts refer to Macrina implicitly, especially when Basil defends and praises women in the ascetic life, or depicts the ideal cenobitic community. Basil in his time was the great champion of feminine virginity and asceticism as a lifelong vocation in the Church, and in this context we should keep in mind the degree to which the example of Macrina informs his writing in this sphere. A selection of these passages follows below. It begins with excerpts from his Homily on Psalm 44, which sets the tone of his scriptural and 1

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See Letter 231 (Deferrari, III, 358–63; Silvas, Gregory, pp. 85–66).

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theological thinking on the life of virginity for the Lord. This is followed by a passage from his Introductory Sketch of the Ascetic Life. Then follows the entire Letter 46, To a Fallen Virgin, in which he describes three generations of women in a family astonishingly like his own. If it is his family, then this letter is the most direct reference to his sister that survives. It also lifts the veil on something of a family scandal. Basil wrote several letters during a retreat at Annisa in 376, and from these two important excerpts from Letters 207 and 210 are included here. Finally there is Letter 315 on a female relative who is a proestosa (superior) taking care of orphans. There are other letters besides those included here that touch on either Annisa or Macrina. There is the very early and rather curious Letter 3, To Candidianus,2 dating from the late 350s, in which Basil writes to an official seeking intervention over the thuggery of a former household servant at Annisa. In fact this is our only source for the name of the family’s country estate which became Macrina and Peter’s monastery. As a letter expressing Basil’s own high social and cultural standing (before he was ever a priest or a bishop), and as a specimen of his exercise of patronage, it should be compared with the much later Letter 315 included below, in which he supports the appeal for tax relief on the part of the female superior of a house who is caring for orphans. In Letter 216 to Meletius of Antioch,3 Basil looks back on his visit to Annisa in 376 and mentions his brother Peter by name, the only occasion he does so, unless the name is a gloss that has crept into the text of several manuscripts: ‘And we went as far as the little house of Peter our brother, which, due to its proximity to the region of Neocaesarea gave cause for much trouble to the people there, and brought on us the occasion of much insult. For they took to flight when no one was in pursuit, and we were reckoned to be intruding ourself among them uninvited in desire of their praise.’ If we take the collection of testimonies below and grant the possibility or the likelihood that Letter 46 does in fact refer to a sister of Basil and Macrina, and that Letter 315 refers to Macrina, we can sum up what we can learn of Macrina from Basil as follows: Macrina, in Gregory of Nyssa’s account, led the family’s already deeply Christian impulses to a new level with her commitment to virginity and asceticism. Her second brother Naucratius was the first to attempt something along her lines, and

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2

Deferrari, I, 24–29.

3

Deferrari, III, 238–41.

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her last brother, Peter, was brought up entirely disposed towards the ascetic and monastic vocation. Emmelia herself was eventually persuaded to follow her daughter’s example. Again, on Gregory’s testimony, Macrina even led their illustrious brother Basil to quit the path of a secular career and embrace the life of virginity and asceticism. The fact that Eustathius of Sebasteia was also a significant influence on Basil and on all the family in ascetic matters was edited out in Gregory of Nyssa’s record of events. We may be sure that in the early period of Basil’s asceticism, 356–62, there was a cross-fertilization of ideas and spiritual witness between Eustathius, Macrina, and Basil. It is quite anachronistic to extrapolate Basil’s later pre-eminence backwards into this period and imagine that only he could be the teacher and Macrina a disciple. We have argued earlier that the final synthesis of Annisa as a comprehensive monastic adelphotes (fraternity) including a house for men and for women was probably achieved at the time of Peter’s profession in about 362, towards the end of Basil’s first ascetic period. We can reasonably infer this from the fact that the features of Macrina’s community recoverable from the VSM may already be discerned in Basil’s Small Asketikon, which reflects the state of monastic teaching in Pontus in about 365. For if Macrina led the way, it was Basil’s part, through the opportunities of his superb education, his aristocratic social standing, and his commitment to participation in the Church at large, to say nothing of his own extraordinary qualities, to articulate the spirit of Christian virginity and asceticism. Under his name and leadership the ascetic movement of central and eastern Anatolia was reformed and adapted and eventually given canonical status in the greater Church as cenobitic monasticism. Basil was the great champion of feminine ascetic endeavour and consecration to the Lord. He affirms that women have surpassed men in the pursuit of piety, that in the sphere of the soul there is no question of a ‘stronger’ and ‘weaker’ sex. In his spirited defence of female asceticism one cannot but feel that the person of Macrina and the example of Annisa inform all that he has to say. His descriptions of the life lived in the communities of virgins are without doubt glimpses of the lifestyle established under Macrina’s governance at Annisa. Basil deepened the theology of female asceticism by giving it an ecclesiological context: dedicated virgins participated in and exemplified the role of the Church as the Bride of Christ. We find that the very terms of his discourse on female asceticism are later taken up by Gregory of Nyssa in the VSM and his other writings. Basil also strengthened the canonical provisions for female asceticism in the Church — and for male asceticism for that matter, being the first to institute a formal vow for monks in the imitation of the practice of the virgins.

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Though Macrina is never mentioned, and Annisa only once, both she and the community we know under that name were close to Basil’s heart. He appears to have ordained Peter a priest as soon as he had the opportunity, thereby affording the community more generous access to the divine liturgy. Towards the end of his life he describes how he gladly retired to Annisa for a retreat and speaks gratefully of his adelphon (genitive plural) there, meaning at the very least both Peter and Macrina. This was almost certainly his last visit to the place which was as it were the fountainhead of the monasticism that has come down in the Church under Basil’s name. His letters also reveal difficulties and strains in the life of ascetic endeavour at Annisa, tempering some of the idealism of Gregory of Nyssa’s portrayal. They appear to have had a young sister who was initially drawn to the virginal life, gave herself to it, but later foreswore it and absconded with an ‘abductor’/lover. In this letter we have a testimony to his grandmother Macrina the Elder, his mother Emmelia, and his sister who eclipsed them all, Macrina the Younger. Basil supports Macrina’s urgent appeal to the young woman in what is a spiritually powerful and very eloquent letter indeed. Another letter seems to show us how the supposedly tranquil life of the communities endured the strains of coming to the rescue of orphans, and the necessity of Basil’s own ongoing role of social patronage and intercession before provincial officials. There were after all political and economic exigencies to living the heavenly citizenship on earth. In conclusion, it cannot be safely deduced that because Macrina’s name does not chance to appear in Basil’s extant writings that he in some way thought less of her or was too busy to think of his venerable sister and his brother Peter and the community at Annisa. The above evidence shows that throughout Basil’s labours for the churches they remained close to his mind and heart.

Homily on Psalm 44, Excerpts4 Psalm 44, originally a royal wedding song, offered a rich spousal imagery to Christian discourse on the spiritual life. Basil interprets the ‘daughter of the king’ as a figure of the Church as the Bride of Christ (Ephesians 5. 32). It is in the train of this Bride, and only in her train, that those who dedicate their virginity to the Lord

4 The text is translated from PG 29.387–414 (cols 409–12). See also Saint Basil: Exegetical Works, trans. by Agnes Clare Way (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 1963), pp. 297–309 (pp. 293–94).

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rightly find their place and gain a privileged access to the inmost shrines of the King’s temple. Here is the spirituality of ‘hiddenness’, of a secret interiority, of desiring only to be known to the Father, that is reported of Macrina in VSM 13.4, 24.5. Here too we find the discourse of ‘defiled’/‘undefiled’ applied to the virgin. In this conception, for a woman to lose her physical integrity, in whatever circumstance, legitimate or not, means that her body/person is ‘defiled’, even ‘corrupted’; to maintain her physical integrity is to preserve herself ‘undefiled’, all of which becomes but a starting point for higher spiritual realities. In his exegesis of Scripture Basil applies to the Christian virgin the levitical distinctions of cleanness/ uncleanness, consecrated use/profane use in temple service (e.g. Leviticus 10. 10, Exodus 22. 26, 44. 23), of the anointing of vessels for service in the sanctuary (Exodus 40. 9. Leviticus 8. 11, Leviticus 22. 15 (The priest shall not profane the holy things), II Chronicles 5. 5, 24. 14, and especially I Chronicles 22. 19), and the command that only unblemished offerings were acceptable as offerings to the Lord (e.g. Leviticus 22. 21). The positive principle was that all vessels used in the sanctuary were to be dedicated and hallowed (e.g. Exodus 30. 25–29 (v. 28), 38. 3, 40. 10, and Numbers 8. 3). The most positive statement about distinguishing between the holy and the common in Temple worship seems to be Leviticus 10. 9–11. For the principle that nothing consecrated should afterwards be returned to profane use see Leviticus 27. 28: ‘For indeed nothing polluted is acceptable among the gifts dedicated (to God) and it is impious and intolerable to return what has once been dedicated to God to common and human usage’ (cf. SR 53). See also SR 310. Thus the virgin’s physical integrity means she is ‘unblemished’, not subject to ‘profane’ use; it is meant to be a privileged if external sign of an inner consecration, from which it takes all its value. 11. All the glory of the King’s daughter is within;5 she is robed and adorned with golden borders. The virgins shall be brought to the King after her (Psalm 44. 14–15). Now that she has been purified of the former doctrines of wickedness, and, heeding the instruction, has forgotten her people and her father’s house (Psalm 44. 10), the Holy Spirit relates what concerns her. Since he saw the purity hidden within, he says: All the glory of the King’s daughter, that is to say, of Christ’s Bride who has become henceforth by adoption daughter of the King, is within. This word allows us to penetrate to the inmost mysteries of the Church’s glory, because the beauty 5 Аóá º äüîá èõãáôñÎò ôïØ âáóéëÝùò §óùègí. Basil follows closely the Alexandrine version of the Septuagint, which uses the word §óùègí (‘within’). The passage in this form had a great future in Christian writing on the spiritual life.

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of the Bride is within. Anyone who adorns himself for the Father who sees in secret (Matthew 6. 6), and who prays and who performs all his deeds not in order to be seen by human beings but to be manifest to God alone (cf. Matthew 6. 1–6), such a one has all his glory within, even as the King’s daughter [. . .]. Certain souls, since they have not accepted the seeds of alien words, follow the Bride of the Lord. They shall be led to the King since they follow the Bride. Let those also who have promised their virginity to the Lord hear that virgins will be led to the King, but virgins who stay close to the Church, who follow after her and do not stray from the Church’s good order. The virgins shall be escorted in gladness and exultation, they shall be brought into the temple of the King (Psalm 44. 16). Not those who assume virginity under constraint, or those who accept the reverent life6 through grief or necessity, but those who in gladness and exultation rejoice at so upright a proposal — it is these who will be brought to the King and they will be brought not into some insignificant place, but into the temple of the King. For it is the sacred vessels which human use has not defiled, that will be brought into the holy of holies, and they will have the right of entrance into the innermost shrines, where unhallowed feet do not tread. And how great a thing it is to be brought into the temple of the King the prophet shows when he prays for himself and says: One thing I have asked of the Lord, for this I will seek, that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, that I may see the delight of the Lord and behold his temple (Psalm 26. 4).

Introductory Sketch of the Ascetic Life, Excerpt7 The primary image of Christ employed by St Basil here is that of the king. Christians are soldiers on campaign under the standard of Christ the King; from this metaphor he derives many implications for their conduct: travelling light, bearing privations, freedom from the attractions and the cares of domestic life. In persuading to celibacy another image of Christ comes to the fore: that of Bridegroom (Matthew 9. 15, John 3. 29, Revelation 19. 7, etc.). Basil then turns his attention to women who, he insists, are as worthy combatants in this type of warfare as men, and some, indeed, have surpassed them. At the end of this selection Basil encourages parents to bring children as oblates to the community, or at least place them

6 7

ôÎí ógìíÎí âßïí, not easy to translate in modern English: the august, dignified, sacred life.

Translated from Praevia insitutio ascetica, PG 31.619–26 (col. 621); see also William K. Lowther Clarke, trans., The Ascetic Works of St Basil (London: SPCK, 1925), pp. 55–59.

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there for their pious education with a view to the monastic life. The context is the type of comprehensive community of which we see glimpses in VSM 18 and 40 and is seen in greatest detail in Basil’s LR 15. It is a fraternity encompassing separate houses for men, women, and children. Here, at the very end, Basil seems to be suggesting that the parents might offer themselves along with their children. He discusses in LR 12 the issues of spouses who wish to join a monastic community. [. . .] The prize of valour, and the crown of one who has lived a life of noble accomplishments, is to be entrusted with governance, to be called the King’s friend, to stand near to him, to be honoured at his right hand, to be pre-eminent among his subjects, to intercede for his friends outside for whatever they seek. Come then soldier of Christ, take these small lessons from human affairs and consider well the eternal blessings. Set before yourself a life without house, city, or possessions. Be freed then, be quit of all worldly cares. Do not let the yearning for a woman bind you, or the thought of children. For in the divine warfare this may not be. For the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh, but powerful before God (II Corinthians 10. 4). Do not let bodily nature overcome you or thwart you against your will, making you a prisoner rather than free. Do not seek to leave children on earth but to lead them to heaven, nor seek to be joined in bodily unions. Reach out rather for spiritual ones, to govern souls and to beget spiritual children. Imitate the heavenly Bridegroom [. . .]. But this subject does not concern men only. The female too joins the campaign at Christ’s side, being enrolled in the campaign thanks to her virility8 of soul, rejected in no way for weakness of body. Many women have excelled not one whit less than men. Indeed some have proved themselves even more outstanding. Among their number are those who fill the choir of virgins.9 From their number are those who have shone resplendently in the contests of confession and in the victories of martyrdom. For the Lord himself, when he came, was not only followed by men, but also by women, and both sexes ministered to the Saviour.10

8

øõ÷éê± •íäñgߑ. ‘Bravery or courage’ might translate the word, but here Basil is specifically stressing ‘manliness’, ‘virility’. It is his way of saying that in the arena of the soul there need be no distinctions of a ‘stronger’ or ‘weaker’ sex. 9

ðáñègíßáò . . . ôÎí ÷ïñüí. The phrase appears several times in the VSM. See 18.3 and note.

10

äéz •ìöïôÝñùí º ëgéôïõñãßá ôïØ óùô­ñïò ¦ðgôgëgÃôï, lit. ‘liturgy (service) of the Saviour was paid by both of them’.

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Since such glorious rewards are laid up for those who campaign under Christ, let both the fathers of sons desire such service and the mothers of daughters too. Let them bring forward their offspring, rejoicing in the eternal hopes in which their children will be partakers, desiring to have champions with Christ and good ambassadors. And let us not be anxious about the children or apprehensive if they have to toil, but rejoice that they will be glorified. Let us present to the Lord what was given by him anyway, that we may become sharers in our children’s glory, bringing and presenting ourselves along with them [. . .].11

Letter 46, To a Fallen Virgin 12 This letter was reckoned by the Benedictine editors among the letters of Basil’s presbyterate. This is also the judgement of Fedwick.13 According to Elm, however, the content indicates a date after Basil’s ordination in 370.14 The possibility that the addressee of the letter is a sister of St Basil was mentioned in passing both by Elm and Rousseau.15 More affirmative are Maraval, Hauschild (several times), and Pouchet, who all agree that the addressee is probably a sister, while Pouchet even suggests that Gregory of Nyssa is the author.16 The passage giving rise to such speculation is 2d where Basil lists the women of the fallen virgin’s immediate family. Her grandmother is both venerable and vigorous in her Christian commitment; the mother strives to emulate her, but it is a struggle for her to change from her former ways to the life of ascetic piety, while the sister of the fallen virgin surpasses both mother and grandmother through her choice of virginity and indeed seems to be appealing through Basil for her little sister to return. The majority text in 3b also confirms that at the time of her

11

óõìðñïóÜãïíôgò ©áõôï×ò êá óõìðáñéóôäíôgò.

12

Translated from Courtonne, I, 115–25; see also Deferrari, I, 282–311.

13

Peter Fedwick, The Church and the Charisma of Leadership in Basil of Caesarea (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1979), p. 141. 14

Elm, p. 142

15

Elm, p. 144, n. 21; Rousseau, Basil of Caesarea, p. 9, n. 23.

16

Pierre Maraval, ‘Encore les frères et soeurs de Grégoire de Nysse’, Revue d’histoire et de philosophie religieuses, 60 (1980), 161–66 (p. 165); Wolf-Dieter Hauschild, ed. and trans., Briefe / Basilius von Caesarea, vol. II (Stuttgart: Anton Hiersemann, 1990), pp. 193 nn. 232, 234; Jean Robert Pouchet, Basile le Grand et son univers d’amis d’après sa correspondance: Une stratégie de communion (Rome: Institutum Patristicum, 1992), pp. 583–84.

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original choice for virginity the young woman’s father was already dead and her mother was head of the household. So many circumstances that all accord precisely with what we know of Macrina the Elder, Emmelia, and Macrina the Younger! That another family might share so many of the same features is perhaps to beg too much of coincidence. ‘The similarities are indeed startling’, admitted Elm, though she dismissed the identification of Basil’s family as ‘a far-fetched possibility’.17 This possibility, however, needs further probing. A first objection might be this: how can Basil be the fallen virgin’s brother, when he never refers to so obvious a relationship? This is not at all strange, because he is much her senior and also the eldest male of siblings whose father has long since died. Socially this already puts him into a paternal role towards his younger siblings. Moreover, the all-important role of the father in choosing a spouse for his daughter and authorizing the marriage should be recalled. In Roman law a marriage was not valid without a father’s authority, and it may be that Basil feels that his responsibilities in loco parentis towards the girl have been violated.18 Building on this domestic and social reality is Basil’s role as a spiritual father. Both Gregory of Nyssa and Peter consistently refer to Basil as their ‘father’ and never as their brother, although it is worth noting that Basil is never styled this way in relation to Macrina. Basil’s paternity therefore is not just on the natural level as their eldest brother, but derives from his attested charism as a father of monks and virgins, enlarged later by his office as Metropolitan of Caesarea. That this is his spiritual relationship to the present addressee is evident in the whole tone of the letter. He lavishes all the resources of his own spiritual life and rhetorical skill at considerable length on this young woman. He is passionately concerned for her spiritual destiny. But it becomes even clearer in 3b–f, when Basil speaks of the two Pauls. The first is the Apostle Paul, but the second really seems to be Basil himself. The notion that he may be speaking of some other priest with the literal name ‘Paul’ is a little crass. We are into metaphor and analogy here. By speaking of himself as a second ‘Paul’, Basil means that he has played towards the young woman the same role of nymphagogue that the apostle played towards the Church as the Bride of Christ. Basil is or was the girl’s nymphagogue leading her to Christ the Bridegroom.

17 18

Elm, p. 144, n. 21.

Basil in Letter 199, Canon 42, Deferrari, III, 102–35 (pp. 128–29) states an important principle: ‘marriages without the consent of superiors (ôäí êñáôïýíôùí, i.e. those with authority, Clark, p. 15: ‘the power-holders’) are fornications.’

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But how does this fit in to what we know of the situation of the siblings in VSM 7.1, 7.4, 8.1, and Gregory Nazianzen’s epigrams, especially Epigram 161? There were five sisters, some of whom were married. Macrina the first-born is accounted for. I have argued at length elsewhere that though Gregory of Nyssa did indeed marry and may even have had a son (Cynegius), his wife was not the Theosebia of Nazianzen’s Letter 191.19 She is named there as his sister in ‘bodily kinship’. I have suggested that she was sent by Macrina as a spiritual help to their brother in Nyssa as he adjusted to his new vocation of bishop, he by that time being a widower. Allow then that two of the five sisters have elected virginity: Macrina and Theosebia. Are we now to suppose that we have here a third who had at least commenced and journeyed some way on this path? That would leave only two sisters married, or possibly three if the addressee of this letter ignored Basil’s appeal and continued with her abductor as her husband. Nothing should be made of Gregory’s silence in the VSM as to the existence of such a fallen sister. Indeed it is not from him that we learn of his own comparative ‘fall from grace’. One has only to think of his exclusion of Eustathius of Sebasteia from the family chronicle to be on one’s guard against arguments from silence. It is true that the impression of VSM 7.1 and 15 is that, of Emmelia’s children, only Macrina continued the virginal life at Annisa and only Macrina and Peter were present at her death. But our sources are too patchy and uncorroborated to allow us to make firm inferences. Any number of unknown circumstances may have accounted for the absence of other siblings. A case in point is the sorry mischance of Peter’s absence from Macrina’s death and funeral (VSM 18.1). Besides, one has the impression that in some of his summary statements, Gregory elides many details we would have been very glad to learn about. A process of rhetorical refinement and enhancement is at work, not so much erring in what is said of Macrina, but in what is said or not said in a range of ancillary details. To record adversities courageously born was very much to

19

The issue is studied in depth in Silvas, Gregory, in the chapters ‘Was Gregory Married?’, ‘Further Soundings in On Virginity’, and ‘Gregory’s Marriage: A Scenario’, pp. 15–25. That Gregory had married is clear, not only from the text of On Virginity, Ch. 3, but also from his second edition of the work in which he added a title to Ch. 3 which states explicitly that he was not unmarried. But his wife was not Theosebia. She was his ascetic sister. See the notes prefacing Gregory Nazianzen’s Letter 197, Silvas, Gregory, pp. 98–101 (pp. 98–99). Soundings in On Virginity suggest that Gregory was probably a widower at the time of writing, and that his wife may have died in tragic circumstances, perhaps at her first confinement. On Cynegius, see Gregory’s Letters 13 and 14. The suggestion that he may have been Gregory’s son in the flesh was made by Jean Danielou, in ‘Le Mariage de Grégoire de Nysse et la chronologie de sa vie’, in Revue des études Augustinennes, 2 (1956), 71–78 (p. 76).

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Gregory’s purpose, but to record moral black spots, defections or painful mistakes in his family’s history certainly was not. Allowing then, that this letter is addressed to a sister of Macrina, Basil, Gregory, and Peter, what kind of scenario can be envisaged in her case? She is clearly one of the youngest children, possibly the last before Peter, born in the early 340s. We have argued earlier that if Peter was born in about 345, he would have been nearing the minimum age for profession in the early 360s, and that this in fact precipitated the final development of Annisa into a fully fledged monastery. This young sister, perhaps the youngest, may have reached a similar stage only a little earlier, say around the year 360. Basil himself is there at Annisa, not in the villa with his mother and sister but in the retreat on the Iris. He has immersed himself in prayer, in dredging the Scriptures and working out a spiritual way forward not only for his private ascetic life, but also in the form of a scripturally attested ascetic life valid for the Church at large. Though not a priest, he already has a role of spiritual preeminence. This is the period in which he would have exercised his spiritual influence over his little sister, encouraging her interest in not following some of her older sisters into the common life of marriage but her eldest sister in the higher course of virginity. At length she made a public profession or confession (2c) of this life choice. In late 362 Basil travelled down to Caesarea for the death of Bishop Dianius, and in the aftermath of the election of the new bishop, was himself ordained to the presbyterate. One can well imagine the writing of this letter at just this period, that is, 362–63. His little sister has already experienced the ‘turbulence of [the] passions’ (3d). She is young, she has had a rocky ride trying to negotiate her sexual longings in the virginal life. Now without her masterful older brother to help, and ignoring or hiding her intentions from her sister, she loses her grip and enters into a scheme with an unscrupulous adventurer, probably a kinsman with whom, apparently, she has been able to exchange letters (2h). They resort to an old expedient for bypassing domestic and social strictures — abduction, or what we might call elopement — and she flees the community of virgins to live with the man. Macrina is very distressed and tries to reason with her: ‘both by her word and by her life, she earnestly summons you, her sister as she thought, to a rivalry of like effort’ (2d), but can make no headway with her. She writes to her brother, now in Caesarea, asking him to intervene with their little sister The following impassioned letter is the result. We know absolutely nothing of the outcome. Alternatively one might date the letter a very few years later, after Basil’s return to Caesarea in late 365. In that case there would have been greater opportunities for the young woman to have received spiritual guidance from Basil during his ministry in Pontus from 363 to 365.

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Quite apart from the potential historiographical value for Basil’s siblings and for Macrina in particular, this spiritually charged letter is of also of great value for Basil’s ‘theology’ (which amounts to scriptural exegesis) of vocational virginity and asceticism for Christian women. It surely conveys to us something of the thought world of Macrina’s community and describes some of the practices of the virgins there. In Letter 199, Canon 1820 Basil addresses the issue of foresworn virgins. He gives a definition of ‘virgin’: ‘but we must agree beforehand on this, that she is called a virgin who has willingly attached herself to the Lord, renounced marriage and preferred the life of holiness’. He takes the opportunity to institute graver ecclesiastical penalties for the forswearing of dedicated virginity than had generally been the custom; henceforth such an offence is to be regarded as the equivalent of adultery. He nominates a minimum age for the profession of virginity: sixteen or seventeen years, and that only after much testing. 1a. Now is the occasion to cry out with the prophet’s words and say: Who will give water to my head and a fountain of tears to my eyes that I may weep for the wounded of the daughter of my people ( Jeremiah 9. 1). Though deep silence envelops them and they lie stunned once for all by the dreadful event and are removed by the terrible blow from all perception of their fate, yet we, at any rate, must not pass over so great a fall without a tear. 1b. For if Jeremiah considered that those whose bodies were struck in battle were worthy of a myriad lamentations, what ever shall one say of such a disaster to souls? Your wounded, it says, are not wounded by swords, your dead are not dead by battle (Isaiah 22. 2). No, it is the sting of the real death, that is, harsh sin which I lament (cf. I Corinthians 15. 55–56), the flaming darts of the Evil One (Ephesians 6. 16), which have savagely set souls on fire as well as bodies. 1c. Surely the laws of God would groan aloud on seeing such a pollution on earth, those laws which have ever forbidden and cried out of old: You shall not covet your neighbour’s wife (Deuteronomy 5. 21), and through the holy Gospels, Whoever shall look upon a woman to lust after her, has already committed adultery with her in his heart (Matthew 5. 28). They now behold the very Bride of the Master21 yielding herself without fear to adultery. 1d. Yes, the very spirits22 of the saints would groan: the zealous Phinehas, that even now he cannot take his spear in hand again and 20

Deferrari, III, 102–35 (pp. 104–09).

21

One fourteenth-century manuscript adds, ‘she whose head is Christ (Ephesians 5. 23)’. Basil at any rate conflates the figure of the Church as the Bride of Christ and the figure of the individual consecrated virgin. On this theme see Homily on Psalm 44 above. 22

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avenge the outrage with bodily punishment (cf. Numbers 25. 6–8), and John the Baptist, that he cannot leave the abodes above as he once left the wilderness, and hasten to rebuke the violation of the law, and if he must suffer some penalty, lose his head rather than his candour of speech, 1e. or rather, it may be that John, like the blessed Abel, still speaks to us even in death (cf. Hebrews 11. 4), and may even now be crying out and shouting with louder voice than he did before concerning Herodias: It is not lawful for you to have her (Matthew 14. 4), and if John’s body has accepted the divinely appointed bounds according to the necessity of nature and his tongue is silent, still, the word of God is not bound (II Timothy 2. 9). For John pursued his candour of speech even to death when the marriage of a fellow-servant was violated. What then would he feel to see such an outrage as this which touches the holy bridal-chamber of the Lord? 2a. Yet you have cast off the yoke of that divine communion, you have fled the undefiled bridal-chamber of the true King and have fallen shamefully into this dishonourable and impious corruption.23 2b. And now that you can in no way escape this bitter charge and have no way or means of concealing the horror of it, you rush impetuously into bravado. Just as when someone impious falls into the pit of iniquity and from then on becomes contemptuous, you even deny your very pact with the Bridegroom,24 and you cry aloud that you neither are nor ever promised to be a virgin, and this though you accepted many pledges of virginity, and indeed offered many. 2c. Recall that good confession (I Timothy 6. 12) which you confessed before God and angels and human beings. Recall the solemn company, the sacred choir of virgins, the assembly of the Lord and the church of the saints. 2d. Recall your grandmother, grown old in Christ but still youthful and vigorous in virtue, and your mother vying with her in the Lord and struggling by strange and unfamiliar labours to break with the force of habit, and your sister, who likewise imitates them both, and yet strives even to surpass them, for indeed she, by the greater prize of virginity25 outstrips the achievements of her forebears. Both by her word and by her

23

öèïñí, or perhaps ‘seduction’. Basil may be referring quite concretely to the practice of abduction, which continued to be a social scourge throughout the fourth century. Abduction could sometimes be a mutual arrangement between the parties, in which case it were better termed ‘absconding’ or ‘elopement’. It was frequently used as a means of pre-empting the laws, financial liabilities, and protocols of marriage. Gregory refers to it in VSM 2.3. 24 25

Some manuscripts have ‘the true Bridegroom’.

ÔïÃò ðáñègíéêïÃò ðëgïígêôÞìáóéí ßðgñáêïíôéæïýóçò. Basil teaches the inherent superiority of dedicated virginity to other forms of dedicated life, all things being equal.

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life, she earnestly summons you, her sister as she thought, to a rivalry of like effort. 2e. Recall these, and the angelic choir around God with them, the spiritual life in the flesh and the heavenly citizenship on earth (cf. Philippians 3. 20). Recall the days free of tumult, the illumined nights, the spiritual songs, the resounding psalmody, the holy prayers, the undefiled bed, the frugal table, and the procession of virgins.26 2f. What has become of your dignified appearance, that reserved manner, that simple dress befitting a virgin, that beautiful blush of modesty, and that comely pallor which blooms through self-control and vigils and glows with a greater charm than any freshness of complexion? 2g. How often, when you prayed that you might preserve your virginity spotless, did you perhaps shed tears? How often did you pen letters to the holy, asking that prayers be offered by them for you, not that you might obtain a human marriage — or rather that dishonourable corruption27 — but that you might never fall away from the Lord Jesus? 2h. How often have you received gifts from your Bridegroom? What need is there to speak of the honours you received for his sake from his own, of the life you lived together with the virgins, of your processions with them, of the fellow-greetings you received from the virgins, of the commendations for your virginity, of the virginal blessings, of the letters written to you as a virgin? 2i. But now, when a slight gust of the spirit of the air has reached you, which even now is at work in the children of disobedience (cf. Ephesians 2. 2), you have become a denier of all these things and have exchanged that precious possession worth fighting for on every side, for a brief moment of pleasure, a pleasure which tickles your appetite for the moment but which you will one day find more bitter than gall. 3a. Who would not mourn over these things and say: How has the faithful city Zion become a harlot? (Isaiah 1. 21) How could the Lord himself not help but say to one of those now walking in the spirit of Jeremiah: ‘Have you seen what the virgin of Israel has done to me? ( Jeremiah 18. 13). I betrothed her to me in faithfulness, in purity, in justice, in judgement, in mercy, and in tenderness (Hosea 2. 19, 20), just

26

The order of the list differs in the manuscripts. Two manuscripts conclude the sentence: ‘and yourself offering the good prayer that your virginity be kept uncorrupted’. The thought recurs very shortly. 27

A most unfortunate statement if about marriage generally. It would contradict Hebrews 13. 4, of which Basil was well aware (Morals 69.2). But in the context Basil means that for anyone who has vowed himself or herself to virginity for the Lord publicly, and the act has been attested as such in the Church, any subsequent human, earthly marriage is a corruption of that prior commitment and consecration.

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as I promised her through the prophet Hosea. But she has given her love to strangers, and though I her husband am living, she conducts herself as an adulteress and does not fear to go over to another husband.’ 3b. What then of the nymphagogue,28 the divine and blessed Paul — I mean the Paul of old and this Paul of today, under whose mediation and instruction you left your mother’s house29 (cf. Psalm 44. 10) and were joined to the Lord? 3c. Would not either of them, in exceeding sorrow over so great a misfortune, say: ‘For the terror I feared has come upon me, and what I dreaded has befallen me ( Job 3. 25), for I espoused you to one husband, that I might present you as a chaste virgin to Christ (II Corinthians 11. 2), and, always I feared lest somehow, just as the Serpent beguiled Eve by his subtlety, your thoughts also might one day be corrupted? (II Corinthians 11. 3). 3d. For this reason I tried always to calm the turbulence of your passions by a myriad charms, and with a myriad safeguards to protect the Bride of the Lord. Always I tried to explain the life of the unmarried, that only the unmarried woman cares for the things of the Lord, how her life may be holy in body and spirit (I Corinthians 7. 34). 3e. And I used to set forth the high worth of virginity and, addressing you as the temple of God (I Corinthians 3. 16), gave wings as it were to your zeal, thus lifting you up to Jesus; and I tried to help you not to fall with the fear of the terrible possibility, saying If anyone violates the temple of God, him shall God destroy (I Corinthians 3. 17). Moreover, I added what assurance my prayers could offer, if in any way you might be preserved wholly blameless in body and soul and spirit, at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ (I Thessalonians 5. 23). 3f. Alas, I spent all this labour on you in vain, and bitter to me has been the outcome of those sweet labours, and instead I must lament over her in whom I should have rejoiced. For behold! you were indeed beguiled by the Serpent, and more bitterly than Eve was. 3g. For not only your thoughts have been corrupted (II Corinthians 11. 3), but with them your very body as well. And, most horrible of all — what I shudder to say and yet cannot pass over in silence, for it is as a fire burning in my bones, and my strength is utterly spent and I cannot bear it ( Jeremiah

28

Ò íõìöáãùãüò, the ‘leader of the bride’, who conducted the bride to the bridegroom’s home; sometimes also means a man who negotiates the marriage of a daughter on behalf of her widowed mother, quite pertinent in this case. 29

Two manuscripts have ‘your father’s house’, explicitly referring to Psalm 44. 10. Most manuscripts, however, register ‘your maternal home’, which in a sense is the lectio difficilior, since it alters the scriptural reference in an unusual way. If this is Basil’s sister, it means she abandoned the social rank of a daughter of the house for the common life of the virgins at Annisa. It was Macrina’s office to lead her own mother in the same direction (see VSM 13.2).

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20. 9): you took the members of Christ and made them the members of a harlot’ (I Corinthians 6. 15). 3h. Among all other vices this one is unique and without parallel. This is a new piece of effrontery in life. Pass over, it is said, to the isles of Kittim and see, and send into Kedar, consider diligently if anything has been done like this, if a nation has exchanged its gods for what indeed are no gods ( Jeremiah 2. 10–11). But the virgin has exchanged her glory for her shame (cf. Philippians 3. 19). At this the heaven was amazed, and the earth shuddered yet more violently. 3i. Surely the Lord says even now that the virgin has committed two evils, she has forsaken me (cf. Jeremiah 2. 11–12), the true and holy Bridegroom of holy souls, and has taken refuge with an impious and lawless corruptor of soul and body alike. She has revolted from God her Saviour and has yielded her members to serve uncleanness and iniquity (Romans 6. 19). She has forgotten me and gone after her paramour (Hosea 2. 13). 4a. It were better for him that a millstone be hanged about his neck and that he be cast into the sea, than he should cause the virgin of the Lord to stumble (cf. Luke 17. 2). Was an impudent slave ever so mad as to fling himself upon his master’s bed? What robber ever reached such a pitch of folly as to lay hands on the very offerings made to God — and not lifeless vessels, but living bodies, having an indwelling soul made after the image of God? Who in this age has been heard to have dared, in the heart of the city and at high noon, to engrave the forms of unclean swine upon a royal image? 4b. Anyone who violates a human marriage is put to death without pity if there are but two or three witnesses (cf. Deuteronomy 17. 6).30 How much more do 30

Adultery in Roman law was the sexual intercourse of a married woman with any man other than her husband. There was no concept of a husband’s adultery against his own wife; any sexual liaisons with unmarried women were stigmatized only as fornication. He committed adultery only with another married woman, and the offence was against her husband, or perhaps better, against that man’s marriage, not against his own. Basil’s statement on this issue was affected by Roman law and prevailing custom. See Letter 188, Canon 9, Deferrari, III, 4–47 (pp. 34–39), and Letter 199, Canon 21, Deferrari, II, 102–53 (pp. 112–13), in which he reluctantly reports the double standard for men and for women endorsed by Church custom. This un-Christian concession to custom was rebuked in a magnificent passage by St Gregory Nazianzen in Oratio 37.6, 7, 8, 10 (‘On Matthew 19.1–12’), NPNF2 , VII, 338–44 (pp. 339–41). As for capital punishment, Augustus’s Lex Iulia de adulteriis coercendis, which was aimed at tightening the marriage laws, had allowed a father to kill an adulterous daughter and her paramour if caught flagrante delicti in his or her husband’s house, and a husband might kill the paramour in similar circumstances, but not his wife (see Justinian’s Digest 48.5). Except for these cases of extreme provocation, however, the crime was not capital, though the penalties were severe. They were made severer still under the Christian emperors. Constantine made adultery a capital offence, which was confirmed by Justinian, Novellae 134.10.

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you think he deserves worse punishment who has trampled underfoot the Son of God, and defiled his professed Bride and outraged the spirit of virginity? (cf. Hebrews 10. 29). 4c. ‘But she wanted it,’ he says, ‘and I did not violate her against her will.’ In that case, what of that desperate mistress who of her own accord fell madly infatuated with the beautiful Joseph? All the same, the madness of the depraved woman did not defeat the virtue of the chaste man (cf. Genesis 39. 7–12). No, he was not forced into iniquity, not even when she laid violent hands on him. 4d. ‘But in her case,’ he replies, ‘the matter had been decided and she was no longer a virgin. And besides, if I had not been willing, she would have been corrupted by someone else.’31 Ah yes, but it has been said: it was necessary that the Son of Man be betrayed, yet woe to that man by whom he was betrayed! (cf. Matthew 26. 24), and, indeed scandals must come, but woe to that man by whom the scandal comes! (Matthew 18. 7) 5a. But then, shall one who falls not rise again, or one who has turned aside not turn back again? ( Jeremiah 8. 4) And why did the virgin turn aside in so reckless a turning, even though she heard Christ the Bridegroom declaring through Jeremiah: And I said, after she had committed all these fornications, ‘Turn again to me’, but she did not return ( Jeremiah 3. 7, Septuagint)? Is there no balm in Gilead; is there no physician there? Why then is the wound of the daughter of my people not healed? ( Jeremiah 8. 22). 5b. Many are the safeguards against evil which you may find in the divine Scripture, and many the medicines which bring salvation even out of destruction: the mysteries concerning death and resurrection, the sayings concerning the fearful judgement and everlasting punishment, the doctrines concerning repentance and forgiveness of sins, those myriad examples of turning back again: the lost drachma, the lost sheep, the son who wasted his substance on harlots, was lost and found again, was dead and brought back to life. Let us then make use of these aids against evil. With such remedies let us heal our souls. 5c. But pray take thought for your last day — for it shall not be your unique lot to live forever — the anguish, the struggle for breath, the hour of death, the imminent judgement of God, the angels hastening us on, the soul fearfully dismayed in the midst of it all, lashed bitterly by the awareness of sin and turning pitifully, now back to this life, now to the inexorable necessity of that great journey beyond. 5d. Picture in your mind, I pray, the final cataclysm of human life, when the Son of God shall come in his glory with his angels (Matthew 25. 31). For he shall come and

31

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shall not keep silence (Psalm 49. 3), when he comes to judge the living and the dead (I Peter 4. 5, II Timothy 4. 1) and to render to each according to his deed (cf. Matthew 16. 27, Romans 2. 6, and others), when that trumpet, resounding with a loud and terrible voice, shall awaken those who have been sleeping through ages (cf. Matthew 24. 31, I Thessalonians 4. 16), and they who have done good shall come forth to the resurrection of life, but they who have done evil to the resurrection of judgement (cf. John 5. 29). 5e. Call to mind the vision of Daniel, how he brings the judgement before our eyes. I gazed, he says, as thrones were put in place, and the Ancient of Days took his seat: his garment was white as snow and the hair of his head as pure wool [. . .] and the wheels of it a burning fire. A river of fire issued forth from before him. A thousand thousand ministered to him, and a myriad myriads stood before him. The tribunal began and the books were opened (Daniel 7. 9–10), clearly disclosing in the hearing of all, both angels and human beings, all things at once, whether good or evil, open or concealed, our deeds and our thoughts. 5f. When those who have lived wickedly are faced with these things, what must be their state? Where then shall that soul hide itself which is suddenly exposed in the fullness of its shame to the eyes of so many viewers? What strength shall it have to sustain those endless and unbearable scourges in the regions where the fire is unquenched, the worm that punishes undying (Mark 9. 47), the shadowy and frightful abyss of Hades, the bitter moans, the vehement lamentations, the wailing and gnashing of teeth (Mark 9. 44, 46, 48), and the horrors without end. From these woes there is no quittance after death, no device or means of emerging from these bitter punishments. 6a. But it is possible to escape these things now. While it is still possible, let us raise ourselves from the fall and not despair of ourselves, if only we set out from our vices. Jesus Christ came into this world to save sinners (I Timothy 1. 15). Come, let us do homage and bow down and weep before him (cf. Psalm 94. 6). 6b. The Word calls us to repentance in a loud voice and cries out.32 There is a way to salvation, if we are but willing! Death in his might has devoured, but know well that again God has wiped away every tear from the face of all who repent (Isaiah 25. 8, Septuagint). 6c. The Lord is faithful in all his words (Psalm 145. 17). He does not lie when he says: Though your sins be as crimson, I shall make them white as snow, and though they be as scarlet, I will make them white as wool (Isaiah 1. 18, Septuagint). 6d. The

32 Deferrari (I, 306–07) inserts here: Come to me all you who labour and are burdened, and I will refresh you (Matthew 11. 28), but most manuscripts do not include it; there is no advice of such a text in Courtonne’s apparatus.

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great Physician of our souls is ready to heal your malady.33 From him come the words, it was his sweet and saving lips that said: It is not the healthy who need a physician, but the sick, for I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance (Matthew 9. 12–13). What plea then can you have or anyone else when he himself cries out these words?34 The Lord wants to cleanse you of the pain of the wound and show you the light after darkness. 6e. He is seeking you — he the good Shepherd who has left behind those who have not strayed. If you but give yourself to him, he will not delay. He, the lover of man, will not disdain to bear you on his own shoulders, delighting to have found again his sheep that was lost. 6f. The Father stands on the watch for your return from wandering. You have only to set out again, and while you are still afar off, he will run to you and cast himself about your neck. In loving embraces he will enfold you, cleansed already by repentance. And first he will put a robe upon you, a soul which has put off the old man with all his works (Colossians 3. 9). He will put a ring on the hands washed clean of the blood of death and he will bind sandals on the feet which have turned from an evil path to run the course of the Gospel of peace. And he will announce a day of merriment and gladness for his own, both angels and human beings, and in every way celebrate your salvation. 6g. For he says: Amen I say to you that there is joy in heaven before God over one sinner who repents (Luke 15. 7). And if any of those who think they stand find fault because you have been received too quickly, the good Father himself will speak in your defence, saying: it was fitting that we should make merry and be glad, for this my daughter was dead, and has come to life again, was lost, and is found (Luke 15. 32).

Letter 210, To the Learned in Neocaesarea 35 The great importance of Letters 207, 210, and 211 to a history of Macrina is that these letters were written from Annisa with Macrina at hand. All that Basil has to say about the participation of women in the Christian ascetic life, and the nature of the communities who have looked to him as a Father takes on added significance when we realize that he was in the company of his brother and his sister even as he

33 Similarly Deferrari (I, 306–07) inserts here: ‘for he is at hand as the liberator not of you alone, but of all who have been enslaved by sin’. 34 35

‘What excuse [. . .] these words’ in one ancient manuscript.

Translated from Courtonne, II, 189–97 (p. 189–90); see also Deferrari, III, 194–215 (pp. 194–97).

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wrote. It was very likely his last visit up north to Pontus, in 376. Letter 210 is placed first, since this establishes his visit to Annisa, to this ‘retreat’, where his ‘siblings now make their home’. Letter 207 is placed following since it seems to come later in the sequence of negotiations between Basil and his addressees in Neocaesarea. Friends in the city of Neocaesarea have informed Basil of the vicious gossip being touted concerning him there, and rather than remain silent he thinks it better to try and disabuse them of the lies. Neocaesarea was about a day’s journey east of Annisa. It was the metropolis of Pontus Polemoniacus, the scene of his father’s professional career, and his own home city where he spent his earliest years. The Neocaesareans had once invited him to preside over the education of their young men (Letter 210). It was close enough to Annisa for Basil to describe both the city and the retreat as ‘this region’ and ‘here’. A faction has sprung up which is critical of Basil and his motives in coming up to Pontus. Atarbius, the bishop who succeeded the venerable Musonios, seems to be at the centre of the intrigues. The group lent itself to a certain archaism and isolationism. Far from being Arianizers or friends of Eustathius of Sebasteia and his Pneumatomachian party, they are subscribers to an old Nicene type of theology, suspicious of the careful distinction between hypostasis and ousia which is a feature of the neo-Nicene theology of which Basil is leader. But they also batten on any other material they can find to accuse Basil and his circle of innovation and breaking the traditions of their Church. Such was his ordered reform of the ascetic movement which is now exemplified at Annisa and other such communities. They do not like his institutions of the psalmody, that is, the hours of day. Paradoxically, they very possibly tar Basil with the brush of Eustathianism, since their suspicions of the role of women in the ascetic lifestyle seem to echo at a distance the complaints recorded in the Council of Gangra. They do not seem to realize, or they ignore, the severe rupture between Basil and Eustathius that has recently come to a head. In Letter 210 we have the nearest thing we have to a hint of Basil’s warmth and esteem for his sister, when he describes himself as ‘coming gladly to this retreat [. . .] to satisfy his own longing’. In Letter 207 he vigorously defends female asceticism and describes in glowing terms something of the lifestyle lived at Annisa under the direction of Macrina and Peter, with particular attention to their schema of prayer, psalmody, and vigil. I was under no necessity whatever of declaring to you my intention or of telling you the reason why I am now in these places. For neither am I one of those who advertise themselves, nor do my affairs deserve so many witnesses. But, as I believe,

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we do not do what we want, but that to which our leaders summon us. For to be entirely ignored has been more highly prized by me than to be on parade is by the lovers of glory. But since I hear that the ears of all in your city have been set buzzing and that there are certain storytellers and fabricators of falsehood bought for this very purpose who are expounding my affairs to you, I thought I ought not allow you to be taught by a pernicious intention and a foul tongue, but tell you myself how my affairs stand. It was because I was familiar with this country from childhood — for it was here that I was reared by my grandmother — and because I dwelt here for the most part when, fleeing the disturbances of civic life and realizing that this region was a suitable place in which to philosophize because of the tranquillity of its solitude, I passed a period of many successive years here, and because of my siblings who even now make this region their home,36 I found a brief breathing spell from my pressing engagements and have come gladly to this retreat,37 not in order to cause disturbance to others thereby, but of my own accord, to satisfy my own longing [. . .].

Letter 207, To the Clergy of Neocaesarea 38 [. . .] But we are accused because we have people practiced in piety39 who have withdrawn from the world and from all earthly cares which the Lord likens to thorns, since they do not allow the Word to come to fruitfulness (cf. Matthew 13. 7, 22). Such as these bear about in their body the dying of Jesus (II Corinthians 4. 10), and having taken up their own cross, are following God (Matthew 16. 24). I would count it worth my life to have these as my faults and to have men by me and under me as teacher who have chosen this ascetic endeavour [. . .]. And if women also choose to live according to the Gospel, and prefer virginity to marriage (cf. Matthew 19. 12), by leading captive the arrogance of the flesh (cf. I Corinthians 9. 27, Romans 8. 13, 13. 14) and by living in a sorrow which is deemed blessed (cf. Matthew 5. 4), they are blessed in their choice wherever they are upon

36

Êá äé ô¬í íØí ôäí •ägëöäí ¦íïßêçóéí. Here •ägëöäí refers equally to brothers and/or sisters; specifically Basil means both Macrina and Peter. 37

¦ð ô¬í ¦ó÷áôßáí ôáýôçí. This term is frequently used of Annisa.

38

Translated from Courtonne, I, 183–88 (pp. 185–86); see also Deferrari, III, 180–93 (pp. 184–89). 39

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ô­ò gÛógâgßáò •óêÝôáò, those given to training (askesis) in piety.

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the earth. But the instances of this among us are few, because they are still at an elementary stage and being introduced to piety. And if they bring any charge of disorder against the life of our women, I do not undertake to defend them, but this I will testify to you, that what Satan, the father of lies has not ventured to say up to this time, these shameless hearts and unbridled mouths are ever recklessly voicing. But I want you to know that we for our part pray to have communities of both men and women40 whose citizenship is in heaven (Philippians 3. 20), who have crucified the flesh with its affections and desires (Galatians 5. 24), who are not anxious about food and clothing (cf. Matthew 6. 25), but who, remaining undistracted and constantly attentive to the Lord (I Corinthians 7. 35), persevere day and night in supplications (cf. I Timothy 5. 5). Their mouths do not proclaim the works of human beings, but sing psalms and hymns to our God unceasingly (cf. Psalm 10. 2, Ephesians 5. 19), while they work with their own hands that they may have something to share with those in need (Ephesians 4. 28). But as to the charge about the psalmodies with which those who slander us especially try to frighten those of simpler sort, I have this to say: the customs which now prevail among us41 are in harmony and entire accord with all the churches of God. For with us, the people rise early in the night to go to the house of prayer,42 and in labour and affliction and in continual tears confessing to God, they at length rise from their prayers and commence the psalmody. And at one time indeed they divide into two groups and sing the psalms alternating between the one and the other, both thereby strengthening their meditation of the scriptural phrases43 and

40 ê᠕íäñäí êá ãõíáéêäí óõíôÜãìáôá §÷géí. The meaning of syntagma here seems to be the orderly bringing together of the tagma of monks and the tagma of virgins in the one adelphotes ‘fraternity’, or community. 41

It seems that Basil’s work of establishing a canonical order of hours through the night and day and instituting a certain variety in the choice of psalms and the manner of singing them is being resisted as an innovation by his slanderers in Neocaesarea. He explains the full schema of hours in LR 37, dating from the early to mid-370s, i.e. contemporary with the writing of this letter. 42

¦ð ôÎí ïÍêïí ô­ò ðñïógõ÷­ò. Thus there was but one church in the fraternity to which all the members of the component houses repaired for the liturgy in common. 43

ô¬í ìgëÝôçí ôäí Ëïãßùí. ‘Meditation’ is the repetition of the sacred phrases of Scripture, through sung recitation whether of the psalms or the readings. Cf. VSM 12.5 ‘meditation on divine things’. This important phrase shows that in the communities under Basil’s guidance the major ‘method of prayer’ and means to union with God was the chanting of the sacred phrases and the ‘knowing by heart’ that it fostered. He even encouraged it during work if possible (LR 37.2). Macrina also encouraged tears at the time of prayer; see VSM 29.3, 33.5, Basil Letter 46.2g above, Gregory of Nyssa Letter 19.9, so that the most personal and intimate response to the divine

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securing for themselves both their close attention and the means of keeping their hearts from distraction. And then again, after entrusting one to lead the chant, the rest sing in response. And so they pass the night in a variety of psalmody, praying in the intervals.44 Then as day begins to dawn, all of them in common raise with one voice and one heart the psalm of confession to the Lord,45 each of them making his own the words of repentance [. . .].

Letter 315, Without Inscription, on Behalf of a Relative 46 This undated letter appears to be addressed to a governor petitioning for tax relief and perhaps even a grant for the proestosa of a house in which orphans are being reared. She is related to Basil by family, but whether she is a sister or a cousin is not specified. The ‘grandfather’ seems to be the father of the proestosa to whom the governor may be expected to show special honour. Could the proestosa be Macrina? In that case, the governor would be stationed in Amasea, metropolis of Helenopontus to which province Annisa belonged, and the grandfather may be a reference to Basil the Elder, father of both the proestosa and Basil himself whose school in Neocaesarea the governor once attended. word might be expected in the context of communal prayer. Other forms of bodily participation included the sign of the cross (VSM 27.1, 3, 33.5), facing the East (VSM 25.2 and note), bows to the ground/prostrations (VSM 19.2, 33.5; see Gregory on proskynesis in On the Holy Spirit, Against the Macedonians 111.2–113.4), and the raising of one’s hands (VSM 19.3, 25.2, 27.1). It was also an incentive simply to share with and witness one’s fellows at prayer. Basil has a delightful passage in LR 15.4 describing how much it cheered the older monks and virgins to have the children accompanying them in the psalmody. So prayer in these late fourth-century communities was embodied, oral/aural, orderly, communal, and ecclesially minded, and through interiorization earnestly felt and deeply personal, all at once. Later distinctions between liturgical prayer and private prayer, or between ‘vocal’ prayer and ‘mental’ prayer, or between ‘formal’ prayer and ‘charismatic’ prayer have little relevance here. 44

Their attention is kept from flagging by a sequence of changes in the communal prayer. They sing (1) antiphonally between two groups, (2) in response to a cantor, (3) all together (briefly mentioned); (4) they observe intervals of quiet for individual prayer (and no doubt the necessities of nature), as outlined at the beginning of the vigil. Basil concludes his LR 37 by explaining the benefit of a certain variety in the psalmody: ‘But we consider it a help when there is diversity and variety in the prayers and psalms at the assigned hours, because somehow, when there is monotony, the soul wearies more readily and becomes a prey to distraction; but when there is change and variety in the psalms and reading at each hour, its desire is refreshed and its vigilance restored.’

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45

That is, the Miserere, Psalm 50, Have Mercy on me O God Have mercy.

46

Translated from Courtonne, III, 189; see also Deferrari, IV , 256–59.

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Yet even if this letter does not refer to Macrina, it is a useful complement to what we are told of the lofty lifestyle of the monastic communities. There were practical problems to be faced at Annisa and elsewhere in the churches and monastic communities which made houses for the poor and houses for the care of orphans part of their charge, as they certainly would under Basil’s guidance. It stands to reason that the life supposedly free from turbulence and distractions would find an influx of abandoned infants and children a matter of some disruption. This was the situation during the famine of 369/70 at Annisa. Basil’s solution in LR 15 was to direct that there be houses (and one daresay nurseries) for the children, but separate from the houses of the women and men ascetics, and that men and women of the community with the requisite qualities be appointed to supervise them. When one considers the very considerable additions made to the Small Asketikon (= RBas 7.1–10) in LR 15 it seems likely that Basil had visited Annisa in that period and continued some of his catechesis of the ascetic communities. If the letter does refer to Macrina, it could be suitably dated towards the end of the famine. Basil at the time was the senior priest under Bishop Eusebius in Caesarea, and after September 370, bishop. He writes to the governor possibly at Amasea who knows and respects Basil and his family. The letter should be compared with the very early Letter 3, written in the late 350s, in which Basil also uses his elite social and cultural standing to write a letter of intercession to an official on behalf of the community at Annisa. Being wholly persuaded that I shall not fail in whatever petitions I may justly make to your Worthiness, I have confidently gone so far as to give the present letter to this most reverend lady who presides over some orphans47 and dwells in a house more troublesome than a many-headed hydra. And to all this it may be added that we are related to each other by kinship.48 We therefore petition your Nobility, not only to honour us as you do but also to save the honour owed to the grandfather of these orphans, by giving her some aid, so as to make the responsibility of these orphans endurable to ourselves in the future.

47 ô± êïóìéùôÜô® ô±äg Ïñöáíäí ðñïgóôþó®. The honorific given to the lady, kosmiotate combines elements of honourableness, moderation, orderliness, competence, and propriety. Her function and title, proestosa, is the same as that used for superiors in the monastic communities under Basil’s guidance. 48 ïÆêgßùò §÷géí •ëëÞëïéò êáô ãÝíïò. How close the family relationship was is unclear. Cf. the military commander at Sebastopol, in VSM 39.2, who was not a brother but a relative in the extended family.

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Introduction

T

he epigrams of St Gregory Nazianzen constitute Book VIII of the Greek Anthology. The following selection is retranslated from the Greek text in W. R. Paton, The Greek Anthology.1 Paton’s translations have been gratefully consulted. Gregory Nazianzen, restorer of neo-Nicene orthodoxy in Constantinople and briefly its archbishop, quit the capital of the eastern Roman Empire in tumultuous circumstances in the midst of the council of 381. He then spent about two years administering the church of Nazianzus, from which he withdrew and settled at his family estate of Arianzus. He appears to have written most of his epigrams during his long retirement there from 383 till his death in 389 or 390. In his Epigram 163 on Macrina, he says that she is now on the tongues of all. This may mean that it was written after the Gregory of Nyssa’s Life of Macrina, which early achieved wide circulation. This testimony indicates that the younger Gregory’s purpose in writing the VSM was fulfilled speedily. Gregory Nazianzen composed some twelve epigrams on St Basil the Great, his former soul mate in Athens and friend. They are numbered 2–11, with ten divided into two as 10a and 10b. Three are selected here for historical information important also for the lives of his older sister Macrina and his younger brother Gregory of Nyssa: Basil’s connection not only with Cappadocia but also with Pontus (5), his father’s name (6), and the duration of his episcopacy (10b).

1

W. R. Paton, ed. and trans., The Greek Anthology, vol. II (London: Heinemann, 1925), pp. 400–505.

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Gregory also devoted his skill in verse to other members of Basil’s family: Naucratius, Emmelia, Macrina, and Theosebia. These latter epigrams are presented here following those on Basil, in the order of their sequence in the anthology. 5. On the Same [Basil] There is one God who rules on high, and our generation saw but one worthy high priest: you O Basil, the far-sounding messenger of truth,2 the bright eye of Christians, shining with beauty of soul, the great glory of both Pontus and Cappadocia. Ever take your stand, I implore you, offering up the Gifts for the world.3 6. On the Same Here the Caesareans laid me their high priest, Basil son of Basil, friend of Gregory, whom I loved with all my heart. May God grant him further blessings, especially that he attain to this life which is mine as soon as may be. What does it profit to linger on the earth and waste away, pining for a celestial friendship? 10b. On the Same For eight years you held the reins of a godly-minded people, and this was all about you, O Basil, that was little. 156. On Naucratius, the Brother of Basil the Great Naucratius was once freeing his fishing net from a sunken rock in the roaring whirlpools of the river.4 The net he did not free, but he himself was caught. Tell me, O Word, how did the net land the fisherman instead of the fish: Naucratius, a model of the pure life? For it seems to me that both grace and doom came to him from the waters.5

2

•ôñgêßçò, this archaic word covers the sense of certainty, accuracy, precision.

3

Gregory asks Basil to continue his high-priestly intercession in heaven, offering up the ‘Gifts’, which of course are not his gifts (contra Paton), but those put into his hands while on earth, those of Christ’s one and eternal paschal sacrifice. 4 5

From VSM 10.3 we learn the river was the Iris.

That is, with baptism came his choice of the ascetic life at Annisa in the wooded hills near the river, and that lifestyle led to this unexpected outcome.

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157. On the Same Naucratius died in the eddying of the envious river, entangled in the cords of his sunken net, in order that you, O mortal, might learn the trickeries of this life, from which the fleet-footed colt was removed. 158. On the Same Naucratius, caught in the cords of his net, was freed from the bonds of this life by fishing. 161. On Emmelia, the Mother of St Basil Emmelia is dead! Who would have thought it, she who gave to life the light of so many and such children, both sons and daughters married and unmarried?6 She alone among mortals had both good children and many children. Three of her sons were illustrious priests,7 and one daughter the companion of a priest,8 and the rest were like an army of saints.9 162. On the Same Emmelia I marvelled when I looked on Emmelia’s offspring, so great and of such kind, all the wealth of her mighty womb! But when I noted that she was Christ’s possession, of pious blood,10 Emmelia,11 this is what I said: ‘No wonder! The root is so great.’ This is the holy recompense of your piety, O best of women, the honour of your children, for whom you had but one desire.

6

õÊÝáò ²ä¥ èýãáôñáò Òìüæõãáò •æõãÝáò ôg. This is indirect testimony that Gregory of Nyssa was married, since there were four sons, and the vocational virginity of the other three (Basil, Naucratius, and Peter) is sure. 7

Êgñ­gò. At this period, the term priest usually referred to a bishop. Hence the epigram was probably written after Peter, the youngest born, had become Bishop of Sebasteia, soon after the Council of Constantinople in 381. 8

º äz Êgñ­ïò óýæçãïò, i.e. Theosebia; see Epigram 164 below. Note the term for ‘companion’ or ‘consort’ here is not quite the same as that used for ‘married’ above. 9

gÛáãÝùí, with connotations of undefiled, untarnished, pure, holy.

10

This seems to refer to the Christian credentials of Emmelia’s own family, of which we know only that her propator (probably her grandfather) had died a Christian martyr (VSM 22.3), probably in the Decian persecutions of the 250s. 11

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Emmelia means ‘in tune’, well-fitted, harmonious, graceful.

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163. On Macrina, Sister of the Great Basil The dust holds the illustrious virgin Macrina, if you have heard something of her, the first born of the great Emmelia. But she who kept herself from the eyes of all men,12 is now on the tongues of all and has a glory greater than any. 164. On Theosebia, Sister of Basil And you, Theosebia, child of noble Emmelia, and in truth the companion of great Gregory,13 lie here in sacred earth, you who were the support of devout women and departed this life at a seasonable age.

12 13

•íäñäí, i.e. males. Macrina clearly practised resolute seclusion and enclosure.

Ãñçãïñßïõ ìgãÜëïõ óýæõãg •ôñgêÝùò. Cf. Gregory’s Letter 197 (Silvas, Gregory, pp. 98–101) to Gregory of Nyssa on the death of Theosebia, his companion, i.e. óýæõãïò, the same term used here and in Epigram 161. For ‘spouse’ in the same epigram he uses Òìüæõãïò. Tabulation of the identifying characteristics of the Theosebia of the epigrams and the Theosebia of Nazianzen’s Letter 197, make it very improbable that so many common features could be repeated in two persons, such that Gregory had a sister called Theosebia who was married to an eminent priest called Gregory, had a ministry to devout women, and died at a seasonable age, and that he himself was also married to a wife called Theosebia who had a ministry to devout women and died at a seasonable age. That Gregory was married the chapter title and contents of On Virginity 3 prove, but his wife was not Theosebia. So the conclusion is that Nazianzen refers to just the one Theosebia in two documents: Gregory’s sister who was a devout companion to him in Nyssa. It is clear that she must have been in this position for some time to earn the accolades she is given in Nazianzen’s Letter 197, and this creates a presumption that Gregory’s wife died earlier rather than later, since it is unlikely that Theosebia would have come to live with him in Nyssa if his wife were still alive. There are other pointers in On Virginity that suggest that Gregory’s wife died early, indeed, probably very early in their marriage.

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G REGORY OF N YSSA , L ETTER 19

Introduction 1

T

his letter is historiographically the most important of all Gregory’s letters. It was edited for the first time in 1731 by J. B. Carraciolo, as one of the Letters 19–25 he had discovered in the codex ‘F’.2 These seven letters were absent from the codex ‘V’3 which until that time had formed the basis of Gregory’s published letters.4 Yet it was many years before the historical implications of the present letter percolated through to historians and patristic scholars. The breakthrough came thanks to Franz Diekamp.5 Earlier commentators on this letter had vaguely supposed that Gregory had somehow been elected Bishop of Ibora. Diekamp elucidated the proper sequence: that just as Gregory had responded to the embassy from Ibora (19.12) and travelled there to supervise the election of a new bishop, so too he responded to an embassy from Sebasteia (19.13b) and travelled there to undertake the same sort of mission. It was at Sebasteia that all the lamentable events reported

1

This section on Letter 19 gratefully uses and revises material from Silvas, Gregory, pp. 172–81.

2

‘F’ is Pasquali’s siglum for codex Laurentianus Mediceus plut. LXXXVI, parchment, 13th cent. See Gregorii Nysseni Epistulae, ed. by Gregorius Pasquali, editio altera, GNO, VIII.2 (Leiden: Brill, 1959), p. 2; Grégoire de Nysse: Lettres, ed. and trans. by Pierre Maraval, Sources Chrétiennes, 363 (Paris: Cerf, 1990), p. 80. 3 ‘V’ is Pasquali’s siglum for V(aticanum) 424, parchment, 13th cent. See Gregorii Nysseni Epistulae, ed. by Pasquali, p. 2, Grégoire de Nysse: Lettres, ed. and trans. by Maraval, p. 80. 4 5

For discussion of the codicological issues, see Gregorii Nysseni Epistulae, ed. by Pasquali, p. lxxxv.

In his essay ‘Die Wahl Gregors von Nyssa zum Metropoliten von Sebaste im Jahre 380’, Theologische Quartalschrift, 90 (1908), 384–401.

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in the latter part of this letter took place. He clarified that the ‘return from Armenia’ of which Gregory speaks in his Letter 29 to Peter refers to his return from his enforced stay in Sebasteia. Thus, according to Diekamp, the letter was written from Sebasteia in the first half of 380, while Gregory was still constrained in the circumstances described in the latter part of the letter. ‘Gregory was bishop and prisoner in Sebasteia, exactly between Winter and Spring.’6 The addressee, John, is much engaged in Church affairs in ‘the city’. He is either a bishop or someone in senior church administration, since Gregory speaks of ‘your church’ (19.20). It is not so evident whether he was resident of Antioch itself. At any rate Gregory seems to have met John there during the council of neo-Nicene bishops in 379, since in 10a he speaks of having ‘left your region’ to return to Cappadocia and thence to Macrina’s deathbed, and in 10c of his first visit to his fatherland after his ‘return journey from Antioch’. It would be stirring if this John could be a youngish John Chrysostom, sometime student of Libanius and protégé of Bishop Meletius. But it seems too early in Chrysostom’s career. In 379 he may have been barely returning from his ascetic years in the caves outside Antioch and was not yet even a deacon. But we may be sure that he would have been very interested to hear of Macrina’s ascetic lifestyle. The John of this letter is concerned that he has received no communication from Gregory in the many months since their meeting. Having heard some strange rumours, he wrote to Gregory to ask what was happening. The letter eventually reached Gregory in Sebasteia, and the following Letter 19 is his reply. The style is somewhat formal — Gregory most often uses the plural of modesty of himself, occasionally (and characteristically) slipping into the singular. He clearly intended the letter as a kind of bulletin of his affairs to someone well placed in Church affairs, meant to correct any misinformation. He expects John to share it with others for the ‘common good’. No other of Gregory’s letters is so rich with biographical and chronological material. Even so we could wish he had been more specific about the motives and actions behind the uproar in Sebasteia that led to his confinement, for the last part of the letter almost descends into incoherence as he laments the calamity that has overtaken him. It is clear enough that he found himself elected metropolitan Bishop of Sebasteia and that this took him completely by surprise. He seems to have refused or resisted the appointment, and then somehow the military authorities were called in to 6 Gregorius Pasquali, ‘Le Lettere di Gregorio di Nissa’, Studi Italiani de Filologia Classica, n.s., 3 (1923), 75–136 (p. 94). For more on the chronology revealed in this letter, see the General Introduction, ‘Gregory’s Return from Exile and Rise in Church Affairs’.

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restrain the uproar and keep him in Sebasteia. The mayhem was considerable, for there was at least a fourfold strife between the Pneumatomachian partisans of Eustathius, the orthodox-minded Sebasteians, the governor, and his own unwillingness. The brief but intense cameo of Gregory’s sister at 19.6–10, proved to be a foreshadowing and a promise of the Life of Macrina and On the Soul and the Resurrection. It is the earliest documentation we have of Macrina’s existence, her way of life, and her funeral co-led by Gregory, written less than a year after her death. The witness of her lifestyle, her conversations with him which were so helpful in forming and strengthening his religious spirit, and above all his providential participation in her dying hours made a deep impression on him. It only needed time to absorb, reflect, and interpret these events. Then, when the occasion offered, he set out to make his remarkable sister better known to the world.

Gregory of Nyssa, Letter 19 To a certain John on certain subjects, especially on the way of life and the character of his sister Macrina. Introduction: The Analogy of the Painter 1. I know of some7 painters, who, when they copy the form as an image, are keen to bestow a kind of profitless honour even on the uglier of their friends, though they accomplish, in a way, the opposite of what they wish. For when in their imitation they correct nature — so they think — by disguising the unsightly form beneath a bright display of colours on the panel, they change the character, with the result that their intention to honour their friend becomes, through this ‘improved’ imitation, the very reason why the friend can no longer be seen in the image at all. 2a. For their friends, there is no profit in the light brown hair arching high over the forehead and glinting with highlights, the bloom on the lips and the flush of the cheeks, the curve of the eyelids, the corners of the eyes, and the eyebrows picked out with black, and the shining forehead above the eyebrows, and whatever else of the kind that contributes to beauty of form. For unless the one presented to the painter for imitation has these qualities by nature, he gains nothing from the benevolent gesture. Instead, through the painter’s art the panel displays a pleasant face, brightly decked all round, but the friend’s face discloses itself as otherwise, and so shows up the excess of the attempted honour. 7

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2b. The same thing, it seems to me, happens when anyone bestows flatteries on someone he loves in order to gain the praises of friendship. So he depicts him in words not as he is, but as someone might be like who is in every way perfect. He may sketch the upright life in words, but by these extravagant praises he does not so much dignify his friend as rebuke him for contradicting the word by his life and as revealing himself to be other than he is supposed to be. 3a. What then do I mean by speaking this way? I saw in the letter of your charity, a kind of human sculpture, finely wrought in sharpest detail — and its name was myself, for so the inscription informed me. But when I looked into my own life in exact detail as in a mirror, I knew that I was far removed from the verbal description. I surmised that in this way you were displaying your love of goodness, for, having deemed that this is what I was like, this is what you loved. You gave the most evident proof of the uprightness of your dispositions that you have no other motive for your love but that of virtue alone, and, since you believed that some share of this was in us, you counted us among the most genuine of your friends. 3b.8 I therefore thought it better that you learn what concerns me from myself rather than be misled by other witnesses, even if those witnesses may be reliable in all else. For this is what the word of the proverb also recommends, that they come to recognize themselves (cf. Proverbs 13. 10, Septuagint) who are willing to know themselves according to the word from without.9 4a. But so much for this. That I may not appear to be secretly courting praise by declining it, and given that you bid us put some effort into giving an answer to your enquiries about our affairs, and in order by such a task to benefit the common good,10 know then, that lately I have not had much less leisure than the one of whom one of the prophets speaks (cf. Amos 5. 19), who, having grappled with a lion and scarcely extracted himself from its jaws and the slashing of its claws, at the very moment he thought to be escaping, found himself in the mouth of a bear; and then, having with much struggle emerged from this danger too and rested himself against the wall, he comes upon a snake lying in wait to bite him. 8

Pasquali considers there is a lacuna at this point. He proposed as the sense of what Gregory may have written: ‘But though you are a man of such authority, I know that you are thoroughly mistaken.’ 9

êáô ôÎí §îùègí ëüãïí. Here Gregory seems to be conflating the famous saying ãíäèé óáõôüí (know yourself!) carved on the temple at Delphi, with Proverbs 13. 10 ïÆ äg ©áõôäí ¦ðéãíþìïígò óïöïß (those who discern themselves are wise). 10

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éögë­óáé ôé ôÎ êïÂíïí, i.e. this letter to John is a newsletter to be shared with others.

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4b. Something like this has been the relentless succession of troubles that have befallen us. The waves of distresses have so overlapped each another, they seem to be continually preparing to overtop by a little what had already overtaken us.11 5. But if it is not an imposition to be rewarding those who love me with gloomy tales, I will briefly set out for you the sorry story. Our Sister Macrina 6. We had a sister who was for us a teacher of how to live,12 a mother in place of our mother. Such was her freedom 13 towards God that she was for us a strong tower (Psalm 60. 4) and a shield of favour (Psalm 5. 13) as the Scripture says, and a fortified city (Psalms 30. 22, 59. 11) and a name of utter assurance, through her freedom towards God that came of her way of life. 7. She dwelt in a remote part of Pontus,14 having exiled herself from the life of human beings. Gathered around her was a great choir of virgins whom she had brought forth by her spiritual labour-pains (cf. I Corinthians 4. 15, Galatians 4. 19) 11

For the same image of one wave of troubles succeeding another, see Basil’s Letter 123, (Deferrari, II, 254–57). 12

ôïØ âßïõ äéäÜóêáëïò. Since âßïò frequently means ‘way of life’, this means that Macrina was Gregory’s teacher in the principles of the Christian ascetic life. To judge from VSM 17.2, his second to last visit to her may be dated to late 371. This may be linked to four more or less contemporaneous events which may have been occasions of contact. (1) The death of Emmelia their mother (late 370/early 371). Gregory very much regards Macrina as taking her place towards him; indeed she took Emmelia’s place as the head of the household at Annisa, which was by now a monastic community. (2) Basil, made a bishop in September 370, commissioned Gregory to write On Virginity in 370/71. Since Gregory was coming from the married life and from a civil career, he may well have sought out Macrina as his ‘teacher’ in Christian asceticism. (3) The ordination to the presbyterate of Peter, the youngest in the family and head of the house of men at Annisa, which apparently took place soon after Basil became bishop. (4) Gregory’s own reluctant ordination to the episcopacy by Basil in late 371. This seems a likely occasion for him to have visited Macrina in Annisa and received from her instruction and encouragement in his new course. According to VSM 31.6, Macrina always ‘honoured his priesthood (= episcopacy)’. One hopes that she greeted him at least once as a bishop. 13 ðáññçóßáí, lit. ‘freedom of speech’, ease of access, daring confidence, boldness — not the superficial ‘freedom’ towards God of an unthinking presumption, but the profound freedom of someone who had paid the interior cost in a life of self-renunciation, prayer, and great love. 14

ôïØ Ðüíôïõ ô §ó÷áôá. Gregory tends to use the related term ¦ó÷áôßá to mean ‘retreat’ or religious solitude. The family estate of Annisa, transformed by Macrina into a monastery, was not so ‘remote’ in the sense of physically difficult of access. It lay on the great Pontic Road about a day’s journey west of Neoceasarea, overlooking the fertile plain of the Phanaroea.

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and guided towards perfection through her consummate care, while she herself imitated the life of angels in a human body. 8. With her there was no distinction between night and day. Rather, the night showed itself active with the deeds of light (cf. Romans 12. 12–13, Ephesians 5. 8) and day imitated the tranquillity of night through serenity of life. The psalmodies resounded in her house at all times night and day. 9. You would have seen a reality incredible even to the eyes: the flesh not seeking its own, the stomach, just as we expect in the Resurrection, having finished with its own impulses, streams of tears poured out (cf. Psalm 79. 6) to the measure of a cup,15 the mouth meditating the law at all times (Psalms 1. 2, 118. 70), the ear attentive to divine things, the hand ever active16 with the commandments (cf. Psalm 118. 48). How indeed could one bring before the eyes a reality that transcends description in words?17 10a. Well then, after I left your region, I had halted among the Cappadocians,18 when unexpectedly I received some disturbing news of her.19 There was a ten days’ journey between us, so I covered the whole distance as quickly as possible and at last reached Pontus where I saw her and she saw me. 10b. But it was the same as a traveller at noon whose body is exhausted from the sun. He runs up to a spring, but alas, before he has touched the water, before he has cooled his tongue, all at once the stream dries up before his eyes and he finds the water turned to dust. 10c. So

15

A reference to Euripides, Iphigeneia in Tauris 1106.

16

á¦éêßíçôïò, though Gregory is thinking of Psalm 118, the actual word is from a Platonic dialogue (Phaedrus 245C). 17

For similar hyperbolic comparisons, cf. VSM 13.3 ñò ßðgñâáßígéí ô­í ¦ê ôäí ëüãùí ßðïãñáöÞí, ‘that it surpasses description in words’; VSM 13.6, ô¬í ôïéáýôçí äéáãùã­í ôßò ží ßðz Ðøéí •ãÜãïé ëüãïò •íèñþðéíïò, ‘what human eloquence could bring this kind of life before your eyes?’ 18

€Åðgéä¬ ôïßíõí ¦ðÝóôçí ðáñz ßìäí ôïÃò Êáððáäüêáéò. The ðáñz ßìäí refers to his departure ‘from’ John. By ‘the Cappadocians’, Gregory may mean that he has just come through the Taurus mountains and reached Cappadocia, perhaps at Podandus or Tyana. In this case the ten days’ journey to Pontus was from south of Caesarea. Most readers have assumed he left from Caesarea (cf. 14.3 ‘the metropolis of the Cappadocians’), but it may be doubted that it took ten days to journey from Caesarea to Annisa ‘with haste’. He did not go to Nyssa, since as VSM 18.1 says, Peter had set out to fetch him but missed him, because he had taken a different route, evidenly making directly for Nyssa in western Cappadocia. 19 This news is not mentioned at VSM 17.1, where Gregory simply says that on his return from Antioch, the desire grew in him to visit his sister, and that he was disturbed by a foreboding dream a day before he reached Annisa.

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it was with me. At the tenth year20 I saw her whom I so longed to see, who was for me21 in place of a mother and a teacher and every good, but before I could satisfy my longing, on the third day I buried her and returned on my way.22 Such was my first visit to my fatherland23 after my return journey from Antioch. Gregory’s Ministry in Pontus 11. Next, before I had digested this misfortune, the Galatians24 who were neighbours of my church, having stealthily sown the sickness of the heresies usual among them in various localities of my church, provided me with no small struggle.25 We were barely able, with God’s help, to put down the disease everywhere. 12. Then other events followed these. Ibora is a city situated in the mountains of Pontus.26 It has been disposed towards us and towards the sound faith from ancient times. Now its bishop having lately departed from this life27 the whole body sent an embassy petitioning us not to overlook it,28 delivered as it was into the 20 This means on the completion of the ninth year and at the beginning of the tenth. Compare VSM 17.2, where he says it was just short of eight years since he had last seen his sister. Here Gregory reckons quickly, whereas in the VSM he is much more deliberate in his calculation. On the other hand the phrase might mean nine years since the death of their mother, whose place Macrina took for him. 21

The references here are singular, ìïé, i.e. personal to Gregory himself.

22

ßðÝóôñgöïí. Gregory returned south to Nyssa. The VSM makes it clear that on the way back he passed through Sebastopolis. 23

ôáØôá ìïé ô­ò Ðáôñßäïò ìgô ô¬í ¦ðÜíïäüí ìïõ ô¬í ¦î zÁíôéï÷gßáò gÆóéôÞñéá. This is proof positive that neither Gregory nor his siblings were born in Cappadocia. 24 That is to the west of Nyssa. Rather than Marcellans, the ‘Galatians’ here are more likely Homoians and Arianizers who have lost their political ascendancy with the disappearance of Valens from the scene. See Basil, Letters 237 and 239, and Grégoire de Nysse: Lettres, ed, and trans, by Maraval, p. 27. 25

Gregory’s underminers have made progress during his protracted absence.

26

Today this is the Turkish village of Iverönü, 7 kilometres south of Erbaa, near where the road begins to ascend over the mountains to Gökdere and thence to Tokat. The author visited the locality in March 2006, and indeed travelled the mountain road. 27

If Araxius, the bishop local to Annisa who had so recently co-led Macrina’s funeral with Gregory and whom he names in VSM 36.1, had been Bishop of Ibora, it seems strange that Gregory leaves him anonymous here. See the comments and suggestion at VSM 36.1 note. 28

êá ôïØ ¦ðéóêïðïØíôïò áÛôçí ðñïóöÜôùò Ûðgîgëèüíôïò ôÎí âßïí, ðáíäçìg ðñÎò ºìò ¦ðñgóâgýóáíôï.

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hands of enemies and being torn apart. 13a. There were tears, fallings at the feet, lamentations, supplications, and all such things through which there has come upon us the present train of evils. 13b. For since we had come to Pontus,29 and, with God as co-worker (cf. II Corinthians 6. 1),30 we were attending to the proper order for the church among them,31 there promptly came upon us in that place like-minded representatives from the main body of Sebasteians,32 expecting us to forestall a takeover there by the heretics. Uproar in the Electoral Synod at Sebasteia 14. The events that followed are worthy of silence and wordless groans (cf. Romans 8. 26) and unending grief and sorrow unabating with the passage of time. For human beings put up with other evils well enough once they become used to them, but as time has gone by, the evils here have only gown worse through the invention of new ones still more intolerable. 15. Well then, in accordance with the procedure, I was with the other bishops who were called together for this very purpose: that I might receive their votes for the laying on of hands.33 The vote, alas, was for me.34 Yes, wretched I, in my

29

¦ðgéä¬ ãñ ¦ãgíüìgèá êáô ôÎí Ðüíôïí, i.e. Gregory had journeyed up to Pontus again to help sort out the affairs of the church of Ibora. 30

óõígñãߑ ÈgïØ.

31

The neo-Nicene candidate Gregory installed as Bishop of Ibora was Pansophius, who attended the Council of Constantinople in 381 ( J. D. Mansi, ed., Sacrorum Conciliorum Nova et Amplissima Collectio, 31 vols (Florence–Venice, 1757–98), III, col. 572A). The identification was made by Pierre Maraval, in ‘Un correspondent de Grégoire de Nazianze identifié: Pansophios d’Ibora’, Vigiliae Christianae, 42 (1988), 24–26. 32

ðáñ ôïØ ðëÞèïõò ôäí Ógâáóôgíäí. From this circumstance and the sequel, Diekamp, ‘Die Wahl’, p. 393, proved that Gregory wrote the letter from Sebasteia in 380. 33

ñò øÞöïõò ßð¥ñ ÷géñïôïíßáò ägîüìgíïò. Evidently Gregory presided over an electoral synod for the see of Sebasteia, left vacant by the death of Eustathius. He appears to have acted as a scrutineer of the votes. Much remedial work was needed in the Church in Sebasteia. It had been a centre of ecclesiastical trouble for most of the 370s due to Eustathius’s Arianizing politics, his collaboration with the emperor Valens, and his hardened attitude against everything that Basil and the neo-Nicenes represented. 34

This was potentially uncanonical. The transfer of a bishop from one see to another was forbidden by Canon 15 of the Council of Nicaea. The principle would be made a pretext in the

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naiveté, was taken by my own feathers!35 16. Thereupon dissensions broke out, pressures were brought to bear, tears, fallings at the feet, takings into custody, a military detachment, and the count himself appointed over them campaigning against us36 and moving the authority of the governor against us and assembling every pretext for this tyranny against us, until we were cast into the evils of Babylon.37 17. With them there was so great a contrast in what concerns the faith with those of olden times, that in their case, the disease only entrenched itself and became harder to dislodge. Their malady made war against those who were attempting to cure it. 18. They were ignorant moreover, and in their speech38 rougher in voice and in their manner wilder than barbarians, and so practised in inventiveness for evil in the stealthy manner of wild beasts, that with them it was not so much a case of an Archimedes,39 as of a Sisyphus, or a Cercyon, or a Sceiron,40 or some

following year (381) for ousting Gregory Nazianzen from Constantinople. Yet some canons did provide for exceptions to be made in the interests of the Church. See the long discussion of fourthcentury canonical provisions in Diekamp, ‘Die Wahl’, pp. 394–400. 35

ôïÃò ¦ìáõôïØ ðôgñïÃò ëéóêüìgíïò, an allusion to Aeschylus’s lost play, The Myrmidons, where an eagle, shot by an arrow, sees its feathering on the arrow and says: ôÜäz ïÛ÷ ßðz –ëëùí, •ëë ôïÃò áßôäí ðôgñïÃò ëéóêüìgèá — ‘so we are taken, not by others’, but by our own feathers. See Stefan Radt, ed., Tragicorum Graecorum Fragmenta, vol. III: Aeschylus (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1985), Fr. 139, pp. 252–56. The survival of the fragment confirms that it was a famous saying; Basil himself may be alluding to it in LR 28.1. 36

Does this mean, paradoxically, that he acted to enforce the election against Gregory’s will?

37

This refers to the capture and deportation to Babylon of the people of Jerusalem (II Kings 25), with the Babylonians as an analogy for the Sebasteians. Gregory is taken into (protective? coercive?) custody, from which situation he writes the present letter. The trouble is still unresolved at the time of writing. Pasquali marks a lacuna at this point, though Maraval thinks the existing text can be accounted for. 38

An oblique reference to the Armenian language. The population of Armenia Minor was a mix of both Greek speakers and Armenian speakers, which would have been especially evident at a congress of bishops and people from all parts of the province. See Diekamp, ‘Die Wahl’, p. 391. Gregory is being polite here by not naming the Armenians as such. Gregory Nazianzen, in his Oratio 43.17 (McCauley, p. 41) is more straightforward: ‘I do not find the Armenians a candid race, but too secretive and crafty.’ 39 40

His inventiveness was of the empirical and useful kind.

In the Iliad 6.145–55 Sisyphus, King of Corinth, is called ‘the most crafty of men’. His name became a byword for cunning. Cercyon and Sceiron were brigands put to death by Theseus.

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other such characters we hear about in the histories, who were always readier with falsehood than with any truth. Such is their shamelessness, so bold their lying that they obstruct those who insist on the truth in this matter. With them, to be rebuked for the worst vices becomes an occasion of popularity with the crowd. Indeed, arrogance, and roughness, and callousness, and uncouthness of speech are considered to be political savvy41 and some sort of love of the good. Conclusion 19. We have avoided a letter of immoderate length and set out for you these few events out of many, that you might not judge our present delay in writing as indifference on our part. For how is it possible for one in these circumstances to bear it equably when his own name is bandied about? 20. But if, all the same, you would like us to devote more time to these matters at a later stage, lend me yourself above all and the time for us to come together — provided the ‘lotus’ of the city42 does not charm you more than our affection. But if affairs overwhelm you there — for I hear that your whole church detains you — you shall fight with us well enough if you beg from God some release from the evils that assail us. Then perhaps, if God grants it and such leisure ever comes our way, we shall not be reckoned as contributing nothing to the common good.

41

ðïëéôéóìÎò, alternatively, ‘urbanity’, ‘elegance’, ‘politesse’. There are hints of Plato’s censure of Athenian ‘democracy’ here, as being little better than ochlocracy, irrationality, and an appeal to lower instincts. 42

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T HE L IFE OF M ACRINA , INTRODUCTION

Sources of the Text

T

he Life of Macrina (VSM) is here translated from the critical edition by Virginia Woods Callahan,1 but has also drawn upon the later critical edition of Pierre Maraval.2 In consultation with Werner Jaeger and other scholars, Woods Callahan examined some twenty-six manuscripts, eight of which were selected for the critical apparatus. Maraval called on two further manuscripts for his edition. The account of the manuscript transmission of the VSM given here is drawn from the introductions of both editions, with some added reflections. The manuscripts containing the VSM are generally of two kinds: collections of the works of Gregory, and collections of the lives of saints, especially the liturgical collections called menologies. Woods Callahan reports the assessment of Jaeger that even when the VSM is found in collections completely dedicated to Gregory’s works, the text bears traces of having passed by way of the menologies3 — except for one manuscript (W), of which more below. The case on which he comments is the codex Vaticanus graecus 448 (‘A’, not chosen for collation). It is a collection of Gregory’s works, yet prefacing the text of the VSM is ìçíà Æïõëßù éèì (for the month of July, the nineteenth), that is, Macrina’s liturgical feast-day, indicating that this particular text was copied from a menology. 1 Virginia Woods Callahan, Vita Sanctae Macrinae, in Ascetica, GNO, VIII.1, ‘Praefatio’, pp. 347–69; text: pp. 370–14. References both in this Introduction and in the translation will be to page and line numbers in this volume of the GNO. 2 3

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Maraval, Vie, pp. 136–267. Woods Callahan, Vita Sanctae Macrinae, p. 352.

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The text of the VSM itself falls into two classes, and within each class there are sub-families, three in the first class and two in the second class. Only the manuscripts chosen for collation in both editions appear in the list below. Excluded manuscripts were demonstrably copies of those already selected, or copies of copies, or later copies of a common source that add little or nothing to the establishment of the text. Using Maraval’s refinements of Woods Callahan’s classification, the following are the manuscripts used in the putative order of their nearness to the original text, that is, in the general order of their preference. Manuscripts of Class 1 Family á W: Vienna, theol. gr. 42, parchment, 12th cent., fols 41–52. V: Vatican Library, gr. 2066, parchment, 9th–10th cent., fols 51–71. In this family W especially preserves an abundance of original and distinctive readings. Furthermore, unlike most other manuscripts, the text of W appears to have bypassed the tradition of the menologies. V retains many distinctive readings in common with W, attesting the antiquity of its text. Yet it also attests the tradition of the menologies. Hence V represents the oldest tradition of the text as it has passed through the menologies, which could have happened very early — Jaeger has suggested three or four centuries earlier than the manuscript. According to Maraval’s judgement, W is to be placed at the head of this family as transmitting the most ancient form of the text. Family â K: Venice, St Mark’s Library gr. 67, parchment, 11th cent.; incomplete, only commencing at 24.30; Cod. Monacensis gr. 23, paper, 16th cent., fols 63–69, a direct and complete copy. N: Oxford, Bodleian Library, Cromwell 9, parchment, 12th–13th cent., pp. 166–200. The text in this family is characterized by its own distinctive readings, yet it is close to that of family á. It clearly derives from the menology tradition. Maraval ranks it second in importance. Family ã Ø: Venice, St Mark’s Library gr. 69, parchment, 12th–13th cent., fols 415–31; Munich, Staatsbibliothek gr. 92, paper, 16th cent., is a copy of it. This family Woods Callahan calls a ‘mixed recension’, somewhat between the first and second class.

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Manuscripts of Class 2 Family 1 S: Vatican Library gr. 1907, paper, 12th–13th cent., fols 89–93. Family 2 G: Venice, St Mark’s Library gr. 360, parchment, 11th cent., fols 68–110. M: Milan, Ambrosian Library gr. 862 (C 135 inf.), parchment, 11th cent., fols 343–67v. These two families have a common origin. They are distinguished by far fewer differences between them than those of the first class. S, G, and M in several instances show readings contrary to those of the three first families. Maraval gives instances where this second class agrees with family ã of the first class. ‘Neutral’ Class Patm.: Patmos, monastery of St John 46, parchment, 12th cent. Jaeger considered it a ‘neutral’ class because of the very mixed character of its readings. It may be seen as a text of the first class ‘corrected’ by a text of the second class. Woods Callahan uses it to confirm two previously conjectural readings: 12.16 (ìgéñáêéþägé) and 37.26 (ºìäí for ßìäí). v: This is the ‘vulgate’ Greek text as published and generally accepted for some centuries until the modern editions. Jaeger summarizes the print history: The Vita Macrinae was missing from the Paris edition in the year 1615, but it was edited for the first time in Greek three years later in a Greek–Latin Appendix to the edition by Jakob Gretscher SJ, together with the Latin translation by Pietro Francesco Zini. Eventually this book was included in the second edition of Gregory’s works as were the other books in Gretscher’s Appendix. Later, Migne accepted this text from the 1638 Paris edition into the Patrologia Graeca.4

MS v represents a text of family ã. Gretscher used Munich, Royal Library 92 (paper, 16th cent.) which was a transcription of Ø. He called it ‘Bavaricum’. Manuscripts Collated by Maraval Maraval traced and examined another nine manuscripts from which he selected the following for his critical edition: 4

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B: Athens, Benaki Museum 10, parchment, 12th cent., fols 109–30, used by Aubineau for de Virginitate; of family â.5 Though very similar to K and N, there are variants proper to each of these three and hence Maraval retained it for collation. H: Istanbul, Library of the Patriarchate, 96, parchment, 14th cent., fols 43v–66v; of family ã, with distinctive readings proper to Ø, importantly confirms a conjecture of Jaeger at 12.16 (ìgéñáêéþägé). Maraval appears to have replaced Woods Callahan’s use of Patm. with H.

The Relationship between the Text Families In establishing his text Maraval generally steers more closely by the readings of WV than does Woods Callahan. Examples are 374.18/4.12 Êó÷Øóáé : ¦îéó÷Øóáé; 398.2/24.29 öëüãá ô­ò ðõñßíçò Õïìößáò NVW; 372.23/2.27 êá ìáñôõñüìgíïí omitted VW; 373.3/2.34 áÆíßîáóèáé : ¦íägßîáóèáé VW; 376.9 ðóáí : ðóé; 379.11/8.28 äé ô­ò èÞñáò omitted VW; 384.11/12.4 ôáØôá ì¥í added VW; 385.6/13.14 •ìöüôgñá : ©êÜôgñá; 412.2/38.2 ÷gñóÂí rather than the ÷Üñéóéí of most manuscripts. Yet there are interesting examples where Maraval does not go with W, but with all the other manuscripts and Woods Callahan: 378.2/7.5 ôïÃò ðïëëïÃò; 392.24/20.5 ôäí ðáôÝñùí : ðáñ •íèñþðùí W; 398.9/24.38 êáôgðþðéïí : êáôgíáíôßùí W. The relationship between the text families of the VSM is summed up in Maraval’s diagram on p. 130. The original, ù, written between 380 and 382, continues in a more or less direct line to W. During the fifth century this text was augmented somewhat in the Pontic monasteries, which is called the ‘Pontic’ recension, denoted by ùò. This is the version which found its way into the menologies between the sixth and seventh centuries, undergoing further modifications in the process. It is denoted by ùòò. In the ninth century V was copied from the same text as represented in W but a menology version of the text was also consulted. Meanwhile families â and ã descend entirely from the menology tradition. At a further remove the second class of manuscripts is generated which bifurcates into two sub-families. All of this, of course, begs the question of the putative ‘Pontic recension’.

5

Michel Aubineau, ed., Grégoire de Nysse, Traité de la Virginité, Sources Chrétiennes, 119 (Paris: Cerf, 1966).

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The Passages Missing from W The idea of a distinct Pontic recension seems to have come from Woods Callahan. It arises from the strange omission in W of the two passages in the narrative which mention Chrysaphius, Naucratius’s former slave who became his companion in the ascetic life. Her argument is as follows: W, on p. 378, 18–21 omits some two or three lines, which pertain to Naucratius, Gregory’s brother, snatched away prematurely by death. This youth was a monk in one of the monasteries which Basil had founded by the River Iris. Once, when he had gone out into the forests and mountains in order to hunt, through adverse fortune he met with death during the hunt, and the brothers only seem to have brought him back to the monastery dead. In the lines omitted by W, Gregory mentions a certain Chrysaphius, who was his brother Naucratius’s slave and attendant and who accompanied him in that hunt as he was accustomed to do. The omission of these words is remarkable, but even more remarkable is that in the same account, p. 380, 7, the same codex W omitted about two lines (duas lineas) in which there is mention of the same Chrysaphius. Since this could not have occurred by accident, it may be wondered whether W deleted all these words deliberately for some unknown reason, or whether the repeated mention of Chrysaphius, which we read in all the other codices, was added afterwards by the brothers who preserved the memory. This conjecture seems to me to be far more probable than the other, but if it is true, all the codices except W go back to a codex in which the name of Chrysaphius had been added. And it appears that it could only have taken place in Pontus where at that time the memory of Chrysapphios and of the premature death of the youths had not yet been consigned to oblivion. There are examples in the codices of both Basil and Gregory in which it is proved that some very old codices took their origin from Asia and from monasteries sited there, which was noted by Byzantine scribes. If therefore the mention of Chrysaphius was once absent from the book by Gregory, the other codices which now contain it, stemmed from a Pontic exemplar, because it had been added in the monasteries.’6

Maraval for his part records this opinion of Woods Callahan without demur. Indeed he incorporates her thesis of a Pontic recension in his stemma. Nevertheless, these two omissions in W beg further probing. Woods Callahan briefly raised the possibility that the passages were deleted ‘for some unknown reason’, and then rejects it. One possible reason is the fear that arose in a later phase of monastic development of homosexual relations between young monks. There is a passage in Basil’s Great Asketikon at LR 33.2 where Basil says, ‘And let the same good order be preserved not only in the case of women with men or men with women, but also in relations between those of the same sex’. This sentence in fact

6

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only appears in the ‘Asketikon 3’ recension. Instead of regarding it as a later insertion after Basil’s death, it was more likely added during one of the several recensions current even in Basil’s lifetime. There are even stronger warnings in On Renunciation7 in which Basil, or a later disciple, rules out youthful twosomes even if ‘under the pretext of spiritual love’ or ‘of studying the divine oracles’, for he has known ‘frequent cases of those who have fallen’.8 Moreover, Woods Callahan’s evocation of ‘the brothers’ who supposedly remembered these circumstances of Naucratius’s death, is based on a thoroughly anachronistic conception of his situation, all the more surprising in a critical editor of the VSM. Naucratius was not a member of any monastery founded by Basil. Very far from it! Basil was away in Athens during Naucratius’ entire ascetic venture. He was only converted by Macrina to a life of asceticism after the death of Naucratius. No, Naucratius and Chrysaphius’s lifestyle represents an early stage in the evolution of monasticism. They were engaged in what was still a freelance experiment in Christian ascetic life for males in the wooded hills by the river Iris. Only gradually, through the transformations of the late 350s and early 360s did the household at Annisa assume the form of the comprehensive and orderly ‘cenobitic’ community that we see outlined in Basil’s Small Asketikon, which reflects the situation in c. 365. By that stage the community included a house for men. But this was not the case in the spring of 356. Back then there were no ‘brothers’ (monks) to bring the two dead men back to the ‘monastery’, if by that is meant the abode by the Iris. So, if these doubts about Woods Callahan’s construction of the ‘Pontic recension’ have any merit, one must rethink what happened at a very early stage of the transmission. An alternative interpretation might be as follows: the two passages in question were actually part of Gregory of Nyssa’s original text, who after all had no reason to be ignorant of the details of his own brother’s death, even if he were not present at the time. Perhaps within a generation or two of Gregory’s text, the two passages were deleted by an over-nervous copyist in some monastic setting in which experience had led to the caution evident in the texts of Basil cited above. In short, they were censored. Indeed it would be ironic if these deletions were made in a Pontic monastery: W itself would then represent the real Pontic recension. However such deletions were more likely made in a Caesarean or Cappadocian setting than in a Pontic setting. This version of the text amended in a particular monastic setting was somehow completely bypassed when the VSM found its way into the menologies during the sixth to seventh centuries. It survived

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7

PG 31.625–68 (col. 637CD).

8

See also An Ascetic Discourse I, 5 in PG 31.869–82 (col. 880C).

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independently, attesting to a very early stage of the transmission, albeit one in which tampering had already occurred.

English Translations Three earlier English translations of the VSM are the following: • William K. Lowther Clarke, St Gregory of Nyssa, The Life of St Macrina (London: SPCK, 1916). • Virginia Woods Callahan, ‘The Life of Macrina’, in Saint Gregory of Nyssa: Ascetical Works (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 1967). • Kevin Corrigan, The Life of Saint Macrina, by Gregory Bishop of Nyssa (Toronto: Peregrina, 1998). Of these three, the first is perhaps the least unsatisfactory and the last the most unsatisfactory. Woods Callahan, for example, translates what in the Greek is ‘the great one’, applied to Macrina, as ‘superior’ (i.e. religious superior) which is not really the meaning, and ãõíáéêgÃïí, that is, women’s quarters, as ‘convent’. Such translations reflect certain preconceptions arising from later developments. In general this translation tends to be pleonastic and over-interpretive. Corrigan’s introduction and translation reveals the following misconceptions: p. 6: ‘Macrina and Peter founded a convent and monastery respectively.’ This sort of vocabulary is based on preconceptions which the General Introduction to the present volume endeavours to correct. p. 7: ‘Gregory, only four years her [Macrina’s] junior.’ He is at least eight years her junior! He had not begun middle school at the time of his father’s death (c. 345) or even for the final few years Basil was finishing middle school at Caesarea (to c. 348). His birth is to be placed in 335 at the earliest. p. 10: ‘it was through Macrina that Gregory finally withdrew from the world to live a life of prayer and study at his brother’s monastery.’ This betrays reliance on long superseded interpretations. Except for perhaps a period in young adulthood, once Gregory chose a secular career in 364 and married, there is no evidence that he withdrew from the world to the monastic life before he became a bishop, though he certainly visited Annisa to consult with his sister. Moreover Annisa wasn’t his ‘brother’s [i.e. Basil’s]’ monastery — if anything it was his brother Peter’s. p. 19: ðáñèÝíïò is translated as ‘maiden’ (VSM 2.1 and others). In the religious and liturgical sensibility of the VSM, and in accord with Gregory’s and the other Cappadocians’ writings on dedicated virginity, one must insist that parthenos be translated as ‘virgin’ with all the sacral connotations attaching to the term.

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p. 33: ‘a group of maidens from the convent’ (VSM 18.3) is a scarcely adequate way of rendering the Greek. One needs to stay closer to the text, as in ‘the choir of virgins from the women’s quarters’. p. 45: ‘a group of women’ (VSM 31.1) needs to be restored as ‘the choir of virgins’. p. 51: ‘that power-house of virtue’ (VSM 40.1) is an anachronistic rendering of öñïíôéóôÞñéïí. Something like ‘school of virtue’ is required. It means a place where phronema, thoughtful prudence, is cultivated. p. 52: ‘where your brother Peter was abbot’ (VSM 40.3). The use of the phrase ‘was abbot’ is an anachronistic way of dealing with the verb êáèçãgÃôï. Even Woods Callahan’s ‘superior’ is preferable. In the same sentence we have ðáñègíþí translated as ‘convent’ and again, this will not do. It is rendered here ‘the virgins’ quarters’.

The Present Translation The above examples highlight the fact that one’s prior conceptions very much affect what one sees in the text. It is important that these texts be read with an informed understanding of their historical context. The present author is able to bring to the task of translation much experience in the texts and historical background of the three siblings, Basil, Macrina, and Gregory of Nyssa. In fact it was in consulting the Woods Callahan and Corrigan translations that I considered that a more accurate translation as well as more beautiful one was needed. The present translation generally respects Maraval’s general preference for WV as tending to preserve the text of greatest antiquity. On the whole much of the data of the critical apparatus is only of interest to text critics. For the most part the variant readings affect the meaning so slightly they are not worth noting here. Maraval’s happy idea of dividing the work into chapters was embraced. His divisions, however, did not always recommend themselves. For example, what is here presented as a single Chapter 20, Maraval divided into two. But since this entire episode in which Macrina philosophizes on the human condition and on the life hereafter became the starting point of a new work, On the Soul and Resurrection, it seemed better that it be presented as a single whole. Other divisions follow logical sense, such as allocating separate chapters to Macrina’s parents and to her birth. Adapting an idea presented by Maraval on p. 27, five major divisions of the work, Parts A–E, have also been indicated. To enable more detailed reference, I have subdivided the longer chapters into verses. Both Woods Callahan’s and Maraval’s systems of reference are according to lines in their respective editions,

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but it is impractical to attempt this here. The corresponding references to the two critical editions are noted at the heading of each chapter. This translation attempts to be very faithful to Gregory’s text. Paraphrase, pleonasm, over-interpretation, and over-translation are carefully avoided. Nor do we want a text marred by idiosyncrasy or tendentious slant. Word-for-word correspondence and consistency in translating the same or similar terms are governing preferences, without being too slavish about it. The aim is to afford the reader in English a sense of confidence in the substance and the accuracy of the translation. Gregory was a master rhetorician. To ignore qualities of beauty in language and expression would betray him. Hence the translation aspires to a noble English that, while it may repay a quick read for superficial ‘information’, invites the reader to reflect, to savour, and perhaps even inspire, to pray.

The Setting and Genesis of the VSM What Gregory has to say on the setting and genesis of the VSM is found in his Letter 19 and in VSM 1 and 17.1–2. Accepting Pouchet’s dating of Basil’s death in late September 378,9 Gregory took part in the Council of Antioch nine months later in May–June 379, when the formerly exiled neo-Nicene bishops of Eastern Anatolia and Syria regrouped and worked out a strategy for the restoration of orthodoxy. It seems Gregory met there the John who is the addressee of Letter 19, or met him at least in Cilicia. Afterwards, when John had not heard from Gregory for some time he wrote a letter of enquiry, which eventually reached Gregory in Sebasteia in early 380. As Letter 19 vividly describes, a series of emergencies had overtaken Gregory on his return to Cappadocia after the Council. The first of these was a hurried journey to Annisa, which he reached on 18 July 379, to find his sister on her deathbed. Two days later he co-led her funeral with the local bishop Araxius. Returning immediately to Nyssa, he found trouble with heresy-mongers in his diocese; then he was summoned to Pontus again to safeguard an episcopal election in Ibora, from where he accompanied another embassy to Sebasteia to do the same in an episcopal election there. To his astonishment, he found himself elected, with the ensuing distresses which he laments somewhat incoherently in Letter 19. In that letter Gregory gives a brief but intense cameo of the life and death of his sister, which proved but the

9

On the dispute concerning the date of Basil’s death, see the General Introduction, ‘Macrina’s Death and Problems of Chronology’.

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harbinger, in literary terms, of what was to come. Macrina stayed on Gregory’s mind through very busy times. In the event he wrote two further major documents in which he made her the centrepiece. After he took part in the great Council of Constantinople in 381, Gregory fulfilled a mandate to visit the problem-ridden church in Arabia and at the same time to visit Jerusalem. On the way south he stopped in at Antioch. While there he met the original addressee of the VSM, who was a cultivated man keenly interested in the ascetic life, in all likelihood a monk. Of the various addressees attested in the manuscripts there are enough hints to suggest that the original addressee of the VSM may have been ‘the ascetic Olympius’. From the internal evidence alone it might be said in favour of the inscription to Olympius that ‘blessed’ rather than ‘holy’ was the usual term for someone recently dead, that the addressee is specified as an ascetic and there are many signs that the work was aimed especially at a monastic readership, and that the manuscript S containing the inscription is the best of the second class of manuscripts. The monk Olympius is also the addressee of On the Christian Profession and On Perfection. Hierius, Governor of Cappadocia, is the addressee of On Infants Prematurely Taken Away and Letter 7. Maraval thinks that the sense of equality of rank in this prefatory letter indicates that the addressee was a fellow bishop.10 During the conversation with Olympius, Macrina was in the forefront of Gregory’s mind and they soon turned to the subject of her remarkable life — remarkable that is in the highest terms of Christian ascetic and spiritual endeavour. Olympius was impressed with what Gregory had to say of her and suggested he memorialize his sister in writing — otherwise, he argued, her resplendent life would have passed by ‘ineffectually’. Well, that is the perspective of a learned and literary culture. This urging, at any rate, proved a trigger for something that Gregory felt inwardly he ought to do anyway. Once he had returned home from his long trip south, he took his friend’s prodding to heart and wrote the VSM, at the earliest during the winter of 381/82, if not through 382, which was a year of intense literary labours for Gregory. Stephen Mitchell suggested to me an excellent and, once it is made, almost obvious explanation for the variety of addressees preserved in the manuscripts: Gregory addressed the work originally to the friend he had met in Antioch, but afterwards recycled the work and sent it on to a range of other persons, changing the address as required.

10

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Genre and Purpose The VSM is not strictly a eulogy, funeral oration, or homily. Instead Gregory chose as a literary genre of his work ‘philosophical biography’,11 the intention of which is to illustrate an ideal through the account of a life. Pagan antecedents are the lives of Pythagoras, Apollonius, or Plotinus, and even Plutarch’s Lives of men of virtue. Maraval insists, however, that Gregory exercised a certain independence with regard to a precise literary form.12 The ideal Gregory proposes in the VSM is much the same as that proposed in his other works, especially the great works of mystical theology towards the end of his life. Macrina is shown as exemplar of the Christian philosopher, one who has shone in a life of virtue and attained to the sublime degree of the life in Christ. At this point Maraval invokes the term ‘hagiography’.13 But this somewhat pejorative genre category carries baggage from the milieu of nineteenth-century German liberalism and nationalism in which it was coined, and is best left aside. An alternative will be proposed shortly below. In writing the VSM Gregory made a point of including brief accounts of other members of the family, notably Emmelia, Naucratius, and Peter, so that the work constitutes something of a ‘family chronicle’. The attention paid to these family members is meant to complement the already far-flung fame of its most illustrious member, the great Basil. When Gregory says of Basil in VSM 8.4 that ‘his reputation eclipsed all those who were illustrious for virtue’, it is obvious that to his mind Macrina was among those so eclipsed. The VSM was intended therefore to remedy this situation. In the same place Gregory says that any attempt to deal adequately with Basil’s life and labours would require a lengthy time-consuming narrative. This task was fulfilled by both Basil and Gregory’s friend, Gregory Nazianzen, whose Oratio 43, the Panegyric on Basil, also has the aspect of a family chronicle, in its earlier chapters at least. Perhaps it was because Gregory of Nyssa was well aware of this lengthy and magnificent document that he could afford to relegate Basil, relatively speaking, when writing this new family chronicle. A word about idealism and reality. One may well be sceptical about the scholarly construction of the VSM as merely a product of literary invention made up of set pieces determined by the conventions of genre. There is too much about the

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11

See Maraval, Vie, pp. 21–23, 92.

12

Maraval, Vie, p. 27.

13

Maraval, Vie, pp. 24–26.

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VSM that carries the conviction of personal experience and lived reality. Yet that there is also idealism in this highly crafted portrait cannot be denied. Mention has already been made of the extrapolation backwards of later developments. Cases in point are Macrina’s observing the formal hours of prayer through the day in VSM 4.4, and Macrina’s comments on Gregory’s career as a trouble-shooter of the churches in 23.4.14 Gregory’s account in VSM 17.1 of how he was moved to visit his sister, sua sponte so to speak, is somewhat at variance with the data of Letter 19, in which he was spurred on by hearing bad news of her condition. The latter is surely closer to the reality. Comparisons with excerpts of Basil’s works included in this volume are also instructive. In VSM 9.1 Gregory describes Emmelia’s conversion to the common life under Macrina’s tutelage. Basil’s Letter 46.2d brings out more clearly just how protracted and difficult a task it was for the aristocratic lady accustomed to command to relinquish her prerogatives and live on an equal basis with former slaves. Similarly VSM 28.5 mentions Macrina’s rescue of children abandoned during the famine. Basil, in Letter 315, gives us a greater insight into just how arduous the undertaking proved to be. He pleads for a ‘most reverend proestosa’ (female monastic superior) who is having enormous difficulties in caring for the orphans in her charge. Such instances do not show up anything false in Gregory’s account, but they do amplify it with a somewhat more concrete and realistic view of events. Basil’s Letter 46 to a Fallen Virgin, on the other hand, if it concerns a younger sister who defaulted from her undertaking as a virgin, as is quite probable, shows Gregory omitting completely from the family record an episode or person that did nothing for the ideal he means to promote. But then we have already seen that he did just that in the case of Eustathius of Sebasteia.

An Interpretive Key: Mystagogy A kind of mystic procession was set in train. (VSM 36.3)

Many approaches might be taken towards so rich a document as The Life of Macrina. But if the present author were to recommend one interpretive key to the reader of the VSM it is that it be understood as mystagogy, By this is meant an exposition of the‘mysteries’, the life in Christ as communicated in the liturgical

14

Compare Gregory’s comments at VSM 17.2 according to which the period since his last visit to Macrina is dominated by the exile from his see.

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rites, and realized above all by the virgin mystic in the liturgy of the heart. It is a much happier genre category to use than the prejudicial term ‘hagiography’, commented on above. Gregory certainly presents the entire life of Macrina as a ‘mystic procession’ culminating in divine communion. What is celebrated by the body of Christians in the psalmodies, the sacred rites, and the sacraments is especially realized by the virgin for the Lord in all the dimensions of her being. Just as the innate character of Christian liturgy involves a certain sense of progression from the earthbound to the supremely sacred, a gradual broaching of thresholds until access to the innermost shrine is finally gained, so the life of the virgin is portrayed is a gradual progression towards divine communion. Nothing is hurried, brash, or pre-emptive. All is played out by gradual approaches and years of patience until the Mystery which is Christ in you, your hope of glory (Colossians 1. 27) is gloriously disclosed in this particular soul only at the very end of her life’s course. Her life of Christian philosophy which was always an anticipation of the angelic life of the resurrection climaxes at last in her mystical communion in prayer on her deathbed, a prayer of final self-offering that bears features of a Eucharistic anaphora. But to begin with, Gregory expresses his intention to show the life of his sister Macrina as a philosopher: ‘she who had raised herself by philosophy to the highest summit of human virtue’. Just as Gregory is often concerned in his other works to give full scope to argument from natural reason before proceeding to the dimensions of revelation and faith — On the Soul and the Resurrection is a most suitable and accessible example in this volume — so also in the VSM, Macrina is shown at first as exemplifying the philosophical life in terms comprehensible to any cultivated and virtuous non-Christian. Even in the extended eulogy of the ascetic life implemented among the virgins at Annisa in VSM 13, their approach to what is styled the ‘angelic life’ in Gospel terms is mingled somewhat with Platonic connotations: ‘their philosophy continually aided them towards greater purity by multiplying the goods [= virtues] they discovered’. What Basil calls ‘meditation on scriptural sayings’ (Letter 207) is here styled more generically ‘meditation on divine things’. Gregory exercises reserve as he sketches his portrait. Only here and there are notes introduced that show a more specifically Christian content. In no sphere is this more evident than in Christian prayer. Macrina in her childhood, or at least by her teens, is chanting the psalms in the manner she has learnt from her family tradition and the local church. That it quite attained to a full system of ‘hours’ as portrayed in VSM 4.4 is doubtful. In view of monastic interests Gregory seems to be anticipating later developments. When one carefully gathers up the scattered

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references, quite a few features of the life of prayer and liturgy as it came to be lived by Macrina and her community can be listed.15 It seems that when young, Macrina not only embraced baptism, probably at the time of her commitment to virginity, but considered that to partake of Holy Communion on daily basis was in keeping with her resolve. She obtained permission and the means to do so.16 This Eucharistic sensibility was no doubt behind Peter’s ordination at a younger age than usual to the priesthood, enabling the Annisa community to celebrate the Divine Liturgy through the week. When Basil became prelate of Caesarea, he ‘advanced his brother to the office of the priesthood in the presbyterate, consecrating him in the mystic rites17 himself. And thus their life made progress in greater dignity and holiness, now that their philosophy was augmented by the priesthood’. Some impression of the Eucharistic sensibility at Annisa can be gained from Basil’s SR 172 (appearing in the Small Asketikon, c. 365): ‘In what fear, or conviction or disposition should we partake of the Body and Blood of Christ?’ A series of epithets build up the aureole around Macrina. She is ‘the virgin’ (1.4, 2.1, 9.2, 12.4, 13.1), the ‘teacher’ (14.2, 21.2, 28.1), ‘the great one’ (18.2, 19.1, 21.7, 23.5, 33.1, 40.6; with ‘great’ qualifying her name 12.1, 20.4, 30.2), the ‘holy’ (27.4, 29.1, 30.4, 31.2, 32.2, 33.1, 37.1, 40.3, 41.1), ‘that blessed soul’ (40.1), ‘the blessed one’ (40.5), ‘the lofty and noble soul’ (12.4), ‘this divine soul’ (29.2), and of her body after death, ‘that sacred body’ (32.1, 38.2), ‘the pure body’ (33.1), its ‘sacred beauty’ (34.1), ‘a radiance seemed to shine forth from her beauty’ (34.2), her ‘holy face’, her ‘godlike/deiform face’ (37.1). Gregory also makes it clear that he considers Macrina the equivalent of the martyrs (the quintessential and original Christian saints), as in his dream vision before he arrives in Annisa (VSM 17.3–4), its verification once he has seen her (21.3), and the holding of an all-night vigil for her as for the martyrs (35.2). These testimonies, together with the working of miracles recorded with much restraint

15

See Basil’s Letter 207 and notes in this volume.

16

Compare the ‘mystic services’, VSM 7.3 and note. She received a supply of the Sacrament from the Divine Liturgy on Sunday and partook of it from her hands each day through the week. 17

ôáÃò ìõóôéêáÃò ©áõôïØ Êgñïõñãßáéò •öégñþóáò. At this stage, ‘mystic’ has a strongly liturgical register. The minimum canonical age for ordination to the presbyterate at that time was thirty years, according to the 12th canon of the Council of Neocaesarea, endorsed in later canonical collections. If Peter was ordained not long after Basil became bishop, say in 370/71, he was probably about twenty-six years old.

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at the end all present Macrina as a woman of consummate holiness worthy of the same veneration that the faithful accord the martyrs. The climax of the VSM is the very moving account of Macrina’s last day, her prayer before death and finally her passing, in which the inner meaning of her life is finally disclosed (24–27). ‘Her final prayer and the liturgical context of her last moments make explicit the Christian sense of her entire trajectory [. . .] The pursuit of the philosophical ideal is none other than the mystical ascent to Christ.’18 The account of her last day is shot with liturgical connotations. Many are the allusions to the evening prayer then being chanted in the church, the lighting of the lamps, and the vesper hymn that was ancient even then, the Phos Hilaron, the salutation of the ‘gladdening light’ that is the appearing of Christ. The last appeal of Macrina’s prayer before death is from Psalm 140, the vesper psalm par excellence. Of particular interest is Macrina’s turning to the east for prayer. This practice (literally ‘orientation’), embodying all the eschatological sensibility of the early Church, is found across all Christian traditions. In the public liturgy (especially the Eucharist) and private liturgy (prayer) it was a gesture signifying nostalgia for a lost paradise in the east and a hope of the world that is to come, when the orient from on high shall visit us (Luke 1. 78), and Christ, the Sun of Righteousness who shall rise with healing in his wings (Malachi 4. 2) bestows the resurrection of life, symbolized forever by the dawn of Easter day and every Lord’s day (Ephesians 5. 14). In the final hymn of Methodius’s Symposium Thecla intones: ‘From above, O virgins, a voice that wakes the dead has come. It cries out to us: in white robes, bearing your lamps, hasten towards the East to meet the Bridegroom, before the King enters within the gates!’ This is exactly the ambience of Macrina’s dying hours. Gregory in his fifth Homily on the Lord’s Prayer comments: ‘Whenever we turn to the East, it is not as if God were only to be contemplated there, for he who is everywhere is not especially apprehended in any part since he encompasses all things equally, but because our first homeland is in the East — I mean our sojourn in paradise, from which we fell, for God planted a paradise in Eden towards the East (Genesis 2.8, Septuagint) — and when we look to the East and recall to our memory how we were cast out from the bright regions of bliss in the East we shall have reason to utter such prayer’.19 Of the many ancient testimonies to the practice of orientation in prayer listed by Graef and by Maraval, one might mention the

18 19

Maraval, Vie, p. 92.

Translated from GNO, VII.2, p. 65, drawing upon Hilda C. Graef, trans., Gregory of Nyssa: The Lord’s Prayer, The Beatitudes (Westminster, MD: Newman Press, 1954), pp. 76–77.

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incident reported by John Moschus, when a martyr about to be executed begs the clemency of being turned to the East for his death.20 Of interest here is the testimony of a well-informed travel writer. In the mid1990s William Dalrymple set out to follow Moschus’s late sixth-century itinerary through the Christian Near East, as reported in his monastic travelogue, The Spiritual Meadow. In the ancient cells of monks carved in the rocky hillsides around Mar Saba in Palestine, Dalrymple noted ‘the prayer niche, a small arched cut in the eastern wall of the cell indicating the proper direction for prayer. As I passed from cell to cell, I realized that the prayer niche must be another of those features of the early Christian world which has been lost to modern western Christianity, yet which is still preserved in Islam. No mosque is complete without its mihrab pointing in the direction of Mecca.’21 Having turned to the east and hailed the gladdening light of the Risen Lord, only now, at the very end is the secret of Macrina’s heart and life fully disclosed: her intimate relationship to a divine person, her spousal love for Christ the Bridegroom, lived out here as a lifelong ‘co-crucifixion’ with Christ (VSM 26.15). Lest we suppose this is only Gregory’s imposition on Macrina of spousal imagery, there is the iron cross and the iron ring she wore constantly over her heart. The ring enclosed a fragment of the Wood of Life, the True Cross. Macrina’s life as a virgin for the Lord culminates in this disclosing of the inmost shrine of her heart: ‘it seemed to me that she was then making manifest to those present that divine and pure love (eros) of the unseen Bridegroom which she had nourished secretly in the innermost recesses of her soul, and was proclaiming the disposition of heart by which she hastened towards him for whom she longed, so that, freed from the fetters of the body, she might be with him as quickly as possible. For in truth, her race was towards her Beloved [. . .]. the nearer she approached her exodus, the more clearly she discerned the beauty of the Bridegroom and the more eagerly she hastened to the one for whom she longed [. . .]. Her pallet had been turned towards the east, and, withdrawing from converse with us, she spoke from then on to God in prayer’ (VSM 24.5–25.2), and spoke no more on earth to man.

20

Graef, Gregory of Nyssa: On the Lord’s Prayer, p. 192, n. 125; Maraval, Vie, pp. 78–79; John Moschus, Pratum spirituale 72, P.G. 87.3, cols. 2851–3112 (col. 2925A). 21

William Dalrymple, From the Holy Mountain: A Journey among the Christians of the Middle East (London: Flamingo 1998), p. 304.

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Gregory, Bishop of Nyssa, on the Life of the Holy Macrina 1 Part A: Introduction 1. Prefatory Letter (GNO, 370.1–371.23 / Maraval, Vie, Ch. 1, pp. 136–37) 1. From the form of the inscription2 the character of this work would seem to be that of a letter, but its wealth exceeds the limits of a letter and it has extended itself into a lengthy3 narrative. My defence must be that the theme on which you urged me to write surpasses the scope of a letter. 2. You will surely not forget our meeting, when, preparing to visit Jerusalem according to vow,4 to see in those places the traces of the Lord’s sojourn in the

1

‘By the same, on Macrina his sister, a letter written to Bishop Euprepios, father of’ [sic]’ W; ‘by the same, saint (•ãßïõ) Gregory Bishop of Nyssa, a letter to Hierios on the life of the Macrina his own sister’ V; ‘by the same, on the life of the holy (Òóßáò) Macrina his sister’ N; ‘a letter of Gregory, Bishop of Nyssa written to Bishop Eutropius on all that concerns the life of the holy Macrina his sister’ B; ‘by the same, on the life of the holy Macrina, sister of Basil the Great’ Ø; ‘life of saint (ãßáò) Macrina written by Gregory Bishop of Nyssa, blessed father’ H; ‘To the ascetic Olympius, on the life of the blessed Macrina, his own sister’ S; ‘by Gregory of Nyssa on the life of saint Macrina his own sister’ G; title and beginning of VSM lacking in M. 2

ô­ò ðñïãñáö­ò . . . lit. ‘the proscription’, from which it may be inferred that some address, as to a correspondent, was part of the original title. 3

ìáêñçãïñßáí (‘lengthy’) all manuscripts except W which has ìáñôýñéáí (‘witnessing’), which, if the original, might be translated as ‘a testamentary narrative’. 4 êáôz gÛ÷¬í . . . alternative translations: ‘in view of prayer’, ‘in fulfilment of a vow/promise’. The ‘prayer’ might be the request of the Council. According to Letter 2.12 (see Silvas, Gregory, pp. 115–22 (p. 120), Gregory had been commissioned by ‘the holy Council’ to visit the churches of

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flesh, I met you by chance in the city of Antioch.5 And you will remember all the different topics we discussed, for it was not likely that our meeting would lapse into silence, with your intelligence prompting so many topics of conversation. 3. As often happens on such occasions, the conversation flowed on until we came to the recollection of the life of someone greatly esteemed. The subject of the tale was a woman — if indeed she was a ‘woman’, for I know not whether it is fitting to designate her of that nature who so surpassed nature (cf. Galatians 3. 28).6 4. Our7 tale did not derive its credibility from hearing tales from others, for our conversation rehearsed in detail what experience itself had taught us; it had no need of being attested by another’s report. The virgin called to mind was no stranger to our family such that it would be necessary to learn the marvels concerning her from others. No, she was of the same parents as we were ourselves, being as it were a votive-offering of the fruits to come, the first shoot of the maternal womb. 5. Whereupon you were convinced that it would be a benefit if the story of her noble qualities were told, because then such a life would not be forgotten with the passage of time, and she who had raised herself by philosophy8 to the highest summit of human virtue would not have passed by ineffectually, veiled in silence.

Arabia. He says that he had ‘promised’ (ßðgó÷üìçí) also to visit the churches of nearby Jerusalem which were in a disturbed state, and that the fact that he saw the holy places was incidental to his main purpose, the remedying of the churches. According to Letter 3.9 (Silvas, Gregory, pp. 123–32 (p. 126) this visit took place after the proclamation of ‘piety’, which means that his mandate must have come from the Council of 381, ratified by the emperor, and not from the Council of Antioch (379). Letter 19, unknown to earlier historians, also fails to support any visit to Jerusalem after the Council of Antioch. Here however Gregory gives a different motive for his visit, implying that he was on pilgrimage, the very practice he censured in Letter 2. It may be that different visits to Palestine are referred to. 5

Apparently the correspondent was not a participant in the council and not a bishop.

6

See On the Making of Man 16.7 (NPNF2 , V , 405) and On Virginity VIII.1 (p. 54), where Gregory cites Galatians 3. 28. In Gregory’s interpretation of Genesis 1. 27, man was created first in the image of God, and only afterwards was differentiated into male and female, since the division into sexes could not be true of the divine archetype. 7

Unless Gregory includes Olympius as a relative or part of the Pontic ascetic circle — a distinct possibility — he seems here to adopt the plural of modesty in reference to himself. 8 In the fourth- and fifth-century the word ‘philosophy’ was often used to denote the Christian ascetic life. See the section ‘Macrina the Philosopher’ in ‘On the Soul and the Resurrection, Introduction’.

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Accordingly, I thought it well to obey you and, in a few words, to tell her story as best I can, in an unstudied and simple narrative.9 Part B: The Biography Proper 2. Macrina’s Parents (GNO, 371.24–372.16 / Maraval, Vie, Ch. 2a, pp. 142–43) 1. The virgin’s name was Macrina (cf. Luke 1. 27). The child was given this name by her parents after a renowned Macrina earlier in the family, our father’s mother, who at the time of the persecutions had bravely contended10 for the confession of Christ. Though this was her name in public — the one used by those who knew her — she had been given another name in secret during an apparition11 just before she came into the light through her mother’s pangs. 2. For her mother12 too was of such virtue that she was wholly guided by the divine will, and was drawn especially to the pure and incorrupt way of life, so that, as far as her own choice went, she would not have married. 3. But since she was an orphan of both her parents, and her body was in its first flower of beauty, and the fame of her comeliness was attracting many suitors, there was a risk that, if she were not joined13 to someone by choice, she might suffer some unwished for violence, seeing that some, inflamed by her beauty, were preparing to carry her off.14 On this

9

By this paragraph Gregory means to gain the reader’s good will through expressions of modesty: he is simply writing at another’s bidding (partially true), and he is going to forgo rhetorical art (largely untrue; this is a conventional phrase). In favour of ‘artlessness’, Gregory does show a certain freedom in his construction of the VSM, not holding himself bound to all the conventions of late antique biography or encomium. The narrative weaves backwards and forwards in a way that might have been tidied up in a more thoroughly revised work. So much for ‘unstudied’. Yet rhetoric is never absent from Gregory’s style. Cf. for example the summary description of the virgin’s way of life (13), Macrina’s prayer before death (24), and the sisters’ lament (26), all highly wrought literary pieces. 10

¦íáèëÞóáóá, i.e. had been an ‘athlete’ for Christ, just like the martyrs. Macrina the Elder must have been a remarkable woman. See the testimonies to her in Basil, Letters 46, 204, and 223, and Gregory Nazianzen, Oratio 43.5–7 (McCauley, pp. 30–32). 11

¦ê ôéíïò ¦ðéöáígßáò, ‘from a kind of epiphany’.

12

Her name was Emmelia, which we know only through Gregory Nazianzen. Emmelia ‘truly well named, the name of harmony’, Oratio 43.10 (McCauley, p. 34). See also Epigrams 161–64. 13 14

óõíáñìüóègßç.

In Roman law the crime of raptus covered abduction, seduction, and rape. The primary concern was not the woman’s consent, but the offence against a husband’s right to legitimate offspring

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account she chose the one who was both known and attested for the dignity of his life,15 and thus acquired a protector for her own life. 3. Macrina’s Birth and her Secret Name (GNO, 372.16–373.3 / Maraval, Vie, Ch. 2b, pp. 144–47) 1. Immediately, in her first pregnancy, she became her mother. When the due time came for to be freed from her pangs in delivery, she fell into a sleep and seemed to be holding in her hands that which was still enclosed in her womb. 2. And one in majesty of form and aspect beyond the human appeared and addressed the child she was carrying by the name of ‘Thecla’ — that Thecla whose fame is so great among the virgins.16 After doing this17 three times, he vanished from her sight and bequeathed ease to her labour, so that as soon as she awoke from sleep she saw her dream realized. 3. Such then was her secret name. But it seems to me that the apparition spoke that way not so much to guide the mother in the giving of a name, as to foretell the life of the girl and to signify by the sharing of the same name the sharing of the same choice of life.

or a father’s right to choose the man who would benefit from his daughter’s inheritance. Throughout the fourth century Church leaders continued to struggle against abduction marriages or bride theft, in which a woman, who might even be an accomplice, is snatched in order to force the hand of the families. The Codex Theodosianus IX, 24. 1 records an edict of Constantine in April 320 that prescribed very severe punishment for abductors and their accomplices. Basil makes ecclesiastical decisions on the issue in Letter 199, Canons 22 and 30, Deferrari, III, 112–15 and 122–23: if the girl was already betrothed to another, she is restored to the authority of that betrothal; if she was not betrothed, she is returned to her family or guardians with whom the decision rests; seduction proper, i.e. the coercion of the girl herself, is to be treated as an offence of fornication on the part of the abductor, attracting a four years’ penance of excommunication. Basil expresses himself indignantly in a case of the latter in Letter 270 (Deferrari, IV , 140–43); he concludes: ‘all are to learn to consider the snatcher a common enemy like a snake or some other wild beast, and to pursue him accordingly and to champion those who are wronged.’ See Basil’s Letter 46 in this volume concerning the ‘bride theft’ of a consecrated virgin, possibly his own sister. For the Roman law on this point see Clark, pp. 35–38. 15

ôÎí ¦ð ógìíüôçôé âßïõ ãíùñéæüìgíüí ôg êá ìáñôõñïýìgíïí, ‘attested for the reverence and gravity of his manner and life’. Basil the Elder, son of fervently Christian parents, would have graduated from his lengthy studies and established his career as an advocate and rhetorician in the city of Neocaesarea. If Emmelia was in her mid- to late teens, he would probably have been in his mid-twenties. An age gap of up to ten years between bride and groom was unexceptional. The negotiations had to take place across two provinces, Cappadocia and Pontus.

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16

See the section in the General Introduction: ‘St Thecla the Virgin and Macrina’s Vocation’.

17

WV; all other manuscripts and W–C insert êá ìáñôõñüìgíïí ‘and calling her to witness’.

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4. Macrina’s Education (GNO, 373.4–374.6 / Maraval, Vie, Ch. 3, pp. 148–50) 1. And so the child was reared. Though she had her own nurse, she was nursed for the most part in her mother’s own arms. Once she had passed the age of infancy, she was quick to learn childish lessons. The girl’s nature shone in whatever lessons her parents directed her. 2. Her mother was most concerned that the child be educated,18 but she did not educate her in the customary secular curriculum, which for the most part instructs the early years of study by means of the poems.19 For she thought it disgraceful and altogether unsuitable to teach a tender and impressionable nature either the tragic passions — those passions of women which gave the poets their starting points and themes, or the indecencies of comedy, or the causes20 of the miseries that befell Troy, which through their degrading tales concerning women tend to the corruption of character.21 3. Instead the parts of the God-inspired Scripture that seem more easily learned22 at a young age: these formed the child’s lessons, especially the Wisdom of Solomon, and besides this, whatever bears on the moral life.23 4. Indeed there was nothing whatever of the Psalter that she did not know, since she recited each part of the psalmody at its own proper time.24 When she rose from bed, or began her

18

Not mentioned here is that Macrina the Elder also played an important role in the education of the (older?) children. See Basil, Letter 210, Deferrari, III, 194–215 (pp. 196–97), Letter 223, Deferrari, III, 286–313 (pp. 298–99). This influence is significant, since the elder Macrina relayed the traditions of the church of Neocaesarea, including the modified Origenism of its apostle, St Gregory Thaumaturgus, with all that that implies for a contemplative devotion to the text of sacred Scripture. Such a gap in documentation warns against arguments from silence. 19

That is, beginning with the Homeric epics and going on to the dramatic works.

20

áÆôßáò VWN; áÆó÷ýíáò ‘shames’ YH, S, GM, W–C; the entire phrase is missing in v. The adultery of Paris and Helen, Clytaemnestra’s adultery and murder of her husband, and many other sordid episodes that clustered around the house of Agamemnon. 21 The critique of this traditional pedagogy began in ancient Greece itself. Plato, in his Republic 2–3 and Laws 7 reproved the use of Homeric myths in education. 22

gÛëçðôüôgñá, probably in the sense of memorized, rehearsed; v has •ëçðôüôgñá, ‘less easily taken up’. 23 24

That is the God-inspired Scriptures themselves had to be meted out prudently to the child.

Gregory may be anticipating later developments by giving a fully fledged monastic character to the young Macrina’s daily regimen. This section corresponds with the description of a rudimentary system of hours in Basil’s Letter 2, written in 358 at the very beginning of his ascetic retreat (Deferrari, I, 6–25). He was almost certainly looking over his shoulder at Macrina’s established practice. Maraval, Vie, pp. 69–70, points out that even the earliest Christian authors (the Didache,

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duties or rested from them, or sat down to eat or retired from table, when she went to bed or rose from it for prayers, she kept up the psalmody wherever she went, like a good travelling companion that never left her at any time. 5. Plans for Macrina’s Betrothal (GNO, 374.7–375.5 / Maraval, Vie, Ch. 4, pp. 152–54) 1. Growing up in these and similar practices, and having trained her hand especially in wool-work, she reached her twelfth year, at just the age when the bloom of youth begins to appear. 2. And here it is worth marvelling that though the girl’s beauty was concealed, it did not escape notice. There was not in all her native country, it seems, any marvel to compare with her beauty and charm, so that not even the hands of painters could capture her radiance. No, that art which shows its versatility in many ways and attempts the greatest themes, even to crafting by imitation images of the cosmic elements themselves, was unable to imitate accurately the comeliness of her form. On account of this a great swarm of suitors for marriage buzzed about her parents. 3. But her father, who was indeed wise and circumspect in his judgement of the good, singled out from among the relatives,25 one of high repute and known for his sobriety26 who was just leaving the schools, and decided to betroth his child to him when she should come of age.27 4. He in the meantime lived in more purposeful hopes,28 and offered to the girl’s father his reputation in eloquence as an especially Tertullian, Hippolytus, Clement of Alexandria, etc.) recommend certain definite moments of prayer through the night and day. 25 ôéí ôãí ¦ê ôïØ ãÝíïõò. Maraval, Vie, p. 153, interprets ‘parmi ceux de sa parenté’, as if among the father’s relatives, which in the context seems to be right. Clark, pp. 41–46, discusses the preference in the Greek and eastern world for endogamy, i.e. for marrying within the near extended family. For centuries Roman legislative acts combated the eastern practice of marrying first cousins, uncles/nieces, and widowed in-laws but with uneven success. The Christian Church and Roman law concurred in this aim. 26

The young man fulfils two essential criteria: he is socially worthy of his prospective bride and of upright character. A girl could legally refuse to marry the man her father chose only if he was of unworthy status or behaviour ( Justinian, Digest 23.1.11–12). 27 ¦êgßíå êáôgããõí ¦êíþêgé ô¬í ðáÃäá, gÇðgñ gÆò ºëßêßáí §ëèïé. There is no question yet of formal betrothal, which in fact never seems to have taken place. Prospective spouses certainly met in the betrothal ceremony, expressed their mutual consent for the future, and exchanged a hand clasp and kiss. But to judge from VSM 5.3–4 and 6.1, Macrina and her young man did not meet in this procedure and possibly never met, unless informally in family gatherings. 28

It is worth noting that young men were also under the authority of their fathers and dependant upon paternal arrangements for marriage: ‘John Chrysostom suggested to fathers a tactic for

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pleasing kind of wedding gift; for he used to display the power of his eloquence in forensic contests on behalf of the wronged. 5. But Envy cut short these more purposeful hopes by snatching him away in his pitiful youth.29 6. Macrina Resolves on a Life of Virgin ‘Widowhood’ (GNO, 375.6–375.21 / Maraval, Vie, Ch. 5a, pp. 154–56) 1. Now the young girl was not ignorant of her father’s plans. So when the decision which had been made for her was cut off by the young man’s death, she designated her father’s decision a marriage, as if what had been decided upon had already taken place, and she resolved from then on to remain by herself.30 And indeed her decision31 was more firmly fixed than might have been expected at her age. 2. For when her parents32 brought her proposals of marriage — which often happened, due to the many who aspired to her hand because of the fame of her beauty — she would say that it was out of order and unlawful not to be loyal to the marriage that had been authorized once and for all for her by her father and to be put under pressure to consider another; since by nature marriage is but once only, keeping adolescent sons on the path of virtue: ‘Promise him too that you will lead him to a lovely girl, and tell him that you have made him the heir of your property’ (On Vainglory, 61) cited in Clark, p. 13. 29

Compare Gregory Nazianzen, Epigrams 122–30 on his first cousin Euphemius (brother of St Amphilochius), who began a career in oratory auspiciously, but died prematurely in circumstances reminiscent of Macrina’s promised betrothed: ‘Instead of a virgin bride, he possesses a tomb, and the day of wailing overtook the days of the bridal song [. . .] The chanters of the bridal song were at his gate but Envy came more swiftly than they.’ He was twenty-one years old, a native of Diocaesarea in Cappadocia. This manner of invoking a personified Envy (like Fortune) was an almost unconscious reflex of pagan usage on the part of Christian authors. It is particularly noticeable in Gregory Nazianzen. But then the pagan personified ‘Envy’ is easily assimilable to the scriptural idea of Satan / the Devil: Nevertheless through envy of the devil death came into the world, and they who are of his side do find it (Wisdom 2. 23). 30

ìÝígéí ¦öz ©áõô­ò, this is a conventional phrase that comes from the Hellenic tradition and means to remain unmarried for the pursuit of philosophy. 31

º êñßóéò. Freedom of choice and the necessity of exercising it is a major element of Gregory’s religious anthropology. He has a dialectic here: the ‘decision’ made by the father (ô¬í ôïØ ðÜôñïò êñßóéí), which he verbally reinforces again and again, now passes into Macrina’s province, and she acts courageously on it, but cleverly too, casting her stubbornness against her parents now as loyalty to her father’s earlier decision. Macrina successfully contrives to escape the necessity under which her mother was placed at the same age. 32

This is plural in all manuscripts (ôäí ãgííçóáìÝíùí) except GM which have singular (ôè ãgííçóáìÝíå), referring to the father.

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as there is one birth and one death. 3. She insisted that he who had been joined to her by her parents’ decision had not died, but that in her judgement he was alive to God (Luke 20. 38, Romans 6. 11) through the hope of the resurrection (Acts 23. 6), and was away on a journey, not dead, and that it was out of order not to keep faith with one’s bridegroom who had gone abroad.33 7. Macrina Works Out her Lifestyle (GNO, 375.21–377.7 / Maraval, Vie, Ch. 5b, pp. 156–60) 1. With such arguments as these she put off those who were trying to persuade her. She determined on one safeguard for her noble decision: never to be separated from her own mother, not even for a moment of time. Consequently her mother often used to say to her that she had carried her other children in her womb for the appointed time, but that she bore her within herself continually, since in a way she sheltered her always in her womb. 2. Yet the daughter’s companionship was neither burdensome nor without advantage to the mother. For the attentions she received from her daughter were worth those of many house servants, and the benefits exchanged were mutual. For the mother looked after the girl’s soul, and she her mother’s body, fulfilling in all other respects the required service, even to frequently preparing the bread for her mother with her own hands.34 3. Not that she made this her primary occupation. But when she had lent her hands to the mystic services35

33

This appears to be a discrete allusion to the heroic fidelity of Penelope, wife of Odysseus, and her resistance to many suitors during the years of her husband’s absence (Odyssey 12). The antiexample in classical literature is Clytaemnaestra’s adultery during her husband’s long absence. 34

In such aristocratic households, this was usually the work of slaves. See the comments of Elm,

p. 46. 35

ôáÃò ìõóôéêáÃò ßðgñgóßáò ôò ÷gÃñáò ©áõô­ò §÷ñçóg in all manuscripts except N, Ø, S, W-C which have §÷ñéóg (i.e. she ‘anointed’ her hands). In the fourth century the adjective ìõóôéêáÃò refers to liturgical rites, especially the sacraments. Maraval, Vie, pp. 158–59, n. 2, records three interpretations of this obscure clause: (1) She consecrated her hands for the day’s work by first taking Holy Communion on them in the morning; (2) she baked the bread for the Eucharist, and then baked bread for her mother using the left-over dough; (3) using an alternative reading §÷ñçóg, ‘she lent her hands in service to the mystic rites’ through the ministry of deaconess. The third explanation is doubtful (see Maraval’s discussion, Vie, pp. 55–56). The office of deaconess only came into prominence somewhat later in the fourth century when it was reserved for older women, commonly widows, from the age of sixty years in the Codex Theodosianus XVI, 2, 27. Macrina was certainly not a teenage deaconess, and she never reached sixty years. Her deputy as superior of the women, Lampadion, is however specified as a deaconess (VSM 31.1). Supporting the first explanation is Basil’s Letter 93 (Deferrari, II, 144–47) where he confirms the devout Caesarea in her custom of taking Holy Communion at home every day from her own hands. On

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— deeming that the zeal for this matter befitted the purpose of her life — from what was left over she furnished food for her mother by her own labours. 4. This was not all, but she also helped manage all her mother’s pressing responsibilities. For she had four sons and five daughters, and paid taxes to three governors, since her property was scattered in that many provinces. In various ways, then, her mother was distracted by responsibilities, for her father had by then departed this life. In all these affairs she shared her mother’s toils, dividing the responsibilities with her and lightening the heavy load of her sorrows. 5. At one and the same time, thanks to her mother’s guardianship, she kept her own life spotless, being directed and witnessed in all things under her mother’s eyes, while through her own life she provided a great spur to her mother towards the same goal — I mean that of philosophy — little by little drawing her on to the immaterial and unencumbered36 life. 8. Basil Returns from Athens (GNO, 377.7–377.24 / Maraval, Vie, Ch. 6, pp. 160–64) 1. When the mother had made such arrangements for the sisters as seemed fitting for each, it was then that the eminent Basil, brother of the one of whom we speak, returned from the schools where he had been undergoing long training in eloquence. 2. He was at that time excessively puffed up with the thought of his own eloquence and was disdainful of local dignities, since in his own inflated opinion he surpassed all the leading luminaries. 3. She, however, took him in hand and drew him with such speed towards the goal of philosophy that he withdrew from the worldly show and despised the applause to be gained through eloquence, and went over of his own accord to the life where one toils even with one’s own hands, thus providing for himself through perfect renunciation37 a life that would lead without impediment to virtue. 4. But indeed, his life and subsequent labours, by which he became renowned everywhere under the sun and by his reputation

this interpretation the youthful Macrina decided to make a practice of daily Communion in the early morning as befitting her purpose as a virgin, with the approval of the local bishop. Both 1 and 2 may be true: she partook of daily Communion and baked the bread for it, though there would be no need to bake bread daily for the Eucharist if the Divine Liturgy were not celebrated daily. It was perhaps only years later, in the 370s, when Peter was a priest, that the Annisa community had the opportunity of the Divine Liturgy on weekdays. Macrina must of course have undertaken baptism at an earlier stage, probably about the time of her lifestyle decision. 36 37

ëéôüôgñáí (lit. ‘lighter’); ôgëgéüôgñáí (‘more perfect’) YH, S, GM.

•êôçìïóýíçò, voluntary poverty, dispensing with possessions (êôÞìáôá). There is a paradox here: Basil provided for himself spiritually by dispossessing himself materially.

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eclipsed all those who were illustrious for virtue,38 would make a long narrative and require much time.39 Let me then bring my discourse back to its appointed task. 9. Macrina Persuades Emmelia to the Common Life (GNO, 377.24–378.8 / Maraval, Vie, Ch. 7, p. 164) 1. Now that all reason for the more material life had been removed for them, she persuaded her mother to give up the life she had been used to and the more ostentatious manner and the services of domestics to which she had been long accustomed, and to put herself in her mind on the same level with the many, and to share a common way of life with the virgins, making sisters and equals of the slave girls40 and domestics who were with her.41 2. But at this point I want to make a short insertion in the narrative and not leave untold an episode which reveals further the virgin’s lofty character. 10. The Life of Naucratius, the Second Son (GNO, 378.9–379.22 / Maraval, Vie, Ch. 8, pp. 164–68) 1. The second of the four brothers, the one who came after the great Basil, was called Naucratius. He surpassed the others in the good fortune of nature, in beauty of body, in vigour,42 and in speed and facility in any task. He had reached his twenty-second year, and had given such proofs of his own studies in a public assembly that the entire audience in the theatre was moved, when, by some divine foresight he despised all these things he already had in hand, and, through some great inspiration of thought, went off to a life of solitude and voluntary poverty.

38

Such as Macrina herself, a situation Gregory is redressing by means of the present work.

39

Basil was too large a subject for Gregory to insert a short biography as he was doing for others in the family. Besides, this missing element in the family chronicle was supplied abundantly by Gregory Nazianzen’s eulogy, Oratio 43, composed (or rather re-edited and expanded from oral delivery) at about the same time as the VSM. The younger Gregory would have known this, and felt secure in relegating the commemoration of Basil. 40

See Gregory’s vigorous comments against the practice of slavery in Homily on Ecclesiastes IV , GNO, V , 334–38. 41

Basil’s Letter 46.2d in this volume, shows more clearly that Emmelia’s change of lifestyle took time and involved much personal struggle. 42

Basil by comparison was susceptible to physical infirmity even from his youth: ‘you are not unaware how serious a bodily illness has been with me from my earliest age even to my present old age, reared with me and chastening me’, Letter 203. Deferrari, III, 140–53 (pp. 142–43). Gregory of Nyssa in his eulogy On His Brother Basil (ed. by O. Lendle, GNO. X .1, 109–34 (p. 125)), mentions that once when Basil was critically ill in his youth, his father received a dream assuring him that his son would live.

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2. He took nothing with him but himself, except that one of the house-servants named Chrysaphius followed him, because he was accustomed to attending him and had determined on the same choice of life.43 3. So he lived by himself in a retreat he had discovered by the Iris. Now the Iris is a river that flows through the midst of Pontus which takes its rise in Armenia and subsequently empties its stream into the Black Sea by way of our regions. The young man found a spot beside it thickly covered with deep forest, hidden in a certain hollow of the overhanging mountain ridge.44 There he settled, far from the disturbances of the city and the distractions that come from either military service or the rhetoric of the law courts. 4. Having in this way freed himself from all the din that commonly besets this human life, with his own hands he used to look after some old people who were living together in poverty and infirmity, for he considered that to take responsibility for such a task was in keeping with his way of life. Being skilled in every type of hunting technique, he would go hunting to provide food for the old people,45 while taming his own youth at the same time by such exercises. 5. But he also gladly heeded his mother’s wishes whenever she asked anything of him. And so in these two ways he steered his life aright, subduing his youth both by his toils and by his diligence on his mother’s behalf, making good progress towards God through the divine commandments. 11. Naucratius’s Tragic Death (GNO, 379.22–380.16 / Maraval, Vie, Ch. 9, pp. 168–72) 1. For five years he lived in this manner, philosophizing and making his mother very happy, both by the way in which he ordered his own life through moderation, and by the way he put forward all his powers for the will of her who had borne him. 43

‘except that [. . .] choice of life’, missing in W. See also 11.3 shortly. On these curious omissions see the The Life of Macrina Introduction, ‘The Manuscript Transmission’. 44

ðgñà ôïØôïí gßñþí ôéíá ôüðïí Ò ígáíßáò àë® âáègߑ êïìäíôá êá ëáãüíé ôéí ô­ò ßðgñôgôáìÝíçò ôïØ Ðñïõò Õá÷ßáò ¦ãêgêñõììÝíïí ¦í áÛôè äé­ãg. ëáãüíé also has the connotation of ‘flank’, so: ‘[. . .] deep forest, hidden on a certain flank of an overhanging mountain ridge, and settled there’. Having located the general area in March 2006, I suspect that a certain area on the western side of the descent from the ridge as it reaches the sloping plain may have been the very spot. It looks up southward to a dip in the ridge. Though the area has probably been covered by landslip over the centuries, we discovered in this location what seemed to be the broken remains of a mill stone. 45

‘The generous youth would go on fishing expeditions, and’ inserted in Øv; this seems to be a marginal gloss imported into the text, gleaned from Nazianzen’s Epigrams 156–58. In Nazianzen’s Oratio 6–8 (McCauley, pp. 31–33), Macrina the Elder and her family used to hunt for food in the mountain forests of Pontus during the persecutions early in the fourth century.

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2. Then a heavy and indeed tragic disaster assailed the mother — a snare, I think, of the Adversary — which brought misfortune and sorrow upon the entire family. In an instant he was snatched from this life, and it was not any of the usual and well-known sicknesses that brought death to the young man. 3. Having set out on the hunt by which he provided necessaries for his old people, he was brought back home a corpse, himself, and the one who shared his life with him, Chrysaphius.46 4. His mother, however, was far off from these events, a three days’ journey from the accident.47 When someone came to tell her of the disaster, though she was perfect in all that concerns virtue, yet nature prevailed over her all the same. Her soul staggered, she at once became breathless and speechless, reason yielded to passion. At the assault of the evil news she collapsed on the spot, like some noble athlete felled by an unexpected blow. 12. Macrina Steadies her Mother in Bereavement (GNO, 380.17–381.14 / Maraval, Vie, Ch. 10, pp. 172–74) 1. It was now that the virtue of the great Macrina was displayed. Opposing reason to passion, she both kept herself from collapse and became the stay of her mother’s weakness, raising her up again from the abyss of grief. Through her own firmness and unyielding spirit she taught her mother’s soul to be brave. 2. As a consequence, her mother was not undone by the disaster and did not yield in any ignoble and womanish manner by crying out at the calamity, or rending her cloak, or bewailing the disaster, or stirring up threnodies of mournful melodies. 3. On the contrary she resisted the assaults of nature calmly, parrying them with reasonings, both her own and those suggested by her daughter as a remedy for the pain. 4. The lofty and noble soul of the virgin was then more manifest than ever, because nature had its own special suffering in her. For it was not only a brother, but her dearest48 brother who had been snatched away by this manner of death. 5. Yet she, rising superior to nature, raised up her mother together with herself by her reasonings, and placed her beyond passion, guiding her by her own example to steadfastness and courage. Moreover, her life, maintained always at a high level

46

‘himself [. . .] his life’, lacking in W. See the discussion of these omissions on pp. 97–99 above.

47

From which it is not to be inferred that there was three days distance between Naucratius’s ascetic retreat and the Annisa villa! Emmelia might easily have been visiting one of her far flung estates; see VSM 7.4. 48

Ò êg÷áñéóìÝíïò, ‘especially dear’, presumably, because he was the first of the brothers to wholeheartedly attempt to follow her ascetical lead.

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through virtue, allowed her mother no opportunity to despond over the one who was missing, but to rejoice instead at the blessings she saw before her. 13. Progress in the Ascetic Life at Annisa (GNO, 381.15–383.8 / Maraval, Vie, Ch. 11, pp. 174–80) 1. When the responsibility of rearing the children and the anxiety of their education and of settling them in life had ceased for the mother, and most of what concerns the more material life had been portioned among the children, then, as I said above, the life of the virgin became for the mother a guide toward the philosophic and immaterial way of life. 2. Weaning her from all that she had been accustomed to, she led her down to her own standard of humility, showing her how to live in equality with the whole body of virgins,49 that is, by sharing with them the one table, the same kind of bed, and all the necessities of life on an equal basis, with every distinction of rank removed from their life. 3. Such was the order of their life, so lofty their philosophy and the dignity of their way of life50 as they lived it day and night, that it surpasses description in words. For just as souls freed by death from their bodies are freed at the same time from the cares of this life, so too their life was far removed from these things, divorced from all earthly vanities and attuned51 to the imitation of the angelic life. 4. For no high temper,52 or jealousy, or hostility, or arrogance, or any such thing was to be seen among them, since they had cast off all vain desires for honour and glory, and self-importance, and pre-eminence and the like. Their luxury was in selfcontrol and their glory in being unknown. Their wealth was in dispossession53 and in shaking off all material superfluity as so much dust from their bodies (cf. Luke 9. 5). 5. They were not occupied with the pursuits of this life, or rather, not preoccupied,54 but solely with meditation on divine things, unceasing prayer (cf. I Thessalonians 5. 17) and uninterrupted hymnody, which was extended evenly

49

Òìüôéìïí áÛô¬í ãgíÝóèáé ôè ðëçñþìáôé ôäí ðáñèÝíùí ðáñáóêgõÜóáóá.

50

º ógìí¬ ô­ò æù­ò ðïëéôgßá, the gravity, sobriety, reverence of their polity or way of life.

51

¦ññõèìßægôï, a wonderful word, possibly of Gregory’s coinage, meaning literally ‘enrhythmed’, attuned to, made to be in harmony with, but more generally ‘trained to’. 52

èõìüò, not exactly ‘anger’, but the underlying disposition to express oneself vehemently or forcefully in whatever way, what one might call the ‘spirited’ faculty. 53 54

•êôçìïóýíç, voluntary poverty, see p. 137 n. 37.

This is expressed elliptically with word play. It is difficult to translate literally; perhaps: ‘they did not make the pursuits of this life the object of their work (§ñãïí), but kept them ancillary (ðÜñgñãïí)’. They worked (and worked hard), but did not succumb to activism.

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over the whole time, throughout the night and day, so that it became for them both work and respite from work. 6. What human eloquence could conjure such a life before the eyes? Their life was lived on the border55 between the human and the incorporeal nature, because for nature to be freed from human susceptibilities surpasses man’s condition, whereas to appear in a body and be circumscribed by a shape and live with organs of sense, falls short, in such measure, of the angelic and incorporeal nature. 7. Perhaps some might dare to say that the difference was not to their disadvantage, because, living in the flesh in the likeness of the incorporeal powers, they were not weighed down by the drag of the body, so that their life was borne aloft to the skies and trod on high with the heavenly powers (cf. I Thessalonians 4. 17). 8. The time they spent in this way of life was not short, and with the passage of time their successes increased, as their philosophy continually aided them towards greater purity by multiplying the goods they discovered.56 14. Peter, the Youngest Brother; the Famine (GNO, 383.9–384.18 / Maraval, Vie, Ch. 12, pp. 180–84) 1. She was helped most of all towards this great goal of life by a brother from the same womb, Peter by name, with whom our mother’s pangs had ceased, for he was the last offspring of our parents, receiving at once the names of both son and orphan, for even as he entered the light his father quit this life. 2. But from the moment he was born, when he had scarcely left the teat, the eldest of his siblings,57 the subject of our tale, took him straight from his nurse and reared him herself. She led him to all the loftier culture, practising him from infancy in sacred studies, in this way not allowing his soul leisure to incline to any vanity. In this way she become all things to the lad — father, teacher, guardian, mother, counsellor of every good. 3. She so steered him that before he had passed the age of boyhood, when he was still in the first bloom of tender youth, he was

55

ìgèüñéïò. Gregory’s discourse here owes much to Platonic and neo-Platonic themes. For his idea of living on the boundaries of human nature, see J. Daniélou, ‘Methorios: la notion de confines chez Gregoire de Nysse’, Recherches de Science Religieuse, 49 (1961), 161–87. 56

The sense seems to be ‘the virtues (•ãáèäí) they explored and attained’. The ‘good’ is used in the sense of ‘virtue’ in the Letter 31 To Letoius of Melitene (Silvas, Gregory, pp. 211–25 (pp. 220–22), though in these passages it imperceptibly shades into the partaking of ‘the good’ in the sense of Holy Communion. 57

º ðñgóâõôÜôç ôäí •ägëöäí, a good example of the freedom from ‘gender’ angst attaching to the Greek word for ‘brothers’ and/or ‘sisters’, identical in genitive and dative plural.

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raised to the lofty goal of philosophy.58 4. By some happy endowment of nature, he was so clever in every kind of manual craft, that without anyone instructing him in every detail he achieved a skill that most people acquire only with time and toil. Declining to spend his time on profane literary studies,59 and having in nature a sufficient teacher of every good lesson, and always looking to his sister and taking her as the model of all good, he attained such virtue that he seemed in no way inferior to the great Basil himself in excellence of virtue.60 5. This was true of him in later life, but at that time, he preferred before all else to be with his sister and mother,61 co-working with them towards that angelic life. 6. Once when there was a severe famine,62 crowds from all sides poured into the retreat where they lived, drawn by the report of their generosity. It was then that

58

§ô gí ìgéñáêéþägé ô± ðëüôçôé ô­ò òñáò áí´ èïØíôá ðñÎò ôÎí ßøçëÎí ô­ò öéëïóïößáò óêïðÎí ¦ðáñè­íáé. ìgéñáêéþägé is restored from H; ìgéñáêßå (‘lad’) in all other manuscripts and editions. This passage means he resolved on baptism, virginity, and the ascetic life while still in his teens. Plutarch and Lucianus use the term ìgéñÜêéïí to indicate a youth no older than twenty. From what Basil says in his canonical Letter 199, Deferrari, III, 103–35 (pp. 108–09) and the Small Asketikon (LR 15, Silvas, Asketikon, pp. 199–200) about the earliest age for marriage or for profession, we may take Peter’s age to be sixteen or seventeen, not much older than Macrina was when making the same radical choice of lifestyle. 59

ô­ò ðgñ ôï×ò §îùègí ôäí ëüãùí •ó÷ïëßáò ßðgñéäþí, lit. the literary studies ‘of those outside’, the secular curriculum for boys of the upper classes. This means that when Peter reached the usual age of fourteen years, he had the opportunity to go to the schools, as his older brothers had done, but decided not to do so. Once again, Gregory is emphasizing personal choice. 60

That is, as a master of the Christian ascetic life and (later) as a holy bishop showing true leadership. Basil had a high regard for Peter, ordained him to the priesthood early, and clearly had him earmarked for wider service in the Church, an objective that Gregory himself was able to achieve by proposing Peter as the bishop of Sebasteia. For further comment on Peter’s progress, see Silvas, Gregory, pp. 43–44, 47–48, 50. 61

•íôé ðÜíôùí ½í ô± •ägëö± êá ô± ìçôñ óõígñãäí áÛôáÃò. In short, when Peter committed himself to the ascetic goal, he did not go off into the woods by the Iris as Naucratius and Basil had done, but stayed with his sister and mother at the Annisa villa. 62

óéôïëgßøéáò ÷áëgð­ò, i.e. a widespread collapse of the grain crops in c. 369. óéôïëgßøéáò, a word unique to Gregory, suggests that the grain had been attacked by some blight. Basil, in discussing the failure of crops in his Homily on the Hexaemeron 5.5, mentions the ‘black wheat’ that had been ‘burned by extreme frost’. Peter’s organization of grain storage meant that there were reserves, which were now opened to the local populace (see also VSM 42.2). See now the study of Dionysios C. Stathakopoulos, Famine and Pestilence in the Roman and Early Byzantine Empire (Aldershot: Ashgate Publishing, 2004).

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he supplied, through his prudence, such an abundance of food that the desert seemed to be a city, so great was the throng of visitors. 15. The Passing of Emmelia (GNO, 384.19–385.15 / Maraval, Vie, Ch. 13, pp. 184–86) 1. It was about this time63 that the mother, having reached a ripe old age, passed to God, taking leave of this life in the arms of these two of her children. 2. The words of the blessing which she bestowed on her children deserve to be recorded. She mentioned, as was fitting, each of those who were absent, that none might be without a share of the blessing, yet she especially commended to God in prayer those present with her. For as these two sat by her on each side of the bed, she took each of them by the hand, and spoke to God in these her last words. 3. ‘To you, O Lord, I dedicate the first fruits and the tithe of my pangs. For this my first-born is the first fruits (Exodus 13. 2), and this, my last labour, is the tenth (Numbers 18. 21). They are both consecrated to you by the Law and are your votive offerings. May sanctification therefore come upon this my first and upon this my tenth.’ 4. By these words she clearly specified her daughter and her son. And when she had ceased her blessing, she ceased her life, having bidden her children to lay her body in their father’s tomb.64 5. They fulfilled her charge and gave themselves to philosophy with still loftier resolve, always striving with their own life and eclipsing their earlier achievements with others that followed.

63

¦í ôïýôå. On the face of it, this might mean about or shortly after the time of the famine, c. 370 and before Peter’s ordination, but Gregory uses the phrase vaguely. Basil in Letter 30 to Eusebius of Samosata (Deferrari, I, 174–77), written in early 371, mentions his mother’s recent death. Emmelia must therefore have died between Eusebius’s presence at Basil’s election in midSeptember 370 and the Spring of 371. Therefore, if she was about seventeen or eighteen when she bore Macrina in about 327, she was about sixty or sixty-one when she died. The effects of the famine may have may have been felt well into 371. Cf. Gregory Nazianzen’s Oratio 43.36–37 (McCauley, pp. 58–60) and Basil’s Letter 31 (Deferrari, I, 176–79), if it is to Eusebius of Samosata, in which he mentions that the famine (Ò ëßìïò) has not yet released him and he has to remain in ‘the city’, i.e. Caesarea. 64

This was in the Martyrion (Chapel to the Forty Martyrs), today a tilled field on a gentle rise about one kilometre from the Iris overlooking the river flats, and about two or three kilometres from Uluköy, the site of Annisa. The modern townspeople preserve a few funerary remains from the site which they call ‘the Church’ place.

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16. Peter’s Ordination; Basil’s Passing (GNO, 385.16–386.21 / Maraval, Vie, Ch. 14, pp. 188–90) 1. It was about this time65 that Basil, great among the saints, was designated prelate of the great church of the Caesareans and advanced his brother to the office of the priesthood in the presbyterate, consecrating him in the mystic rites66 himself. And thus their life made progress in greater dignity and holiness, now that their philosophy was augmented by the priesthood.67 2. Eight years having passed after this, at the ninth year,68 Basil, who was named throughout the whole world, departed from among human beings to live with God, a common cause of sorrow to his fatherland and to the whole world. 3. Now when Macrina heard the report from afar of the calamity, she suffered in soul at so great a privation, for how could she not be affected by the disaster when even the enemies of the truth felt it? 4. But, as they say, the proving of gold takes place in several crucibles, such that if some impurity escapes the first smelting, it is separated out in the second, and again, till in the last one, all admixture of dross is purged away from the matter, so that the most accurate test of proven gold is that when it has passed through every smelting it casts off no more dross. 5. It was something like this that took place in her. When her lofty cast of mind had been tested by the varied assaults of grief, the unadulterated and undebased quality of her soul was revealed on every side — firstly by the departure of her other brother, then after this, by the parting from her mother, and thirdly when Basil, the common glory of the family, was removed from this human life. Yet she continued firm, like an unconquerable athlete, not buckling at any stage before the assaults of misfortune.

65

¦í ôïýôå, September 370. See pp. 49–52 above for a brief discussion of the controversy over the dating of Basil’s death, and hence his ordination as bishop. 66 ôáÃò ìõóôéêáÃò ©áõôïØ Êgñïõñãßáéò •öégñþóáò. At this stage, ‘mystic’ has a strongly liturgical register. Thus Peter it seems was ordained to the presbyterate in late 370 or 371. 67

On Peter’s priesthood and its consequences at Annisa, see the comments in the General Introduction, ‘Later Transformations at Annisa’. 68

ôè ¦íÜôå ¦íéáõôè. Jean-Robert Pouchet, ‘La Date de l’election Episcopal de S. Basile et celle de sa mort’, Revue d’histoire ecclésiastique, 87 (1992), 5–33 (p. 16), marks this phrase, translating it as ‘la neuvieme année commencée’. This together with the evidence of Gregory Nazianzen’s Epigram 10b shows that Basil’s episcopate lasted just eight years and not much more. If his election as bishop is dated to mid-September 370, then his death may be placed towards the end of September 378. Since he did not die a martyr, his feast-day (1 January) did not have to mark the day of his ‘confession’.

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Part C : Gregory’s Eyewitness Account of Macrina’s Last Hours 17. Gregory Decides to Visit his Sister; A Warning Dream (GNO, 386.22– 387.19 / Maraval, Vie, Ch. 15a, pp. 190–92) 1. It was the ninth month after this disaster or a little more,69 and a synod of bishops was convened in the city of Antioch, in which we also took part.70 And when we broke up, each to return home before the year passed by,71 the desire grew in me, Gregory, to go and see her. 2. For a long period of time had elapsed in which the circumstances of my trials had hindered such visits, since I was everywhere hounded out of my own fatherland72 by the leaders of heresy. Indeed, when I reckoned up the period of time during which my trials had prevented our meeting face to face, the result was no short interval, it measured a little short of eight years.73 3. Now when I was nearing the end of the journey and one day’s distance away, a kind of vision appeared to us in a dream, filling us with forebodings of what was to come. I seemed to be carrying the relics of martyrs in my hands. A radiance shone out from them like that which comes from a pure mirror when it is turned to face the sun, so that my eyes were dazzled by the brilliance of the rays. 4. That very night the same kind of vision came to me three times, and though I could not understand clearly the riddle of the dream, I foresaw some grief for my soul, and was alert to interpret the apparition by events. 18. Gregory Arrives at Annisa (GNO, 387.19–388.17 / Maraval, Vie, Ch. 15b–16a, pp. 192–94) 1. When I came to the outskirts of the retreat74 where she led so uprightly her angelic and heavenly life, I first asked one of the attendants about my brother, 69

That is, eight months or a little more. As Pouchet points out, ‘La Date’, p. 20, n. 46, the adjective ‘ninth’ month here does not mean the same as nine completed months. See above at 16.2, where ‘at the ninth year’ means the beginning of the ninth year. 70

The Council of Antioch, in May/June of 379.

71

ðñÂí ôÎí ¦íéáõôÎí ðáñgëègÃí. This probably refers not to the Roman year but to a local calendar used in Antioch itself. The Seleucid calendar, for example, began on 1 October. See Maraval, Vie, pp. 61–62; Pouchet, ‘La Date’, pp. 20–21. Gregory is reporting events in Antioch and the original addressee of the VSM probably lived in Syria. 72

ðÜôñéäïò, i.e. Pontus Polemoniacus, in which the agents of Eustathius, leader of the Pneumatomachians (and one-time friend of the family) had been active. 73

If Gregory’s final visit to Macrina was on 18–19 July 379, then his previous visit to her was perhaps in late 371 or just possibly early 372, around the time of his own ordination as bishop. 74

One imagines he has just crossed the river Iris into the country estate, with some eight kilometres or so to go to the villa. The attendant was possibly by the Roman bridge on the lookout.

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whether he was at home. He told us that he had set out about four days ago now, and understood that he had gone to meet us by another way — which was indeed the case.75 2. Then I enquired after the great one.76 When he replied that she was in a weak condition, I was all the more anxious to hasten and finish what remained of the journey, for a certain fear, a premonition of what was to come stole in to disquiet me. [Maraval, Vie, Ch. 16a] 3. So I reached the very place, rumour having already announced to the brotherhood77 my immanent arrival. The whole company of the men78 came pouring out from the men’s quarters79 towards us — for it was their custom to honour those dear to them80 by coming out to meet them — while on the women’s side the choir of virgins81 awaited us modestly at the entrance to the church. 4. When the prayer and the blessing were finished, the women, having received the blessing with a gracious bow of the head, turned back and withdrew to their own quarters. But since none of them stayed behind with us, I surmised — which was the case — that their superior82 had not been among them.

75

This confirms the evidence of Letter 19.10a that Gregory had already received disturbing news of her somewhere in ‘Cappadocia’ some ten days journey distant, and hence was already expected. Peter must have reckoned on his brother’s return to Nyssa and went south by a more westerly route through Amasea, bypassing Caesarea entirely. 76

ô­ò ìgãÜëçò, perhaps ‘great lady’ though in the Greek the feminine gender is obvious without adding a noun. 77

ô± •ägëöüôçôé. This term from I Peter 2. 17 is used in Basil’s writings for the protomonastic communities. It does not refer simply to the community of men, but to the whole community, comprising separate houses of men, women, children, and guests. Basil’s LR 15 and 33 reveal the arrangements especially clearly. 78

ôü ôg óýíôáãìá ôäí •íäñäí žðáí.

79

¦ê ôïØ •íäñäíïò, mistranslated by Maraval as ‘du monastère’. But the ‘monastery’, to use a later term, was the whole adelphotes, which included the women’s house. 80

êáôáèýìéïõò, lit. those ‘in mind’, perhaps close friends, spiritual advisers, benefactors.

81

Ò ä¥ ¦í ãõíáßî ô­ò ðáñègíßáò, lit. ‘choir of virginity’. Parthenia, while meaning primarily ‘virginity’, was also used of what we might call vocational celibacy, e.g. the continence practised by dedicated widows; the meaning being ‘the choir of women dedicated in celibacy’. The impression is that the men’s quarters and the women’s quarters were on opposite sides of the church. 82

ô­í êáèçãïýìÝíçí. This cannot mean Macrina, whom Gregory would scarcely have trouble identifying or even expected to have seen, but rather the sister who governed the women under Macrina. Gregory met her later; she was the deaconess Lampadion (29); no doubt during Gregory’s arrival she was by Macrina’s sick-bed.

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19. Gregory Reaches Macrina’s Side (GNO, 388.17–389.19 / Maraval, Vie, Ch. 16b–17a, pp. 194–98) 1. Someone led me to the house where the great one was and opened the door, and I entered within that sacred abode. Though she was already greatly incapacitated by weakness, she was not lying on a bed or couch, but on the floor, on a board strewn with sacking, with another board propping up her head, so contrived to act as a pillow for the head by supporting the sinews of the neck at a slant and supporting her neck comfortably. [Maraval, Vie, Ch. 17a] 2. Now when she saw me entering the doorway she raised herself on her elbow, but was in no condition to come to me herself, since her strength was already consumed by fever. Yet by placing her hands on the floor and leaning out from her pallet as far as she could, she did me the honour of a reverence. 3. I ran to her and taking in my hands her head bowed to the ground, I raised her up again, restoring her to her usual reclining position. She then stretched out her hand to God and said, ‘Yes, even this favour you have granted me, O God, and have not deprived me of my desire, since you have moved your servant to visit your unworthy handmaid.’83 4. To avoid bringing despondency to my soul she endeavoured to suppress her groans and made a great effort somehow to conceal the difficulty she had in breathing. She contrived in every way to be cheerful, both by initiating kindly conversation herself and by providing us with opportunities by asking questions. 20. Macrina Philosophizes on Death and the Life to Come (GNO, 389.19– 391.4 / Maraval, Vie, Ch. 17b–18, pp. 198–200) 1. When the memory of the great Basil arose in the course of conversation, my soul drooped, my face fell dejected, and the tears streamed from my eyes. But so far was she from sharing in the despondency affecting us that she made the memory of the saint a starting point for the higher philosophy. 2. Such were the themes that she took up were that she discoursed on the nature of what it is to be human and disclosed by reason the divine economy hidden in disasters and discussed aspects of the life that is to come as if divinely inspired by the Holy Spirit.84 It almost seemed to me that my soul was elevated by her words above human nature and set down through the guidance of her discourse within the heavenly sanctuary. [Maraval, Vie, Ch. 18] 3. Just as we hear in the story of Job (cf. Job 2. 8, 7. 5) that the man was wasting away on every side through the whole of his body with

83 84

ðáéäßóêçò óïõ, a self-deprecating diminutive: ‘your little / insignificant handmaid’.

ègïöïñïõìÝíç ôè ãßå ðígõìáôé, lit. ‘God-borne by the Holy Spirit’, an implicit testimony to the divine nature of the Spirit.

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the discharge of his sores coming from their corruption, yet by his reasoning powers he did not allow his sensibility to incline to the pain, but held the pains within his body and did not become dulled in his own activity or cut off the discourse when it mounted to higher things 4. It was some such case that I saw in the great Macrina. Fever was consuming her vital force and impelling her towards death, yet she refreshed her body as with some kind of dew, and so kept her mind unimpaired in the contemplation of the higher things, in no way hindered by her great weakness. 5. And if my narrative were not to expand to an unconscionable length I would recount everything in order, how exalted was her discourse as she philosophized to us on the soul and explained the cause of our life in the flesh, and why man was made, and how he became mortal, and whence came death, and what is the release from death back to life again. 6. In all of this she explained everything clearly and in sequence as one inspired by the power of the Holy Spirit. Her speech flowed with complete ease like water streaming downhill from a fountain unimpeded. 21. Gregory is Sent to Take Rest; They Receive Better News (GNO, 391.5– 392.20 / Maraval, Vie, Ch. 19, pp. 200–04) 1. When our conversation finished, she said, ‘It is time, brother, for you to rest your body a short while, wearied as you are from the great toil of the journey.’ 2. Though it was a great and genuine repose for me simply to see her and listen to her great words, yet because this was so pleasing and important to her, and that I might seem to obey my teacher in everything, I found a graceful arbour prepared in one of the adjacent gardens, and took my rest under the shade of the trailing vines. 3. But it was impossible to take any pleasure in the cheerful surrounds when my soul within me was in turmoil with the expectation of gloomy events, for what I had seen seemed to disclose to me in the event the riddle of my dream. The sight that had confronted me was truly the remains of a holy martyr, remains which had died to sin but which shone with the indwelling grace of the Spirit (cf. Romans 6. 11, 8. 10–11). I discussed this with one of those who had earlier heard the dream from me. 4. As might be expected, we were rather despondent in expectation of the coming griefs, when she, somehow guessing our state of mind, sent us a message of more cheerful news, bidding us take heart and have brighter hopes for her, since she was feeling a change for the better. Now this was not said to deceive, for the message was actually true, though we did not realize in what manner at the time. 5. For in very truth, just as a runner who has passed his adversary and already draws near to the end of the stadium, when he draws near the prize and sees the victor’s crown,

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rejoices inwardly as if he had already attained what is before him and calls out his victory to his supporters among the spectators. 6. It was in such a frame of mind that she, too, told us to cherish more favourable hopes for her, for she was already looking to the prize of the upward call (cf. Philippians 3. 14), and all but uttering the apostle’s words for herself: Henceforth there is laid up for me the crown of righteousness, which the righteous Judge shall give me (II Timothy 4. 8), for I have fought the good fight, I have finished the course, I have kept the faith (II Timothy 4. 7). 7. As a result we were cheered by the good news and began to enjoy what was put before us. They were varied and the arrangements gave much pleasure, since the attentiveness of the great one extended even to such trifles as these. 22. The Second Meeting with Macrina; She Recalls the Events of her Childhood (GNO, 392.20–393.26 / Maraval, Vie, Ch. 20, pp. 206–08) 1. When we again came before her eyes — for she did not allow us to spend too leisurely a time by ourselves — she began to recall the events of her youth, describing it all in order as in a narrative, what she could remember of the life of our parents, and what happened before and after my birth. 2. But her aim in the telling was to give thanks to God, for what she remarked in our parents’ life was not so much their eminence among their contemporaries for wealth or reputation, but the increase given them through the divine benevolence. 3. For although our father’s parents had had their property confiscated for their confession of Christ, and our mother’s grandfather85 was executed by the imperial wrath and all his possessions transferred to other masters, yet through faith their86 life was given such increase that no one was named above them in their day. 4. Moreover, when their wealth had been divided into nine according to the number of the children, the portion of each was so multiplied by blessings that the substance of each of the children exceeded the prosperity of the parents. 5. When an equal share had been divided among the siblings she retained nothing of what was assigned her, but put it all into the hands of the priest to be administered in accordance with the divine commandment (cf. Acts 4. 35).87 Her

85

ôïØ ä¥ êáô ìçôÝñá ðñïðÜôïñïò.

86

That is, Macrina and Gregory’s parents.

87

This relates to an issue raised in the Council of Gangra (c. 341 AD ), Preface 5, Canons 7 and 8 (See Silvas, Asketikon, p. 491), the independence of the ascetic enthusiasts from and their censoriousness towards the common clergy, while arrogating to themselves the distribution of Church funds to the poor. As can be seen, Macrina’s practice is directly opposed to that of these hyperascetics.

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life became such, under God’s provision, that her hands never ceased to be active in respect to the commandment (cf. Psalm 118. 48). 6. She neither looked to man for help, nor did any human benefit ever give her a pretext for a comfortable life. Yet neither were those who petitioned her ever turned away, nor did she ever look for benefactors, since God, by his secret blessings, caused the modest resources of her works to grow as from seeds into abundant fruit. 23. Macrina Comments on Gregory’s Ministry (GNO, 393.26–395.6 / Maraval, Vie, Ch. 21–22a, pp. 208–12) 1. I then rehearsed the difficulties in which I was placed, how earlier the Emperor Valens drove me out on account of the faith,88 and how, after this, the confusion in the churches summoned me to contests and exhausting efforts.89 2. At this she said: ‘Will you not cease your insensibility to the divine blessings? Will you not remedy the thanklessness of your soul? Will you not compare your lot with that of our fathers? 3. It is true that as regards this world, we make it a special boast that we are well born and consider ourselves sprung of noble stock. Our father was highly esteemed in his day for his learning. Yet his reputation only extended as far as the law courts of the province. In the end, though he surpassed all others in sophistic skill, his fame did not go beyond Pontus.90 Still, with such regard as this in his own fatherland he was content. 4. ‘But you,’ she said, ‘are named in cities and peoples and provinces. Churches send you as ally and reformer and churches summon you, and you do not see the grace in it? Do you not recognize the cause of such great blessings, that the prayers of your parents are lifting you on high, since you have nothing in you, or very little, to equip you for this?’91 88

On Valens’s persecution of the neo-Nicenes, see Gregory’s Contra Eunomium I, GNO, I, 62–71; NPNF2 , V . 47–49. In this work Gregory focuses on Basil. He conscientiously avoids commending any deeds of his own in that period and does not mention his own exile. Cf. Basil, Letters 225, 231, 232, 237, 239, and Gregory Nazianzen, Letter 72. 89

If Valens’s change of policy was in the spring of 378, and Gratian issued a formal recall in August, then Gregory was restored to Nyssa by late summer at the latest, only to wait on Basil’s dying weeks and days. On his deathbed Basil solemnly charged his brother to continue his own work in defence of the faith. Gregory was soon active among the churches, remedying the confusions of the Marcellans (hypotrophied old Nicenes), Pneumatomachians (neo semi-Arians), Eunomians (hyper-Arians), and Apollinarists (hypertrophied old Nicenes). 90

This highlights that the family’s seat was in Pontus, not in Cappadocia. Two manuscripts, V and Ø, have ‘place’ instead of ‘Pontus’. 91 ÏÛägìßáí ´ Ïëßãçí ïÇêïègí §÷ïíôá ðñÎò ôïØôï ðáñáóêgõÞí. This means that his native talents and training did not fit him for this kind of work. What this sisterly ‘put-down’ seems to

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[Maraval, Vie, Ch. 22a] 5. As she continued in this way, I was wishing it were possible to extend the length of the day so that she might not cease to delight our ears. But the voice of the psalm-singers was summoning us to the thanksgiving at the lighting of the lamps, and the great one, having sent me off to church, withdrew once more to God in prayers, and in these she spent the night. 24. Macrina’s Last Day: The Ambiguous Signs (GNO, 395.7–396.14 / Maraval, Vie, Ch. 22b, pp. 212–16) 1. But when day came it was clear to me from my observation that the day now commencing would be the uttermost limit of her life in the flesh, since the fever had sapped all the residual strength of nature. Yet she, seeing our weakness of mind, tried to divert us from our gloomy forebodings, and once again dispersed our grief of soul with those beautiful words of hers, though from now on she did so with short and laboured breathing. 2. It was then especially that my soul was torn in conflicting directions at what appeared before it. For nature was heavy with gloom, as might be expected, because I could no more look forward to hearing such a voice again. 3. On the other hand, to the extent that I hoped that the common glory of our family was not yet to depart this human life, my soul, inspired in some way by what appeared before it, thought she might have escaped the common nature. For not even during her last breaths did she suffer any qualm at the prospect of her departure, or flinch at her separation from this life. No, right up to her last breath she philosophized with a lofty mind on the convictions she had formed from the beginning about the life here below. 4. All this seemed to me to be no longer of the human order. It was if by some dispensation an angel had assumed a human form, with whom, not having any kinship or affinity with the life of the flesh, it was not at all unreasonable that the mind should remain in an unperturbed state,92 since the flesh did not drag it down to its own passions. 5. Accordingly it seemed to me that she was then making manifest to those present that divine and pure love93 of the unseen Bridegroom reflect is that Gregory had earlier preferred a career as a rhetorician and a secular professional to service in the church. Basil discerned both his brother’s great talents and his liabilities. Though he won him for the episcopacy, he retained misgivings about his capacities as a man of affairs, remarking on his ‘naivité’ and ‘simplicity’ (Letter 58 in this volume). Still, Gregory’s intellectual powers very much aided him in his role as consulting theologian through the 380s. In this aspect, Basil’s deathbed trust in his brother was more than amply fulfilled. 92

¦í •ðáègߑ, or ‘impassible’, unable to be ruled or affected by passion. It is the only instance that the VSM uses this Stoic inspired term. 93

§ñùôá, eros, that passionate quest for the ultimately beautiful, which has a most important role to play in Gregory’s mystical anthropology and theology.

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which she had nourished secretly in the inmost recesses of her soul,94 and was proclaiming the disposition of heart by which she hastened towards him for whom she longed, so that, freed from the fetters of the body, she might be with him as quickly as possible. For in truth, her race was towards her Beloved, and no other of the pleasures of this life diverted her eye to itself. 25. The Waning of the Day: Macrina Turns to God Alone (GNO, 396.15– 398.17 / Maraval, Vie, Ch. 23, pp. 216–18) 1. Much of the day had now passed, and the sun was declining towards the west, but her eagerness did not decline. No, the nearer she approached her exodus, the more clearly she discerned the beauty of the Bridegroom and the more eagerly she hastened to the one for whom she longed. Such thoughts as she uttered were no longer addressed to us who were present, but to him to whom she looked away with intent eyes. 2. Her pallet95 had been turned towards the east,96 and, withdrawing from converse with us, she spoke from then on to God in prayer, making appeal with her hands97 and murmuring in a low voice, so that we scarcely heard what she said. This then was the fashion of her prayer, and we need not doubt that it came before God and was heard by him. 26. Macrina’s Prayer before Death (GNO, 397.3–398.17 / Maraval, Vie, Ch. 24, pp. 218–24) 1. ‘It is you98 O Lord, she said, who have freed us from the fear of death (Hebrews 2. 15), 2. you who have made the end of our life here the beginning of true life for us,

94

Óí êgêñõììÝíïí gÍ÷gí ¦í ôïÃò ô­ò øõ÷­ò •ðïññÞôïéò ôñgöüìgíïí . . .

95

÷áìgýíéïí, a pallet set on the ground. Sleeping on the ground (÷áìgõíßá) was an ascetic practice adopted by early Christian monks and nuns. 96

See the comments on turning to the east on pp. 107–08 above.

97

Or, ‘supplicating’ with her hands. For the use of the hands in prayer, see also 19.3, 27.1, 2; cf. also 7.3 and 15.2. 98 The first part of this prayer is a series of expressions beginning with Gõ, i.e. an emphatic ‘you’ (or Thou). But a series of informative statements about God is not the idea. The constant murmuring repetition of ‘Thou’ is in itself an expression of adoration, interspersed with a litany confessing God’s saving acts on our behalf. The first half of the prayer is structured very much as a Eucharistic anaphora. Compare the rehearsal of salvation history in the earlier part of the Anaphora of St Basil. The second half too is reminiscent of the Eucharistic/Paschal mysteries: As if in an epiclesis, Macrina asks that an angel be sent to lead her in this hour, associates herself intimately with the paschal mystery (co-crucified with you), petitions the forgiveness of sins, and surrenders her soul into the hands of God in the final act of self-offering.

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3. you who put our bodies to rest in sleep a little while and will waken them again at the last trumpet (I Corinthians 15. 52), 4. you who return our earth fashioned by your hands (cf. Genesis 2. 7), to the earth (cf. Genesis 3. 19) for safekeeping, and will retrieve again what you once gave, transforming what is mortal and unseemly in us (cf. I Corinthians 15. 53) with immortality and grace, 5. you who have rescued us from the curse (cf. Galatians 3. 13) and from sin, having become both for our sakes (cf. II Corinthians 5. 21), 6. you who have shattered the head of the dragon (cf. Psalm 73. 13, 14, Septuagint) who had seized man in his jaws and dragged him into the yawning abyss of disobedience,99 7. you who have opened up for us the way to the Resurrection, having trampled down the gates of Hades (cf. Psalm 106. 16, Matthew 16. 18) and brought him who had the power over death (Hebrews 2. 14) to naught, 8. you who have given a sign (Psalm 59. 16) to those who fear you, the symbol of the Holy Cross, to destroy the adversary and to secure our life. 9. O God the eternal one, 10. to whom I have cleaved from my mother’s womb (cf. Psalm 21. 11), 11. whom my soul has loved (Song of Songs 1. 7) with all its strength (cf. Mark 12. 30), 12. to whom I have dedicated my flesh and my soul from youth even until now, 13. send an angel of light to be by my side to guide me to the place of refreshment (cf. Psalms 65. 12, 38. 14), to the water of repose (Psalm 22. 2), in the bosom of the holy Fathers (cf. Luke 16. 22). 14. You who averted the flame of the fiery sword (Genesis 3. 24)100 and brought to Paradise the man who was co-crucified with you and implored your mercies 15. remember me, too, in your kingdom (Luke 23. 42), since I, too, was co-crucified

99

A strong sense of the Fall, and the weakness it wrought in human nature, is very much part of Gregory’s religious anthropology. This generates a lively and not always resolved tension in Gregory’s ascetic and mystical discourse, for he also maintains the capital importance of human freedom and choice. See Ernest V. McClear, ‘The Fall of Man and Original Sin in the Theology of Gregory of Nyssa’, Theological Studies, 9 (1948), 175–212. 100

öëüãá ô­ò ðõñßíçò Õïìöáßáò WV, öëüãéíçí Õïìöáßáí Ø H, S, GM, W–C. Gregory interprets the significance of the fiery sword at the entrance to paradise at the end of the ‘Second Homily on the Forty Martyrs’, Sermones Pars II, GNO, X .1, 135–69 (pp.155–56): ‘Scripture shows that the fiery sword does not always oppose those who approach Paradise. It stops those who are unworthy, but yields to the worthy and opens up a clear path to life.’

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with you (cf. Galatians 2. 19, Romans 6. 6), having nailed my flesh in the fear of you, for I have feared your judgements (Psalm 118. 120, Septuagint; cf. Galatians 5. 24).101 16. Do not let the terrible abyss sunder me from your elect (Luke 16. 26), 17. or the Slanderer102 stand in the way to oppose me (cf. Zechariah 3. 1, Revelation 12. 10), 18. or my sin be uncovered before your eyes, if I have sinned in word or deed or thought, led astray in some way through the weakness of our nature. 19. O you who have power on earth to forgive sins (Matthew 9. 6, Mark 2. 10), 20. spare me, that I may revive (Psalm 38. 14) and as I put off my body (cf. Colossians 2. 11) be found before you without stain or blemish (cf. Ephesians 5. 27) in the form of my soul. 21. But may my soul be received into your hands (cf. Psalm 30. 6) blameless and undefiled as an incense offering in your sight (Psalm 140. 2).’103 27. The Passing of Macrina (GNO, 398.17–399.22 / Maraval, Vie, Ch. 25, pp. 226–28) 1. As she spoke these words she traced the seal104 on her eyes and mouth and heart. Little by little her tongue dried up with the fever until, no longer being able to articulate speech, her voice faded away. Only through the trembling of her lips and the gesture of her hands did we know that she was in prayer. 2. Meanwhile the evening came on and a lamp was brought in. All at once she opened wide the orb of her eyes and gazed towards the beam of light, making it clear that she was eager to sing the thanksgiving at the lighting of the lamps.105 But her voice failed her and she fulfilled this intention in her heart by moving her hands, while her lips moved in sympathy with her inward impulse. 3. But when she had finished the thanksgiving and had brought her hand to her face for the seal to

101

This strong phrase from the Septuagint is also used by Basil in Letter 22 on the monastic life, Deferrari, I, 129–41 (pp. 140–41). 102

Ò âÜóêáíïò, the Envious One, the Begrudger, the Slanderer. See 5.5 and note.

103

Thus she ends by citing the psalm par excellence of evening prayer.

104

That is, the sign of the cross, or perhaps more specifically, did so with the signet of her ring containing a relic of the cross; see VSM 32.3–5 and 33.6. 105 There is an allusion here to the evening hymn ÷áÃñg öäò Êëáñüí (‘Hail gladdening light!’), which was already ancient in Macrina’s day. It was certainly known in her circle; Basil refers to it in On the Holy Spirit 73.

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mark the end of the prayer, she drew one great deep breath and with that brought to a close both her prayer and her life.106 4. Since from that moment she was without breath or movement, I recalled the commands she gave at our first meeting, when she said that she wished my hands to close her eyes and that the customary care be given her body through me. So I reached out my hand, numbed with grief, to her holy face, only not to seem to neglect her bidding. For indeed her eyes needed no one to compose them. 5. It was as if she had fallen asleep naturally, with a graceful lowering of her eyelids. Her lips were set naturally and her hands lay reverently over her breast. The whole body had fallen of its own accord into a harmonious position and needed no one’s hand to compose it. Part D: The Funeral Preparations 28. The Sisters Bewail their Spiritual Mother (GNO, 399.23–401.21 / Maraval, Vie, Ch. 26, pp. 228–32) 1. My soul was now unnerved on two counts, from the sight before my eyes, and from the mournful wailing of the virgins that began to clamour in my ears. Until now they had born up quietly and contained their grief in their soul, restraining the impulse to wail from respect for her, as if they dreaded a rebuke from her face, though it was now silent, should a cry break forth from them contrary to her orders and be a source of grief to their teacher. 2. But when their anguish could no longer be subdued in silence, and grief like some inward fire was smouldering in their souls, all at once a bitter and irrepressible cry broke out, so that my reason no longer remained steady, but as if submerged by a torrent in flood,107 was swept under by passion. Thereupon, disregarding the duty at hand, I yielded myself up wholly to the lamentations. 3. Even so, to me the occasion for the virgins’ grief seemed just and commendable. For it was not as if they were bewailing the loss of some affection or bond according to the flesh, or any other such attachment which human beings find hard to bear when disasters come, but it was as those being torn away from their hope in God and the salvation of their souls that they cried out and loudly bewailed in these lamentations, saying: 4. The lamp of our eyes is extinguished!

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106

In short, Macrina died in the act of making the sign of the cross at the end of evening prayer.

107

The verbal echo with Naucratius’s manner of death is striking.

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The light that guided our souls is taken away! The surety of our life is dissolved! The seal of incorruptibility is removed! The bond of our harmony is broken! The firmness of the vacillating is trampled asunder! The cure of the infirm is withdrawn! With you the night became for us as the day, for we were illumined by your pure life. But now even our day shall be changed to deep gloom! 5. Even more vehement than the others was the grief of those who had called her their mother and nurse. These were the ones whom she had rescued when they had been exposed by the roadside at the time of the famine. She had nursed them and reared them, and guided them to the pure and incorrupt life. 29. Gregory Exhorts the Sisters to Calm (GNO, 401.8–401.22 / Maraval, Vie, Ch. 27, pp. 232–34) 1. But when I somehow brought my soul back from the abyss I gazed on that holy head, and as if rebuked for the disorder of those who were making such a commotion with their wailing, I spoke to the virgins in a loud voice: 2. ‘Look at her, and remember her instructions, by which she taught you to be orderly and seemly at all times. One occasion for tears did this divine soul prescribe for us, when she urged us do so at the time of prayer. This we can now do if we exchange the wailing of our lamentations for psalmody suiting the occasion.’ 3. I had to say this in a loud voice to be heard above the mourners’ din. Then I asked them to go away for a short while to the house nearby, but some to stay behind whose care she had been pleased to accept while she was alive. 30. Vetiana the Noblewoman Advises Gregory (GNO, 401.22–402.13 / Maraval, Vie, Ch. 28, p. 234) 1. Among these was a woman of the nobility who had been admired in her youth for wealth, good family, beauty of body, and other distinctions besides. She had married a man of high rank and had lived together with him a short time. Then, while still young in body, she was released from the marriage yoke. 2. She made the great Macrina the guardian and guide of her widowhood, and stayed much of her time with the virgins, learning from them the life of virtue. The woman’s name was Vetiana,108 and her father, Araxius, was one of those who made up the council of senators. 108

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3. I said to her that now, at least, there would be nothing objectionable in putting brighter clothing on the body and adorning that pure and stainless flesh with shining linen. 4. But she said that one ought to learn what the holy one had considered proper in these matters. For it was not right that we should do anything at all contrary to what she would have wished. But whatever was truly approved and well-pleasing to God, this would have been her desire too. 31. Consultation with Lampadion, the Sisters’ Superior (GNO, 402.14– 403.19 / Maraval, Vie, Ch. 29, pp. 236–38) 1. Now there was one appointed over the choir of virgins of the rank of deaconess whose name was Lampadion.109 She said that she knew exactly what she had decided for her burial. When I asked her about it — for happily she was present during our discussion — she said in tears: 2. ‘The only adornment of concern to the holy one was a pure life. This to her was the ornament of her life and her shroud in death. But as far as the decoration of the body goes, she neither had any while she was alive nor laid up any for the present purpose. So even if we wanted, there will be nothing more to dress her in than what we have available110 here.’ 3. ‘But is it not possible,’ I said, ‘to find something in the cupboards to adorn the bier with?’111 4. ‘Cupboards? What cupboards?’ She replied. ‘You have all that she stored up before you. There is her cloak, there her head covering, there the worn sandals for her feet. This is her wealth, these are her riches. There is nothing stored up in secret places apart from what you see, or put away safely in chests or bedrooms. She knew of only one place for storing up wealth, the treasure in heaven (Matthew 6. 19–20). It was there that she stored her all, leaving nothing behind on earth.’ 5. ‘What if,’ I said to her, ‘I were to bring in some of the things I prepared for the burial, would this in some way be against her wishes?’ 109

ðñïôgôáãìÝíç ôïØ ÷ïñïØ ô­ò ðáñègíßáò. The ‘choir of virgins’ does not mean their assembly in the church, as if Lampadion were a kind of choir mistress. It refers to the house of the virgins. The term ðñïôgôáãìÝíç is used in the Asketikon for an official subordinate to ‘the one who presides’. It seems therefore that Macrina fulfilled the function of proestosa, otherwise called that of presbytera, of the women. Lampadion then, seems to have been Macrina’s deputy, something like a later prioress to an abbess. Vetiana, on the other hand, seems to have had a more personal relationship with Macrina. 110

ïÛ omitted with V and Maraval. It is found in all other manuscripts and editions, with the sense: ‘[. . .] than what we do not have available here.’ 111

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6. ‘I do not think,’ she said, ‘that this would be against her intention. For had she been alive, she would have accepted such honour from you on two counts: your priesthood which she always held in honour, and your communion of nature, for she would not have considered alien to herself what belonged to her brother. For this reason she also requested that her body be prepared for burial by your hands.’ 32. Relics of the Holy Cross on Macrina’s body (GNO, 403.20–404.19 / Maraval, Vie, Ch. 30, pp. 238–42) 1. When this was decided upon and we were about to clothe that sacred body in the fine linen,112 we divided the work and applied ourselves to one task or another about her. I for my part bade one of my attendants bring in the robe. 2. But as the above-mentioned Vetiana was arranging that holy head with her own hands, she brought her hand to the neck, looked towards me and said: ‘See what kind of necklace the holy one wore as an ornament.’ 3. As she said this she loosened the clasp from behind, reached out her hand and showed me the shape of the cross in iron113 and a ring of the same material, both of which were fastened by a slender chain and had always been over her heart. 4. ‘Let us share this treasure,’ I said. ‘You by all means keep the cross as a safeguard. It will be enough for me to inherit the ring’ — for the cross was also stamped on its seal.114 5. Gazing at it intently, the woman again spoke to me: ‘Your choice of this as a possession has not missed the mark. For the ring has a cavity in the band, and

112

One can only admire Gregory’s tact with the women. His original impulse was to dress Macrina’s body in fine linen, and eventually this is exactly what he does, but first he consults the superior and hears her views. She, in a sense, gives him the go-ahead. This then affords us a valuable testimony to Macrina’s spirit and practice of poverty. Gregory’s modus operandi here accords perfectly with Basil’s instructions in SR 111, where he makes it clear that though there might be one (male) superior over the whole community, the women’s superior has every right to be indignant if he attempts to act unilaterally in the women’s house without consulting her. It is a model of collaborative leadership between the male and female superiors (under the general leadership of the male superior) requiring dialogue and mutual accommodation. Later on (34) Gregory yields his own view to Lampadion’s wishes. 113

In 2003 and 2006 the present author saw in the museum at Amasya (ancient Amasea, about seventy kilometres from Annisa) small iron crosses from ‘the Christian era’ (pre-1071), described as reliquaries of the cross. 114

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hidden in it is a fragment of the wood of Life.115 So by its shape the seal116 shows from above what lies beneath.’ 33. Vetiana Explains a Scar (GNO, 404.20–406.9 / Maraval, Vie, Ch. 31, pp. 242–46) 1. But when the moment came to cover the pure body in its robe, the command of the great one made it necessary that I perform this ministry myself. But she who shared with me the great one’s inheritance was at hand and joined me in the work. ‘Do not let a very great wonder accomplished by this holy woman pass by unrecorded,’117 she said. ‘What is that?’ I asked. 2. Laying bare part of the breast she said: ‘Do you see this slight, faint mark below the skin? It is like a scar made by a small needle.’ As she spoke she brought the lamp nearer the place she was showing me. ‘What is to be wondered at,’ I said, ‘if the body is pricked here with some faint mark?’

115

This is one of the earliest testimonies of devotion to the true cross. Eusebius’s Life of Constantine 3.25–40, written after the death of Constantine in 337, describes the search for the location of the Holy Sepulchre following the defeat of Licinius (324), and the building by Constantine of the great ‘Church of the Saviour’ there, followed by other churches in Bethlehem and the Mount of Olives. 3.41–46 intimate that Helen, Constantine’s mother, was instrumental in establishing these holy places, but mention nothing of the discovery of the cross. The earliest mention of relics of the wood of the cross is in Cyril of Jerusalem’s Catechetical Lecture 4.10, delivered in the great church itself in the late 340s: ‘The whole world has since been filled with pieces of the wood of the cross.’ He says the same in Lectures 10.19 and 13.4. The earliest record of Helen’s finding of the cross is by Rufinus of Aquileia, who lived in Jerusalem from the 370s to the 390s. It is found in his additions to his translation of Eusebius’s Church History, 10.7–8, written in 403. See The Church History of Rufinus of Aquileia, Books 10 and 11, trans. by P. Amidon (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), pp. 16–18. This was a major source of the accounts in Socrates Church History 1.17 and Sozomen Church History 2.1, written in the 430s and 440s. See Maraval’s discussion in Vie, pp. 240–41, n. 2, where he refers to F.–J. Dölger, ‘Das Anhängekreuzchen der hl. Makrina und ihr Ring mit der Kreuzpartikel [. . .]’, Antike und Christentum, 3 (1932), 81–116, and Anatole Frolow, La Relique de la vraie croix: Recherches sur le développement d’un culte, Archives de l’Orient Chrétien, 7 (Paris: Institut français d’etudes byzantines, 1961), and Les Reliquaries de la vraie croix, Archives de l’Orient Chrétien, 8 (Paris: Institut français d’etudes byzantines, 1965). 116 117

º óöñáãÂò, again, the ‘seal’, meaning the cross.

•íéóôüñçôïí. This seems to imply that the women expected Gregory to make a written tribute of Macrina’s life. Gregory remarks in the conclusion that he listened to many other tales of Macrina from the members of her community that were not recorded in this Life.

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3. ‘This’, she replied, ‘is left on the body as a memorial of a great benefit received from God. For there once grew in this spot a frightful disease, and it was perilous whether the tumour118 were cut out, or the affliction progressed to a completely incurable state by spreading to the region of the heart. 4. Many times her mother begged her119 and implored her to accept treatment from a physician, since this art too, she said,120 was sent from God for the saving of human beings.121 But she judged it worse than the affliction to lay bare any part of her body to the eyes of a stranger. 5. So one evening, after waiting on her mother as usual with her own hands, she passed within the sanctuary122 and fell prostrate before123 the God of healings all night long and poured out a stream of water from her eyes upon the ground, and used mud from the tears as a salve124 for the disease. 6. But when her mother, in a thoroughly distressed state, again pleaded with her to put herself into the physician’s hands, she declared it would be enough for the cure of the blight if her mother with her own hand applied the holy seal125 to the place. But when the mother put her hand within her bosom to apply the seal to the place, the seal was effective and the disease was no more.

118

ôÎí Ðãêïí, evidently cancer of the breast and/or lymph glands. Emmelia’s mother had died young, and this may have added something to her alarm over her daughter’s condition. 119

Omitting öçóß in this place with VW, GM, as superfluously referring to Vetiana.

120

Reading öçóß in this place with ØGMv, as referring to Emmelia.

121

The extent to which Christians should rely on the medical art is discussed at great length in Basil’s Asketikon, LR 55, and SR 314 (see Silvas, Asktikon, pp. 264–69, 448–49). It was a live topic at Annisa. Indeed one or another of Basil’s questioners who raised the issue may have been from Annisa (Peter?). The earlier statement, SR 314, is somewhat restrained in approving the recourse to physicians by Christian ascetics; his mature statement in LR 55, however, is more moderate and accords wholly with Emmelia’s sentiments expressed here, though Basil reprimands those who think of physicians as ‘saviours’. 122

ðáíáãéáóôçñßïõ, this refers to the ‘holy of holies’ where the Mysteries were offered, what is called ‘the altar’ today in the Christian east. The church building does not seem to have been any great distance from the household. WV have ãéáóôçñßïõ (holy place), and KB, YH have èõóéáóôçñßïõ (altar = the holy of holies). 123

ðñïóðßðôgé, meaning ‘besought’ yes, but the verb also has a physical register. Cf. Gregory’s discussion of proskynesis, or bowing face to the ground, in On the Holy Spirit, Against the Macedonians 111.2–113.4 (GNO, III.1.105.19–110.23). Gregory Nazianzen tells of a very similar incident in his Eulogy for his Sister Gorgonia 15 (PG 35.808, McCauley, pp. 112–13). 124 125

öáñìÜêå, illustrating the literal meaning of the term as a remedial ‘drug’.

That is, the sign of the cross, but in this context it might also refer to the physical application of the iron ring, in whose ‘seal’ was a relic of the holy cross, as described in the previous section.

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7. ‘But this,’ she said, ‘is the slight mark which then appeared instead of the frightful tumour and remained right to the end as a memorial, I think, of the divine visitation, a cause and a subject of continual thanks to God.’ 34. Lampadion’s Counsel Prevails: The Body Is Covered with Emmelia’s Cloak (GNO, 406.10–406.21 / Maraval, Vie, Ch. 32, p. 246) 1. When our task was finished and the body had been adorned with what we had available, again the deaconess spoke, maintaining that it was not fitting that she should be seen by the eyes of the virgins clothed as a bride. ‘But I have,’ she said, ‘one of your mother’s dark cloaks laid by which I think would do well put over her, so that this sacred beauty is not made to shine with an alien126 splendour of clothing.’ 2. Her counsel prevailed, and the cloak was placed over the body. Yet even in the dark robe it shone, the divine power having added, I think, this grace to the body, so that, exactly as I had seen in the dream, a radiance seemed to shine forth from her beauty. 35. The Neighbours Stream in for the Vigil (GNO, 406.22–407.13 / Maraval, Vie, Ch. 33a, pp. 246–48) 1. While we were occupied in these tasks, and the psalmodies of the virgins mingled with their lamentations were echoing about the place, I do not know how, but the news quickly spread everywhere in the district, so that all who lived in the neighbourhood127 began streaming towards the calamity, until the forecourt could no longer contain the gathering. 2. We held an all-night vigil for her with hymn singing, as in the festivals of the martyrs. When it was finished and Orthros128 was just beginning, the crowd of both men and women flocking in from the whole neighbourhood began breaking into the psalmody with their lamentations. 3. Though my own soul was sorely pressed by the misfortune, nonetheless I was working out how it might be possible, given our resources, not to omit anything suitable for such a funeral. I separated the tide of people according to sex, and put the crowd of women with the choir of virgins, while the menfolk I put in the order of the monks.129 I then elicited a single psalmody, rhythmical and harmonious,

126

¦ðgéóÜêôå . . . êüóìå, extraneous, adventitious, superfluous.

127

ðgñéïéêïØíôgò, one might almost say, ‘parishioners’.

128

That is, the prayer at dawn; see Basil, LR 37.3 (Silvas, Asketikon, pp. 245 and 247).

129

This is Gregory’s parallelism of terms for the female and male members of the community: ôè ôäí ðáñèÝíù}í . . . ÷ïñè / ôè ôäí ìïíáæüíôùí ôÜãìáôé.

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coming alternatively from either side as in choral singing, and blending beautifully in the common responses.130 36. The Funeral Procession (GNO, 407.14–408.17 / Maraval, Vie, Ch. 33b–34a, pp. 248–52) 1. But since the day was advancing somewhat, and all the area about the retreat was becoming congested with the throng of those pouring in, the one who presides over those districts as bishop, Araxius by name,131 who was there with the full complement of his priests, proposed that the body132 be slowly brought forward since there was quite a distance to be covered and the crowd was likely to impede movement. As he said this he summoned all who shared the priesthood with him to form the escort of the body. [Maraval, Vie, Ch. 34a] 2. When this had been decided and the plan was put into effect, I took one side of the bier and invited him to the other, while two other eminent clergy took the rear part of the bier. I then led the way at a slow pace, as was fitting, and so we moved forward little by little. For the people were pressing around the bier, all of them insatiable for that sacred sight, so that there was no way open for us to press on easily with the journey. 3. Thus we made our way forward, flanked on either side by no small crowd of deacons and attendants escorting the body in order, all with wax tapers alight in their hands. A kind of mystic

130

Compare Basil’s description of the varied styles of psalmody in the communities, Letter 207, ‘To the Clergy of Neocaesarea’, in this volume. 131

Ò ôäí ôüðùí ¦êgßíùí äé ô­ò ¦ðéóêïð­ò ðñïgóôþò, zÁñÜîéïò Ðíïìá áÛôè. All commentators assume that Araxius’s see was Ibora. Yet account has to be taken of the speed with which he and his clergy convened at Annisa in the early morning. Ibora was at least a half-day’s journey distant, perhaps twenty-five to thirty kilometres. Another possibility might be proposed as Araxius’s see: Magnopolis, near the junction of the Iris and the Lycus about eight kilometres distant from Annisa. It is recorded in Byzantine times as having a bishop. In Letter 19.12, Gregory tells of being called to Ibora to supervise the election of a new bishop, the previous bishop having died. If this had been Araxius, it is odd that his name is not mentioned, especially if he had so recently co-led Macrina’s funeral with Gregory. Araxius is styled here in the present tense as ‘the one who presides’ (still). In the ecclesiastical structure of the late fourth century there might be many chorepiscopoi (‘country-bishops’ with limited powers) under a single metropolitan bishop, which was an important office and not the sinecure it later became in the West. Araxius may have been a chorbishop stationed at Magnopolis. Gregory Nazianzen speaks of Basil’s ‘multiplying of bishops in the countryside’ in Oratio 43.59 (McCauley, p. 77), and in his own de Vita Sua, of Basil ‘surrounded by fifty chorepiscopoi’ (Saint Gregory of Nazianzus Three Poems, trans. by Denise Molaise Meehan (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 1987), p. 89). 132

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procession133 was set in train, the psalmody resounding harmoniously from beginning to end, sung as in the hymnody of the three children (cf. Daniel 3. 51). 4. There were seven or eight stades134 between the retreat and the house of the holy martyrs where the bodies of our parents were also laid. We scarcely finished the journey in the whole of the day, and that with difficulty,135 for the accompanying crowd was constantly growing larger and did not allow our progress to be what we wished. 37. Arrival at the Tomb: The Burial Service (GNO, 408.17–409.8 / Maraval, Vie, Ch. 34b, pp. 252–54) 1. When we came inside the doors of the house we put down the bier and turned first to prayer. The prayer however became a signal to the people for lamentations. For when during a lull in the psalmody the virgins gazed on that holy face, and the tomb of our parents was already being uncovered in which it had been decided to lay her, one of them cried out impulsively that from this hour we would never look upon that godlike face again. 2. Thereupon the other virgins cried out the same with her, and a disorderly confusion overthrew the orderly and sacred character of the psalmody, with everyone else sobbing at the wailing of the virgins. 3. With some difficulty we made gestures for silence, the cantor took the lead in prayer by intoning the phrases customary in the church, and the people settled down to the service of prayer.

133

½í ôéò ìõóôéê¬ ðïìð¬ ôÎ ãéíüìgíïí, referring to the liturgical processions of the Easter vigil, which featured the rites of initiation. Cf. Gregory’s description of the Easter processions in On the Pasch or the Resurrection, GNO, IX , 309, and in his Letter 6.10 (Silvas, Gregory, p. 142), of the chorus of virgins with lit tapers processing into the church like a river of fire. 134

©ðô äg Ðíôùí » Ïêôã ôäí ¦í ìÝóù. The precise measurements of the stade varied in antiquity. In most widespread use in the Empire was the Alexandrian stade, about an eighth of a Roman mile, c. 185 metres. On the face of it the distance here is equivalent to a mile, perhaps about one and a half kilometres. Gregory may be using a slightly longer stade, or, more likely, is approximating without too much accuracy. In 2003 the present author visited the site about two and a half kilometres (again, approximate) east and a little to the south from Uluköy–Sonissa–Annisa, which the Muslim townsfolk call the ‘Church Place’. It is at the end of rise about one kilometre from the Iris, at some distance from the ancient Pontic Road going east from Annisa. Little evidence remains above ground. Strangely there was one sarcophagus-like structure (of a later period) that would have accommodated three bodies. This then seems to be the site of the Martyrion where Basil the Elder, Emmelia, and Macrina were once buried. 135 äé ðÜóçò ó÷gäÎí ô­ò ºìÝñáò ìüëéò ô¬í ÒäÎí äéçíýóáìgí. On the face of it, it seems extraordinary that a distance of one and a half or even two and a half or three kilometres can have taken most of the day. Perhaps by ‘day’ Gregory here means ‘morning’ or ‘fore-noon’.

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38. Opening of the Parents’ Grave and Interment (GNO, 409.9–410.2 / Maraval, Vie, Ch. 35, pp. 254–56) 1. When the prayer had duly come to an end, there came over me a fear of the divine commandment which forbids us uncover the shame136 of father or mother (cf. Leviticus 18. 7). And ‘how,’ said I, ‘shall I escape such condemnation if I look upon the common shame of human nature in the bodies of my parents, since they are all fallen apart and decayed, as is to be expected, and changed to a loathsome and revolting formlessness?’ 2. As I thought these things over and Noah’s ire against his son was heightening my fear (Genesis 9. 24–25), the story of Noah itself advised me what was to be done (Genesis 9. 23). As the lid was being lifted up,137 before the bodies came before our eyes, they were covered by a pure linen cloth from one side to the other. And now that the bodies were hidden beneath the cloth, we — myself, that is, and the bishop of the district mentioned above, took up that sacred body from its bed and laid it out beside the mother,138 thus fulfilling the common prayer of both. 3. For with one voice both of them had asked God for this all through their life, that their bodies should be reunited with each other after death, that the communion of their way of life while in this life should not be broken even in death. Part E : Macrina the Wonder Worker 39. Gregory Returns South and Meets a Soldier (GNO, 410.3–410.19 / Maraval, Vie, Ch. 36, pp. 256–58) 1. When we had finished all that was appointed for the funeral rites and it was necessary that I resume my journey,139 I first cast myself on the tomb and embraced the dust, and so I took the road again, downcast and in tears, pondering how my life had been severed from so great a good. 2. Along the road a man of high rank in the army, the military commander in a small city of Pontus called Sebastopolis where he was stationed with his

136

•ó÷çìïóýíçí, with a connotations of ‘indecorum, disfigurement, disgrace’; in the text of Leviticus referred to by Gregory, it is a euphemism for the private parts. 137 It seems that the parents’ grave was set in the floor of the Martyrion; the stone lid is being raised from floor level. 138

Since Gregory knew which of the two concealed bodies was which, it is reasonable to infer that he was present at the interment of his mother in late 370/early 371. 139

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subordinates, came to meet me in a friendly manner on my arrival at the place.140 When he heard of the misfortune, he was greatly distressed, for indeed he was related to us both by kinship and association.141 3. He told me the story of a miraculous incident in her life. It is the only one I shall inscribe in my history and I shall conclude my tale with it. When we had ceased from our tears and were engaged in conversation, he said to me: ‘Hear how great a good has departed from this human life.’ And with that, he began this tale. 40. The Soldier’s Tale: A Visit to Annisa (GNO, 410.20–411.26 / Maraval, Vie, Ch. 37, pp. 258–60) 1. ‘On one occasion a great desire came upon us, my wife142 and me, to pay a special visit to the school of thought and virtue143 — for so I think the place ought to be called where that blessed soul had her abode. 2. Our little daughter also was with us. An infectious illness had left her with an affliction of the eye, and indeed her appearance was quite off-putting and pitiful, for the membrane around her pupil was thickened and whitish with the disease. 3. When we came within that divine abode, I and my yolk-fellow144 separated according to sex during our visit to the philosophers in that place. I went to the men’s quarters, governed by your brother Peter,145 while she entered within the virgins’ quarters146 to be with the holy one. 4. ‘When a suitable interval had passed, we decided it was time to take our leave from the retreat. We were already at the point of setting out when kindly protests came to us from both sides. 5. Your brother was urging me to stay and partake of the philosophers’ table, and the blessed one would not let my wife147 go. Holding our little daughter in her lap, she said would not give her up until she had had a

140

•ðáíôçóÝ ôg öéëïöñüíùò êáôz áÛô¬í ãgíïìÝíå.

141

­í ãñ ä¬ ôäí ¦ê ãÝíïõò ²ìÃí ïÆêgßùí ôg êá ¦ðéôçägßùí. Compare the relationship reported in Basil, Letter 315, in this volume. 142

ãáìgô±, perhaps more exactly ‘mate’.

143

ôÎ ô­ò •ñgô­ò öñïíôéóôÞñéïí, phrontisterion (comically translated ‘thought-factory’) was coined by Aristophanes to mock the circle that gathered around Socrates, Clouds 94. 144

¦ãþ ôg êá ² Ïìüæõãïò. Gregory uses a varied vocabulary for ‘spouse’, which one attempts to maintain in English translation. 145

¦í ôè •íäñäíé, ôí êáèçãgÃôï ÐÝôñïò Ò óÎò •ägëöüò.

146

º ä¥ ôïØ ðáñègíäíïò ¦íôïò ãgíïìÝíç. Parthenon i.e. the abode not only of ‘virgins’, but of all the dedicated women ascetics including widows. 147

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table prepared for them and had welcomed them with the bounty of philosophy. But when she kissed the child, as might be expected, she put her lips to her eyes, perceived the condition around the pupil and said. 6. ‘“If you grant me this favour and share our table, I will give you in return a reward not unworthy of such honour on your part.”148 ‘“What is that?” said the child’s mother. ‘“I have a medicine,”149 said the great one, “which is effective in healing eye complaints.” 7. ‘When news came to me from the women’s quarters150 telling me of this pledge, we stayed gladly, minding little the pressing necessity of starting on our journey.’ 41. The Soldier’s Tale Continued: What Happened on the Way Home (GNO, 412.20–413.16 / Maraval, Vie, Ch. 38, pp. 260–64) 1. ‘When the feasting came to an end and we had finished the prayer, the great Peter having entertained us and cheered us with his own hands,151 and the holy Macrina having sent off my yoke-fellow with every courtesy one could wish for, we then returned along the same road cheerfully and delightedly, each telling the other what had befallen us as we made our journey. 2. I for my part repeated all I had seen and heard in the men’s quarters, while she recounted every detail as in a history, thinking that nothing ought to be left out, not even the least point. She went through everything as if following the sequence of a narrative. When she reached the part where the promise of a cure for the eye was made, she suddenly broke off her tale. 3. ‘“What have we done?” she cried. “How did we forget her pledge, the medicine she promised us for the eyes?” ‘I was annoyed at our carelessness, and bade someone run back quickly for the medicine. At that moment, the infant, who was in her nurse’s arms, looked at her mother, and the mother peered at the child’s eyes. 4. ‘“Cease”, she said, “your annoyance at our carelessness”, crying aloud for joy and astonishment. “For, see! Nothing is lacking of what she promised us! She really

148

ßìäí ôéì­ò (‘your honour’) most manuscripts; ºìäí ôéì­ò (‘our honour’) Patm., Jaeger’s conjectural correction, Woods Callahan; ßìÃí ôéì­ò (‘of honour to you’); omitted in S. 149

Literally ‘drug’, but the sense of ‘medicine’ fits the context; Macrina bestows no visible drug but the invisible medicine of her prayer before God instead.

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ðáñ ô­ò ãõíáéêùíßôéäïò.

151

÷gñóÂí most manuscripts; ÷Üñéóéí (‘kindnesses’) S, GM, Woods Callahan.

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has given her own true medicine that heals diseases, the cure that comes from prayer, and it has already worked, and there is nothing more remaining of the eye’s affliction. It has all been cleared up by that divine medicine!” 5. ‘And as she said this, she took up the child and placed her in my arms. My mind then took in the miracles of the Gospel, which until then I had not believed.152 “Is it too great,” I said, “that sight is restored to the blind by the hand of God, when through faith in him his handmaid now accomplishes the same healings, and has worked something not much short of those miracles?”’ 6. As he spoke his voice kept breaking down in sobs and his tale overflowed with tears. Such then is what I heard from the soldier. 42. Conclusion (GNO, 413.17–414.14 / Maraval, Vie, Ch. 39, 264–66) 1. I do not think it advisable to add to my narrative all the other stories like this that we have heard from those who lived with her and knew her life accurately. For most men, judging the credibility of what they are told by their own measure, mock anything that transcends the capacity of the hearer with suspicions of falsehood and exclude it from the truth. 2. Accordingly I pass over that incredible husbandry during the famine, when the grain was being dispensed for the relief of need, and yet gave no sign of diminishment. It retained the same bulk before it had been distributed to the needs of the suppliants as afterwards. 3. There were indeed other events even more astonishing than these: healings of diseases and castings out of demons, and foreseeings of future events that did not lie. All are credited as true by those who have investigated them accurately, even though they may be incredible. 4. But they are considered by the more fleshly minded to exceed the limits of what is acceptable — by those, that is, who do not realize that the distribution of spiritual gifts is according to the analogy of faith (Romans 12. 6), with the result that little is given to those of little faith, and much to those who make generous room within themselves for the faith (cf. Luke 8. 18). 5. In order that the more incredible stories do not harm those who do not believe the gifts of God, I have refrained from a consecutive narrative of these sublime wonders, deeming that what has been already said is sufficient to bring to a conclusion what concerns her life.

152

ô •ðéóôïýìgíá êáô ôÎ gÛáãã¦ëéïí èáýìáôá. This might be translated as ‘the incredible wonders/miracles of the Gospel’, but the soldier’s own dispositions seem to be at issue. He was no doubt well educated, but perhaps only a Christian in the sense of a nominal catechumen. From this point Gregory sustains a play on believing and unbelieving till the end.

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O N THE S OUL AND THE R ESURRECTION , INTRODUCTION

Sources of the Text

I

nformation on the text of the de Anima et resurrectione is only sketchily available in English — or in any other language for that matter. Hence it is worthwhile offering the reader some background on this topic. The translation here is made exclusively from S. Gregorii Episcopi Nysseni de anima et resurrectione cum sorore sua Macrina dialogus.1 To date, Krabinger’s critical edition is the still the best available text of the On the Soul and the Resurrection. Krabinger explains that a critical edition was necessary, ‘especially because to date none has been produced, and in the existing text as it is in the works of Gregory of Nyssa, many lacunae and inept amendments can be found.’2 He refers to the faulty text of the edition published by A. Morell at Paris in 1638, which was incorporated by J.-P. Migne into the works of Gregory published in the Patrologia Graeca.3 Krabinger was the Bibliothecae Reg[alis] Monacensis Custos, that is, librarian of the Royal Library of Munich, today the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek. He collated five manuscripts from that library, which, with their sigla, are as follows: Mon. A: Munich gr. 23 (once Fuggerianus), paper, 16th cent., fols 19a–62a. Krabinger (p. iv) refers the reader for more information to Hardt (the catalogue of the codex manuscripts of the Bibliothecae Reg. Bavar.), I, 105.

1

J. G. Krabinger, ed., S. Gregorii Episcopi Nysseni de anima et resurrectione cum sorore sua Macrina dialogus (Leipzig: Gustav Wittig, 1837).

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2

Krabinger, ed., S. Gregorii Episcopi Nysseni, p. iii.

3

PG 44–46 (46.11–150).

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Mon. B: Munich gr. 47 (once Fuggerianus), paper, 16th cent., fols 1a–44a. See Hardt, I, 226. Many scholia have been imported into the text by the copyist Johanne Naupliensis Murmureus. There are many corrections by Laurentio Sifano, some between the lines, the greatest number in the margins. Mon. C: Munich gr. 192 (once Fuggerianus), paper, 14th cent., fols 178a–224a. See Hardt, II, 259ff. ‘I am not surprised that book B, as also books AC were shared with Sifanus by Fuggeris.’ Mon. D: Munich gr. 438 (once Augustanus), silk, 14th cent., fols 271a–322a. See Hardt, IV, 356, 358. Copied by various hands; once possessed by Georgio Birgota who bought it from a Roman chief secretary in 1489. Mon. E: Munich gr. 562 (once Augustanus), partly parchment, partly paper, 11th and 15th cents, fols 271a–322a. Krabinger also consulted an edition of the de Anima et resurrectione by J. Christoph Wolf (1722), and provided information on two manuscripts used by Wolf, but not personally seen by him: Hasselman: paper, 14th cent.; it was loaned by Zacharias Hasselman, Minister at Oldenburgh, to Wolf, about whose description of the codex in Anecdota Graeca,4 Krabinger reports: it was very carefully copied; the names of Gregory and Macrina marked out in red identify their parts in the dialogue. Mühlenberg has not able to identify this manuscript. Uffenbach: Krabinger reports the description by J. Heinrich May in Bibliothecae Uffenbachianae MStae Part. 2, p. 425: paper, 14th-cent., fol. 157a–p. 257 (sic). It has variant readings in the margins; at the end of the dialogue, on folio 251b, ‘certain scholia’ were added, since space for recording them in the margins of the text ran out. May used the codex lent to Wolf by Steinhelius, Polish Ambassador at Frankfurt-am-Main at the request of Z. Uffenbach. Professor Mühlenberg described to me this manuscript, used by him for his edition of Gregory’s Oratio catechetica. ‘The manuscript from the Bibliotheca Uffenbachiana is catalogued as Hamburgensis theologicus 1517, dated to the sixteenth century, paper, 602 pag. 22x16 cm, 1 col., 21 lin.’ Krabinger is a very meticulous editor, as far as his range of sources allowed him.5 F. Oehler also published a Greek text of the de Anima et resurrectione with German translation in 1858. He incorporated numerous corrections and amendments of

4 5

Anecdota Graeca (Hamburg, 1722), vol. II.

The text, with Greek on one page and Krabinger’s Latin translation on the facing page, covers pp. 1–159. Exceedingly detailed notes, in smaller font size, cover pp. 161–374.

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Krabinger’s text. It is not easy to establish an adequate bibliography for this volume.6 Professor Andreas Spira was preparing a new critical edition for the Gregorii Nysseni opera, but died in May 2004 before finishing the volume. Spira collated dozens of new manuscripts and had prepared the Greek text to a stage that it could be used by the lexicographers at Münster.7 But he wrote no praefatio and no account of the stemma. Apparently the collation of the manuscripts will have to be worked through again. It seems unlikely that the work will reach publication in the GNO series for some time to come.8

English Translations English language readers have available several translations of On the Soul and the Resurrection. They are all translated from Krabinger. William Moore’s translation appears in the Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers series.9 He brings to the task great erudition in the Greek philosophers, Origen, and Gregory of Nyssa himself, and a superb command of English. His notes show engagement with Krabinger’s critical notes and with Oehler’s edition. It is noticeable that he often takes exception to Oehler’s readings and agrees with Krabinger. His translation nevertheless is rather free and interpretive, indeed idiosyncratically so at times, if always intelligent. It lacks a certain exactitude and consistency in the translation of some Greek terms, which is very requisite in the case of a work of such verbal nuance and tightly controlled argument in the service of philosophical and theological enquiry.

6

It appears to be as follows: Bibliothek der Kirchenväter. Eine Auswahl aus deren Werken. Urschrift mit deutscher Übersetzung. Begründet und unter Mitwirkung Anderer herausgegeben von [. . .] Franz Oehler. I. Theil. Gregor von Nyssa. Leipzig: Engelmann, Band 1 (1858) Gregor’s von Nyssa Gespräch mit seiner Schwester Makrina über Seele und Auferstehung und Lebensbeschreibung seiner Schwester Makrina an den Mönch Olympius. Griechisch und Deutsch von Franz Oehler. That might be summarized as: F. Oehler, Bibliothek der Kirchenväter, I Theil (Leipzig: Engelmann, 1858). 7

That is, Friedhelm Mann and Wolf-Dieter Hauschild, editors of the ongoing Lexicon Gregorianum (Leiden: Brill, 1998–).

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8

I am indebted to Prof. Ekkehard Mühlenberg of Göttingen for answers to some of my queries.

9

NPNF2 , V , 428–68.

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Virginia Woods Callahan, a student of Werner Jaeger at Harvard, published a translation in the Catholic University of America Fathers of the Church series.10 It is the only translation to date that preserves the headings of the two interlocutors of the dialogue that are found in most manuscripts. Its grasp of the Greek sometimes seems tenuous, and the translation tends to elide over or abbreviate difficult parts, yet it has at times afforded welcome insights not offered by the other translations. More recent is the translation by Catherine P. Roth.11 Roth has deliberately steered closer to Gregory’s text than did Moore, though the effect often yields a somewhat wooden English, which does not do justice to Gregory’s sense of the beauty of language. Yet it is generally a reliable translation for readers in English who wish to be confident that this is what Gregory really said. Roth divided her translation into ten chapters, an idea that contributes to readability and ease of reference, and one which has been gratefully imitated, though without following her divisions exactly.

The Present Translation So why another translation? The above translations of On the Soul and the Resurrection appear scattered amid other works of Gregory or as small monographs. Since the purpose of the present book is to systematically gather all the extant sources of Macrina’s life for an English language readership, the inclusion of this work was imperative. Hence it was necessary to ‘authorize’ another translation, this no doubt the last to draw upon Krabinger’s edition. Though it may seem that having these forbears in the task might be an advantage, yet the Greek text has been painstakingly analysed, line by line, for this translation. It cost not a few hours, for example, to disentangle the tortuous passage about the orbits of the moon and the sun at 2.12–18. In the light of the forthcoming critical edition I have judged it obsolete to engage to any degree with Krabinger’s analysis of texts and have relied on his editorial decision, questioning it in only two or three places. The identification of the interlocutors is included in this translation exactly as they are presented in the manuscripts. All the codices contain them. It was the

10 11

Woods Callahan (see volume Abbreviations).

Catherine P. Roth, On the Soul and the Resurrection (Crestwood, NY: St Vladimir’s Seminary, 1993).

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seventeenth-century Paris editions that first omitted them. In most manuscripts. Macrina is identified as such (ÌáêñÃíá), except that in Mon. AC º äéäÜóêáëïò (the teacher) appears instead. It may be suspected that ‘the teacher’ was the original identification, but nevertheless the example of those manuscripts that use Macrina’s name has been followed here instead. Occasionally at the beginning of designated chapters it has been advisable to identify the speaker afresh, but such instances are included in square brackets. As mentioned above, the work has been divided into chapters with chapter titles. While ten distinct topics flow naturally from the work itself, the division adopted by Roth is not entirely adopted. Sometimes a chapter begins a little earlier or later. But most importantly a distinct introduction is instituted, which sets the scene before the debate between Macrina and Gregory gets under way. The ten chapters follow. Verse numbering is also instituted for ease of precise location, at least in this edition. Krabinger’s pagination is noted in the body of the text in square brackets. It is often approximate within a few words, since the word order of the Greek and of the English translation cannot always be coordinated precisely across the pages. Scriptural citations are italicized in the text, and both citations and scriptural allusions are referenced in brackets within the text. References have been added that do not appear in the other editions or translations. The aim has been to stay as close as possible to Gregory’s Greek text and to refrain from flights of fancy in translation. Vocabulary is translated consistently and with an eye to the tradition of philosophical and theological discourse. The adjective íïgñüò, which has been in time past translated as ‘intelligible’ is here translated as ‘intellectual’. It means something subsisting and perceptible on the plane of the intellect or mind, not of the senses. Today we might use ‘spiritual’ rather than ‘intellectual’ to characterize the existence of angels, for example. Another word dominating this work, ëüãïò, necessitates varied handling in varied circumstances, since no one English term can match the comprehensiveness and weight of this resplendent Greek word. Most often in this dialogue it merits translation as ‘argument’, in the sense of a rationally argued case. In 2.3–4 it can only be translated as ‘definition’. In 5.4 and 7.3 it is translated in a phrase as ‘in my opinion’, in lieu of ‘in my reckoning’. The argument is often presented in very complex syntactical structures and highly supple vocabulary. At times it is necessary to express this in somewhat more idiomatic English than a literal replication would warrant, the very woodenness of which would tend to obfuscate the meaning. Hopefully, the result is a translation that yields a sense of solidity and reliability and at the same time succeeds as noble English, but that remains for the reader to judge.

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This is a great work of religious philosophy if not speculative theology, composed by one of the finest intellects among the Greek Fathers of any century, and it is impossible that it should ever be a ‘light read’, so it must be allowed to make its demands on the reader even if we are trying to make it accessible in English.

The Origin of the Dialogue Gregory himself sketches in the Introduction the occasion that led to his writing of this dialogue. Some nine months or so after the death of his brother, Basil the Great, Gregory by a very remarkable providence reached the bedside of his sister Macrina in the late morning of the day before she died. He was dismayed that she too was near death. They held several long conversations, made poignant and urgent because they would be the last between brother and sister on earth. Two days after his arrival he co-led her funeral procession and interred her body in their parents’ grave. Macrina’s death deeply affected Gregory, intellectually, and spiritually.12 He reflected on Macrina, the testimony of her words and of her life, over some years. We can see the development of his thought about her in the three accounts he gives of the original event. Each of them is somewhat different, because they are emphasizing different aspects for different purposes at the time of writing. They proceed with a certain crescendo, the second work emerging out of and enlarging the first, and the third work magnifying very considerably one episode adumbrated in the second. The first record is that of Letter 19.6–10, written in early to mid-380, within a year of Macrina’s death, probably while Gregory was still detained under guard at Sebasteia in the first half of 380. The second account occurs in the VSM, written in late 381/82, especially what Gregory says in the prefatory letter at VSM 1 and in VSM 20. In the latter episode, Gregory tells how his grief over Basil’s death quickly turned the first conversation between sister and brother to questions concerning death and the afterlife. He emphasizes the orderly reason and calm of his sister’s discourse, summarizing it by saying ‘And if my narrative were not to 12

It is a point worth pondering that, though Gregory appears to have been present at his brother Basil’s death (see Gregory Nazianzen, Letter 95 in Silvas, Gregory, 95), it did not lead to the profound reflections and literary activity inspired by his attendance at Macrina’s death, except insofar as it disposed him to be all the more sensitive to Macrina’s passing only nine months later. We know far less about the circumstances of Basil’s dying than we do about Macrina’s. And of Gregory’s own death we know absolutely nothing, except that it happened in late 394 or in 395.

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expand to an unconscionable length I would recount everything in order, how exalted was her discourse as she philosophized to us on the soul and explained the cause of our life in the flesh, and why man was made, and how he became mortal, and whence came death, and what is the release from death back to life again.’ This statement makes it clear that at the time of writing the VSM he had not yet had opportunity to expand his account of her discourse. Thus the Life of Macrina predates On the Soul and the Resurrection. On the Soul was written during one of Gregory’s productive winters towards the mid-380s. The winters of 383/84 or of 384/85 are most likely. Gregory is at the zenith of his career in the Church. He has for years now assumed something of Basil’s mantle in defence of Christian doctrine and is looked on as his doctrinal heir in the highest quarters. He was in great standing with the Emperor Theodosius and was formally regarded as a standard of the orthodoxy proclaimed at the Council of Constantinople in 381.

Genre and Antecedents Even in Gregory’s first surviving work, On Virginity, written in 371, Macrina, though not mentioned by name, was his model of the virgin life, the life wholly dedicated to God. This image of Macrina as virgin reached its culmination in the Life of Macrina. It can be seen there, for example, in her explicit assimilation to the figure of St Thecla, first-century virgin and disciple of St Paul, a model of virgins who was very popular in the Asia Minor of that time. In On the Soul and the Resurrection, however, it is another aspect of Macrina that comes to the fore. She is called ‘virgin’ here only twice, and that rather passingly. Here she is above all the teacher, the philosopher discoursing about death on the eve of her own death. It was above all Plato’s Phaedo that provided Gregory with the model for his work, which has indeed been called the Christian Phaedo. Plato’s dialogue shows Socrates on the eve of his judicial execution being called to account for his calmness in the face of imminent death and so giving reasons to his friends for the soul’s survival after bodily death. There is another parallel with Plato. I am indebted to Constant Mews for asking me the question: ‘Could we say that the Life of Macrina is like Plato’s Apologia of Socrates, and the Dialogue one of the matching Dialogues?’ Yes, just as the Apologia does duty as a Life of Socrates, and Plato in subsequent years pondered the events surrounding Socrates’ death and used them as a springboard for several philosophical dialogues — the Euthyphro, the Crito, and above all the Phaedo — so also, Gregory of Nyssa, having written the Life of Macrina, continued to ponder

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the events surrounding her death and made them the springboard for his own philosophical dialogue On the Soul and the Resurrection. The two documents, the Life of Macrina and On the Soul and the Resurrection, called together in the manuscripts Ta Makrinia, completed his testimony to his revered sister and teacher. Plato also furnished an outstanding example of a woman philosopher in Diotima of Mantineia, who appears at length in the Symposium as Socrates’ preceptress in ‘love matters’.13 In her mouth are placed the highest insights as to the real nature of eros. She says it is insufficient to leave eros on the level of sexual passion. Its essence rather is in yearning for the good and the beautiful. Once this yearning is emancipated from confusion, and one learns to govern it with virtue, it is capable of leading the healthfully erotic soul upward to the ultimately Good and the ultimately Beautiful, what she calls ‘the divine beauty’ (ôÎ ègéï yí êÜëïí),14 which assimilates readily to the Christian concept of God. Gregory himself adapted these ideas in his own mystical theology,15 and they may be seen here implicitly in his treatment of the ‘desiring’ faculty (3.56–60). Gregory also had another important model among Christian writings: the philosophical dialogue Aglaophon or on the Resurrection by Methodius of Olympus (d. 313), in which the physician Aglaophon raises objections to the doctrine of the Resurrection, which are then answered by Methodius. Gregory knew this work well (and others by the same author),16 and agrees with Methodius in rejecting both Origen’s ideas of the pre-existence of the soul and his spiritualizing of the Resurrection to the point that risen bodies are so ethereal that they bear no real relation to the previous life in the flesh. In Chapter 5 Macrina/Gregory argue that 13

Plato, Symposium, 201D–12C. See Plato with an English translation V Lysis Symposium Gorgias, ed. and trans. by W. R . M. Lamb (London: Heinemann, 1925), pp. 172–209. 14

Symposium 211E; see Lamb, Plato with an English Translation V, p. 206.

15

He was certainly well versed in Plato’s Symposium. According to J.-R . Pouchet, ‘Une Lettre Spirituelle de Gregoire de Nysse identifiée: L’Epistula 124 du corpus Basilien’, Vigilianae Christianae, 42 (1988), 28–46 (p. 32), the phrase äéÜègóéò ¦ñùôéêÞ (‘erotic disposition’) is at the heart of Gregory’s mature spirituality; c’est une expression typiquement nyséene’. He traces it from his earliest work in On Virginity 5 (‘the erotic power’) to his mature works devoted to mystical theology, On the Life of Moses and Sermons on the Song of Songs, where eros is wholly subsumed into the New Testament agape (see especially I John 4. 8). For an excellent introduction to these works see H. Musurillo, ed. and trans., From Glory to Glory, Texts from Gregory of Nyssa’s Mystical Writings, selected and with an Introduction by Jean Daniélou (Crestwood, NY: St Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1979). 16

On the influence of Methodius’s works, see the General Introduction, ‘St Thecla the Virgin and Macrina’s Vocation’.

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there must be some form of identity between the physical body that once was and the body that shall rise again, and that this will be possible if the soul, which is unbounded by space or dimension, always maintains its link with the scattered elements which once formed its body and is thus able to recognize its own elements at the divine word of command. There was also the example of Methodius’s Symposium, already discussed in the General Introduction. This was another important dialogue in the Platonic manner very well known to Gregory, which portrays Christian ascetic women engaged in philosophical discussion. Clearly Aristotle’s On the Soul is also part of the backdrop of Gregory of Nyssa’s On the Soul and the Resurrection. There is a conscious dialectic against some of its conclusions, for example, at 3.10 where Aristotle is expressly invoked without naming him as such. Other allusions reappear here and there throughout the dialogue. It is true that Tertullian wrote several treatises on the topics covered in this dialogue — The Testimony of the Soul, On the Origin of the Soul (lost), On the Soul, and On the Resurrection of the Flesh — but it seems unlikely that Gregory was able to read these Latin works.17 Nevertheless it is curious that something close to the traducianism argued by Tertullian in On the Soul is suggested in this dialogue (9.16–19), that is, the idea that the human soul is somehow transmitted in the act of generation. One of Tertullian’s points of reference was a Greek work also called ðgñ øý÷­ò (On the Soul), now lost, by the second-century physician Soranus who thought with the Stoics that the soul was in some sense corporeal. Gregory who always showed a keen interest in medicine, was highly literate in the field18 and almost certainly knew Soranus’s treatise. Gregory had already addressed himself to questions of anthropology (i.e. the nature of and the constitution of the human being) and to eschatology (i.e. the ultimate destiny of the human being) in On the Making of Man (379). In this early work he had endeavoured to continue Basil’s commentary on creation in the Hexaemeron. The arguments of Gregory’s earlier treatise anticipate in many respects the arguments of this dialogue. He also came back to the same topics in his

17

One might one wonder if any opportunity arose to discuss Christian Latin writers with Jerome, during the time of their acquaintance at the Council of Constantinople in 381. 18

Compare his attitude at the beginning of his letter To Eustathius the Physician (Letter 33, Silvas, Gregory, pp. 232–45 (p. 236): ‘All you who practice medicine surely have philanthropy for your profession. And it seems to me that one who preferred your science to all pursuits of this life would hit upon the proper judgment and not miss the mark.’

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two sermons On the Pasch or the Resurrection (Easter 379, Easter 382). Gregory subsequently dealt with these topics in the Catechetical Discourse (c. 386/87). For Gregory, the great master of Christian speculative philosophy and theology was Origen, whose eschatological ideas in the de Principia are clearly a backdrop to the discussion in this dialogue. Though, as we saw above, Macrina/Gregory are prepared to set aside some of his ideas, here as elsewhere they do subscribe to Origen’s speculations about apocatastasis, the idea that at the end of the ages all things would be so restored in Christ that evil itself would cease to exist, and along with it any state of punishment or purification. Of course this does not quite accord with the emphasis on human freedom elsewhere characteristic of Gregory. It is based on what has been called ‘metaphysical optimism’,19 the tendency to identify being and goodness, so that evil is considered merely a privation of being, a defect of reality, having in itself no real existence. But the inference that Hell would cease to exist would be eventually condemned at the Fifth Ecumenical Council (AD 553). Interestingly Justinian, in his Letter to Meno (AD 543), used a text of St Basil himself, SR 267, as a patristic locus classicus to affirm the doctrine of everlasting punishment. It bears some thinking about, that in this matter Macrina, Gregory, and probably Peter appear to have maintained a view at variance with that of their brother Basil. One thing is clear, that of these four siblings in the one family, all inheritors of a moderate Origenism through Macrina the Elder and Gregory Thaumaturgus, Basil was the one who changed. The others remained within the general view inherited from Origen. It was Basil who made a deliberate break with it. In the subsequent judgement of the Church, he was right. Making allowances for the eschatology, the idea of punishment in the afterlife portrayed in this dialogue paradoxically bears a remarkable similarity to the doctrine of purgatory as it came to be called in the West. Only there is a difference of nuance, since Macrina/Gregory consider that the pains in the afterlife consequent upon the vice practised in this life are not primarily a punishment, but a purification ordered to ultimate communion with the divine (7.3–7).20 The suffering that must 19 20

See Anthony Meredith, Gregory of Nyssa (London: Routledge, 1999), p. 7.

Clement of Alexandria was the earliest Christian writer to argue that punishment in the afterlife is medicinal and pedagogical, since vindictive punishment seemed unworthy of the consummate goodness of the divine nature. See J. R. Sachs, ‘Apokatastasis in Patristic Theology’, Theological Studies, 54 (1993), p. 618. Brian Daley, The Hope of the Early Church: A Handbook of Patristic Eschatology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), pp. 20–24, discerns two streams of thought in the early Christian period: the older view affirmed a state of everlasting bliss and a state of everlasting damnation, of which view Irenaeus is the great exemplar. The other, beginning with Clement and developed by Origen in a universalist direction, viewed punishment

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be undergone is nonetheless painful for all that, but it is more medicinal than retributive in intent. Since Basil had little idea of an intermediate state of remediation in the afterlife, the later development of doctrine, in the West at any rate, paradoxically confirmed aspects of both brothers’ eschatologies: yes (with Basil), there is a hell, a state of everlasting alienation from God, but there is also (with Gregory), another state of purification, purgatory, leading to the ultimate attainment of God. When Gregory came to write this dialogue he had several strands to weave together when deciding how to structure his writing. In the first place there was Macrina’s actual character in life, and the circumstances of her last hours in which he had shared so deeply. Gregory was clearly struck by her imperturbability in the face of her own death, whereas he himself was very upset at both Basil’s death and her impending death. She gently confronted him about this attitude and so spoke to him at some length on questions of life beyond death and the hope of eternity. All this conspired with Gregory’s interest in examining at length the issues of anthropology and eschatology. With such common subject matter, the links with Plato’s Phaedo automatically suggested themselves. Macrina fell naturally into the role of a Christian Socrates on the eve of her death discussing with her brother-disciple why she was not afraid of death, and arguing for the continuance of the soul. Gregory himself would supply the role of agent provocateur, the spokesman of those sceptical of such doctrines as the immortality of the soul and the Christian hope of the resurrection of the body. Thus he and Macrina engage in a dialectical enquiry in which a premium is set on the use of reason and argument. The object is to furnish the known truths of Christian faith with as much foundation in human reason as can be mustered. The purpose is apologetic: to blunt the scepticism towards Christianity of the contemporary pagan intellectual elites. Hence all the resources available to Gregory’s considerable intelligence from natural science, medicine, and philosophy are brought to bear in the enquiry. This over-riding concern is nowhere so clear as in Chapter 10, where Macrina provides an excellent overview of the incentives for belief in the resurrection of the body as found in the Scriptures, both the Old and New Testaments. All of this Gregory as a Christian readily accepts himself, but considers insufficient for the purposes of this enquiry. He must press on to elicit a metaphysical basis for the plausibility and probability of the resurrection of the body, and a demonstration that there were certain pointers to this doctrine even in the writings of the philosophers. as remedial, and the restoration of all as possible or even inevitable — with unresolved ambiguities with regard to the role of human freedom.

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Thus, On the Soul and the Resurrection is a Christian apologia in the highest sense of the term: a defence and a reasoned account of what Christians believe is the ultimate destiny of human beings. It is intended to allay the misgivings of contemporary intellectuals concerning aspects of the Christian faith and to predispose them if not persuade them to that faith. It was an outstanding attempt, for its time, to mediate and reconcile the apparently discordant claims of empirical science, metaphysics, and the intuitions of religious faith.

Reality and Literary Invention Finally, to what extent does this dialogue reflect the real-life episode shared by Macrina and her brother on the eve of her death, and to what extent must it be attributed to Gregory’s literary invention? First, let us concede that it is, after all, Gregory’s composition and work. It is doubtful that brother and sister conducted several hours of strenuous philosophical analyses with Macrina herself almost in extremis, and that as only one of several conversations.21 Nevertheless we need have no doubt that earnest discussion about death and immortality really did take place, and that in what she had to say to her grieving brother Macrina was charged with the grace of her culminating hours. This genuine experience reported in VSM 20 gave Gregory his starting point. The final form of the philosophical dialogue is the work of Gregory’s skill and intelligence. A fair injection of the real Macrina may yet be expected, and that with regard to not only her character, but also her reasoned argument. The claims of verisimilitude still hold true: Gregory would not have published widely a verbal icon of his sister that was significantly at variance with her known character. We should allow, too, that Macrina’s manner here as a teacher with Gregory, reflects not only the conversations they had on her deathbed, but earlier conversations years before, the latest in late 371 after he had been ordained a bishop. These earlier conversations were deeply formative of Gregory’s religious spirit at a vulnerable period of his life, and implicitly inform his On Virginity. Several times in this dialogue Macrina introduces pauses and silences into the discussion (e.g. 4.1) which give Gregory the opportunity for mental revision and note-taking of what has just been said. It shows us the kind of mental processes he

21 Compare Gregory Nazianzen’s Oratio 43, Panegyric on St Basil (McCauley, pp. 27–99). It is far too long to reflect the original occasion of delivery. The author considerably re-edited and expanded his address.

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used while listening and talking with his sister (see also 6.9). When he left Macrina’s funeral his acute intelligence was stocked with several pre-rehearsed conceptual ‘pegs’ on which later to build up the structure of his work when the time became available. Of course it will never be possible to separate entirely what is really ‘Macrina’ and what is really ‘Gregory’ in this dialogue. The integrity of Gregory’s authorship of the work remains. Except for the brief tribute by Gregory Nazianzen, it is always Gregory’s Macrina that we must deal with in the three documents he has left us about her. Even so, that does not necessarily mean the obfuscation of her real character. When the capacity of the observant and sympathetic artist is very high, then the likely result is a profoundly insightful portrait of the one observed. To leap over many lesser examples, one has only to think of the author of the fourth Gospel.

Macrina: Biographical Gleanings Since the mode of On the Soul and the Resurrection is dialectical argument, it would not seem to be a promising field for gleanings of a biographical nature. And indeed this proves to be the case. Yet there are a few welcome morsels to be recovered concerning Macrina’s circumstances and character. They might be divided into biographical data proper (i.e. information about her real life situation) and aspects of her character and intellectual calibre. This dialogue mentions what was not explicit in the VSM, that there were ‘many’ by Macrina’s bedside during her brother’s conversations with her (10.1; cf. 10.35), and that one of these was a physician who was monitoring her physical condition (2.6). She describes at length his methods of diagnosis with a view to using them as an analogy for her argument (2.6–9). As she does so she is fairly commenting on her own symptoms and pathology. They are corroborated by the details reported in VSM 19.1, 19 4, 20.3, 24.1, and 27.1 so that a full picture of her mortal illness can be obtained. This presence of the physician and Macrina’s practical and positive attitude to his services are interesting to compare with her quondam refusal to consult a physician reported in VSM 33, and with Basil’s mature and balanced statements on the Christian use of medicine in LR 55. Modesty may have been a factor in the earlier incident, since it seems to have involved cancer of the breast or at least of the lymph glands, and she shrank from exposing this part of her body to any but her mother’s hands. On her deathbed, her symptoms seem to be above all bronchial and respiratory, together with high fever, possibly indicating a heart condition. She is either more amenable to attention being paid to a

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condition of this sort, or she has in the interim developed a more balanced view of the Christian use of medicine. With regard to Macrina’s style and character, Gregory’s portrayal of the relations of sister and brother has most to tell us. Moments of lively repartee between sister and brother breathe an air of genuineness, rather than the determinisms of rhetorical topoi. An attractive feature of Gregory’s personality is that he is not above telling tales against himself.22 There is no false humility about it or a selfdeprecation aimed at winning audience sympathy (usually), just a straightforward candour about himself and his capabilities. There exist counter-evidences enough of his sense of self-worth.23 An especially lively example of interaction between the two siblings occurs at 2.36 and 2.38 where each breaks into the other’s speech, Macrina for her part quite indignantly. Another example of a certain abruptness on Macrina’s part can be seen at 1.1 where she interrupts Gregory’s speech with a gesture for silence. Since sister and brother are engaged in intellectual debate, it is not surprising that each frequently critiques the other’s arguments or statements. Gregory at times replies rather captiously to what Macrina has just said, in keeping with his assumed role of antagonist, for example at 2.40: ‘“Well then,” I said, “in this line of reasoning we only exchange one absurdity for another [. . .].”’ Macrina can calmly reprove his inattention: ‘Clearly, replied the teacher, you have not quite attended to the argument’ (4.3). But at other times Macrina can express her negative reaction with vigorous interjections, as in 1.5 (‘“Away,” she cried, “with these nonsensical pagan theories!”’) and 2.38 (‘“Fie on such absurdity!”’). On another occasion she does not have to use words to communicate her negative response, as in 1.13: ‘At these words the teacher uttered a low groan.’ Yet it is far from all adversarial. Sometimes we can hear Gregory cheering on his sister for some well-expressed segment of the argument, for example, 3.51 and 5.12. There are moments when Macrina expresses herself with some drollery, which again bears the hallmark of a real-life situation. When Gregory has argued certain objections to the Resurrection with some gusto, she remarks with backhanded praise (10.64): ‘You have assailed the doctrines of the Resurrection not without gallantry using the rhetorical art as it is called, running round the truth in circles with attractively subversive arguments [. . .].’ Compare also 1.18. 22

A particularly good example of this occurs at VSM 23.4. See also his frankness in Letter 1 (Silvas, Gregory, pp. 105–15) about the moral battle within himself during his extraordinary encounter with Helladius. 23

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All this proves that what Gregory says of Macrina in Letter 19 in relation to God is also true of her in relation to human beings. She has ðáññçóßá, lit. ‘freedom of speech’, prompt access, daring confidence, even boldness. So a certain confidence, forthrightness, and transparency characterize Macrina’s dealings with human beings. This disposition of course does not come from some kind of mindless impulsiveness or naivité. It comes rather on the far side of a hard-won maturity. Macrina is intensely self-disciplined, skilled in discourse, and experienced in leadership. Thus we also find examples of her patient, sensitive, and indeed pastoral manner, especially in the very beginning at Introd.2: ‘But she, like an expert equestrian, allowed me to be carried away by the torrent of my grief for a brief while, and then tried to bridle me with words and to steer with the bit of her own reasoning the disorder of my soul.’ Her preparedness to allow the emotions a certain amount of play, but then to apply the reins, is borne out also in VSM 29.1–2, when Gregory invokes Macrina’s own principles when attempting to restrain the wailing of the sisters after her death. Macrina asks leading questions to draw out Gregory’s mind as in Introd.8 or 1.1. She will acknowledge the justice of Gregory’s questions where warranted, as at 3.5: ‘She replied: “You quite fittingly raise this question already examined by many others.”’ On another occasion she concedes that the faultiness of her own reasoning may have muddled the argument, as in 3.33: ‘“It seems,” replied the teacher, “that I myself have occasioned this confusion in reasoning [. . .].”’ At one point, 10.64, she concedes that Gregory has put the case for the opposition with such skill that she does not think she can match his rhetoric in refuting it. She eventually makes her point with the use of similes.

Macrina as Philosopher The apologists of the second and third centuries AD used the term ‘philosophy’ and its field to describe the Christian way of life and belief. They endeavoured to show that Christianity was intelligible and credible in the terms of classic Hellenism, in which ‘philosophy’ meant the pursuit of higher things, not merely intellectually, but also in one’s way of life through striving for virtue. By the fourth and fifth centuries ‘philosophy’ was especially applied to the Christian ascetic life, and eventually to monasticism.24 Gregory Nazianzen encapsulates the sense of Christian

24

The classic work on this topic is Malingrey’s study, ‘Philosophia’: Étude d’un groupe de mots dans la littérature grecque des présocratiques au IVe siècle après J. C. (Paris: Klincksiek, 1961). See also

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philosophy when he describes the asceticism of his brother in Oratio 8.9: ‘As philosophy is the greatest, so is it the most difficult, of professions, which can be taken in hand but by few, and only by those who have been called forth by the divine magnanimity.’ In a strongly revisionist view, Alan Brown takes issue with contemporary secular humanist notions of Christianity’s philosophical naivety.25 Just as classical philosophy was not an abstracted activity but sought the good and the valuable in human life in the praxis of moral life, so too Christianity was very much concerned with the human good. It did not graft its philosophy on to its religious beliefs as a sort of adjunct, from elsewhere, but instead was intrinsically philosophical in its own distinctive sense. Gregory of Nyssa and his preoccupations fit perfectly into the scenario sketched by Brown. What then of Macrina’s intellectual powers and skills? Could she, especially as a woman, really have been competent to carry on some form of dialectical argument with one whose credentials as a rhetorician had impressed even Libanius, one who was probably the greatest speculative thinker among Greek theologians between Origen and Maximus the Confessor? Some scholarly and even feminist quarters have been inclined to answer ‘no’. Elisabeth Clark doubts that Macrina could have known the philosophical traditions she is portrayed as dealing with in On the Soul, and considers that she is largely a literary foil to Gregory’s own persona, yet another female more obscured than revealed in texts written by men.26 Notwithstanding, there are good grounds for venturing a ‘yes’ to the above question. There are several pointers to the likelihood of Macrina’s exposure to higher philosophy and the opportunities she had to be aware of current intellectual trends, some of which have been rehearsed earlier in this book, and of developing her powers of discourse. Her father had been a prominent rhetorician in the provincial capital of Neocaesarea. And rhetoric, let it be recalled, meant the entire higher curriculum, including a survey of the philosophers. After Basil the Elder

my comments in the Preface to this volume. Basil was unusual in consciously eschewing the use of Hellenism in his ascetical discourse. See Silvas, Asketikon, ‘The Revolution in Basil’s Ascetic Discourse’, pp. 86–89. 25

Alan Brown, The Life of Wisdom: An Introduction to Classical Philosophy and Early Christianity (London: Tauris, 2006). 26 Elisabeth Clark, ‘Holy Women, Holy Words: Early Christian Women, Social History, and the “Linguistic Turn’’’, Journal of Early Christian Studies, 6 (1998), 413–30. Macrina is considered at length, pp. 423–28.

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died in c. 345 and the mother, Emmelia, moved the family seat to Annisa, the estate on the Iris, it is likely that Basil the Elder’s professional library went with them, especially since his sons were all marked for the same privileged education. This family was steeped in the higher rhetorical culture. We know that the writings of Origen were available at Annisa, since sometime in the years 359–62 Basil and Gregory Nazianzen composed a treasury of excerpts from his de Principia (On First Principles) while in the retreat on the Iris, not that far from the villa. Besides, a respect for the intellectually engaged Alexandrian tradition came with the family turf through Macrina the Elder who guarded the traditions of the church of Neocaesarea that came from its apostle and founding bishop, Gregory Thaumaturgus, the great disciple and panegyrist of Origen. In her own person, the elder Macrina provided her granddaughter an outstanding model of a Christian woman committed to teaching the faith in family and local church. According to VSM 4, Emmelia ensured that her daughter’s early education steered clear of the kind of classics usually studied under the grammaticus, that is, the teacher of the curriculum up to about the age of fourteen. So, put to the Scriptures early, Macrina may have bypassed the Iliad and the Odyssey, or if that is too much to ask, certainly the tragedies of Euripides, the comedies of Aristophanes, and probably the political orations of Demosthenes, and other standard works of that kind studied in the higher curriculum. But when she had ‘graduated’ so to speak at around fourteen, and was free to do so, it is not unreasonable to assume that she was drawn to exploring Origen whose writings were part of the family’s patrimony,27 and, partly through his influence, to Plato and the questions pursued in the higher ‘pagan’ philosophy. Even such intensely Christian works as Methodius’s Symposium and his other writings, which definitely formed part of Macrina’s reading, attest a fruitful Christian engagement with the Platonic dialogue tradition. Once exposed to Christian apologetic literature and the issues it dealt with in the pagan philosophers, Macrina could not but recognize that reason too had its 27

Compare Melania the Elder, a woman of the Roman nobility who gave herself to the ascetic life in Palestine. She was an assiduous reader of Christian classics, especially Origen. Palladius reports in the Lausiac History 55.3 (trans. by Meyer, p. 136): ‘She was most erudite and fond of literature, and turned day into night going through every writing of the ancient commentators: three million lines of Origen and two and a half million lines of Gregory, Stephen, Pierius, Basil, and other worthy men. And she did not read them once only and in an offhand way, but she worked on them, dredging through each work seven or eight times. Thus it was possible for her to be liberated from the knowledge falsely so called (I Timothy 6. 20), and to mount on wings thanks to these books. By good hopes she transformed herself into a spiritual bird and so made the journey to Christ.’

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claims in support of the milieu of faith and scriptural meditation in which she was reared, and furthermore, that in an era when Hellenism was still very much alive there was a pastoral value in being able to give a rational account (ëüãïò) for the hope within (cf. I Peter 3. 15). So there is no reason why Macrina would not have pursued her own reading and eventually developed her own powers of discourse, given the high literary culture of the family tradition.28 The VSM shows Macrina maturing into the moral reason of self-control and the practical reason of financial administration and the governance of others. So too the dialectical reason of intellectual enquiry was a task she did not neglect, given her seniority among the siblings, her innate intelligence, and the rhetorical culture in which she was immersed. The exacting standard of theological understanding that could be expected of Christian women should also be considered when estimating Macrina’s likely intellectual capacities. The letters of the Cappadocian Fathers bear witness to the high level of doctrinal and theological argument they could use in writing to their women correspondents, for example, Gregory’s Letter 3, To Eustathia and Ambrosia and Basilissa29 and his letter to Olympias which prefaces his homilies on the Song of Songs.30 For Basil, compare Letter 52 to the Canonicae,31 Letter 105, To the Deaconesses, Daughters of Count Terentius,32 Letter 159 to Eupaterius and his Daughter,33 and Letter 173 to Theodora.34 In Letter 105 Basil praises the deaconesses who have kept both their piety and their wits about them in the midst of great doctrinal confusion: ‘you have not given way to deceptions, surrounded as you are by the gross perversity of those who corrupt the word of truth. You have not abandoned the apostolic proclamation of the truth to go over to the faddish novelty of the day’. Macrina’s role as superior at Annisa would have required her to be more than a passive if intelligent recipient of theological reasoning in support of sound doctrine. She had a responsibility to guard the faith of the community from snares and distortions, and that would have required her to contend intellectually with both

28

Maraval, Vie, p. 49, n. 3 refers to epigraphic evidence of young girls styled as öéëüëïãïé ïñ öéëïãñÜììáôïé.

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29

See Silvas, Gregory, pp. 123–32.

30

Herman Langerbeck, ed., Gregorii Nysseni in canticum canticorum, GNO, VI, 3–13.

31

Deferrari, I, 326–37.

32

Deferrari, II, 198–201.

33

Deferrari, II, 392–99.

34

Deferrari, II, 448–53.

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the genuinely confused and erring doctrinaires. Thus it is likely that Macrina had some ministry of dialogue with visitors. Gregory’s letter To the Monk Philip35 shows a Eunomian doctrinaire, Seleucus, coming to a monastery and baiting the monks and virgins there with what he thinks are his sophisticated arguments. The superior, Philip, wrote to Gregory seeking a clear refutation of Seleucus’s arguments. It is just this sort of situation that may have seen Macrina coming out to engage with visitors on doctrinal issues. In his lengthy autobiographical Letter 22336 Basil recalls that the great inspirer of the ascetic movement in northern Anatolia, Eustathius of Sebasteia, used to visit Annisa often and hold long conversations there especially on matters of Christian asceticism, and also, we may be sure, on matters concerning doctrinal strife and Church politics. Macrina, the preceptress of the transformations of Annisa into an ascetic community, was scarcely an uninvolved bystander. One of the facilitating factors in Eustathius’s regular visits was the location of Annisa along the Via Pontica, the main road connecting Constantinople and the eastern frontier across northern Anatolia. It was about a day’s journey west of Neocaesarea. Given this location it is far from improbable that other travellers also visited Annisa over the years. VSM 40 and Basil’s LR 20 make it clear that Annisa was a place of hospitality. Passing comments in On the Soul and the Resurrection are also suggestive. In 8.16 Macrina says: ‘For I have heard those expounding such views [. . .]’ and then goes on to report their beliefs in reincarnation and the pre-existence of souls. Similarly in 1.13, ‘I hear that Epicurus was led very far in this direction by his theories’ suggests conversation with visitors and discussion with readers of the philosophical canon. Compare also 8.20. Before we discount these as evidence that Macrina was in a position to listen to or contend with the ideas of such ‘pagan’ thinkers, consider the figure of Vetiana in VSM 30. This noble widow divided her time between Annisa and Constantinople, where her father Araxius was a senator. Thus Macrina’s name was not unknown in high circles, particularly among those of neo-Nicene faith, given her relationship to the famous Basil. In such quarters she was looked up to as a model and a leader of ascetic women. These few hints lift the lid ever so briefly and tantalizingly on a situation where for the most part a great silence of documentation prevails. We do not really know how widespread was Macrina’s reputation in her lifetime and to what extent she may have been sought out by visitors, but it may have been more than we know.

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35

See Silvas, Gregory, pp. 225–32.

36

Deferrari, III, 286–313.

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The Character of Macrina’s Piety Finally a brief word on the form taken by Macrina’s piety. She shows in her person both a bracing Christian radicalism and a certain intention to act within the recognizable parameters of civil society and Church. Thus the use of a putative ‘widowhood’ to justify her unmarried status as a virgin in the society of the time. Similarly with the use of reason and faith. Without doubt Macrina focussed austerely on the Lord in her ascetic lifestyle, yet refuge in mere pietism and fideism were not options for one of her prominence in an aristocratic family steeped in the culture of Greek discourse and eloquence. She had to develop an internalized doctrine and logos of the Christian faith, both for the governance of the women and men under her guidance, and for dialogue with visitors who may not have been Christian. The resources of her piety were the liturgy and life in the Church (8.6), the use of scripture as the rule of life and doctrine (3.8, 3.53), chanting the Scriptures (hence she ‘hears’ David, 10.10), thoughtful reading of and discussion of the best of Christian commentators available, a critical awareness of current debates in the wider Church, and the praxis of community life. Since Macrina was so immersed in the Scriptures, one feels that passages like 1.23, where instinctively she has recourse to a sacred text before constraining herself to plod on with rational argument, have a viva voce quality. Macrina’s piety was far from a type marked by a dominating interest in visions, marvellous phenomena, strained devotions, and religiosity. Nor was she one to foster an emoting self-absorbed ‘spirituality’ divorced from solid doctrine, moral endeavour, sacred scripture, and liturgy, Church and tradition. In what liberal Western values today would find a conundrum, she was a strong autonomous individual without a vestige of interest in individualism — which is certainly true also of Basil. While she allowed emotion its due, especially in prayer before God, she always kept the reins of reason and self-governance in hand, especially when it came to relations within community and with visitors. Her religious experience took shape from psalmody and prayer, sober reason and ascetic endeavour, orthodox doctrine sought out, well thought through, and discussed with others, and an intense interior allegiance to the Lord that found its impetus and completion above all in the liturgy, even to tears (VSM 29.2). All that said, supernatural things do seem to have happened around her, as Gregory discreetly hints in the concluding sections of the VSM, especially the gifts of healing, foresight, and of miraculous supply in time of communal need. In all of Gregory’s portrayals of her, Macrina consistently emerges as a genuine female ‘Philosopher of God’, who through long and resolute exercise of both reason

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and virtue in pursuit of the ultimate good, achieves parrhesia (confidence of access, liberty of speech) before God and man. Her human endeavour, led by faith and collaborating with grace, is shown at the end to have reached the innermost sanctum of Christian mysticism. As far as he contemplates her (implicitly) in On Virginity and (explicitly) in Letter 19 and the VSM, she is for Gregory the model not only of bodily virginity, but of that true virginity of soul, of human nature restored and raised to the angelic in consummate union with God. Through her pivotal influence on St Basil the Great, Macrina merits the title Mother of Greek Monasticism and perhaps even Mother of Cenobitic Monasticism, insofar as Basil’s doctrine prevailed as the seminal model of cenobitic monastic life throughout the Church both east and west. She has been called ‘the Fourth Cappadocian’,37 though in point of chronology and stemma of influence, she was the first. By any standard she belongs as one of the more illustrious members of the category ‘Mothers of the Church’. Macrina the Younger without doubt appeals to us today as one of the most outstanding examples of a holy woman, not only from the early centuries, but in any age of the Church.

37

E.g. Jaroslav Pelikan, in his Christianity and Classical Culture: The Metamorphosis of Natural Theology in the Christian Encounter with Hellenism, Gifford Lectures (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1993), p. 8. Something of a tradition of seeing her in this light has emerged. See Dunstan McDonald, ‘Macrina: The Fourth Cappadocian?’, in Prayer and Spirituality in the Early Church, vol. I, ed. by Pauline Allen and others (Everton Park: Centre for Early Christian Studies, 1998), pp. 367–73 (p. 367).

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Introduction: Mourning Basil’s Death and Macrina’s Dying 1. When Basil, great among the saints, had passed from this human life to God and a common access of sorrow came upon the churches, our sister and teacher1remained as yet in this life. I went to her then with haste, to share with her the calamity2 of our brother. Indeed my soul was keening at so exceedingly painful a loss, and I sought one with whom I might share my tears, one who bore the same burden of grief. 2. Alas, when we came before each other’s eyes, the sight of the teacher only rekindled the passion, for she too was already in the grip of a mortal illness. She, like an expert equestrian, allowed me briefly to be carried away by the torrent of my grief. Then she then endeavoured to bridle me with words and to steer with the bit of her own reasoning the disorder of my soul. The apostolic saying put forward by her was: 1

º •ägëö¬ êá äéäÜóêáëïò. Macrina was not only the first-born among the ten children of Emmelia and Basil Senior, but the leading religious spirit in her family, once her paternal grandmother, Macrina the Elder, had died (uncertain, perhaps the 340s). Gregory consistently refers to his sister as his teacher, especially throughout this work, but also in the VSM and in his earliest surviving mention of her, Letter 19. In VSM 8 he reports Macrina’s pivotal influence on Basil, but despite the fact that no express mention of her by Basil survives, her continuing influence on him may well be guessed, especially in the early years of Basil’s ascetic life at Annisa, 359–62, and in the second period there, 363–65. Much of the shape of the community life taught in Basil’s Small Asketikon (c. 365/66) derives from the form of ascetic life worked out at Annisa under her guidance. It is a great mistake to suppose, based on older preconceptions, that Macrina could only be Basil’s disciple in the monastic life. 2 ¦ðé ôè •ägëöè óõìöïñò, this term meaning ‘calamity’, ‘disaster’, ‘misfortune’, almost ‘shock’ Gregory uses in all the moments of unexpected bereavement in his family: the death by accident of his brother Naucratius, Basil’s early death, and Macrina’s own death.

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Macrina: 3. ‘One ought not grieve for those who have fallen sleep, for this is the passion only of those who have no hope’ (cf. I Thessalonians 4. 13). But I, with my heart still in a turmoil of grief, retorted: Gregory: 4. ‘How can that ever be achieved among human beings, since there is instinct in each of us a natural aversion to death! Those who look upon the dying do not bear the sight easily and those to whom death draws near avoid it all they can. [Kr. 4] Why, even the laws that rule us judge this as the worst of crimes and the worst of punishments. By what construction then are we to consider the secession from life as nothing even in the case of an outsider, to say nothing of our familiars, when they cease from life? 5. We observe,’ I said, ‘that all human effort looks to this one thing: how we may continue to live. Indeed it is for this that we have invented houses to live in, that our bodies may not be exhausted by the ambient cold or heat. Again there is the tilling of the earth: what else is it but provision for our life? In fact all concern for our life arises through the fear of dying. What then of the medical art? Why is it held in such honour among human beings? Is it not because it seems somehow by its art to carry on the fight against death? 6. Why then do we have breastplates, and long shields, and greaves and helmets, and all the defences of armour, and the enclosures of walls and gates barred with iron, and the reinforcements of embankments, and all such things except that we fear death? If death therefore is naturally so fearful, how can it be easy for a survivor to obey this order to remain without grief over one who is falling asleep?’ Macrina: 7. ‘But what exactly is it about death in itself,’ asked the teacher, ‘that seems especially grievous to you, since the custom of the unreasoning is insufficient for your aversion?’ Gregory: 8. ‘What then! Is there nothing meriting grief,’ I addressed her, ‘when we see one who was so lately alive and vocal becoming all of a sudden bereft of breath and voice and movement, with all the natural faculties of sense extinguished, with neither sight nor hearing any longer operative, nor any other of the means by which sense receives its impressions? If you apply fire or iron to the body or plunge a sword into it or cast it to beasts of prey or if you bury it beneath a mound, it is affected all the same whatever is done to it. 9. When the change is perceived in all these ways, the principle of life, whatever it may be, vanishes all at once and is no longer evident, just as a lamp is extinguished when the flame, which only a moment before was alight, neither remains in the wick nor passes to some other place [Kr. 6] but vanishes entirely. 10. How then can such a change be borne without grief by one who has nothing evident to rely on any more? For we hear of the exodus of the soul, and we see what is left. But what it is that has been removed

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we do not know, neither what its nature is nor whither it has gone. For neither earth, nor air, nor water, nor any other of the elements3 shows this force within itself that has quit the body, at the withdrawal of which there remains only a corpse already set for corruption.’

Chapter 1: The Soul’s Continuance after Bodily Death 1. As I was enlarging on these things, the teacher made a gesture with her hand for silence. Macrina: ‘Surely some such fear as this does not disturb you and weigh on your mind,’ she said, ‘that the soul does not abide forever, but ceases along with the dissolution of the body?’ Gregory: 2. I answered rather brashly, without considering too carefully what I was saying, for I had not yet recovered my reasoning from passion. I said that the divine utterances were like commands by which we are constrained to believe that the soul ought to continue forever. We are not led to such a belief by any reason, but it seems that our mind within us accepts slavishly through fear whatever we are bidden, not consenting to what is said by any willing inclination. 3. Hence our grief over those who have fallen asleep weighs on us all the more, since we do not know for sure whether this life-giving principle still exists in itself or where it is or how it is or whether it no longer exists anywhere at all. 4. This obscurity about the true state of affairs applies equally to either supposition. To many this seems true, to many others the opposite seems true, and indeed there are some of no small reputation for philosophy among the Hellenes who have thought and taught as much. Macrina: 5. ‘Away,’ she cried, ‘with these nonsensical pagan theories!4 For by means of them the inventor of lies persuasively fabricates deceptive theories to do injury to the truth. Mark this: such a view about the soul amounts to nothing else 3

This alludes to the traditional enumeration of the elements as fire, air, water, and earth, attributed to Empedocles, fifth century BC . They reappear at 1.21. Gregory in On Virginity 22 says he once listened to a physician discourse on the four elements in the human body. It is a fair guess that this was Basil of Ancyra, a leading Homoiousian bishop and a physician, who wrote On True Virginity (PG 30.669–809), once falsely attributed to Basil the Great, in which a ruling idea is keeping the four elements in balance. Gregory appears to have heard him during the sorry proArian Council of Constantinople in 360. See Elm, p. 115. 4

§îùègí ‘of those outside’, non-Christians, whether pagans or Jews. This distinction appears fairly often; in this translation it is usually rendered as some form of ‘pagan’.

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[Kr. 8] than estranging oneself from virtue and looking only to the pleasure of the moment. It dismisses from hope the life looked for in eternity through which alone virtue is of advantage to us.’ Gregory: 6. ‘How then,’ I asked, ‘can we reach a firm and unshakable belief in the soul’s continuance? For I am also aware that human life will be bereft of the most beautiful thing that life has to offer, I mean virtue, unless an unwavering confidence on this point holds sway in us. What ground for virtue have they who suppose that their existence is limited to this present life and that beyond it there is nothing more to be hoped for?’ Macrina: 7. ‘Well then,’ replied the teacher, ‘we must seek where our discussion on these matters may make a suitable beginning. Let your part, if you please, be the defence of the opposing views, for I see that your mind is indeed prone to accept such a brief. Then, once the objection has been stated, the argument for the truth can begin its investigation.’ Gregory: 8. Since this was the way she commanded it, I begged her: ‘Do not think that I am putting up these objections in real earnest, but rather in order to establish securely the doctrine of the soul by first drawing out what is aimed against this view.’ 9. ‘Well then,’ I said, ‘the supporters of the opposing argument would say this: that since the body is composite, it must be entirely dissolved into that of which it is composed. And when the coalition of elements in the body is undone, each is likely to gravitate towards its own, since it is the very nature of the elements that like is restored to like by some inevitable attraction. Thus the heat in us will be united with heat, the earthy with the solid, and each of the other elements will also pass to its like 10. so where will the soul be after this occurs? If someone should say that it exists in those elements, he would then have to agree that it is the same thing as they are, for a mixture of one dissimilar nature with something alien to it may not be. [Kr. 10] 11. ‘But if this were the case, the soul would necessarily appear as something variegated, a mixture of opposing qualities. The variegated, however, is not simple, but must be classed with the composite, and all that is composite is necessarily dissolvable.5 But dissolution means the destruction of the composite, and anything destructible is not immortal — otherwise the flesh itself, dissolvable as it is into its constituents, might also be called immortal. 12. If, on the other hand, the soul is something other than these elements, wherever can reason suggest that it is? Since 5

Compare Phaedo 78C and Republic 611B, where Plato argues for the immortality of the soul on the grounds that it is something simple and unable to be dissolved.

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it is of a dissimilar nature, it is not found in those elements, and there is nowhere else in the world where the soul might be, if it is to live in accordance with its own nature. But what is nowhere, plainly does not exist.’ Macrina: 13. At these words the teacher uttered a low groan. ‘Perhaps these were the arguments or something like them,’ she said, ‘that the gathering of Stoics and Epicureans brought against the apostle in Athens (cf. Acts 17. 18). I hear that Epicurus was led very far in this direction by his theories. 14. In his conception the nature of things that exist is fortuitous and mechanical, because there is no providence pervading its affairs. Accordingly he thought that human life is like a bubble inflated by some breath of the body, remaining only as long it is contained in its envelope, and that on the collapse of the swelling its contents too are extinguished along with it. 15. To him the nature of things that exist is limited to the phenomenal. He made our senses the only measure by which things are to be comprehended. He shut down completely the sensing capacities6 of the soul and was incapable of contemplating anything intellectual7 and bodiless. It is just like someone confined in a hut8 who remains unable to see the wonders of the heavens because he is cut off by the walls and roof from seeing what is outside. 16. ‘Truly, all things in the universe perceived by the senses are like earthen walls which for that very reason barricade smaller souls from the contemplation of intellectual realities. Such a one can only see the earth, and water, and air, and fire. But where each of these things comes from, in what [Kr. 12] it has its existence, and by what it is governed, he is unable to discern because of his smallness of soul. 17. Anyone who sees a garment will reason to9 the weaver, and from a ship one comes to a conception of the shipwright, and again on seeing a building the hand of the builder comes to the mind of the one beholding it. But these small souls gaze upon the world and their eyes are blind to the one who is declared through all these things. 18. ‘And so these shrewd and incisive arguments are proposed by those who teach the soul’s disappearance: that the body is from the elements, and the elements from body, and that the soul cannot exist by itself if it is not one of these elements or in them. 19. For if these opponents think that if the soul is not

6

áÆóèçôÞñéá, ‘organs of sense’; essentially the same thing as ‘senses’ just used, but Gregory varies his vocabulary. 7

íïçôäí, i.e. non-material realities perceptible only on the level of the intellect; often translated in classical philosophical discourse as ‘intelligibles’.

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As was Gregory in Sebasteia in early 380 when he wrote his Letters 10, 18, 19, 22, 23.

9

•íáëïãßóáôï, i.e. will infer to, make ‘analogy’ to.

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connatural with the elements it therefore exists nowhere, let them teach first that the life in the flesh is also inanimate,10 since the body itself is nothing but a convergence of the elements, and then let them say that the soul is not in these either, giving life of itself to the compound. 20. If, as they think, it is not possible for the soul even to exist after death, although the elements continue to exist, then our very life is shown by them to be nothing but a dead thing. But if on the other hand they do not doubt the soul’s existence now in the body, how can they maintain that it vanishes when the body is dissolved into its elements? 21. ‘In that case let them be equally daring against the divine nature itself! For how can they say that the intellectual and immaterial and formless nature which pervades the wet, and the soft, and the hot, and the solid,11 sustains all that is, and that although it is not akin to the things which it invests yet it is not incapable, despite its dissimilarity, of being in them? Let them, therefore, entirely remove from their doctrine the divine itself which encompasses all that exists.’ Gregory: 22. ‘On this point,’ I said, ‘how can our opponents have any doubt that all things have their being from God and all that exists is held fast in him, or at least that there is something divine that wholly transcends the nature of all that exists?’ Macrina: 23. ‘Truly, it would be more fitting,’ she remarked, ‘to keep silence with regard to such doubts than to dignify these foolish [Kr. 14] and impious propositions with an answer, since one of the divine sayings forbids us to answer a fool according to his folly (Proverbs 26. 4–5), and he is surely a fool, as the Prophet declares, who says that there is no God (Psalms 13. 1, 52. 2). 24. But since it is necessary to discuss this too, I will urge upon you an argument,’ she said, ‘which is not mine or that of any human being, for this would be a small thing however great the speaker, but one which the whole of creation delivers by means of its wonders, of which the eye becomes the hearer when the wise and skilful argument echoes in the heart from the things which appear. For creation declares its maker openly, for the very heavens, as the Prophet says, narrate the glory of God in utterances without speech (Psalm 18. 2–4).12 25. For one beholds the harmony of all things in the

10

–øõ÷ïí. The very Greek terms lend aid to the argument, since –øõ÷ïí, ‘without life’, is literally ‘without soul’, and §ìøõ÷ïí, ‘having life’, is literally ‘ensouled’. 11 12

That is, the four constitutive elements of the cosmos. See Introd.10 and note.

These psalm verses were associated by Christian thinkers with the Pythagorean concept of the ‘music of the spheres’. The ideas of Pythagorean astronomy inform this passage with a strange interchange of the aural and the visual. It seems that the ‘utterances without speech’ of creation resonate in the heart as tones, from which the ear of the heart instructs the discerning eye of the soul.

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wonders of the heavens above and of the earth beneath, show all the elements which are contrary to each other by nature are woven together in an inexpressible communion towards the same goal, the power of each contributing to the permanence of the whole. 26. ‘One beholds how things which cannot be mixed or allied because of the particularity of their qualities do not secede from each other, any more than they are corrupted by each other when they are tempered towards each other by their contrary qualities. Instead one beholds how those elements which are buoyant by nature are borne downwards, as when the heat of the sun pours down in its rays, while bodies possessing weight are made to rise through becoming attenuated into vapour, so that water contrary to its nature is borne upward and conveyed by winds through the air. 27. ‘One also beholds how that fire of the upper air is so borne earthward that not even the abyss fails to share in its heat, how the moisture of the rains which is poured out on the earth, though one in nature, generates myriads of differing plants, fostering the fitting growth of all that is subject to it. One beholds how very swift is the revolution of the firmament, how the orbits within it move in contrary ways, with all the eclipses and conjunctions and the harmonious spacing of the stars. 28. ‘When one beholds all these things with the discerning eye of the soul, how can one fail to be taught clearly by the things that appear that there is a divine power, skilful and wise, manifesting itself in the things that are and [Kr. 16] coursing through everything, harmonizing the parts with the whole and completing the whole in the parts, encompassing all with a single power, abiding the same in itself, yet moved about itself, though never ceasing from its motion, yet never changing to a place other than the one it holds?’ Gregory: 29. ‘But how,’ I asked, ‘does this belief in the existence of God prove also at the same time the existence of the human soul? For the soul, surely, is not the same thing as God, with the result that if one of them is professed the other must also be professed along with it?’ Macrina: 30. ‘It has been said by the wise,’ she replied, ‘that the human being is a kind of microcosm comprising in himself the same elements which go to make up the universe.13 If this reasoning is true, and it seems probable, we shall perhaps need no other ally to confirm for us what we have assumed concerning the soul. And we have assumed that it exists by itself in a peculiar and distinctive nature apart from the bodily density. 13 Thinkers of the Hellenistic and Roman eras, e.g. Poseidonius, Philo, Chryssipus, Seneca, etc., commonly inferred the knowledge of God from analogies of microcosm and macrocosm, the little world of the individual human being and the vast world of the universe.

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31. ‘For just as we come to know the outer cosmos through apprehension by the senses and are guided by these activities of our senses to a conception of a reality and an intelligence beyond the senses, with the result that our eye becomes the interpreter of that all-powerful wisdom which is contemplated in all things, which reveals through itself that which encompasses all things by its means (cf. Wisdom 13. 5).14 32. So also, when we look to the cosmos within ourselves, we find no slight grounds there also for conjecturing from what appears to what is hidden. For what is hidden is something that, being in itself intellectual and without visible form, eludes detection by the senses.’

Chapter 2: The Nature of the Soul Gregory: 1. At this I said: ‘Granted that it is possible to infer the wisdom that transcends the universe from the wise and skilful designs in this harmonious fabric that can be contemplated in the nature of existing things. But for those who would trace the hidden from the apparent, what knowledge of the soul can be gained from the things revealed in the body?’ [Kr. 18] Macrina: 2. ‘Why the soul itself,’ the virgin replied, ‘is a sufficient teacher of what is to be conceived about the soul, especially for those who desire, according to that wise precept, to know themselves.15 The soul then is something immaterial and bodiless, active and moving in accord with its own nature, and giving evidence of its own movements through the organs of the body. 3. For the same apparatus of bodily organs exists no less in those whom death has just reduced to corpses, but it remains without movement or activity because the power of the soul is no longer in it. It only moves when there is sensation in the organs and the intellectual power infuses that sensation, moving those organs of sense by means of its own impulses where it pleases.’ Gregory: 4. ‘What then,’ I asked, ‘is the soul? Is it possible to delineate its nature by some definition,16 that by means of the description we may come to some grasp of the subject?’

14

This seems to mean that even when we reason to the intelligent design that governs the universe, what that wisdom perceives is not itself God, but God in his activities.

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That is, the famous motto of the Delphic oracle: ãíäèé ógáõôüí, know yourself.

16

ëïãè ôéíÂ, i.e. its ‘logic’, ‘rationale’.

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Macrina: 5. ‘Some in one way, some in other ways,’ the teacher replied, ‘have offered a definition of it, each defining it as seems best to him. Our opinion about it is this. The soul is an engendered substance,17 a living and intellectual substance which infuses into an organic and sensate body the power of living and of receiving the impressions of sense, as long as the nature capable of this holds together.’ 6. As she was saying this she indicated with her hand the physician seated beside her attending to her bodily condition, and said: ‘Here right by us is testimony of what I have said. How, I ask, does this man, when he places his fingers on my artery hear nature somehow calling out to him through the sense of touch and telling him of its particular condition, namely that the body’s infirmity is in fact virulent, and that the disease originates in this or that internal organ, and that the virulence of the fever has reached this or that degree? 7. How too is he taught by means of the eye other things of this kind, when he observes the way the patient is lying and the wasting of the flesh, and the wan and jaundiced appearance of the complexion, and the look of the eyes [Kr. 20] unconsciously betraying the suffering and pain, all of them indicative of the internal condition. 8. ‘So also the ear is a teacher of similar things, ascertaining the condition from the shortness of breath and from the groans emitted with the breathing. One can even say that the expert’s sense of smell is not without use for detecting the pathology, when it discerns the infirmity lurking in the internal organs from the particular quality of the breath. 9. How could these things be if there were not a certain intellectual power present to each of the organs of sense? What could our hand have taught us by itself, if thought did not lead the tactile sense to knowledge of the subject before it? How could the ear apart from the mind, or the eye, or the nostril, or any other organ of sense, have helped us discern what we are looking for, if each of these existed all by itself? 10. ‘But it is the truest of all statements that one of pagan education is recalled to have expressed so well: that it is the mind that sees and the mind that hears.18 For if you do not allow this to be true, tell me then, when you look at the sun as you have been taught by the teacher to look, how do you assert that its size is not as it appears to the many from the span of its disk, but that it exceeds many times over the measure of the whole earth? 11. Do you not confidently maintain that this is so, because you have deduced it by thought from the things that appear in such

17 18

ïÛóßá ãgíçô¬, i.e. it has come into being, it has a beginning, it is created.

Epicharmus, fragment 249: ‘it is the mind that sees and the mind that hears: all else is deaf and blind’; also quoted by Theodoret in de Fide 1.

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and such a movement, in such and such interstices of time and space, on such and such occasions of eclipse? 12. ‘And when you behold the waxing and waning of the moon you are taught further truths concerning that heavenly body through what appears: that it is without light in its own nature, and that it goes round in the orbit nearest the earth, and that it shines with the rays of the sun as mirrors do, which, when they receive the sun on themselves, do not give back beams of their own, but reflect those of the sunlight from their smooth and shiny surface. 13. To those who look without enquiry, the radiance seems to come from the moon itself. But what shows that this is not so is that when it comes to be diametrically opposite the sun the whole of the disk that faces towards us is illumined, [Kr. 22] yet its space being lesser, it moves more swiftly round its own orbit, so that before the sun has travelled once round its own course it has completed its own more than twelve times.19 Hence it happens that the lunar body20 is not always filled with light. 14. For in the frequency of its revolutions, the moon which orbits often in a short period does not remain continually facing that body which rotates in a long period. When its position is facing directly opposite the sun it causes the whole side of the moon facing us to be illumined with the sun’s rays, but when the hemisphere of the moon which is always turned toward us moves sideways to the sun, the side facing us necessarily begins to be shadowed, since its exposure to the rays is cut off. 15. Thus the brightness moves on from the part which can no longer look to the sun to that which still looks to it, until the moon passes directly inside the sun’s orbit and receives its rays from behind, and thus, because it is entirely without light and radiance in its own nature, the side turned to us is invisible while the further hemisphere is all in light. This is spoken of as the complete waning of the moon. 16. But when as it moves along its own course it has passed the sun again and is transverse to its rays, the side which was previously dark begins to shine a little, for the rays move from the illumined part to that so lately without radiance. 17. ‘Do you see then what the sense of sight teaches you? Yet it would never have provided such insight by itself, if there were not something gazing through the eyes and using the data of the senses as guides of a kind to penetrate from what

19

In the geocentric conception of the solar system, the moon moves around the earth in a nearer orbit in a lunar month while the sun moves round the earth in a more distant orbit once a year. Compare Plate, Timaeus 36, 39B. 20 óôïé÷gÃïí, ‘element’, interpreted here as the moon’s shape, i.e. the hemisphere it presents to view; otherwise, if it is considered to mean its entire sphere, one could translate: ‘it never happens that its form is filled with light’.

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appears to what does not appear. 18. There is no need to enlarge on the resources of geometry that lead us from sensory calculations to what lies beyond the senses, and a myriad other instances besides these, all of which establish that it is possible to ascertain that there is an intellectual substance deeply seated in our nature from the things that are operative in us bodily.’ Gregory: 19. ‘Consider this,’ I said, ‘that though all the elements have in common the [Kr. 24] materiality of a perceptible nature, yet there are many individual differences in each form of matter. Motion, for example, is not the same in all elements. Some move upward, some sink down, since their forms are not the same and their qualities differ. What if someone were to say, keeping to the same argument, that they also have a certain innate power in them which gives effect to these intellectual impressions21 and movements from a natural individuality and power. 20. I mean the kind of thing we often see activated by the inventors of machines, when matter, skilfully arranged, imitates nature, displaying the likeness not only in outward form, but also in motion, as when the mechanism, resounding in its phonetic part, mimics a kind of voice, though we do not contemplate in these occurrences any intellectual power giving effect to the particular shape, form, sound, and movement. 21. ‘What if we were to assert that this is what also happens in the mechanical organism of our nature without any admixture of an individual intellectual substance, that such activity is the result of some kinetic power inherent in the nature of the elements in us, so that it is nothing but an impulsive motion operative in relation to the knowledge that we seek? What would be more likely to be proved by these arguments, that the intellectual and bodiless substance of the soul exists by itself, or that it does not exist at all?’ Macrina: 22. She however replied: ‘But your example fights on the side of our argument! Indeed the whole apparatus of the counter-argument brought against us contributes not a little to confirming our conceptions.’ Gregory: 23. ‘How do you say this?’ Macrina: 24. ‘Because you see,’ she said, ‘to know how to manipulate and arrange soulless matter so that the skill invested in such mechanisms all but takes the place of the soul in this material whereby it is able to mimic movement, sound, shapes, and the like, may be turned into a proof that there is some such case in the human being who is able through the intuitive and inventive power to conceive 21

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ôò íïçôéêò ôáýôáò öáíôáóßáò.

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[Kr. 26] of these things within himself and to work out such mechanisms beforehand in his mind, and to produce them through the operation of his skill, and to realize his thought in matter. 25. ‘First he understood that wind is needed to produce any sound, and then in order that wind might be devised for the mechanism he works it out beforehand through reasoning by enquiring into the nature of the elements that there is no vacuum at all in the things that exist, but that the lighter is to be considered a vacuum only by comparison with the heavier, since even the air itself, which has an individual subsistence, is compact and full. It is only by conventional use that a jar is said to be “empty”, for even if it is empty of liquid it is nonetheless full of air, which is what anyone informed will say. 26. ‘The proof of this is that when an amphora is put into a pool it does not fill with water immediately, but first it bobs about on the surface because the air that it contains buoys up its cavity. It is not until the hand of the water-drawer forces the amphora below that it takes in water by the neck. 27. This shows that it was not empty even before it took in water, for a sort of fight between the two elements about the neck can be observed, then the water, forced by the pressure rushes in into the cavity, while the air contained in the cavity is squeezed by the water along the same neck and rushes up in the opposite direction through the same neck, but there it is rebuffed, as the water churns and bubbles against the force of the air. 28. ‘Observing this, the inventor22 conjectured how wind might be introduced into the mechanism in accord with the nature of the two elements. He made a kind of cavity of impervious material that prevented the air within from leaking out in any direction. He then introduced water into the cavity through the opening, measuring out the quantity of water according to requirement. Next he gave a passage to the air on the opposite side through an attached pipe, so that, when compressed by the water, it becomes a more forceful wind, which as it encounters the structure of the pipe, produces a note. 29. ‘Is it not clearly proved by such phenomena that there is in the human being [Kr. 28] an intelligence of a different order, distinct from the phenomena, which by its own invisible and thinking nature works out such devices beforehand in itself by conceptualizations, and then brings into the open through serviceable matter the thought conceived within? 30. For if it were possible to attribute such wonders, as our opponents argue, to the nature of the elements, why, these mechanisms would build themselves for us spontaneously! The bronze would not wait for the 22

It seems Ctesibius of Alexandra is meant, who is said to have invented the ßäñáýëçò, the hydraulic organ, by Athenaeus, ðgñ ìç÷áíçìÜôùí 4.174B, written in the second century BC .

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artist’s skill to be made into the image of a man, but would immediately become so naturally. The air would not require the pipe to produce a tone, but would always be resounding by itself as it chances to flow and move about. Moreover, the upward jet of the water would not be the result of an artificial pressure forced through a channel in an unnatural direction, as it is presently, but would rise into the mechanism entirely of its own accord, being borne upward by its own nature. 31. ‘If on the other hand none of these results are activated spontaneously by the nature of the elements, but each element is led by skill to a deliberate end, then skill is a certain coherent thought working through matter towards some goal, and thought is a certain movement and operation that belongs to the mind. So you see that even through the counter-arguments put to us, the sequence of the reasoning proves that the mind is something other than that which appears.’ Gregory: 32. ‘I will agree to this,’ I said, ‘that what appears is not the same as that which does not appear. However, I do not find in this argument what I am seeking, for it is not yet clear to me what we must consider this non-apparent something to be, except that your argument has taught me that it is not anything material. I do not yet know what is fitting to say about it in itself. This at any rate is what I especially want to learn: not what it is not, but what it is.’ Macrina: 33. ‘But we learn much,’ she replied, ‘about many things in just such a way, for we interpret the actual being of whatever it is we seek by affirming what it is not. For example, when we speak of a lack of evil we are proposing the good, and when we call someone ‘unmanly’, we disclose a coward, and one can speak of many other things [Kr. 30] in a similar way, when we either convey the more positive concept by the negation of bad qualities, or conversely we address our theories to the worse, demonstrating evil through the privation of the good.23 34. ‘Well then, if you think in just such a way of the subject presently before us, you will not fail to gain a proper conception of what we are seeking, and we are seeking what we are to think of the mind in its very substance. 35. Granted that you no longer doubt that what we have been discussing does exist because it is 23

The idea that evil has no existence of itself, but is simply a privation of the good, has one of its earliest Christian expositions in Origen, Commentaries on John, PG 14.66A. J. G. Krabinger, ed., S. Gregorii Episcopi Nysseni de anima et resurrectione cum sorore sua Macrina dialogus (Leipzig: Gustav Wittig, 1837), p. 201, also cites Plotinus 1.8.1 for the doctrine. Gregory himself discusses it at length in the Catechetical Discourse, Chapters 5 and 7. Basil succinctly explains the doctrine in his That God is not the author of evils, ch. 5 (PG 31.229–354 (cols 341B–344A)). Though evil does not exist as an ontological principle, he affirms that it certainly has a reality in created existence and experience (344A).

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shown to us through its activities, yet if you want to know what kind of thing it is, you may discover it well enough when you learn that it is not anything grasped by the senses, neither a colour, nor a form, nor a hardness, nor a weight, nor a size, nor anything in three dimensions, nor localized in some place, nor any of things we predicate of matter, but that is something distinct from all these.’ Gregory: 36. At this I interrupted her discourse: ‘But if you eliminate all these from the discussion,’ I said, ‘I do not see how you can possibly avoid excluding with them the very thing we are seeking. I cannot at present see what the attempt to comprehend can cleave to apart from these. 37. For whenever we enquire with the examining intelligence into the things that exist, groping for what we seek like the blind being guided along the walls to the door, we inevitably come upon one of those things mentioned, whether we discover colour, or form, or size, or some other of the things you listed just now. But when it is asserted that it is none of these, we are led by our smallness of soul to think that it is something that does not exist at all.’ Macrina: 38. At this she interrupted my speech indignantly: ‘Fie on such absurdity!’ she said. ‘What a conclusion this stunted and earth-bound assessment of existing things reduces us to! If everything unknowable by the senses is to be excluded from existence, surely anyone alleging this would also have to confess this of the very power that presides over and encompasses all that is? When he learns of the divine nature that it is bodiless and without visible form, he will surely argue by the same logic that it does not exist. 39. But if [Kr. 32] the fact that these qualities do not exist in the case of the divine constitutes no obstacle to its existence, how then is the human mind snuffed out of existence at the removal of bodily properties, as if completely used up?’ Gregory: 40. ‘Well then,’ I said, ‘in this line of reasoning we only exchange one absurdity for another, for the argument reduces us to the thought that our mind is the same thing as the divine nature, if it is true that neither can be understood except by the exclusion of what is discoverable by the senses.’ Macrina: 41. ‘Do not say “the same”,’ said the teacher, ‘for this is indeed an impious argument. But say rather, as you are taught by the divine utterance, that the one is like the other. For though that which is made according to the image (Genesis 1. 26–27) maintains its likeness to its prototype entirely in every respect, intellectual in relation to the intellectual, bodiless to the bodiless, free of all mass as is that one, and eluding all measurement by dimensions like that one, yet in the particular quality of its nature it is something other than that one. For it would be no longer an image if it were the same as that other in every respect. 42. Rather,

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where an aspect is observed in those qualities which are in the uncreated nature, so the created nature shows this aspect in the same qualities. This often happens with a small fragment of glass when it is positioned in the right way towards the sunlight. The entire disk of the sun is seen in it, though it does not appear in it according to its own size, but to the extent that the slightness of the fragment encompasses an impression of the sun’s disk. So too the images of those ineffable qualities of the Deity shine forth in the slightness of our nature. 43. Thus reason, guided by these considerations, will not fail to grasp what the mind is in its substance by dismissing bodily qualities from the object of enquiry, and at the same time it will not regard the small and the perishable as equivalent to the unseen24 and undefiled. It will regard this substance as intellectual, since it is indeed the image of an intellectual substance, but it will not pronounce this image to be the same thing as the archetype. 44. ‘The ineffable wisdom of God is so manifest in the universe that we do not doubt that there is a divine nature and power in all that exists whereby they all continue to be. Yet [Kr. 34] if one were to seek a definition of that nature, the substance of God is wholly distinct from everything in creation, both the evident and the conceptual, although it is acknowledged that there is between these a difference of nature.25 45. In the same way it is not at all incredible that although the soul’s substance is something quite other by itself, whatever it is conjectured to be, this is no hindrance to its existence, although the things contemplated in the cosmos as its elements do not concur with it in the principle of nature. 46. ‘For, as has already been said, in the case of our living bodies which have their subsistence from a blending of these elements, there is no kind of communion in the principle of substance between the simplicity and absence of visible form in the soul and the density of the body, and yet there is no doubt that the life-giving action of the soul pervades them according to a principle beyond human comprehension. 47. Therefore not even when the elements of the body have resolved into themselves is that bond that comes from that life-giving energy destroyed. Just as when that blend of the elements still holds together, each part partakes of the soul26 because the soul penetrates equally and similarly each of the members making up the body, 24

•ïñÜôå (invisible) of Krabinger’s text, which incorporates the lectio difficilior of one codex, the Uffenbach, instead of the •ïñßóôå (boundless, limitless) of most codices. Thus ¦ðéêÞñïí (perishable) and •êçñÜôå (undefiled, pure) are similar in sound but of distinct fields of meaning. Thus the literary figure is not antithesis, but paronamasia. 25

That is, the divine nature wholly transcends both the material (bodily) and spiritual (intellectual) creation. 26

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øõ÷ïØôáé, i.e. is ‘animated’, given life through being endowed with soul.

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and yet one could not call it hard and resistant though blended with the earthy, or humid, or cold, or the quality opposite to the cold, though it is in the whole and sends the life-giving power into each part, 48. so, when that blend is dissolved and has reverted to its own elements, there is nothing against the likelihood that the simple and uncompounded nature which has once by some ineffable principle sprung up with that blend of the bodily elements should always remain with those elements with which it was once mingled, and should in no way be sundered from a coalescence27 once brought into being. For when the composite is dissolved, that which is not composite is in no danger of be dissolved along with the compound.’ Gregory: 49. To this I replied that the elements come together with each other and then are separated from each other, and that this is the constitution of the body and its dissolution, [Kr. 36] no one would deny. Though it is understood that there is a great disparity between each of the elements which are heterogenous among themselves both with regard to their localization in a place and the difference and individuality of their qualities, 50. yet when they have converged in a given subject, it follows that the intellectual and non-dimensional nature which we call the soul springs up together28 with that which has been brought into a unity. But once they are divided from each other and each has gone where its nature impels it, what shall happen to the soul when its carriage is thus scattered in every direction? 51. Just as a sailor, when his vessel has broken up in a shipwreck, cannot float simultaneously on all the pieces of the boat which have been scattered this way and that over the surface of the sea, but surely seizes whatever comes to hand and leaves the rest to drift on the waves, 52. in the same way the soul, which is by nature incapable of disintegrating along with the dispersal of the elements, will, if it is reluctant to be parted from the body, surely cling to one of the elements and so be split off from the others. The logic of this argument no more allows us to think it immortal for living in one element than mortal for not existing in the plurality of them.

27 28

óõìöýéáò, i.e. the springing up together of body and soul.

óõìöõäò ðñÎò ôÎ ²íùìÝíïí §÷géí, i.e. the soul does not pre-exist the body but is generated along with the bodily compound in which it acts a life-giving principle. See also 9.19 and note. Cf. On the Making of Man, 19.1: ‘As man is one, his being consisting of both soul and body, we are to suppose that the beginning of existence is one, common to both parts, lest he be found antecedent and posterior to himself if the bodily element is prior in time and the other a later addition.’ This anthropology informs Gregory’s several accounts of the Incarnation of the divine in the human at the moment of Christ’s conception in the womb of Mary, e.g. Letter 3.16–22 (Silvas, Gregory, 128–30) and Against Apollinaris, 8 (GNO, III, 223–24).

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Macrina: 53. ‘But the intelligible and non-dimensional,’ she replied, ‘is neither contracted nor dispersed, since contraction and dispersal are the property only of bodies. No, in keeping with its own nature which is without visible form and bodiless it is equally present at the conjunction of the elements in the body and at their separation, and is no more confined by the compression which attends the conjunction of the elements than it is left behind when they go off to what is akin to them by nature, however wide the disparity contemplated in the heterogeneity of elements seems to be. 54. For example, there is a great difference between the buoyant and light compared to the heavy and earthy, between the hot compared to the cold, between the humid compared to its opposite. Nevertheless it is no labour to the intellectual nature to be present to each of those elements with which it once cohered when they were combined, since it is not split up by the repulsion of the elements. 55. ‘For though these elements are considered to be far removed from each other in locality and particular qualities, the non-dimensional nature does not thereby undergo any hardship [Kr. 38] in being joined to what is separated locally, since even now it is possible for the mind at the same time to contemplate the sky above and be extended to the limits of the cosmos in its busy investigations, and its contemplative power is in no way attenuated by reaching to distances so great. 56. There is nothing therefore to prevent the soul’s being equally present in the elements of the body when mixed together at their convergence or disbanded at their separation. 57. ‘When gold and silver are welded together, a certain technical power can be seen to have welded the materials, and if the one is melted away from the other, the principle of this skill remains no wit less in either, so that when the material is separated into parts the skill is not cut up along with the material, for how can the indivisible be divided into parts? 58. So, according to the same principle the intellectual nature of the soul can be discerned in the convergence of the elements, and when they are disbanded it is not divided but remains in them. Though it is extended along with them in their separation it is not cut up. It is not chopped up into pieces and sections to accord with the number of the elements, for this is proper to the bodily and dimensional nature, whereas the intellectual and nondimensional nature is not susceptible to the effects of distance. 59. ‘The soul therefore exists in those elements in which it once came into being, for there is no necessity tearing it away from its coherence with them. What cause for gloom is there, then, in this, if the visible is exchanged for that which is without visible form, and why does your mind bear such a grudge against death?’

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Chapter 3: The Emotions and Passions Gregory: 1. I then took up again in my mind the definition of the soul which she had given earlier in our discussion and said: ‘Your argument does not tell me enough about the powers contemplated in the soul when it says that the soul is an intellectual substance endowing the organic body with a life-giving power ordered to the activity of the senses. 2. For our soul is not only active in scientific and contemplative thought, being activated in such thinking by its intellectual substance, and it does not only deploy the organs of sense for this activity according to its nature. 3. Also contemplated in our nature are the great emotions29 of desire [Kr. 40] and of anger. While both of them have a distinctive existence in us, we observe that the stirring of both is expressed in activities of many and varied differences. One can see that many activities are led by desire, while again many others spring from a basis of anger.30 None of these is the body, and yet the bodiless is plainly intellectual. 4. ‘But since our definition puts the soul forward as something intellectual, then one of two alternatives, both absurd, must result from the logic of this argument. Either anger and desire constitute other souls in us, and a plurality of souls is to be discerned instead of one, or not even the faculty of thought in us is to be regarded as soul, if the intellectual cleaves equally to all of them and reveals them all as souls or else excludes each of them equally from what is proper to the soul.’31 Macrina: 5. She replied: ‘You quite fittingly raise this question already examined by many others: what are we to consider the faculties of desire and of anger to be? Are they found together with the soul’s substance and do they take their

29

êßíçóéò, lit. ‘movement’, ‘motion’, which in this context is specifically ‘emotion’.

30

This is the classic division of emotions into ôÎ ¦ðéèõìÞôéêïí, the ‘concupiscible’ emotions of desire, and ôÎ ¦íèõìïgéäÝò, the ‘irascible’ emotions of anger. A great variety of emotions arise from various permutations of either emotion singly or both together; see below, 3.26–28. 31

W. Moore (NPNF 2, V , 438, n. 1) comments on the argument here: ‘The syllogism implied in the following words is this: The emotions are intellectual (because incorporeal). Therefore the emotions are soul (or souls). The conclusion is obviously false; logically, by reason of the fallacy of “the undistributed middle”; ontologically, because it requires a false premise additional (i.e. “everything intellectual is soul”) to make it true. Macrina directly after this piece of bad logic deprecates the use of the syllogism. Is this accidental? It looks almost like an excuse for not going into technicalities and exposing this fallacy which she has detected in her opponent’s statement. Macrina actually answers as if Gregory had urged his objection thus: “The emotions are not purely intellectual, but are conditioned by the bodily organism: but they do belong to the expression and substance of the soul: the soul therefore is dependent on the organism and will perish along with it.”’

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existence with it at its first constitution, or are they something distinct from it, only coming to be in us later? 6. ‘That they are discerned in the soul is acknowledged equally by everyone, but reason has not yet accurately discovered what we ought to think of them, that any firm conception about them can be maintained. 7. The many still fluctuate in their opinions about them, which are shifting and variable. But in our case, if the pagan philosophy which methodically deals with all these points were a sufficient demonstration of the truth, it would surely be superfluous to add a discussion on the soul to their speculation. 8. ‘But although in the case of the latter their theorizing about the soul proceeded so as far as that which appears gave them license, we are not entitled to such license, I mean of asserting whatever we want to. Instead, we use Holy Scripture as the rule and the norm of every doctrine, necessarily fixing our eyes upon it and accepting only that which is in harmony with the goal of those writings. 9. Accordingly we must set aside the Platonic chariot and [Kr. 42] the pair of horses yoked to it each maintaining a different pace to the other and the charioteer set over them and all other such details with which he philosophizes in figures about the soul.32 10. We must also leave aside whatever was said by the philosopher after him,33 who 32

Phaedrus 246A–B. Plato at first seems to suggest a certain complexity in the soul by describing it under the figure of a charioteer (reason) directing two horses, one noble and disciplined (emotions put to a good use), the other difficult and intractable (emotions ruled by wayward appetites); but later in his work he goes on to argue the simplicity and uniformity of the soul. 33

That is, Aristotle; see his De anima 2.2–3, where he says the human soul comprises in itself all the orders of animate existence. He distinguishes the nutritive, sensate, and intellective functions of the soul in an ascending hierarchy: the first is common to plants, the second to animals, and the last only to man and alone potentially separable from the body. In 3.5 he returns to the intellective, distinguishing between the form-receptive nous (mind) and the form-bestowing or agent nous (mind). The lower soul, the psyche, is thoroughly merged with the body (2.1) and perishable, whereas the highest aspect of the soul, the agent nous, enters from without as something divine and is immortal though not, it seems, in any personal sense (De anima 3.1, 3.5, De gen. animal. 2.3). Unlike Plato who considered the entire psyche immortal and always of itself in motion (Phaedrus 245C), Aristotle denied the psyche any motion of its own. Aristotle generally had a poor reputation with the Church Fathers. Moore (NPNF2 , V , 439, n. 5) cites Gregory Nazianzen who exclaims (Oratio 27): ‘away with Aristotle’s calculating Providence, and his art of logic, and his dead reasonings about the soul, and his purely human doctrine!’ Gregory of Nyssa himself is ambivalent about Aristotle. He has clearly studied him and sometimes uses his concepts and methods, but Aristotelianism was tarred by its association with Eunomius and other heretics who battened especially on Aristotle’s categories of logic. The Latin Fathers also distrusted Aristotle, though they knew little more than his Categories. Jerome, for example, noted that it is characteristic of heretics to quote Aristotle.

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after he had reasoned technically about phenomena and had carefully examined the question now before us, declared that the soul by reason of these principles was mortal.34 And we must set aside all those before and since their time, whether they philosophized in prose or in verse. 11. ‘Instead we will adopt as the guide of our argument, the Scripture, which has legislated that one cannot consider any excellence in the soul which is not also proper to the divine nature. 12. For he who declares the soul to be God’s likeness (Genesis 1. 27 and 2. 7, I Corinthians 15. 45)35 asserts that anything foreign to God is outside the limits of the soul, for likeness cannot be maintained in deviant qualities. But since nothing of this kind36 can be contemplated in the Divine nature, one would be right to suppose that such things do not share substance with the soul either. 13. ‘Now to seek to build up our doctrines by dialectical skill which reaches its conclusions through syllogism and analysis37 is a form of argument we shall ask to be excused from, as being weak and unreliable for demonstrating truth. 14. For it is obvious to all that that subtlety in dialectic possesses equal force in either direction, whether for the subversion of truth or the refutation of falsehood. The result is that often we suspect even the truth itself when advanced by means of some such skill, as if the very cunning of these devices were muddling our thought and leading it astray from the truth. 15. But if one would accept an unprepared argument devoid of all twists and turns, we will express it as best we can, proposing our view of these matters according to the sequence of the scriptural narrative. 16. ‘What, then, do we claim? That this rational animal, the human being, is the recipient of intelligence and understanding is attested even by those outside our doctrine,38 and this definition would never have described our nature in this way if it had contemplated anger and desire and all such emotions as sharing the substance of that nature. 17. For no one would give a definition of any other [Kr. 44] subject by invoking common rather than specific qualities. But since the principles of desire and anger are observed equally in the irrational and the rational natures, one could not reasonably characterize what is common as specific. 18. How can what is surplus to and excluded from the description of a nature be validly used, as 34

That is, desire and anger.

35

Genesis 1. 27–28 does not specify that the soul (only) is created in God’s image. To arrive at such a Platonizing notion compatible with Scripture, Gregory has infused Genesis 2. 7, that Adam was created a ‘living soul’ (æäóá øý÷ç), into his interpretation of Genesis 1. 27–28.

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36

Again, desire and anger are meant.

37

The root idea of these Greek words is the ‘putting together’ and ‘taking apart’ of arguments.

38

ôäí §îù ôïØ ëüãïõ ôïØ êáèz ßìáò.

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if part of that nature, to overthrow the definition of it? For every definition of a substance examines what is specific to the subject in hand. Whatever is outside that specificity is disregarded as extraneous to the definition. 19. ‘And yet these activities of anger and desire are acknowledged to be common to all irrational nature. But whatever is common is not the same as that which individualizes. Necessarily therefore, these activities may not be reckoned among those by which human nature is especially characterized. 20. But just as anyone who sees the principles of sensation and of nutrition and of growth in us does not on that account discard the given definition of the soul — for it does not follow that because this is in the soul that is not — so, when one detects in our nature the marks of anger and desire, one may not on that account reasonably make war on the definition, as if it failed to fully express that nature.’ Gregory: 21. ‘What therefore,’ I asked the teacher, ‘is one to make of this? For I am not able to see as yet how we can fittingly reject as alien to our nature that which is actually within us.’ Macrina: 22. ‘You observe,’ she replied, ‘a kind of battle of the reason against them and a struggle to rid the soul of them as far as possible. And indeed there are some in whom this struggle has been achieved, as we hear for example, of Moses, that he was superior to both anger and to desire. History attests both of these in him, that he was meek beyond all men (Numbers 12. 3), his freedom from anger being shown in his gentleness and lack of resentment, and that he desired none of those things with regard to which we see the principle of desire so active in the many. 23. This could not have been so if these faculties were nature and traceable to the principle of substance. For it is impossible for one who has departed his nature to continue to in being at all. But [Kr. 46] if Moses was both in existence and yet without these, then it follows that they are something other than nature and not nature itself. 24. For nature is truly that in which the existence of its substance is comprehended, and if our estrangement from these emotions lies within our power so that their removal not only does not injure, but is even beneficial to the nature, it is clear then that they are to be considered as externals. They are affects39 of the nature and not its substance, for the substance is simply that which it is. 25. ‘As for anger, the many think it a ferment of the blood round the heart; others a keenness to inflict pain in retribution for pain received. We ourselves would take anger to be an impulse to hurt someone who has provoked us. But none 39

ðÜèç, i.e. what the nature undergoes or suffers or has done to it, what in moral discourse (see 3.31) are ‘passions’.

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of these tally with the definition of the soul. 26. Again, if we were to define what desire is in itself, we shall call it a seeking for what one lacks, or a yearning for the enjoyment of some pleasure, or a grief when something on which we have set our heart is not in our power, or a habituation towards some pleasure which it is not possible to enjoy. All these and similar descriptions do indeed indicate desire, but they do not touch the definition of the soul. 27. ‘Moreover, among all the other emotions discerned in regard to the soul, some mutual opposites are observable, such as timidity and boldness, grief and pleasure, fear and disdain, and so on. Each of them seems akin to the principles of desire and of anger, while their own nature is identified with an individualizing definition. 28. Daring and disdain, for example, suggest a certain accentuation of the irascible impulse, while the dispositions arising from timidity and fear suggest a diminishing and weakening of that same impulse. 29. Grief on the other hand draws its material from both of them, for the weariness of anger, which comes of powerlessness to punish those who have grieved us, itself becomes grief, and our despair of having the things we desire and our privation of the things on which we have set our heart instils a sullen cast of mind. And what is considered the opposite of grief, I mean the thought of pleasure, is similarly divided between anger and desire, for pleasure governs the both of them equally. 30. ‘All these emotions are around the soul and yet they are not soul, but only like warts growing from the soul’s thinking part. [Kr. 48] They are reckoned to be parts of it because they are growing on it, and yet they are not what the soul is in its substance.’ Gregory: 31. ‘And yet we observe,’ I replied to the virgin, ‘that they make no small contribution to the betterment of those dedicated to virtue. For Daniel was praised for his desire (cf. Daniel 9. 23, 10. 11, 10. 19, Septuagint) and Phineas propitiated God through his anger (cf. Numbers 25. 11) and we have been taught that the beginning of wisdom is fear (Proverbs 9. 10) and have heard from Paul that the goal of grief according to God is salvation (II Corinthians 7. 10) and the Gospel legislates for us a disdain for terrors,40 and what else is not to be frightened with any amazement (Luke 21. 9, I Peter 3. 6) but a description of boldness and this last is numbered by Wisdom among the things that are good (cf. Wisdom 8. 7). 32. The

40

ôäí ôg ägéíäí ô¬í êáôáöñüíçóéí. Woods Callahan points out (p. 216, n. 13) that though the sentiment is certainly in the NT, Gregory’s phraseology is Platonic. Compare Plato’s discussion of courage and his legislation for the ideal state ‘concerning the things that are to be feared’ (ðgñ ôäí ägéíäí), Republic 429.

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Word shows in all these instances that such qualities are not to be considered passions,41 for passions would not have been employed to accomplish virtue.’ Macrina: 33. ‘It seems,’ replied the teacher, ‘that I myself have occasioned this confusion in reasoning, by not making those distinctions in the argument of the case which would have imposed a certain logical order on our considerations. But now, as far as possible, some such order shall be devised for the investigation, so that by advancing logically in our considerations there may be no more room for such contradictions. 34. ‘We assert, then, that the contemplative, critical, and all-surveying power of the soul is proper to it by its very nature, and that it is through these that the soul preserves in itself the image of the deifying grace, since reason surmises that the divine itself, whatever it might be in its nature, is these at least in these, that is in universal supervision and in discrimination of the beautiful from the worse. 35. But when it concerns what lies on the borderland of the soul, capable of inclining to either of two opposites according to its particular nature, the way it is used determines the outcome whether for the good or its opposite. Such for example are anger and fear and any other such emotion of the soul without which human nature cannot be studied. All these we reckon as accretions from without, because no such characteristics are to be found in the beauty of the archetype. 36. ‘In the meantime let the following argument of these matters be offered as a kind of training exercise, [Kr. 50] to avoid the sneers of contentious hearers. The Word tells us that the divine proceeded by a certain gradual and orderly sequence to the creation of man. When the foundations of the universe were laid, as the history relates, man did not appear on the earth straightaway. Instead the nature of the irrational animals preceded him, and preceding them were the plants. 37. The Word shows by this, I think, that the life-giving power mingled itself with the bodily nature in a certain sequence. First it infused itself into the insensate, and after that advanced into the sensate, and then it ascended to the intelligent and rational.42 38. Accordingly, some of all the things that exist are with bodies and others are wholly intellectual.43 Those with bodies are in turn divided into the 41

ðÜèç, i.e. disordered conditions suffered by the soul: morbid or pathological states. Macrina/ Gregory use the term for emotions that have become corrupted: see the definitions at the end of this chapter. 42

Macrina/Gregory combine the Genesis account of creation with Aristotle’s division of the soul into the nutritive, sensate, and the intellective in de Anima 3.1. See p. 189, n. 33 above. 43

That is, the primordial differentiation of existent beings is between those which subsist in the spatio-temporal-material world (including, for example, light, rocks, and humans), and those

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inanimate and the animate — by animate I mean partaking of life. Of living beings, some are endowed with sensation, some have no part in this. Again, of these sensate beings, some have reason, some are irrational. 39. ‘Since the sensate life could not subsist apart from matter, and the intellectual could not otherwise come to be in the body if it did not spring up together with the sensate, for this reason it is narrated that finally man was created, that he might encompass every form of life envisaged both of plants and of irrational animals. 40. His nourishment and growth he has from plant life, for such processes can be seen even in plants as they draw in nourishment by their roots and send it forth in fruits and leaves. His constitution as sensate he has from the irrational animals. But the power of thought and reason is unalloyed and particular to this nature, being contemplated by itself. 41. However, just as this nature has the instinct of drawing what is necessary for the material life, which, when it is manifested in us, we call appetite, and we assert that this is an aspect of plant life, since we can see it there too as certain impulses working naturally to secure their proper nourishment and to swell in germination, so too all that is proper to the irrational nature is mingled with the intellectual part of the soul. 42. Among these,’ she said, ‘is anger; among these is fear and all the other counterbalancing [Kr. 52] activities within us — everything except the power of reason and thought. That alone is special to our life which bears in itself, as has been said, the stamp of the divine character. 43. ‘But since, according to the argument which we have just been expounding, the reasoning power cannot otherwise come to be in the bodily life except that it comes into being with the senses, and since sensation already had subsistence in the nature of the irrational animals, a necessary consequence of this alone is our soul’s communion with all that accompanies it. 44. These are the incidence within us of what are called “passions”, which have not been allotted to human life for any bad purpose at all, for the Creator would be the author of vices if compulsions to wrongdoing had been implanted along with our nature. Instead, these emotions of the soul become the instruments of virtue or of vice according to the way we order our choice, 45. just like the iron that is forged according to the intention of the smith, which takes whatever shape the conception of the smith wills, whether it becomes a sword or some agricultural implement.

which do not, namely the pure ‘intelligibles’ or spirits (e.g. angels). It unclear whether Macrina implicitly speaks of created beings. If she is not, then perhaps God and the angels would belong in the same class of pure intellegibles. Therefore an even more basic differentiation of ‘that which exists’ needs to be posited: between the uncreated (or ‘non-created’, or ‘increate’) and the created, a distinction of huge importance in Gregory’s theology.

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46. ‘Well then, if reason, that special property of our nature, were to maintain governance over these emotions which have been added to us from without, which indeed the word of Scripture reveals in figures when it commands man to rule over all irrational animals (cf. Genesis 1. 28), none of these emotions would be active in the service of vice. Fear would only generate obedience, and anger courage, and timidity caution, and the impulse of desire would sponsor the divine and undefiled delight.44 47. ‘If reason, however, casts away the reins like a charioteer who has become entangled in his chariot and is dragged behind it wherever the irrational movement of the yoked horses carries him,45 then these impulses are changed into passions, just as we see happens with irrational animals. 48. Since in fact reasoning does not preside over the natural impulses innate in animals, the more irascible ones destroy each other under the generalship of rage, while the heavily built and powerful animals gain no benefit from their power, but from their want of reason become the slaves of that which has reason. [Kr. 54] 49. The activities of desire and pleasure in them are not directed to any of the higher realities, and no other impulse observed in them is directed by any reason to the beneficial. 50. So it is with us too, if these impulses are not led by reasoning in the right direction and if the passions prevail against the mastery of the mind, the human being is changed from the rational and the godlike to the irrational and unthinking, being reduced to the level of an animal by the force of these passions.’ Gregory: 51. I was greatly impressed by these words. ‘Your argument,’ I said, ‘has progressed so simply and spontaneously and in such orderly sequence, that to anyone of intelligence it will seem to be correct and to diverge in no way from the truth. 52. However, though the syllogism is enough to convince those who are practised only in the technical methods of proof, with us it was agreed that more worthy of belief than any of these technical conclusions is what has been revealed in the holy teachings of Scripture. Hence I think we need to inquire whether the God-inspired teaching concurs with what has been said.’

44 45

That is, the consummate joy of union with God.

The allusions are both to Plato’s charioteer in Phaedrus 246B and to the practice of overeager charioteers who wrapped the reins fast round their waist so that they could ply their whip on the horses more freely. But this risked just such an entanglement in an accident as is here described. On this analogy the ‘letting go’ of the reins here means abdicating ordered governance in favour of force, or in classical Greek terms, tyranny.

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Macrina: 53. ‘And who,’ she replied, ‘would deny that truth is only to be found in that which bears the seal of scriptural testimony? If it is necessary then that something from the Gospel be adduced in support of this doctrine, it will not be untimely to look at the parable of the weeds (cf. Matthew 13. 24–30). 54. There the householder — and we of course are his household — sowed good seed.46 But the enemy watched until the men were asleep, and then sowed worthless seed in the food crop, setting weeds in the very midst of the wheat. 55. So the two kinds of seed sprouted together, for it was impossible that the seed put in the very midst of the wheat not sprout along with it. But because the roots of the opposite kinds were growing together, the steward of the farm forbad the servants to pull up the useless crop, lest they pull up the nourishing crop along with the alien. 56. ‘Now we think that by the good seed the Word means the corresponding impulses of the soul, each of which, [Kr. 56] if it is only cultivated for the good, necessarily puts forth in us the fruit of virtue. 57. But since there has been sown among these a thoroughly mistaken judgement as to beauty and that alone which is truly beautiful in its own nature (cf. Matthew 19. 17)47 has been thrown into shade by the sprout of delusion springing up along with it, 58. for the principle of desire has not sprung up and matured towards that which is beautiful by nature because of which it was sown in us, but it has altered its growth towards the bestial and irrational, the desiring impulse being steered in this direction by the mistaken judgement as to beauty, 59. and in the same way the seed of anger has not been forged into courage but has only armed us to fight against our own kind, and the power of affection48 has deserted the intellectual and gone completely mad for the enjoyment of the sensual beyond all measure, and in like manner the other emotions have put forth the worse rather than the better shoots — 60. because of all this the wise farmer allows the sprouts that have sprung up among his seed to remain there, to ensure that we are not altogether stripped of better hopes if desire were also uprooted along with the useless spouts. 61. ‘For if human nature underwent this, what would there be to raise us up to union with the heavenly? If affection is taken away, in what way shall we be united to God? If anger is extinguished, what arms shall we take up against our adversary? 62. The cultivator therefore leaves the bastard seeds within us, not that they may 46

That is, his household, his family.

47

The ultimate and only intrinsic good is the divine. In this teleology our intellectual conceptions of the good govern what we seek and will. According to Plato Meno 77C–E, Socrates argued that if one knows what is truly good, one will of necessity act virtuously. 48

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always prevail against the more precious sowing, but that the arable field itself, for so he names the heart allegorically, through the power inherent in it naturally, which is that of reasoning, may cause some of the seeds to wither and render the others fruitful and abundant. But if this does not come to pass, then he reserves for the fire the sorting of the crop. 63. Accordingly if someone uses these emotions with due reason, holding them in his own power rather than becoming subject to their power, like a king who uses his subjects’ many hands for assistance, then he will succeed more easily in his efforts towards virtue. 64. But if he become theirs, being taken hostage as when slaves [Kr. 58] rebel against their masters, and if he bows ignominiously before their slavish mindlessness and becomes the prey of what was under his yoke according to nature, then of necessity he will turn to whatever the domination of his new masters impels him. 65. ‘Now if this is how things are, we shall not pronounce these emotions of the soul to be of themselves either virtue or vice, since they lie in the power of those who use them for good or for otherwise. But whenever their movement is towards what is better, then they become matter for praise, as was desire for Daniel, and anger for Phineas, and grief for those who mourn worthily. But whenever their inclination turns for the worse, then they become and are called passions.’

Chapter 4: The ‘Place’ of Souls in the Afterlife Gregory: 1. When she had finished speaking she paused and allowed the discussion a brief respite, during which I recollected in my mind49 all that had been said. Reverting to an earlier line of argument in which it was established that it was not impossible that after the body’s dissolution the soul continues in its elements, I asked the teacher this: 2. ‘Where is that Hades as it is popularly called and much bandied about in the custom of daily life and in the writings of both pagans and our own, into which everyone thinks that souls migrate hence as into a kind of repository? Surely you would not call the elements this Hades?’ Macrina: 3. ‘Clearly,’ replied the teacher, ‘you have not quite attended to the argument. When speaking of the soul’s migration from the seen to the unseen, I thought I had omitted nothing concerning the question of Hades. It seems to me that whether in the pagan or in the divine writings, this word for a place in which

49

óõígëÝîáìçí ô± äéáíïߑ ô gÆñçìÝíá, an interesting glimpse of Gregory’s technique as an attentive listener. The verb bears the sense ‘selected and gathered up’.

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souls are said to be signifies nothing else but a transition to the non-apparent and invisible world.’50 Gregory: 4. ‘And how is it,’ I asked, ‘that some think that by the “underworld” a place is being named which gives refuge to souls within itself, as if it were a kind of inn adapted to [Kr. 60] receiving such a nature, drawing to itself those that have at last been dragged away from this human life?’ Macrina: 5. ‘But our doctrine,’ replied the teacher, ‘will not be injured in any way by such a supposition. For if your account is true, that the heavenly firmament is continuous with itself and seamless and that it encompasses all things within its vault, that the earth and its environs are poised in the middle, and that the movement of all circling bodies is around this fixed and stable centre, 6. then of necessity, she said, whatever happens to each of the elements in the region above the earth, the same also happens in the region opposite, since one and the same substance extends around its whole mass. 7. For the embrace of the rays cannot reach all around its spherical shape at one and the same time. It is entirely predictable that on whatever side the sun strikes with its rays, it focuses on some point of the sphere in such a way that if one traced a straight diameter from it one inevitably discovers darkness at the opposite point. 8. Thus the dark travels around continuously in tandem with the sun’s course, directly opposite the line of its rays, so that the region above the earth and the region beneath it are equally in light and darkness in their turn. Hence we should set aside all doubt that whatever is observed concerning the elements in our hemisphere of the earth, the same holds on the other side. 9. Since the ambience of the elements is one and the same in every part of the earth, I think it right neither to contradict nor agree with those who raise the objection that we must regard either this or the region beneath the earth as assigned to the souls released from their bodies. 10. As long as this objection does not shake our principle doctrine concerning the existence of souls after the life in the flesh, our argument will enter into no debate about place, holding as we do that location in a place is a property only of bodies, [Kr. 62] and that since the soul is bodiless, is not by any necessity of its nature detained in any place.’ Gregory: 11. ‘But what,’ I asked, ‘if the objector puts forward the apostle who says that at the restoration of all things the entire rational creation will look to him who governs all, among whom he mentions some who are “under the earth” as

50

gÆò ôÎ •öáíÝò ôg ê᠕égä¦ò. Plato etymologizes the term ‘Hades’ from •géä­, aeide (without visible form) in Phaedo 80D.

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when he says in the Letter to the Philippians: to him every knee shall bow of things in heaven, and things on earth, and things under the earth (Philippians 2. 10). Macrina: 12. ‘We shall stand by our doctrine,’ answered the teacher, ‘even if we hear them saying this, since even our opponent agrees with us concerning the soul’s existence.51 So, as we have just said, we make no objection with regard to place.’ Gregory: 13. ‘But what is one to say,’ I asked, ‘to those who insist on the apostle’s meaning in this utterance, if one is to interpret the saying without reference to place?’ Macrina: 14. ‘I do not think,’ she replied, ‘that the divine apostle was dividing up the intellectual substance according to place when he used the terms “in heaven”, “on earth”, and “under the earth”. But since there are three states in which rational nature exists: one from the very beginning was allotted a bodiless life, and this we call the angelic; another is interwoven with the flesh, and this we say is human; a third is released by death from the things of the flesh, which is contemplated in the case of souls. 15. Now I think that this is what the divine apostle in his profound wisdom saw when he intimated the future harmony of all rational nature in the good, and so he calls the angelic and bodiless “in heaven”, and that still involved with a body “on earth”, and that already parted from a body “under the earth”. If there is any other nature to be classed among the rational apart from those mentioned, and whether one wishes to call this last “demons” or “spirits” or anything else of the kind, we shall not disagree. 16. ‘For it is believed, both in the prevailing opinion and still more in the tradition of the Scriptures, that another nature exists apart, divested of such bodies as ours, which is opposed to the beautiful and injurious to human life, since of its own will [Kr. 64] it lapsed from the better choice, and by this secession from the beautiful it gives subsistence52 in itself to what is considered its opposite, 17. and that the Apostle listed this nature, some say,53 among the things under the earth, signifying in that passage that when evil shall some day be made to vanish through the long courses of the ages,54 nothing shall be left outside the good, but that even from

51

That is, after the death of the body.

52

ßðïóôÞóáóáí, or perhaps ‘personified’.

53

Notably Origen, according to whose conjectures about apocatastasis, hell itself shall eventually cease when all shall be saved. 54

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these there shall arise in one accord the confession of Christ’s Lordship. 18. If this is so, then no one can compel us anymore to conceive of a place in the underworld in the expression things under the earth, since the air is poured out evenly on all sides around the earth so that no part of it is left denuded of this mantle of air.’

Chapter 5: The Soul’s Recognition of the Body’s Elements Gregory: 1. When the teacher had finished expounding these things, I hesitated a moment, and then said: ‘I am not yet satisfied about the object of our enquiry, for after all that has been said my mind is still somehow doubtful. I ask please that the discussion return to the same line of reasoning as before,55 leaving aside the points on which we have already agreed. 2. ‘For I think that all except those given to excessive controversy will have been quite persuaded by what has been said not to consign the soul after the dissolution of the body to extinction and non-existence, or to maintain that because it differs by nature from the substance of the elements it is impossible for it to be anywhere among the things that exist. For even if the nature that is intellectual and immaterial does not tally with these elements, it is not prevented from being in them. 3. This assumption is confirmed for us in two ways: first, that the soul exists in our bodies in this present life even though it is something other than the body in substance; and secondly, that the divine nature, as the argument shows, though it is something wholly other than sensate and material substance, nevertheless pervades everything that exists, and through this permeation of the whole it sustains all things in being. From these considerations, it is consistent that the soul also not be thought outside the things that exist, when it passes from the life contemplated in forms to the unseen. 4. ‘But how,’ I asked, ‘once the union of the elements has taken up quite another form through their intermingling with each other, that form in which the soul has become familiar [Kr. 66], when this form disappears along with the dissolution of these elements, as is to be expected, what signpost shall the soul follow after this, now that the recognized form no longer remains?’ Macrina: 5. She paused a moment. ‘Allow me,’ she said, ‘to fashion some kind of argument by using an example as best I can, to illustrate the matter before us — even though the idea seems far from any possibility. Grant, then, that in the art of

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That is, 2.45, that the soul remains with those elements of which the body had been composed. Gregory’s petition twice uses ìïé, indicating a slightly deprecative, apologetic tone.

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the portrait painter it is not only possible to mix contrary colours to achieve a particular tint, as they usually do, but also to separate what has been mixed and to restore to each of the colours its natural hue. 6. If white or black or red or golden colour or any other hue that was blended to form the given tint were again separated from the mixture with the others and come to be by itself, we would say that the individual appearance of that colour is nevertheless recognized by the artist, and that no kind of forgetfulness will come over him, say of the red or the black for example, if after having become quite a different colour by mixing with the other each returns to its natural hue. 7. He remembers the way the colours were blended with each other, and knows what kind of colour was mixed with the other and what colour was the result, and how, if the other colour is drained away, it will revert to its own lustre. And if he needs to achieve the same by mixing again, the procedure will be all the easier for him from his having practised it in his craftwork before. 8. ‘Now, if our argument finds any analogy in this example,’ she said, ‘we must use it to examine the matter in hand. For this argument, let the soul stand for the art of the painter, and let the nature of the elements be reckoned instead of the artists’ colours, and let the varied hue mixed from the different colours and the return of each of these to its own, which we have been allowed to assume, represent the gathering and the separation of the elements. 9. If, as we were saying in this example, the painter is not ignorant of the hue of each colour, when after been mixed it has returned to its own bloom, but he recognizes the red [Kr. 68], and the black, and any other colour that was used to achieve the form through a distinct communion, recognizing it as it was in the mixture, as it now is in its natural state, and as it shall be again, should the colours be mixed again in a similar fashion — 10. so the soul knows even after their dissolution the particular nature of those elements whose coming together prepared the body in which the soul itself sprang up. 11. However far apart their nature drags them from each other through their inherent contrarieties which hinder each of them from mingling with its opposite, nevertheless the soul will be in each, being joined to it and abiding in it by its power of recognition, until their convergence again after this dispersal takes place in the same way, in that reconstitution of what was dissolved that truly is and is called resurrection.’ Gregory: 12. I interrupted: ‘You seem to me by this latest statement to have fought valiantly for the principle of the resurrection. By it the adversaries of the faith might be gently dissuaded from considering it impossible that the elements should come together again and refashion the same human being.’ Macrina: 13. ‘Yes,’ said the teacher, ‘what you say is true. For we may hear those who are opposed to this principle asking that, when the elements are

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dissolved into the universe each to its own kind, by what device can the warmth that was in this life, once it has been dispersed unalloyed into the whole, be separated again from its own kind in order to constitute this human being who is being refashioned? 14. For if the individual element does not return exactly, and instead of it something of the same kind replaces it, what shall come to be is something other than the first one, and this would no longer be a resurrection as such but the making of a new human being. 15. But if it is necessary that the same return to himself (Luke 15. 17), it is fitting that he be wholly the same as himself and take up again his original nature in every part of its elements.’ Gregory: 16. ‘To meet that kind of objection,’ I said, ‘the above opinion about the soul would be enough for us,56 [Kr. 70] that it remains after dissolution in those very elements in which it grew up from the beginning, and like someone mounting guard over his own property, it does not let go of its own when they are mingled with their own kind, but by the subtlety and ubiquity of its intellectual power it makes no mistake about the elements, however subtle their diffusion. 17. Instead it slips in along with its own as they merge with their own kind, and in no way loses its force by accompanying them as they pour back into the universe, but remains with them wherever or however nature arranges them. 18. But if the power that disposes the universe signals the scattered elements to come together again, then, just as when the different strands that hang from a single pulley all answer at one and the same moment to the pull, so when this one power of the soul draws together the various elements, the cable of our body shall be woven together by the soul as its own converge again, each of them being woven into its ancient and accustomed place and embracing what it recognizes.’ Macrina: 19. ‘And another example,’ the teacher continued, ‘might well be added to those we have already examined, to show that there is no great difficulty in the soul’s distinguishing its own among the elements from the foreign. 20. Suppose then a potter has been provided with clay, and let it be a large supply, and let some of it already be moulded to the state of being finished off as vessels, while the rest is yet to be moulded. Let not all of the required vessels be of the same shape. One is to be a cask, for example, and another a jar, another a plate, or a bowl, or some other useful vessel. Let them not all have one owner, but suppose for the sake of the argument that each has its own master.

56

At this juncture, Macrina’s and Gregory’s roles are momentarily reversed: she articulates the argument of opponents and Gregory offers the defence.

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21. ‘As long as these vessels are intact they are of course recognizable to their owners. Yet even if they are broken up, they will nevertheless be identifiable to their owners even from their pieces — one piece for example will belong to a cask, while another kind will belong to a cup. And if they are mixed into the un-worked clay, the discernment of [Kr. 72] what has been already worked from the unworked clay will be much more unerring. 22. ‘Now each human being is in some way a vessel like that.57 He was moulded from the common material by the convergence of his elements, acquiring at the same time considerable differentiation from his own kind by his individual shape. 23. When that shape is dissolved, the soul which has possessed that vessel nevertheless recognizes its own even from the remains. It will not secede from its own, whether they are in communion with the other fragments or mixed into the unworked part of the material from which the elements come. It always knows its own as it was when intact in bodily form, and after dissolution it never makes any mistake about its own, led by the signs which persist in the remains.’ Gregory: 24. Welcoming what she had said as thought out aptly and appropriately for the aim set before us, I replied: ‘It is well to speak of and believe in these things in this way. But what if someone were to urge against our discussion that the Lord’s narrative in the Gospel about those who are in Hades is not consistent with our examination? How are we to be prepared to give an answer?’ Macrina: 25. She replied: ‘The Word certainly expresses the narrative in rather bodily terms, but there are many pointers58 scattered in it that summon the careful inquirer to a more subtle contemplation. 26. For he who divides the good from the worse by a great gulf and has the sufferer craving a drop of water brought by a finger, and offers the patriarch’s bosom as repose to the one who was ill treated during this life, and tells of their death before this and their consignment to the tomb (cf. Luke 16. 19–31) leads anyone who is not inattentive in searching out these sayings no small way beyond a superficial understanding.59 27. For what kind of eyes has the rich man to lift up in Hades, when he has left those of the flesh behind in the tomb? And how can the disembodied feel any flame? And what kind of tongue does he crave be cooled with a drop of water when he no longer has the fleshly one? What is the finger that is to sprinkle him in this way? The bosom of repose itself, what is it?

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Gregory returns to this analogy and will later develop it in the Catechetical Discourse 8.

58

•öïñìò, starting points, prods, thought provokers, pointers to further reflection.

59

ô­ò êáô ôÎ ðñü÷géñïí äéáíïßáò, i.e. a literal understanding of the parable.

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28. ‘Inasmuch as the bodies of both of them are in the tomb [Kr. 74] and their souls are not in the body and do not consist of parts, it would scarcely be possible to reconcile the scheme of the narrative with the truth if it were understood superficially. One can only do this by transposing each detail to the level of a contemplation of the mind.60 29. Thus the gulf must not be thought of as some chasm in the earth but as a barricade against the communion of incompatibles, for what trouble would it be to the bodiless and the intellectual to span such a gulf, however vast it might be, since what is intellectual by nature can be wherever it wills in no time?’ Gregory: 30. ‘What then,’ I asked, ‘are the fire, and the gulf, and the other things that are spoken of, if they are not what they are said to be?’ Macrina: 31. ‘It seems to me,’ she replied, ‘that the Gospel signifies by each of these certain doctrines relating to our enquiries into the soul. For when the patriarch says first to the rich man, you during your life in the flesh received your share of good things (Luke 16. 25) and says likewise of the poor man that he fulfilled his service61 during his life by his share of bad things and then comments further on the gulf that walls them off from each other, by such expressions he intimates a doctrine very important for our argument. That doctrine, to my reasoning, is as follows: 32. Originally the life of human beings had only one form, and by one form I mean a life that was contemplated only in the good, unalloyed with the bad. The first of God’s laws attests this principle, which gave to man an unstinting participation in all the beauties of paradise, forbidding only that which had a nature mixed of contrarieties through the confusion of the bad with the beautiful, and imposing death as the penalty for transgression. (cf. Genesis 2. 17) 33. But man, acting freely by an autonomous impulse, abandoned the lot unmixed with the worse, and drew on himself the life compounded of contrarieties. 34. ‘Yet the divine forethought did not leave that recklessness of ours without a remedy. But since death necessarily fell upon the transgressors as the sentence for breaking the law, it divided human life into two parts, the one spent in the flesh [Kr. 76] and the other apart from the body hereafter. 35. Their span is not of equal duration, for God has circumscribed the first with the briefest possible limit of time and prolonged the other to eternity. In his love for man he gave him the power to

60

Compare Gregory’s defence of an interpretation of the Scripture that goes beyond the literal sense, in his Letter to Olympias, remarked above in the introduction to On the Soul, ‘Macrina as Philosopher’, p. 166. 61

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choose which of the two he would have, I mean the good or the bad, either in this short and fleeting life or in those endless ages whose boundary is infinity. 36. ‘Now these expressions “the good” and “the bad” are equivocal, for each of them can be used with two meanings, one relating to the mind I mean, and the other relating to the senses. Some on the one hand class as good whatever seems pleasant to the senses, while others believe that only that which is contemplated by the intellect is good and should be so named. 37. ‘Those, therefore, who have never exercised their reasoning powers and have never enquired after the better way soon squander that portion of the good which is due to their nature on idle indulgence in this fleshly life, storing up none of it for the life hereafter. 38. But for those who order their own life here with discerning and sober reasoning, enduring in this brief life things painful to the senses and storing up the good for the age that is to come, the result is that better lot which is co-extensive with eternal life.62 39. ‘This therefore, in my opinion, is the “gulf” which does not come of a rift in the earth, but is made of those decisions during this life which are divided into opposing inclinations. For anyone who has once chosen pleasure in this life and has not cured his recklessness through repentance, renders inaccessible to himself the country of the good hereafter, for he has dug by himself this impassable necessity like a yawning and unbridgeable abyss. 40. This is why it seems to me that the good state of the soul in which the Word gives repose to the long-enduring athlete is called Abraham’s bosom. For it is related that this patriarch was the first of all who had lived up to that time to exchange the enjoyment of the present for the hope of what was to come. Stripped of everything in which his life had consisted from the beginning, he sojourned among strangers, and thus [Kr. 78] purchased by present afflictions the blessed lot in which he hoped (cf. Genesis 12. 1, Hebrews 11. 8–11). 41. Just as by an applied usage we call a certain embrasure of the sea a “bosom”, so the Word it seems to me to convey the sense of that immeasurable good above by the term “bosom”,63 in that all who sail through this life with virtue, when they set out from here, moor their souls in that “bosom” of the good as in a waveless harbour. 42. ‘But for the others the privation of the good now manifest to them becomes a flame smouldering in the soul, so that it craves but does not obtain the consolation of one drop of that sea of the good engulfing the holy. 43. If you also consider the tongue and the eye and the finger and the other bodily terms which occur in

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‘Life is short, eternity is long.’ The observation is made by Plato in the Republic 608C.

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The word for a geographic ‘bay’ or ‘gulf’ and for ‘bosom’ is the same in Greek: êüëðïò.

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the dialogue between the disembodied, you will acknowledge that they accord with the argument we have already worked out by conjecture concerning the soul — if you look carefully into the thought behind the words. 44. For as the convergence of elements makes the substance of the whole body, so too it is likely that the nature of the members that are in the body is implemented from the same cause. 45. If the soul therefore is present in the elements of the body when they are again mingled with the universe, it will not only recognize the sum of the elements which once converged to form the whole compound and so remain in them, but it will also not fail to recognize the particular consistency of each of the members and by what morsels among the elements our limbs were completed. It is therefore not at all unlikely that that which exists in the whole sum of the elements also exists in each of them. 46. And so if one considers those elements in which each member of the body potentially exists and supposes that Scripture is saying that a finger and an eye and a tongue and all the others exist after the dissolution of the compound in connection with the soul, one will not miss the likely meaning. 47. ‘Moreover, if such details dissuade the mind from a bodily conception of the story, it is also likely that the above-mentioned Hades64 is not to be thought a place called by that name, but that we are being taught by the Scripture that there is a certain invisible and bodiless state of life in which [Kr. 80] the soul continues to live.’

Chapter 6: The Soul’s Progress toward the Divine [Macrina cont.]: 1. ‘Yet, we also learn in this story of the rich man and the poor man another doctrine very pertinent to our investigations. The story has it that when that lover of the flesh given to passions65 realized that his own calamity was inescapable, he gave forethought to those belonging to his family on earth. 2. When Abraham told him that the life of those still living in the flesh is not unprovided for, since they have guidance at hand, if they will, in the Law and the Prophets, the rich man persisted in begging that the message would take them by surprise and be persuasive if announced by someone come back to life from the dead.’ Gregory: 3. ‘What then,’ I asked, ‘is the doctrine in these details?’

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That is, at 4.2, and queried again at 5.2.

65

¦êgÃíïí ôÎí ¦ìðáè­ êá öéëüóïöïí.

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Macrina: 4. ‘In these,’ she said, ‘that Lazarus’s soul is occupied with present blessings and does not turn back to anything left behind, whereas the rich man is still stuck to the fleshly life even after death, as if with some gum.66 Even though he has quit this life he has not divested himself cleanly of it, but is still preoccupied with flesh and blood. For in his plea that those who share family ties with him be exempt from evils it is clear that he is not yet freed from fleshly attachments.67 5. In such details of the story, she said, I think the Lord teaches us this: that especially we who are alive in the flesh must, as far as we can, separate and free ourselves somehow from its inclination by a life of virtue, so that after death we do not need yet another death (cf. Revelation 2. 11, 20. 14) to cleanse us from the residue of this fleshly glue, but that when the bonds around the soul are broken its course68 towards the Good may be light and unimpeded, with no burden of the body to drag it down (cf. Romans 7. 24). 6. ‘For anyone who becomes wholly and completely fleshly in mind, devoting all the movement and energy of the soul to the will of the flesh ( John 1. 13), such a one even when he is parted from the flesh is not separated from its symptoms,69 just as those who spend much time [Kr. 82] in places of foul odour are not cleansed of the unpleasantness contracted through their prolonged stay there, even when they pass into sweet-smelling air. 7. So too in the passage to the invisible and subtle life, not even then will lovers of the flesh be able to avoid dragging with them in some way the fleshly foul odour. And thus they intensify their pains, because the soul has become more material from its immersion in such environs. 8. ‘There seems to be some support for this view in what is reported by some, that the shadowy phantasms of those who have fallen asleep are often seen around

66

Æîå ôéíé ô± óáñêßí® æù± . . . ðñïóßó÷gôáé, ‘gum’, ‘glue’, ‘cement’, ‘bird-lime’. The soul hampered by bodily ‘glue’ is a Platonic image with a long career. See Phaedo 82E. 67

Catharine P. Roth explains in Gregory of Nyssa On the Soul and the Resurrection (Crestwood, NY: St Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1993), p. 75, n. 1, that this borrows from Plato’s Phaedo (81A–D), in which Socrates says that souls contaminated by attachment to bodily pleasures cannot escape to the invisible divine world after death — only here Macrina replaces the Platonic ‘body’ with the Pauline ‘flesh’, which is the mentality bound to this world that reigns in both body and soul. 68

äñüìïò. Here Macrina/Gregory blend the Pauline image of the race course (Acts 20. 24, 4. 7) and the Platonic image of the soul’s upward flight like a bird (Phaedrus 248 C); hence Moore (NPNF2 , V , 448) translates it as ‘soaring’. I Corinthians 9. 24, II Timothy 69

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ðáèçìÜôùí, morbid conditions, pathologies.

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the places where their bodies have been laid.70 If this is really so, then the soul’s attachment to the fleshly life here is revealed in that the soul, even when thrust from the flesh, is unwilling to fly cleanly away or to concede that its aspect has been transferred entirely to that without visible form, but remains near the form even after freed from the form, and though now outside it, hovers regretfully over the place of its matter and continues to haunt it.’ Gregory: 9. I paused a moment to recollect the thought of what she had been saying. ‘It seems to me,’ I said, ‘that a certain contradiction now crops up between what you have said and our earlier investigation into the passions. For if such emotions of the soul are considered to be active in us due to our kinship with the irrational animals as were listed in our earlier discussion: anger and fear, desire and pleasure and so on, 10. and if it was asserted that virtue consists in putting these to good use, and vice comes of the failure to do so, and if in addition we argued that each of the other emotions contributes to a virtuous life, and how it is by desire that we are led to God, being drawn up as by kind of a rope from below towards him: the whole argument, I said, seems somehow to contradict our present thrust.’ Macrina: 11. ‘How do you say this?’ Gregory: 12. ‘Why,’ I said, ‘when every irrational emotion is extinguished within us after our purification, this principle of desire [Kr. 84] will wholly cease to exist, and if this is no more, neither will there be any more striving after the better, since no such emotion remains in the soul to stir us up to a longing for the good.’ Macrina: 13. ‘To this,’ she said, ‘we reply that the contemplative and discerning principle is proper to the deiform soul,71 since it is by these we apprehend even the divine. If, then, whether by care exercised here or by purification hereafter, our soul becomes free of its coalescence with the irrational passions, there will be nothing to hinder its contemplation of the beautiful. For the beautiful is somehow attractive by its very nature to all who look towards it. 14. If the soul then is purified of every vice, it will exist wholly in beauty. Since the divine is by its very nature beautiful, the soul will be joined to it through purity, being joined to its familiar. Were this to take place, there would no longer be any need of the emotion of desire

70

Macrina/Gregory allude to the discussion of ghosts in Plato, Phaedo 81B. Origen, in discussing Celsus’s Epicurean view that ghosts are pure illusion (Contra celsum 2.60), himself refers back to the Phaedo passage being used here. 71

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ôïØ ègùgéäïØò ô­ò øõ÷­ò.

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to guide us to the beautiful. 15. For anyone who dwells in darkness will be in desire for the light, but once he comes into the light then enjoyment displaces desire. The potency of enjoyment renders desire stale and effete. 16. ‘Thus it would be no loss to our participation in the good if the soul were to become free of such emotions and having returned to itself (Luke 15. 17) to see itself accurately, of what kind its nature is, and look through its own beauty as in a mirror and image toward the archetype. 17. For we can truly say that the accurate likeness72 to the divine (cf. Genesis 1. 26–27) consists in our soul’s imitation in some measure of the transcendent nature. For that nature which is above all thought, whose seat is far from all that is contemplated within us, proceeds in its own life in a very different manner and not as we do in this present life. 18. For we human beings, whose nature is always to be entirely in motion, are borne wherever the impulse of our choice impels us, for it is not as if the soul is affected in the same way by what lies before it, so to [Kr. 86] speak, and what lies behind it. Hope initiates the forward movement, but memory brings up the rear as that movement advances towards the hope. If hope indeed leads the soul to what is beautiful by nature, the trace that this movement of the will imprints upon the memory is a bright one. 19. ‘But if hope has tricked73 the soul with some idol of the good so that it is defrauded of the better, then the memory that follows upon these events is turned to shame. And thus internal warfare arises in the soul, with memory fighting against hope because it has been such a bad leader of the will. 20. The passion of shame clearly construes some such a state of mind in which the soul is stung at the outcome and lashes the reckless impulse with remorse as with a whip, courting even forgetfulness as an ally against its tormentor. 21. ‘But with us, our nature is so poor in the beautiful that it is always seeking what it lacks, and this appetite for what it misses is the very disposition of desire in our nature,74 whether it is led astray by bad decisions from the truly beautiful, or even comes upon the good by chance. 22. But the nature surpassing every good conception and transcending every power, which has no need of anything that can

72

Ïìïßùóéí, i.e. becoming like God, not being the same as God; Macrina/Gregory are careful to safeguard theological and anthropological exactitude. There is no scope for pantheism or monism in Cappadocian theology. 73

ðáñáóùöéóáìÝíçò, alluding to the late fifth-century BC debates about the aims of sophists in Athens, who undertook to teach how to persuade hearers that black was white and white was black. 74

Roth (On the Soul and the Resurrection, p. 78) refers to Plato’s Symposium 201B, where Socrates asserts that love (eros) is always needy.

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be regarded as good since it is itself the sum75 of all good, does not come to be in the beautiful through participation in the beautiful, but itself is the nature of the beautiful, whatever the mind may suppose that beautiful to be.76 23. This nature neither admits in itself the movement of hoping, since hope is only active towards something absent, and, as the Apostle says, does one hope for what one already has? (Romans 8. 24), nor has it any need of the activity of the memory for its knowledge of things, for whatever is seen does not need to be remembered. 24. Therefore, since the divine nature outstrips every good, and the good is wholly dear to the good, it follows that in beholding itself it wishes for what it has and it has what it wishes, admitting nothing external to itself. 25. ‘Yet nothing is outside it except vice alone, which, paradoxical as it may seem, has its existence in non-existence. For there is no other origin of vice except the [Kr. 88] privation of what is, for that which truly is, is the nature of the good.77 Therefore anything not found in that which is, is certainly in non-existence. 26. Once the soul has divested itself of all the varied emotions of its nature and become deiform, and has mounted above desire to that towards which it was once elevated by desire, it offers no more occupation in itself for either hope or memory. 27. For it has that which it hoped for, and being now wholly occupied in the enjoyment of the good it dismisses memory from its thought. And by being thus conformed to the particular qualities of the divine nature it imitates the life that is above. No other disposition is left to it now but that of love, which cleaves to the beautiful by natural affinity. For this is love, the innate affection for the object of one’s desire.78 28. When the soul therefore has become simple and one in form and accurately godlike, it finds that truly simple and immaterial good which alone is really loveable and desirable, and cleaves to it and is mingled with it through the

75

ðëÞñùìá, plenitude, fullness.

76

Here the divine nature is equated with the Platonic form of the beautiful. Lesser material beings share in the beautiful by participation in a greater or lesser degree in this ultimate beauty. See Symposium 211B, Phaedo 100C. This use of Platonic philosophy is assimilated to the Gospel saying that One alone is good, God (Matthew 19. 17). 77 Metaphysical optimism, the idea that evil has no real existence but is a privation of the good, which alone has real being, is highly characteristic of Gregory’s thought. In terms of philosophical development, it seems to have come to the fore during Middle Platonism. Its greatest exponents in the third century were Origen (e.g. Commentary on John 2.13.92–96) and Plotinus (Enneads 1.8.3). See p. 183 n. 23 above. 78

² ðñÎò ôÎ êáôáèýìéïí ¦íäé•ègôïò ó÷Ýóéò, a habit or innate disposition towards what-isaccording-to-one’s heart.

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movement and activity of love, fashioning itself according to that which it is ever comprehending and discovering. 29. ‘The soul becomes through likeness to the good that which the nature in which it participates is. But since there is no desire in that nature because there is no lack of the good in it, it would follow that the soul also becomes free of any lack and hence expels from itself the movement and disposition of desire, for this arises only in the absence of something yearned for. 30. It was the divine apostle who introduced this teaching to us, when he foretold a certain ebbing and cessation of all our present strivings, even for the better, but found no limit for love alone. Prophecies, he says, shall come to an end, forms of knowledge shall cease, but love shall never fail (I Corinthians 13. 8), which is equivalent to saying that it continues always as it is. 31. Although he says that faith and hope have remained so far along with love, yet he extends love even beyond them, and with reason. For hope is in motion only as long as the enjoyment [Kr. 90] of things hoped for is not to be had, and faith in the same way is the buttress of things hoped for while they are as yet obscure, for so he defines it: faith is the upholding of things hoped for (Hebrews 11. 1). But when that which is hoped for has come, then all other movements ebb away while love alone remains active, finding nothing more to supplant it. 32. ‘Love, therefore, is the foremost of all the accomplishments of virtue and of the commandments of the law. So if the soul ever attains this end it will have no need of the others, because it has embraced the sum of all that is and because it seems that love alone somehow preserves within itself the character of the divine blessedness. For the life of the sublime nature is love, since the beautiful is wholly lovable to those who recognize it, and the divine recognizes itself. But then knowledge becomes love, because that which is recognized is beautiful by nature. 33. The insolence of satiety cannot touch that which is truly beautiful. With no satiety able to disrupt this state of love for the beautiful, the divine life will always be activated through love. This life is beautiful by nature and lovingly disposed by nature towards the beautiful, and knows no limit to the activity of love, 34. because no boundary of the beautiful can be comprehended such that love might leave off at the boundary of the beautiful. Indeed the beautiful is only limited by its opposite, but since its nature is unreceptive to the worse, it will go on towards the boundless and limitless good.79 79

One of the most original and important contributions of Gregory’s theology is his exposition of the divine infinity, which is a development of the Cappadocian doctrine of God’s incomprehensibility (‘ungraspableness’). In Platonic and neo-Platonic philosophy and in Origen’s theology, perfection was seen in terms of a complete (i.e. definite) simple whole. Plotinus in the Enneads 6.6.2

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35. ‘Inasmuch as every nature tends to attract what is related to it, and the human is in some way related to God because it bears within itself imitations of its archetype, the soul is by every necessity attracted to the divine which is akin to it, for it is altogether and in every way necessary that what belongs to God be secured as his own. If the soul then happens to be light and untrammelled, and no bodily burden presses it down, its advance towards the one who draws it becomes sweet and congenial.’

Chapter 7: The Pains of Purification [Macrina cont.:] 1. ‘But if on the other hand, the soul is fastened with the nails of passionate attachment to the material state, its case will be something like those bodies buried beneath the rubble of buildings which have collapsed in earthquakes.80

connects the bad, multiplicity, and infinity: ‘Multiplicity therefore is a revolt from unity, and infinity a more complete revolt by being infinite multiplicity. Hence infinity is bad, and we are bad when we are a multiplicity.’ In this view one can experience satiety even of participation in the divine which leaves the way open to a return to lower orders (Cf. Origen, On First Principles 1.3.8, 2.9.2). No, says Gregory, the divine nature is perfect in its very boundlessness and its infinity. It is ðáó­ò ðgñéãñáö­ò ¦êôüò ‘beyond every circumscription’ (Catechetical Discourse 8.65). The partaker of the divine nature can never be sated with God who has no limits. Perfect spiritual attainment for the human being therefore consists in never finally attaining but always reaching out for the God who is always greater. This is the key to Gregory’s mystical theology of epektasis, a term he found in Philippians 3. 13. See Anthony Meredith, Gregory of Nyssa (London: Routledge, 1999), pp. 13–14. 80

On earthquakes see also 10.41. The entire region of Asia Minor / modern Turkey is on a tectonic plate and historically subject to seismic activity. The most recent catastrophic earthquake at the time of Gregory’s writing is the levelling of the city of Nicaea on 11 October 368. See Socrates, Historia Ecclesiastica 4.11 (which gives the exact date, and reports another severe earthquake soon afterwards at Germa on the Hellespont); Sozomen, Historia Ecclesiastica 6.10; Theodoret, Historia Ecclesiastica 2.21. Basil’s homily that God is not the author of evils (PG 31.329–54), preached in 369, frequently refers to city-levelling earthquakes, evidently with the recent event in mind. In Letter 26 Basil congratulates and counsels Caesarius on escaping death during this earthquake. Gregory Nazianzen himself says of his brother, Oratio 10.10: ‘And when, a short time ago, the earthquake occurred at Nicaea, which is said to have been the most serious within the memory of man, overwhelming in a common destruction almost all the inhabitants and the beauty of the city, he alone of the men of rank, or with very few, survived the danger, being shielded by the very ruins in his unbelievable escape’ (NPNF 2, VII, 234). A major earthquake devastated nearby Nicomedia on 28 August 358, which Gregory of Nyssa refers to in his Letter 17 to the presbyters of the city. See Silvas, Gregory, pp. 161–69 (p. 166). He also mentions this tragedy in Against Fate, GNO, III.2, 52.1–2, 54.1–2.

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Let us propose for the sake of illustration [Kr. 92] not only that they are pinned beneath the ruins but they have also been pierced with some metal shards or splinters of wood found in the rubble. 2. What then are those bodies likely to endure as they are dragged from the ruins by relatives for the holy rites? They shall be all discoloured and torn and mangled in the most dire manner possible, the rubble and the nails lacerating them by the very force necessary to drag them out. It seems to me that some such experience also comes upon the soul when the divine power, for very love of man, drags its own from the ruins of the irrational and material. 3. ‘For it is not in hatred, not in retaliation for a life of vice, in my opinion, that God brings upon sinners those painful affects. He is only claiming and drawing to himself whatever by his gift has came into generation. But while he who is the source of all blessedness attracts the soul to himself for a better end, this necessarily affects the one being attracted as a painful state. 4. Those who extract extraneous matter from the gold by fire, not only melt the dross in the fire, but must also melt the pure along with the spurious, so that when the dross is drawn off the gold remains. Even so, when vice is being drawn off in the purifying fire, the soul that is united to it is by every necessity also in the fire, until the admixed dross and spurious matter is dissolved out of it, drawn off by the fire. 5. If mud of a stickier sort is plastered thickly round a rope, and the end of the rope is put through a narrow opening, and someone pulls on it forcefully from the other side, then of course the rope obeys the one drawing it, while the mud plastered around it is scraped off during the forceful pulling and left outside the hole. Indeed it is just because of this that the rope does not run easily through the passage, but has to endure a forceful tension from the one who pulls it. 6. It seems to me that one can conceive of the soul in a similar way, as wrapped round by material and earthly attachments, [Kr. 94] toiling and being stretched as God attracts his own to himself, while the alien matter which has somehow sprung up with it is scraped off by force, which of course brings upon it keen and intolerable pains.’ Gregory: 7. ‘Then it seems,’ I said, ‘that the divine judgement does not primarily bring punishment upon sinners, but is acting only to separate the good from the bad and to draw into the communion of blessedness, and that it is the severance of what has sprung up together that brings pain on the one being attracted.’ Macrina: 8. ‘That,’ said the teacher, ‘is indeed my argument, and also that the measure of pain is according to the measure of vice in the individual. For it is not reasonable that one who has long been involved in forbidden vices and one who has slipped into certain moderate shortcomings should suffer equally in the

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purification81 of their wretched state, but that according to the material available that painful flame will kindle to a greater or lesser degree for as long as it has fuel. 9. In the case of one with a heavy burden of material, the consuming flame is necessarily great and of longer duration, but in the case of one immersed in the fire to a lesser extent, the punishment mitigates the fierceness and keenness of its activity in proportion to the lesser degree of vice in the subject. 10. For vice must be utterly and in every way removed from existence, so that, as we said earlier, that which has no real existence may really cease to exist. Vice of its nature does not exist outside the will. Therefore when every will shall come to be in God vice shall retire to complete annihilation, since there shall be no receptacle for it left.’ Gregory: 11. ‘But what is the good of this fair hope,’ I said, ‘when one considers how bad it is to endure pain even for a single year, and if that intolerable pain is extended for the duration of an age, what comfort is left from any subsequent hope for one whose punishment is commensurate with an entire age?’82 [Kr. 96] Macrina: 12. ‘It means that care must be taken beforehand,’ said the teacher, ‘either to keep the soul wholly unmixed and unallied with the defilements of vice, or, if our impassioned nature makes that quite unfeasible, that our failures in virtue comprise only certain moderate and easily curable lapses. 13. For the Gospel teaching knows a certain debtor of ten thousand talents (cf. Matthew 18. 24), one of five hundred denarii,83 one of fifty (cf. Luke 7. 41) and one of a quadrans, which is the least of coins (cf. Matthew 5. 26), and that God’s just judgement eventually comes upon everyone, a judgement that adjusts the payment required to the weight of the debt, yet does not overlook even the smallest of debts. 14. However the discharging of debts, says the Gospel, is not made through the payment of money, but by the

81

ô± êáèÜñógé ô­ò ìü÷èçñò ªîgùò. The emphasis on êáèÜñóéò, purification, in this chapter is also shared by neo-Platonism, e.g. Plotinus, Enneads 1.6.5. On Gregory’s recourse to later developments in the Platonist stream, see H. F. Cherniss, The Platonism of Gregory of Nyssa (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1930), p. 26, Francis Young, ‘Adam and Anthropos, a Study of the Interaction of Science and the Bible in Two Anthropological Treatises of the FourthCentury (Greg. Nyss.; Nemesius)’, Vigiliae Christianae, 37 (1983), 110–40 (p. 119), and Meredith, Gregory of Nyssa, pp. 19–21, 83–85. 82

Gregory’s ideas on the non-eternity of hell begin to emerge. They are based on Origen’s etymology in the de Principia of the terms áÆþí (‘age’ / ‘eternity’) and áÆþíéïò (‘of an age’ / ‘eternal’) and his decision in favour of the first of these pairs of meaning. The fullest statement of these ideas occurs in Macrina’s response to the current query at 7.21. 83

Some confusion has entered into the transmission of the text, between the one hundred denarii that appear at Matthew 18. 28 and the five talents that appear at Matthew 25. 20.

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debtor’s being handed over to the tormentors until, it says, he pays back all that he owes (Matthew 18. 34), which is nothing else than to pay back in torment what is ineluctably owed, 15. that is, the debt of his share of griefs which he contracted during his lifetime when he recklessly chose pleasure instead, unmixed and unalloyed with its opposite. Thus when he has put off all that is alien to him which is sin, and has discharged the shame of his debts, he shall come into freedom and confidence. 16. ‘Now freedom consists in reflecting the likeness84 of that which is without a master and is self-governing.85 We were endowed by God with this likeness from the beginning (cf. Genesis 1. 26–27), but it has been enshrouded by the shame of our indebtedness. 17. All freedom is one in its nature and shares an innate kinship. Accordingly, all that is free shall correspond to its like. For virtue is without master, that is, it is free. Therefore all that is free shall come to be in virtue. 18. ‘But indeed the fountain of all virtue is the divine nature. Those therefore who have done with vice shall come to be in that nature, so that, as the Apostle says, God will be all in all (I Corinthians 15. 28).86 This utterance seems to me to

84

¦îïìïßùóéò, ‘becoming like’, or ‘reflecting the likeness’.

85

This freedom and sovereignty of the restored and transformed soul is a motif of Gregory’s thought. It appears, for example, in On the Making of Man 4 and 16, and in Catechetical Discourse 5. ‘It would be possible to quote similar language from the neo-Platonists (e.g. Plotinus 6.83–6): but Gregory learnt the whole bearing and meaning of moral liberty from none but Origen’: Moore, NPNF 2, V , 452, n. 1. This moral liberty is the very opposite of hubristic licence, for it only comes with perfect correspondence to the qualities of the divine. It is the internalization, realization, and activation of the likeness to God in which man was first created. 86

This scriptural passage became the cornerstone of Origen’s eschatology of apocatastasis, in which he at first tentatively and then more firmly advocated the ultimate disappearance of evil (Contra celsum 4.69, 72). The consequence is that punishment in the afterlife is not everlasting. It is paradoxical to note that Plato himself taught that there was an eternal Hell, Tartarus, for the ‘incurably wicked’ — see Phaedo 113E–114A, Gorgias 525C, and Republic 10.615. The conjecture that it was not only came in with the later Platonists. In this, Gregory, who is prepared to dissent from Origen on other points, shows himself very much his heir. Thus in dealing with Gospel passages which teach an eternal punishment, he follows Origen’s interpretation of áßùí and its adjective áÆþíéïò as referring not to ‘eternity’, but ‘of an age’. Controversially, Basil opposed this doctrine in no uncertain terms. See the classic statement of SR 267 where he affirms that the Gospel means what it says when it speaks of everlasting life and everlasting punishment, and you cannot believe the one Gospel phrase and discount the other. It is noteworthy that the ascetic who questioned Basil assumes as a matter of course the doctrine espoused here by Gregory and placed in Macrina’s mouth. Basil corrected him. This Origenistic type of eschatology therefore was current even in the ascetic communities who looked to Basil as a father, and most pertinently, even at Annisa itself among his own siblings.

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clearly confirm the thought we examined earlier,87 which asserts that God will indeed become all things, yes, even in all things. 19. For during our present life which is activated in varied and diverse conditions [Kr. 98], we partake of many things, such as time and air and place, both food and drink, and clothing, and sunlight, and lamplight. and many other necessities of life, none of which is God. That blessedness to which we look forward however has no need of any of these things, because the divine nature will become all to us and replace all, dispensing itself harmoniously to every need of that life. 20. This is surely clear from the divine sayings, that for those who are deserving God becomes place (cf. John 14. 2–3) and house (cf. Ephesians 2. 19–22) and clothing (cf. Matthew 22. 11–12, Galatians 3. 27) and food and drink (cf. John 6. 35, 48–58) and light (cf. Psalms 26. 1, 33. 6, 118. 105, John 8. 12) and riches (cf. Luke 12. 21, Romans 9. 23, Ephesians 1. 18, 2. 7) and dominion (cf. Matthew 5. 3, 5. 10, 19. 28, Luke 12. 32) and everything conceivable and nameable that contributes to the good life for us. 21. ‘But he who becomes all things comes also to be in all things. By this it seems to me that the word teaches the complete disappearance of vice. For if God will be in all things that exist, then vice, clearly, will not be among these things that exist, for if any one were to suppose that it too would exist, how shall God’s existence in all things be safeguarded? The excepting of that one thing elides the comprehensiveness of the term all. But he who will be in all things will never be in that which does not exist.’ Gregory: 22. ‘What then ought one to say,’ I asked, ‘to those who are disheartened88 at the prospect of these distresses?’ Macrina: 23. ‘Let us say to them,’ replied the teacher, ‘that you fret and baulk in vain at the necessary sequence of these events, because you are ignorant of the goal to which the economy of each part in the universe tends, and that all must come to the likeness of the divine nature in a certain order and sequence according to the skilful wisdom of their governor. 24. Indeed, rational nature was brought into generation for this purpose, that the riches of the divine goodness should not lie idle. The wisdom that sustains the universe fashioned certain vessels as it were, receptacles with free wills consisting of souls, for this very purpose: that there would be some capacities able to receive his blessings, capacities that are ever being enlarged by the addition of that which is poured into them. 87 88

This seems to refer back to the discussion at 1.21–27.

ôï×ò ìéêñïøý÷ùò äéáêgéìÝíïõò, referring to pusillanimity, lit. ‘smallness of soul’, dispiritedness, despondency, and pejoratively, meanness, peevishness of spirit, cowardliness.

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25. ‘For such is the participation in the divine good: it renders one in whom it comes about greater and more capacious,89 [Kr. 100] since it allows into the recipient an addition of power and magnitude, so that the one being nourished always increases and never ceases to increase. 26. The fountain of the good wells up unfailingly (cf. John 4. 14) and the nature of the partaker makes of the entire inflow an addition to its own proportions, since nothing it receives is superfluous and useless. It becomes at the same time more attractive of the better and more able to contain it, each aspect growing along with the other, both the power which is nourished by the abundance of the good so that it grows greater, and the nourishing supply which matches the growth of those incremental powers. It is therefore likely that those in whom there is no limit90 to retard the increase will ascend to such a magnitude. 27. ‘With such prospects before us, therefore, are you upset that our nature is advancing to its proper goal along the path appointed for us? For we cannot in any way run our course towards those good things unless that which weighs us down, I mean this encumbering burden of earthiness, is shaken off from our soul, and we cannot through purity become like to that which is our like unless the sympathy for that earthiness which we have acquired in this life is purged away by a better training. 28. ‘But if something in you still clings to this body and if being unyoked from what you love grieves you, do not let this dampen your hope either.91 You will see this bodily covering which is now dissolved in death, woven again from the same elements, not according to its present dense and heavy texture, but with its fibre spun again into something more subtle and ethereal, so that you will not only have with you that which you love, but it will be restored to you with a brighter and more captivating beauty.’

89

This is a corollary of Gregory’s doctrine of the divine infinity; see 6.39 and note.

90

Moore (NPNF 2, V , 453, n. 6) thinks this limit is the body, but not so. The enlarging of our capacity for God is our human vocation even while in the body. It is rather, in Gregory’s terms, that sympathy (sympatheia) or passionate attachment (prospatheia) to the earthy body acts to retard spiritual progress. 91 Moore (NPNF2 , V , 453, n. 7) suggests interestingly that Macrina may be referring here to Gregory’s brotherly affection for her. Compare his distress on perceiving her imminent death in Introd.2.

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Chapter 8: The Idea of Reincarnation Gregory: 1. ‘It somehow fits the thread of argument,’ I said, ‘that the doctrine of the resurrection now comes into our discussion. It seems to me indeed that it ought to be true, as well as being both credible and beyond doubt from the teaching of the Scriptures.92 2. But since the weakness of human thought is somehow strengthened further in such a belief by any arguments available to us, [Kr. 102] it would be well not to run past this subject either without giving it consideration. Let us therefore examine what should be said about it.’ Macrina: 3. At this the teacher replied: ‘Those outside our philosophy, by different theories, in one way and in another, have partially approached the doctrine of the resurrection. Though not agreeing with us in detail, they have by no means failed to evince such a hope. 4. Some indeed insult our humanity with their lack of distinctions, maintaining as they do that the same soul becomes alternately that of a human being and that of an irrational animal, that it changes bodies and is constantly transmigrating where it pleases, becoming after having been human some winged or aquatic or land animal, and then returning from these to human nature again.93 5. Others extend this nonsense even to bushes,94 so that they consider the woody life as congruent with and akin to the soul. Still others hold only this, that the soul is constantly exchanging one human being for another, so that human life is always being conducted by means of the same souls, which are continually coming to be, first in these, then in those. 6. ‘But we say that it is well to take the doctrines of the Church as one’s starting point95 and admit only such of these philosophical conjectures as show that they

92

There is a certain confusion in the manuscripts and editions in the latter part of this sentence. Here, Krabinger’s amendment of ÆägÃí (to see) in some manuscripts to ägÃí is accepted, and full weight given to the ì¥í in the first part of the sentence. Thus Gregory is here understood to mean that apart from the assurances that believers can gain from the Scriptures, the resurrection recommends itself to him even on the level of human reason. 93

The idea of transmigration of souls was usually sourced to Pythagoras and his followers. It is given expression at some length by Plato in the myth of Er, son of Armenius, in Republic 614B–621B, where souls are judged after death, punishments and rewards are allotted, and souls choose to be reincarnated as human beings or animals. 94

It seems that Empedocles is meant. See fragments 127, 146, 147. Celsus also reports this view of Empedocles in the citation by Origen in Contra celsum 8.53. Gregory also discusses this view in On the Making of Man 28. 95

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accord in some measure with the doctrine of the resurrection. 7. Their assertion, for example, that the soul insinuates itself into certain other bodies after it is unyoked from these bodies, does not depart too far from the revival for which we hope. For our view, which maintains that the body, both now and in the future, is composed of the elements of the cosmos, is held just the same by those pagans, who do not conceive of any nature of the body apart from a convergence of these elements. 8. The difference lies in this: we assert that it is the same body as before, fitted together from the same elements, which compacts itself around the soul. They think that the soul migrates to other bodies, whether rational or irrational or even insensate, the composition of which, all agree, [Kr. 104] is from parts of the cosmos. They part company from us in thinking that they are not made of the same elements which in this fleshly life sprung up cleaving to the soul from the beginning. 9. At least let this pagan philosophy bear witness that the soul’s coming to be in the body again is not at all implausible. But it may be opportune to examine the inconsistencies of their doctrine, and from the very sequence of sound argument that emerges for us, to bring the truth to light, as far as possible. 10. ‘What then is to be said of such views? Those who would have the soul migrating to different natures seem to me to confuse the distinctions of nature. They mix everything up and lump them all in with each other, that is, the rational, the irrational, the sensate, and the insensate, as if these could really come to be in each other with no meshing of nature to debar the one from passing into the other. 11. They say that the same soul comes into being at one time as rational and intellectual although clad in a body of some kind, and then again that it lurks in a hole with the reptiles, or flocks with the birds, or joins the beasts of burden, or the predators, or those beneath the waves, or even falls into the insensate, taking root and treeifying, sprouting branches and putting forth flowers on them or thorns, or fruit edible or harmful. 12. This is nothing other to deem that all things are the same and that the nature in all that exists is one, with a kind of muddled and undifferentiated commonality jumbled up in itself, in which there is no individual note to distinguish one thing from another. 13. ‘Anyone who asserts that what comes to be in everything is the same thing intends nothing else than that all things are one, and the innate differences among existing things in no way hinders the mixing of things which have nothing in common. Thus it will be necessary when one sees a venomous or predatory animal to regard it, despite appearances, as of the same kind and even of the same family as oneself. 14. Such a one will not even regard hemlock as alien to his own nature, if, which is the case, he sees the human even in plants. He will not regard without suspicion even the grape-bunch itself, cultivated for the purpose of life, for this too

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comes from a plant. [Kr. 106] Why even the crops of grain by which we are nourished are plants. 15. How then shall one put in the sickle to cut down the grain, and how shall one press the grape-bunch, or pull up the thistle from the field, or cut flowers, or hunt birds, or kindle a fire with wood, if one is unsure whether one’s hands are raised against family members or ancestors or at least one’s own kind, and whether it is with their bodies that the fire is being kindled and the wine bowl mixed and the food prepared? 16. ‘For to anyone who thinks that in each of these cases the soul of a human being has become a plant or animal, there are no signs to mark which plant or animal has come from a human being and which has come otherwise. 17. Anyone caught up in such notions will have to adopt an equivalent attitude to everything. Accordingly he must either harden himself even against those in the nature of living human beings, or, if he is inclined by nature to be benevolent towards his own kind, he will be similarly disposed towards every other living thing, whether it happens to be a reptile or a wild beast. Indeed, if one who has accepted such a doctrine goes into a thicket of trees, he will regard the trees as a crowd of human beings. 18. What then will be the life of such a one, who has either to be respectful towards everything on account of their being of the same kind, or hardened towards human beings because he makes no distinction between them and other creatures? In the light of what we have said, then, such an argument ought to be rejected. 19. ‘Yet there are still many other considerations which according to sound reasoning steer us away from this theory. 20. For I have heard those expounding such views96 saying that there are whole nations of souls living subject to their own particular realm before the life in the body. Such is the subtlety and mobility of their nature that they spin around with the rotation of the universe, but when these souls have lost their wings through some gravitation towards vice,97 they become embodied, firstly in human beings.98 After their secession from the human life due to their habituation to the irrational through their passions, they become beasts of burden. From this they fall as far as the insensate life of plants. 21. Thus what is subtle and mobile by nature, the soul, first becomes heavy and downwardtending and because of vice takes up its dwelling in human [Kr. 108] bodies. Thereupon its power of reasoning is extinguished and it takes up life in irrational 96

That is, the Pythagoreans, the later Platonists, and Origen (cf. Contra Celsum 3.80).

97

See Phaedrus 246B–E on the wings of the soul.

98

Cf. the myth of Er, mentioned above. Macrina’s objections here also dissent from Origen’s ideas of the pre-existence of the soul in On First Principles. Cf. also Origen, Contra celsum 3.80 where he spiritualizes Plato’s image of the soul’s loss of its wings.

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animals. At that point even the gift of the senses is withdrawn and it passes over to the insensate life of plants. But after this it mounts up again by the same steps until it is restored to its place in heaven. 22. ‘Now such a doctrine can be refuted on its own terms even by those moderately skilled in judgement because it lacks consistency with itself. For if the soul on account of vice is to be dragged down from the heavenly life to the woody life, and again from there, on account of virtue, reverts to the heavenly, this kind of argumentation will be in a quandary which to consider more honourable, the woody life or the heavenly life. 23. It is like a cycle of much the same recurring patterns, in which the soul wherever it might be is forever unstable. If it is borne down from the bodiless life to the embodied, and from this to the insensate, and from there again it reverts to the bodiless, then those who teach these things are proposing an indiscriminate confusion of the bad and the good. 24. For neither does the life in heaven continue in blessedness, if vice indeed affects those who live there, nor is the woody life without its share of virtue, since it is from this that the soul’s rebound towards the good begins, while from there it begins the life of vice yet again. 25. ‘For if the soul as it moves about heaven becomes entangled in vice and on account of this is dragged down to the material life from where again it is raised up to dwell on high, 26. they are maintaining contradictorily that material life is the catharsis of vice, while that unerring heavenly circuit becomes for souls the initiation and cause of vices, if in the former the soul grows wings through virtue and then soars upwards, while in the latter their wings fall off because of vice and they seek the ground, becoming earthbound and immersed in the density of material nature. 27. ‘But the absurdity of such doctrines does not stop at this inversion of opinions into their opposites, for even their basic conception itself does not always remain firm. 28. They say, for example, that the heavenly is changeless. [Kr. 110] How then does passion have a place in the changeless? If the lower nature is subject to passion, then how does freedom from passion arise in what is subject to it? They jumble together the incompatible and unite things that have nothing in common, discerning the unchangeable in passion, and again, freedom from passion in the changeable. 29. ‘Yet they do not always remain consistent even in these views, for to the very place whence they had exiled the soul because of vice they bring it home again from the material as if to a life secure and unalloyed, while it escapes their notice that it was there that the soul became heavy with vice and mingled with this lower nature. 30. The disparagement of this life and the praise of the heavenly thus becomes confused and jumbled up, for that which was once disparaged leads in their

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opinion to the beautiful, while that which was taken for the better starts the soul again on its decline towards the worse. 31. ‘Therefore all erroneous and shifting opinions about such matters ought be excluded from the doctrines of the truth. Moreover, let us not follow those who suppose that souls pass from women’s bodies to the life of a man,99 or conversely, that souls separated from the bodies of men come to be in women, or even that they pass from men into men, or from women into women, since all these have missed the truth. 32. As to the earlier theory,100 not only is it rejected as shifting and unreliable of itself, switching its suppositions around into their opposite, but also because it is irreverent, maintaining that nothing of the things that exist is brought into being unless vice gives to each nature its beginning. 33. For if neither human beings nor plants nor cattle can spring up unless a soul has fallen upon them from above, and this fall comes about because of vice, then obviously they think that vice initiates the constitution of all that exists. And both of these are somehow to happen together at the same time: a human being springs into being from a marriage, and the fall of the soul coincides with the function of that marriage. 34. ‘Yet there is something else even more absurd than this. If the irrational nature for the most part mates in the spring, are we to say then that spring causes vice to be engendered in the sphere above [Kr. 112] so that at one and the same time souls filled with vice fall and the wombs of irrational animals conceive? 35. And what are we to say about the farmer who sets the seedlings of plants in the earth? How is his hand to dig a human soul into the ground along with the plant: by the coincidence of the soul’s moulting of its wings with his impulse to plant? 36. ‘The same absurdity exists in the second of the two theories as well, the one in which it is supposed that the soul concerns itself with the intercourse of those living in wedlock, or is on the look-out for childbirth,101 in order to insinuate itself into the bodies then produced. 37. What if the man refuses the union,102 or the woman frees herself of the necessity of labour pains,103 will vice then cease to weigh 99

For example, in Republic 620BC the soul of Atalanta chooses the life of a male athlete and the soul of Epieus chooses the life of a woman skilled in the arts. 100

That is, that human souls pass into animals and plants.

101

In accordance with stoic medicine which held that the human soul only entered at childbirth, a view incompatible with Gregory’s. 102

ãÜìïí, i.e. marital union. The man frustrates an act of intercourse to avoid procreation (coitus interruptus). 103

That is, she uses means to procure sterility or an abortion. The second-century AD physician Soranus gives advice on contraception, distinguishes between miscarriage and procured abortion,

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down that soul? Will it be marital union, then, that gives the first signal to vice above against souls, or does this inclination towards the opposite batten on the soul even without this? 38. But in this latter case, the soul will have to wander about in the meantime like a homeless vagrant, having put off its heavenly environs, yet not being lucky enough to find a body to receive it. 39. ‘But how can they suppose after this that the divine presides over the things that exist if they attribute the beginnings of human life to this fortuitous and irrational fall of souls? All that follows must of necessity accord with the beginning, for if the life was initiated by some mechanical accident,104 its entire subsequent course must also be a series of chances. 40. In vain do they refer the things that exist to a divine power if they will not say that things in the cosmos are engendered by the divine will and if they consign the beginnings of what comes into being to some evil accident, as if the human life would not be constituted unless vice first gave the signal for life. 41. If such is the beginning of life, then clearly a sequel will also be set in motion that accords with the beginning. No one would maintain that the beautiful springs from vice or that from good comes its opposite. Rather, as is the nature of the seed so we expect the fruit to be also. 42. ‘If providence therefore does not pervade everything that exists, this mechanical and accidental process shall govern the whole of life. The forethought that comes of reason will be utterly useless, [Kr. 114] the benefit that comes of virtue will be nothing, and keeping oneself far from vice would also be nothing. Everything will be entirely in the power of whatever carries it along, and our life will not differ at all from boats without ballast, drifting about on the waves of mechanical circumstances, now towards the beautiful, now towards the foul as chance may be. 43. No benefit consequent upon virtue shall ever come to those whose nature takes its rise from virtue’s opposite, for if our life is ordained105 by God it is acknowledged that vice does not initiate our life. But if we do spring from it, then we shall certainly continue to live in thorough conformity with it. 44. Consequently, the judgement after this life and the recompense according to merit are shown up as nonsense, as also all the other things asserted and believed that tend to the elimination of vice, for how can the human being who springs from such a source escape it? How could any deliberate impulse towards the life of virtue come

and between contraception and abortion, and justifies the latter if the woman’s life is in danger (Gynaeceia 1.19.60, 1.20.59–65); he lists some seventeen abortifacient and contraceptive recipes.

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¦ê óõíôõ÷ßáò áÛôüìáôïõ ôéíÎò.

105

ïÆêïíïìgÃôáé, disposed, dispensed, arranged, administered, etc.

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about in the human being, whose nature, they allege, takes its rise from vice? 45. For just as none of the irrational animals attempts to give utterance in human fashion, but uses the voice of its nurture and its nature, deeming it no penalty not have been allotted articulate speech, so in the same way the desire of virtue will never come about in those whose life is reckoned to have its beginning and cause in vice, because it is something quite outside their nature. 46. ‘But in fact, to all who have purified their soul through reason, the life of virtue is possible through zeal and desire. By this it is clearly proved that vice is not prior in time to life, and that our nature did not derive its first beginnings from such a source, but that it was the all-disposing wisdom of God that initiated our life, and that when the soul came to generation in the manner which is pleasing to its maker, then by its power of volition it was free to choose according to its intention whatever it wished, and this indeed is what it becomes. 47. ‘We may understand this argument from the example of the eyes. It is their nature to be able to see, but if they do not see, this is either because of choice or from some condition, since what is unnatural may sometimes [Kr. 116] come about instead of what is natural when someone voluntarily shuts his eyes or the sight is occluded by some condition. 48. Likewise we may say of the soul that it has its constitution from God, and since no vice can be entertained in connection with the divine, the soul is outside any necessity of it. Yet though it came into being in this way, it can be led by its own intention to what it approves, either by wilfully shutting its eyes to the beautiful or sustaining damage to the eye from that insidious enemy who cohabits with our life106 and so come to pass its life in the darkness of delusion, or on the other hand, by looking purely to the truth and so keeping far from the darkening passions.

Chapter 9: The Generation of the Human Soul [Macrina cont.]: 1. ‘Someone then will ask: when and how does the soul come into being? But this very enquiry into how each thing has come into being should 106

Counterbalancing Gregory’s metaphysical optimism and emphasis on human freedom is his strong sense of the moral struggle involved in the human vocation from the time of the Fall. Something close to a doctrine of original sin is expressed at 10.23. Cf. also Catechetical Discourse 8: ‘Since there has been inbred in the soul a strong natural tendency to evil, it must suffer [. . .]’. The idea here, that there is some almost innate evil within us that must be contended with, will be considerably developed by pseudo-Macarius. See E. V. McClear, ‘The Fall of Man and Original Sin in the Theology of Gregory of Nyssa’, Theological Studies, 9 (1948), 175–212.

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be excluded entirely from our discussion. Even with regard to what is readily available to our understanding, that is, the things we apprehend with the senses, it would be impossible for investigative reason to conceive how what now appears was constituted. 2. Even God-inspired and holy men consider it beyond grasping. For By faith, the apostle says, we understand that the worlds were fashioned by the word of God, so that the things which are seen came into being from things which do not appear (Hebrews 11. 3).107 3. He would not have said this, I think, if he had thought the object of enquiry knowable by the reasoning powers. While the apostle says that it is believed that it was by the divine will that the world itself and all which has come to be from it was fashioned — whatever this world is in which the entire visible and invisible creation is contemplated side by side — yet how this comes about he left out of investigation. 4. ‘For I do not think that inquirers will ever succeed in this, for the investigation of these things presents us with many difficulties108 from the outset. How, for example, can movement come from the nature that is stable?109 How does the dimensional and complex come from the simple and non-dimensional? Does it perhaps come from the transcendent substance itself? But this is not borne out by the fact that existing things are different in kind to that substance. 5. Does it come then from some other source? Yet reason cannot contemplate anything as quite outside the divine nature, for such a supposition would drive a wedge between two distinct principles, as if something were conjectured to exist outside the creative cause, from which skilful [Kr. 118] wisdom enlists the resources for creation. 6. ‘Therefore, since the cause of all that exists is one and one only, and yet the things brought into existence by that cause are not of the same kind as the transcendent nature, both theories are equally absurd, whether one supposes that the creation is from the divine nature or that the universe is constituted from some other substance, 7. for either the divine shall be reckoned to exist in the individual qualities of creation, if all that comes into being is of the same kind as God, or else

107

As Roth remarks (On the Soul and the Resurrection, p. 97 n. 1), Macrina could also have mentioned Socrates’ rejection of natural science, described in Plato’s Phaedo. 108 That is, of a metaphysical nature. There is a barrier beyond which empirical investigation cannot go. Measuring and analysing material creation can never yield answers to the ultimate and deepest questions. 109

Macrina/Gregory address Aristotelian concerns here. Aristotle argued to the existence of an immaterial and noetic God from the necessity of an ultimate source for all the movement in the universe: God therefore is the unmoved mover, beyond which not. The doctrine received its fullest development in his late work Metaphysics È.8 and especially Ë.8.

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a material nature outside of the divine substance will have to be brought in alongside it, comparable to God in unbegottenness,110 because its being has no beginning. This in fact is what the Manichaeans fantasized111 and some who borrowed equivalent notions from Greek philosophy,112 and they made this fantasy their doctrine. 8. ‘Therefore in order to avoid either of these absurdities that arise from the enquiry into existing things, let us follow the example of the apostle’s lack of curiosity and leave aside the question of how each thing exists, observing in passing only this much, that the movement of the divine choice becomes a reality whenever it wills. Its intention takes substance, becoming at once a nature, for whatever that omnipotent authority wills, it does not leave insubstantiated. The actuality of its will is substance.113 9. ‘Inasmuch as existing things are divided into two kinds, that of the intellectual and that of the bodily, the intellectual creation somehow does not seem inconsistent with the bodiless nature,114 but approximates it in displaying absence of visible form, intangibility and non-dimensionality, and if anyone supposes that these pertain to the transcendent nature, he will not miss the mark. 10. The bodily creation, however, being contemplated in those individual qualities that are not shared by the divine, does provide reason with a particular difficulty, namely that it cannot see how the visible comes from the invisible, how the hard and resistant comes from the intangible, how the delimited comes from the infinite, how that which is wholly circumscribed by certain measures contemplated in terms of quantity can come from that which has no quantity and no size, and so on with all the aspects comprehended in the bodily nature. 11. But of these we can say this much, [Kr. 120] that not one of them contemplated of itself in the body is the body, neither shape, nor colour, nor weight, nor dimension, nor stature, nor anything else contemplated as a quality, but each one of them is a category. It is rather their convergence with each other and their union which becomes a body. 12. Since the qualities which make up the body are grasped by the mind and not by the senses, 110

êáô ôÎ •ãÝííçôïí.

111

Manichaeans professed an ontological dualism, i.e. two metaphysically distinct and opposing principles of good and of evil. They considered the latter be the source of material creation. 112 Most Greek philosophers (and near-Eastern mythologies) thought in terms of a pre-existent matter furnishing the material for the work of ‘creation’, which consequently was a question of shaping and fashioning as by an artisan, rather than of creation ex nihilo.

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113

º ä¥ ôïØ ègëÞìáôïò àðáñîéò ïÛóßá ¦óôé.

114

That is, of the divine nature.

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and the divine is intellectual, what trouble can it be for the intellectual to fashion the intellectual qualities whose convergence with each other generates for us the nature of the body? 13. ‘But let all these be explored aside from our present enquiry. Our question was: if souls do not pre-exist their bodies, when and how do they come into being? In addressing this, however, our argument dismisses any busy enquiry concerning the how as something beyond our reach. 14. It therefore remains for us to enquire when souls take the beginnings of their existence, which follows from matters we previously examined. For if we were to grant that the soul lives in some special state prior to the body, it would be entirely necessary to deem that the absurdities of those inventors of doctrines have force, according to which souls take up their dwelling in bodies because of vice. 15. On the other hand, no one of any intelligence would suppose that the generation of the soul comes later and that it is subsequent to the fashioning of the body.115 For it is plain to everyone that nothing inanimate has any power of movement or of growth in itself, whereas there is no dispute or doubt about the growth or the moving about of those being nurtured within the womb. All that remains is to think that the beginning of the constitution of body and of soul is one and the same. 16. ‘We also affirm that just as the earth receives the offshoot of a root from those who till the earth and makes a tree of it, yet it does not itself impart to its nursling the power of growth, but only gives what has been embedded in itself a start towards growth, so also that which is drawn off from a human being for the planting of a human being is in some way living, the animate from the animate, the nourished from the nourished.116 17. If this slip of an offshoot does not encompass all the activities and the movements of the soul to begin with, [Kr. 122] it is no surprise, for neither does the ear appear all at once in the seed of wheat. How indeed could anything so large be encompassed in something so small? But as the earth 115

Macrina/Gregory reject the Stoic teaching that the human soul only enters at the time of

birth. 116 ¦î ¦ìøý÷ïõ §ìøõ÷ïí (the ensouled from the ensouled), ôñgöïìÝíïõ ôñgöüìgíïí. In short, human semen is something alive in itself and somehow transmits ‘soul’ (= life) in the begetting of a new human being. This doctrine is traducianism, i.e. the idea that the soul is passed on from one’s progenitor(s) in the moment of conception. See also On the Making of Man 19.5. Since there is no idea that the woman also contributes necessary ‘seed’ to conception, but only the environment necessary to nurture the new life, the ‘quickening’ of what is conceived is thought to be due solely to the semen. Yet traducianism is not the last word of Gregory’s thought and contrasts with his spiritualizing concepts of the soul elsewhere. Compare his description of the human soul as ‘an influx of the divine in-breathing’ (Against Apollinaris 12).

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nurses it with the nourishment suitable to it, the wheat becomes an ear without changing its nature in the soil, but simply developing it and bringing it to maturity through the activity of that nourishment. 18. Just as in the sprouting of those seeds the growth towards maturity advances little by little, so in the same way in the constitution of the human, the power of the soul reveals itself in proportion to bodily size.117 First it is present in that which is being formed within118 through the capacities of nutrition and growth. After that, it introduces the gift of the senses to those who have come into the light. Then somewhat like the fruit that appears on a plant that has been growing for a while, it displays in a certain measure the power of reason, not all of it at once, but growing in a steady progress along with the shooting up of that plant. 19. Inasmuch as that which is drawn off from animate beings to give a start to the constitution of another animate being cannot itself be dead, since deadness comes from the privation of the soul and it cannot be that the privation of something is the way to acquiring it, we grasp from these considerations that in the constituting of that which is compounded from both119 there is a common passage of both into being. The one does not come first and the other follow afterward.120 20. ‘Reason necessarily foresees that the increase in the number of souls will level off, in order that nature may not flow on forever pouring out successive generations and never ceasing from that forward movement. 21. But we think that the reason why our nature must surely at some time come to a standstill is that since every intellectual nature is stabilized by its own plenitude, it is likely that at some time our humanity will also reach a limit, and in this show itself not alien to the intellectual nature. Thus it will not always be despised for seeming to be in a defective state, since this continual addition of successive generations implies that our nature is deficient.

117

In asserting that at conception the human being is fully constituted, body and soul, as in a seed, and that all that remains are successive stages of growth and maturation, the medically literate Macrina/Gregory firmly reject the ideas of Stoic-influenced physicians, such as Soranus, that the unborn is not really alive and a human being till it draws breath after birth. 118

ôïÃò §íäïègí ðëáóóïìÝíïéò.

119

That is, body and soul.

120

This is a very important statement of position, already anticipated at 8.15 (see note), that the soul is generated simultaneously with the body at conception. In this Macrina/Gregory decisively reject Origen’s speculations on the pre-existence of souls (e.g. Contra celsum 3.75) alluded to at 9.14. The individual human is therefore already fully constituted at the moment of conception. The only difference between its state then and later after it is born and during its life until death, is its position along an unbroken continuum of growth and maturation (10.49, 72).

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22. ‘Whenever our humanity shall have attained its proper fullness,121 this flowing movement of its nature will altogether cease as it comes up against its [Kr. 124] necessary limit. Some other condition will then carry on our life, other than the present succession of generation and corruption. 23. If there is no generation, then by every necessity nothing will be destroyed, for if synthesis must precede dissolution — by synthesis I mean the passage into being through generation — then necessarily, if this synthesis does initiate the process, no dissolution will follow. Hence it is shown in advance by credible argument that the life after this life is stable and indissoluble, unchanged by any generation or corruption.

Chapter 10: The Resurrection of the Body Gregory: 1. The teacher finished her exposition, and to the many sitting by the argument seemed now to have reached a fitting conclusion. Yet I feared that if the teacher succumbed to her infirmity, which indeed is what happened, we would no longer have one among us to solve the objections of pagans to the resurrection, and hence I spoke up. 2. ‘The argument has not yet touched the most important of our enquiries into doctrine. I mean, that the God-inspired Scriptures in both the new and in the old teaching not only declare emphatically that as our nature proceeds in a certain order and sequence through the cyclic movement of time, this on-flowing current of successive generations will come to a stop, 3. but also that when the plenitude of the universe no longer admits further increase, the entire complement of souls will return again from their formless and scattered state to subsistence and manifestation, the very same elements reverting to each other in the same connecting chain. 4. In the divine teaching of the Scriptures this restoration of life is called the 121

Macrina/Gregory argue not only for the perfecting of each human being, but also for a kind of collective perfecting, or coming to full term of ‘the human’. According to On the Making of Man 16.16–18, it is ‘the entire plenitude of the human’ which images God, and since the plenitude of human nature had pre-existence in God’s foreknowledge (19.1), he has ordained a definite number of souls (17.4), which were destined before the Fall to come into being as angels, but which after the Fall, would come into being through the ministry of sexual differentiation. Moore analyses the thought of this section (NPNF2 , V , 459, n. 7): ‘Each individual soul represents, to Gregory’s view, a “thought” of God, which becomes visible by the soul’s being born [better translated as ‘generated’]. There will come a time when all these “thoughts”, which complete, and do not destroy each other, will have completed the ðëÞñùìá (Humanity) which the Deity contemplates. This immediate apparition of a soul as a “thought” of God is very unlike the teaching of his master Origen: and yet more sober and more scriptural.’

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resurrection, the same term comprising the entire movement of the elements and the raising up of the earthy being.’ Macrina: 5. ‘But which of these points,’ she said, ‘has been left unmentioned in what has been said?’ Gregory: 6. ‘Why, the very doctrine of the resurrection itself,’ I replied. Macrina: 7. ‘But surely,’ she said, ‘many of the things we have just been discussing122 bear on that goal.’ [Kr. 126] Gregory: 8. ‘Then do you not know,’ I asked, ‘how great a swarm of objections our antagonists bring against us concerning this hope?’ And straightaway I endeavoured to spell out all the ways in which these challengers contrived to refute the resurrection. Macrina: 9. She replied: ‘It seems to me that we ought first to briefly run through the declarations of this doctrine scattered through the divine Scripture, so that from there we may give the finishing touch123 to our argument. 10. Well then, I have heard124 David saying in the midst of his praises in the divine songs, at the end of the hymnody of the hundred and third psalm where he has taken God’s adornment of the universe as his theme: You shall take away their breath and they shall fail and return to their dust. You shall send forth your Spirit and they shall be created and you shall renew the face of the earth (Psalm 103. 29–30). 11. He says that the power of the Spirit which works all things in all (I Corinthians 12. 6) gives life to those it enters and on the other hand deprives of life those it quits. Since, as it says, the failure of living things comes about at the withdrawal of the Spirit, and the renewal of what has failed comes about at his advent, and according to the order of the statement the failure of what is to be renewed comes first, we hold that in these words that mystery of the resurrection is being announced to the Church, David foretelling this very gift by the prophetic spirit. 12. ‘You will find this same prophet also saying elsewhere that the God of all, the Lord of everything that is, has shone upon us, to establish the feast with thick branches125

122

7.28 and most of Chapter 8, as well as Chapter 5 earlier in the dialogue.

123

º êïñùíÂò, like the winner’s wreath at the games.

124

This is a testimony to the oral culture surrounding the Scriptures. Macrina has an aural knowledge of texts through constant chanting and reciting them. 125

¦í ôïÃò ðõêÜæïõóé, this anomalously verbal form is to be accommodated to the adjective ðõêíïÃò or the passive participle ðgðõêíùìÝíïéò, meaning ‘thick’, ‘dense’, ‘closely packed /

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(Psalm 117. 27, Septuagint), meaning by the phrase thick branches the feast of tabernacle-fixing126 which was instituted of old in the tradition of Moses. 13. I think that the law-giver was prophetically announcing beforehand the things which are to come, for though the feast was being repeatedly celebrated, it was not yet accomplished. 14. For the truth was indeed being foreshadowed as a type in the figures127 of those recurring celebrations, but the true tabernacle-fixing itself was not yet. Therefore on this account, according to the prophetic word, the God and Lord of all has shown himself to us to institute for human [Kr. 128] nature the tabernacle-fixing of our housing that was dissolved, when the body condenses again at the convergence of its scattered elements. 15. For that expression ‘thick covering’ signifies according to its own meaning an encircling cloak and the adornment provided by it. 16. Now the phrasing of the psalmody continues in this way: God and Lord has shone upon us; institute the feast with thick branches even to the horns of the altar, which seems to me to announce in figures beforehand that one single feast is to be instituted for the whole rational creation, and in that assembly of the good the inferiors will join in the dance with their superiors.128 17. ‘For in the typological arrangements of the temple129 not all were allowed to pass within its outer perimeter, for gentiles and foreigners were all forbidden entry. And again, of those who did come within, not all were granted equal access further within, but only those who had been sanctified by a purer way of life and by certain sprinklings. 18. Yet again, not everyone even among these could set foot within the inner temple,130 but it was lawful for priests alone to enter within the veil, when required by their priestly duty. 19. But even to the priests the hidden, covered’. Commentators dependent on the Septuagint text interpreted it to refer to branches or boughs; others interpreted it to mean ‘crowds’. 126 That is, the Feast of Tabernacles/booths/huts or Sukkoth, originally a late autumn harvest festival celebrated with pilgrimage to Jerusalem. Cf. Exodus 23. 16, 34. 22, Leviticus 23. 33–35, 39–43, Deuteronomy 16. 13–16, Ezekiel 3. 4, Nehemiah 8. 14–18. 127

áÆíßãìáóé, i.e. ‘hints’, ‘riddles’, pointers to something else.

128

The type is that the gradations of admission to the innermost shrine of the temple (here the horned altar) will be abolished, and all will gain access. The anti-type is that then the human shall be on a par with the angelic and/or those of different degrees of spiritual attainment in this life will eventually reach parity in divine communion. 129

The typological exegesis here depends on the exposition of the temple liturgy in Hebrews

8–10. 130 Ò §íäïí íáÎò, the sanctuary proper, the ‘holy place’ or Hekal which was entered through a veil. In it were found the altar of incense, the great seven-branched lampstand (the menorah), and the table of the loaves of offering.

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innermost shrine of the temple131 where stood the altar132 adorned with its jutting horns, was inaccessible, except for the one who held the highest rank of the priesthood, who once a year on a certain designated day passed within alone, bearing an especially sacred and mystic offering. 20. ‘If such were the distinctions that applied in this temple which was an image and an imitation of the intellectual realm, then it is not the whole of the rational nature that can approach the temple of God, that is to say, the confession of the great God. No, those who have gone astray in false opinions are outside the precinct of the divine, 21. while of those who through this confession have been admitted within, some who have been purified beforehand by sprinklings and by chastity are preferred to the others, and of these some who have been already consecrated133 have still further privileges, even to being counted worthy of the inner mysteries. 22. ‘The meaning [Kr. 130] of the imagery may be brought out more clearly. From the teaching of the Word one can ascertain the following points: that some of the rational powers have been fixed like the holy altar of incense in the innermost shrine of the deity. Again some of these appear pre-eminent, jutting forth like the horns, while others are arranged around them in first or second place in a

131

ôÎ äg •ðüêñõöüí ôg ê᠖äõôïí ôïØ íáïØ. The holy of holies, the Debir, containing the Ark of the Covenant, capped by the ‘mercy seat’ and flanked by images of two cherubim with outstretched wings. The jar of manna and Aaron’s rod were kept here, apparently (Hebrews 9. 4) within the Ark together with the tablets of the covenant. 132

Macrina/Gregory here follow Hebrews 9. 3 in locating the altar of incense within the holy of holies. This is not the arrangement of Exodus 30. 1–10, 40. 1–8, 18–33, and Leviticus 16. 11–14, which place the altar of incense in the holy place immediately before the entrance into the holy of holies. Incense was burnt on the altar of incense twice daily, hardly possible if it were located within the holy of holies. There were in fact two veils, one at the entrance to the holy place, and one at the entrance to the holy of holies. The altar of holocaust on which animal sacrifice was offered and the laver of washing were outside in the court before the holy place. Once a year, on the Day of Atonement, the high priest took fresh incense, live coals from the altar of holocaust, and the blood of sacrifice, passed within the first veil and burned incense in the holy place, and then passed through the second veil bearing the blood of sacrifice with which he then sprinkled the ‘mercy seat’. 133

•öégñùèÝíôgò. Macrina/Gregory refer to virgins and ascetics, though it is noteworthy that the priests in the temple cult are held to be their type. This is possible perhaps because it is not the external worship that is being considered but the internal and existential liturgy of every human being in relation to God. Gregory’s earliest work, On Virginity, very possibly written after consultation with Macrina, is full of a sense of the special divine access given to those who are virgins for the Lord, i.e. those who have progressed from physical virginity to the interiorized virginity of total inward dedication to God.

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certain sequence of rank. 23. The race of human beings, however, was expelled from the divine precinct because of indwelling vice, but when purified with sprinkled lustrations it enters again within. Since all the intervening barricades by which our vice has fenced us off from what lies within the veil are eventually to be done away with (cf. Ephesians 2. 14), when the tabernacle of our nature is set up again in the resurrection, and all the indwelling corruption of vice has vanished from the things that exist, then the common feast will be instituted around God by those who have thickened134 again through the resurrection. 24. One and the same gladness will be set before all, with no difference any longer dividing off the rational nature from an equal participation in the good, for those who through vice are now outside shall then be admitted within the inner shrine of the divine blessedness and shall bind themselves to the horns of the altar of incense, that is, to the most supreme of the transcendent powers. 25. ‘The apostle says this same thing more plainly when he interprets the final symphony of the universe with the good, when every knee shall bow to him, of things in heaven and things in earth and things under the earth, and every tongue shall confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father (Philippians 2. 10–11). 26. Here, instead of the horns, he speaks of the angelic and heavenly and with the other terms he refers to us, the creation we think of next to that, and says that one festival united in voice135 shall prevail for all. That festival shall be the confession and the recognition of the one who truly is. (Exodus 3. 14, Septuagint)136 27. ‘One could choose,’ she said, ‘many other passages of Holy Scripture to confirm the doctrine of the resurrection. There is Ezekiel for example, who, soaring in the prophetic spirit over all the intervening time and its long duration, [Kr. 132] stands, by means of his prognostic power, at the very moment of the resurrection and gazes at what is to come as if already present, bringing it before our eyes in his description. 28. He saw a great plain stretched out to an immense distance, and upon it was a vast mound of bones scattered about haphazardly this way and that. Then by the divine power the bones at once began to move towards their own kind that had once belonged to them, and to grow into their familiar sockets, and then clothe themselves with sinews, flesh, and skin, which is the thickening spoken of 134

The same word as the ‘thick’ branches, here referring to the ‘condensing’ again of the body.

135

Literally, ‘symphonic’.

136

ôïØ Ðíôùò Ðíôïò. The Septuagint text of God’s self-disclosure to Moses is ¦ãþ gÆìé Ò êí, ‘I am he who is / the existent one’. Beginning with the Jewish philosopher Philo and continuing in the Christian tradition, this phrase was confidently identified with the expression for the divine in the Platonic tradition, ôÎ Ðíôùò Ðí, ‘that which really is’.

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in the psalmody. It was the life-giving Spirit awakening all that lay prostrate there (cf. Ezekiel 37. 1–14). 29. ‘But with regard to the apostle’s description of the wonders attending the resurrection, why repeat it, since it is readily available to all enquirers: how, for example, at a certain cry of command and the sound of trumpets, says the Word, all that lies dead shall be changed all at once in a moment of time to the condition of immortal nature (I Thessalonians 4. 16, I Corinthians 15. 51–52). 30. ‘The utterances in the Gospel I will also pass over lightly, because they are quite clear to every one. For the Lord not only declares in word that the dead137 shall be raised again (cf. John 5. 25–29), but accomplishes in deed the resurrection itself, beginning this wonder-working with demonstrations of power nearer to us and less likely to be disbelieved. 31. First he displays his life-giving power in the case of diseases unto death when he abrogates these conditions with one word of command (cf. Matthew 9. 18–25, Luke 7. 1–10, John 4. 46–53). Next he awakens a child who has just died (cf. Luke 8. 49–56). Then he makes a young man already being carried out for burial sit up on the bier and so restores him to his mother (cf. Luke 7. 11–15). 32. After that he leads forth alive from the tomb Lazarus whose corpse was four-days dead and already decomposing, having given life by his voice of command to that which had lain prostrate (cf. John 11. 17–44). 33. Then after three days he raises from the dead his own human body pierced through as it was with the nails and spear (cf. John 10. 17–18, Matthew 28. 6, Luke 24. 36–40), and brings the prints of those nails and the spear-wound as testimony of his resurrection (cf. John 20. 26–27). 34. ‘But I do not think it is necessary to go into these things in detail,138 for no doubt lingers for those who have received the tradition of the written accounts.’ Gregory: 35. ‘But this,’ I said, ‘was not in question. Most of your hearers will agree both from the scriptural proofs and from the arguments already examined that there at some time there will be the resurrection and that the human being will be brought before the incorruptible [Kr. 134] tribunal.139

137

ôï×ò ígêñï×ò, i.e. the bodies of the dead.

138

On the Making of Man 25.7–11 rehearses in greater detail this progressive display by the Lord of the power of resurrection. 139

This is the correct order. The envisaged sequence of states seems to be (1) bodily death and survival of the bodiless soul, (2) remediation of the soul almost as a necessity of nature, (3) the general resurrection, (4) purification of the risen body as required, (5) the general judgement which discloses the moral weight of each life, and (6) final bliss/restoration of all things. See 10.56–58,

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36. ‘But what does remain to be examined is whether what we hope for will be like what is now. Because if it is, then as I said,140 human beings had better flee the hope of the resurrection. For if human bodies are to be restored to life again as they are when they cease to live, then all that human beings can look forward to in the resurrection is unending misfortune. 37. For what could be a more pitiful sight than bodies shrivelled in extreme old age and changed into something unsightly and distorted, the flesh on them all wasted with the length of years, the skin all withered into wrinkles about the bones? With the sinews contracted through their no longer being enriched with their natural moisture, the whole body shrinks and becomes an absurd and pitiful sight, the head bent towards the knee, the hands on either side unable to carry on their natural activity, shaking continually with an involuntary trembling. 38. What again of those whose bodies are wasted through chronic disease? They only differ from bare bones in that they seem to be covered with a tissue of thin and already worn-out skin. 39. What also of those swollen with the affliction of dropsy and of those who have succumbed to the sacred disease!141 What word would suffice to bring before the eyes the horror of the disfigurement? Gradually the rottenness pervades all the limbs and organs and sensation and devours them. 40. What of those mutilated in earthquakes, or battles, or from some other cause who live on in this misfortune for a time before they die, or those disfigured in some way from birth who have grown up with twisted limbs? What is one to say of them? 41. And concerning newborn infants who have been exposed or strangled or died a natural death, what is one to think if they are to be brought back to life again just as they were? Are they really to continue in their infancy? What could be more wretched! Or are they to reach the measure of their stature? Yes, but with what sort of milk is nature to nurse them again? 42. ‘Thus if the body is to live again the same [Kr. 136] in every respect as before, then what is being expected is misfortune. But if it is not the same, the one awakened will be someone other than the one prostrate. 43. If, for example, it was a child who fell, but it is an adult who rises again, or the reverse, how can we say that it is the one lying prostrate who is raised up, when the fallen one is being substituted by reason of the difference in stature? 44. Instead of the child, one sees an adult; instead of the elder, one sees someone in the prime of life. In fact, one 10.80, 10.84, 10.107–11. Gregory discusses resurrection, remediation, and judgement in that order in Catechetical Discourse 35. 140 141

See 10.8.

The ‘sacred disease’ in Hippocratic medicine usually refers to epilepsy, but here it evidently means leprosy and/or gangrene.

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beholds another entirely: the agile instead of the cripple, or one of firm flesh instead of one wasted away, and so on with all like cases, not to go through each of them for fear of burdening the argument. 45. If the body is not to come to life again as it was when it was mingled with the earth, then it is not that which has died that shall be raised again, but rather the earth shall be fashioned again into another human being. 46. ‘What then is the resurrection to me, if instead of myself it is someone else who shall come to life? For how could I recognize myself when I see in myself what is not myself? For it could not truly be myself unless it were in every respect the same as myself. 47. It is as if I were to retain in memory the features of a certain person in this present life. Let us suppose for the sake of argument that he had sparse hair, prominent lips, a somewhat snub nose, a pale complexion, grey eyes, white hair, and a wizened body, and that I then went to look for such a one, and met a youth with a fine head of hair, a beak of a nose, dark skin, and in all other respects quite different in his bodily features. When I see this one, am I likely to think of that one? 48. ‘But why dwell any further on these lesser objections and neglect the stronger? For who does not know that human nature is like a stream, advancing continually from generation142 to death in a certain forward movement and only leaving off that movement at the same time that it ceases to exist? 49. This movement does not involve a change of place, for our nature does go out from itself. No, its progress is by internal alteration instead. This alteration, as long as it is what it is called, never remains at the same stage, for how can the alteration of something be achieved through sameness? 50. It is like the fire on the wick which, as far as outward aspect goes, always appears the same, since the continuity of its movement always [Kr. 138] shows it uninterrupted and one with itself. But in truth it is forever supplanting itself and it never remains the same. For as soon as the moisture extracted by the heat bursts into flame it is burnt up and changed into smoke, the movement of the flame always being activated by the alterative power and of itself converting the subject-matter into smoke. 51. Thus it is impossible for anyone touching the flame twice in the same place to come into contact with the same flame twice, since the ongoing change is so rapid it does not wait for a second touch, however quickly this may be done. No, the flame is always new and fresh, constantly being born and always supplanting itself and never remaining the same.143 142 143

ãgíÝógùò, i.e. not birth but the constitution of the body–soul entity at conception. See 9.19.

10.52 clearly alludes to the philosophy of Heraclitus, the pre-Socratic philosopher famous for his ‘all things are in flux’ (Plato, Cratylus, 439C, cf. 411C, Theaetetus 132C), and ‘one cannot

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52. ‘It is rather like this with our bodily nature, for the process of inflow and outflow which is always going on in our nature through the alterative movement only stops when it ceases from life. As long as it is alive there is no stop, for it is either being filled or dispelling, always engaging in one or the other. 53. For if someone is not the same as he was even yesterday but by alteration becomes something else, when the resurrection shall bring our body back to life again, that single one will become a sort of crowd of human beings, that is, if nothing of the one being raised is to be missing: the newborn baby, the infant, the child, the lad, the man, the father, the elder, and all the stages in between. 54. ‘Moreover, both chastity and lack of self-control are operative in the flesh, and both those who endure the pains of tortures on behalf of piety and those who take the soft option at such a prospect declare themselves through the senses of the body. How then can justice be secured at the Judgement? 55. ‘Or the same one now offends and now cleanses himself by repentance and then, as it may happen, relapses into his offence, both the defiled and the undefiled body alternating in the course of his nature, neither of them prevailing in any lasting way. 56. Which body shall be punished along with this reprobate? That which is shrunken with old age and near to death? But [Kr. 140] this is not the same as that which accomplished the sin. Ah — that which defiled itself with passion? But then where is the elder? For either this latter shall not be raised again and the resurrection will be ineffective, or else this is the one that shall be awakened, while the culpable body will escape justice. 57. ‘Let me also raise another of the objections put to us by those who do not accept our argument. Nature, they say, does not make any part of the body without a function. Some bodily parts, for example, afford the basis and power of life in us — without them our life in the flesh cannot possibly be sustained. Such are the heart, liver, brain, lungs, stomach, and the other internal organs. Others are assigned to sensory activity, and still others to the activities of doing and moving about, while others are adapted to the transmission of posterity. 58. Now if the life after this one is to continue in the same conditions, the transition amounts to nothing. But if the word is true, as indeed it is true, which defines marriage as having no part in the way of life after the resurrection (cf. Matthew 22. 30), and that the life then shall no longer be maintained by eating and drinking (cf. Romans 14. 17), what use shall there be for these parts of our body, if the activities for which our members now exist are no longer to be expected in that life? step into the same river twice’ (Plato, Cratylus, 402A), which was also alluded to here in 9.20. See also On the Making of Man 13.

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59. ‘If the organs for marriage exist for the sake of marriage, then when this is no more, we shall have no need of those organs for this purpose. And so also of the hands for working, the feet for running, the mouth for taking in food, the teeth in grinding it for nourishment, the entrails for digestion, the excretory passages for dispelling that which has all been used up. 60. When these activities are no more, then how or for what purpose shall those members that came into being on account of these activities exist? Consequently, if those things which are going to contribute nothing to that other life ought not be about the body, then surely none of the parts which now make up our body would exist at all? 61. The life then would subsist in other ways, and one could no longer call such a state a resurrection in which each of the members does not rise along with the body due to their uselessness in that life. 62. But if the resurrection is to be effective in all these members, then the author of the resurrection will be fashioning parts in us that in that life are vain and meaningless. [Kr. 142] And yet it is necessary that we believe that there is a resurrection, and that it will not be vain. 63. ‘We must therefore attend to the argument, that we may thoroughly secure the probability of this doctrine in every respect.’ Macrina: 64. When I had finished this speech, the teacher replied: ‘You have assailed the doctrines of the resurrection not without gallantry using the rhetorical art as it is called, running round the truth in circles with attractively subversive arguments, 65. with the result that those who have not looked into this mystery of the truth too closely might be affected by the plausibility of your argument and think that the doubt raised against what we have been saying is not entirely beside the point. 66. ‘Yet the truth, she went on, is not so, even though we may be unable to oppose your argument with matching rhetoric.144 The true rationale of these things is still laid up in the hidden treasuries of Wisdom (cf. Sirach 1. 25, 4. 18, Proverbs 8. 21), and will not come to light until we are taught the mystery of the resurrection by the deed. Then we shall have no more need of fine phrases to clarify the things for which we now hope. 67. Those awake during the night may have many arguments about what the brilliance of the sun might be. But the grace of its radiance has only to shine forth to render futile the descriptions of reason. So too every

144

zê—í •äõíáôäò §÷ùìgí ¦ê ôäí Òìïßùí •íôéñçôïñgýgéí ôè ëïãå, in other words: even though I may not be able to mount a formal antirrhetic against your argument, i.e. a detailed refutation and attack in the controversial manner. This sentiment surely suggests something of Macrina and Gregory’s actual conversation.

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conjectural reasoning touching our future condition will be shown to be nothing when the experience of what we looked for has overtaken us. 68. ‘But the objections brought against us should not be left wholly unexamined. We therefore take up our argument concerning these questions as follows. First, one must gain a clear concept of the scope of this doctrine of the resurrection, that is, why it was spoken of by that holy voice and why it is believed in. 69. In order then to encompass it in a certain definition, we will say this, that the resurrection is the restoration of our nature to its original condition.145 70. But in that first life of which God himself was the artificer it is likely that there was neither age nor infancy nor any of the sufferings of our varied illnesses nor any wretchedness of the body whatever, for it is unlikely that God could be the artificer of such things. 71. Instead, [Kr. 144] human nature was something divine before our humanity succumbed to the impulse of vice and all these things beset us along with the entry of vice. Accordingly the life that is without vice is under no necessity whatever of existing in those conditions that came about because of vice. 72. ‘When one travels in icy conditions it follows that the body grows cold, and when one goes about in the hot sun the complexion is darkened, but if one avoids both of these, it follows that one is completely free of both the darkening and the cold. No one would reasonably expect the outcome of a certain cause if that cause is not present. 73. In the same way our nature, in becoming subject to passion, necessarily incurred what follows from a life of passion, but when it has turned back again to that blessedness free of passion, it will no longer incur what follows from vice. 74. Since all that was mingled with our human nature from the irrational life was not in us before our humanity fell through vice into passion, then of necessity when we abandon passion, we shall also abandon all that is observed in company with it. No one therefore could reasonably expect in that other life the things that accrue to us through passion. 75. If someone clad in a tattered tunic is stripped of that covering, he would no longer see on himself the unseemliness of what has been discarded. So also with us, when we have put off that dead and repulsive tunic made for us from the skins of irrational animals — for when I hear skins (Genesis 3. 21) I take it to mean the aspect of the irrational nature with which we

145

•íÜóôáóßò ¦óôéí º gßò ôÎ •ñ÷áÃïí ô­ò öýógùò ²ìäí •ðïêáôÜóôáóéò, ‘original, ‘ancient’, ‘primordial’ nature, referring to the state before the Fall. Moore observes (NPNF 2, V , 464, n. 1) that the definition is couched in Platonic terms (cf. Symposium 193D). It is the key concept in Gregory’s exposition of the resurrection, reappearing at 10.101, and in On Virginity 12, On the Making of Man 17.2, On Ecclesiastes 1, Funeral oration for Pulcheria 3, and On the Dead 3.

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were clothed when we became habituated to passion.146 In putting off that tunic then, we shall cast off along with it all that belonged to that skin of the irrational animals that was about us. And what we received from the skin of the irrational animals was sexual intercourse, conception, childbearing, sordidness,147 breastfeeding, nourishing, excretion, gradual growth to maturity, the prime of life, old age, disease, and death. 76. ‘If that skin shall no longer envelope us, how shall those things derived from it be left behind in us? But since another state is hoped for in the life that is to come, it is foolish to object to the doctrine of the resurrection on account of things which have nothing [Kr. 146] in common with it. 77. What, for example, has being wrinkled or smooth-skinned, emaciated or plump, or any other condition attendant upon a bodily nature in flux, have in common with that life, which is foreign to the on-rushing and transitory character of this life? 78. The rationale of the resurrection requires only one thing, that a human being has come into being through generation, or rather as the Gospel says, that a human being is born into the world ( John 16. 21). The length or brevity of life, or the manner of death, whether it happened this way or that, are irrelevant when it comes to examining the rationale of the resurrection. 79. Whatever circumstances we may care to imagine, it all comes to the same thing. Vicissitudes of this sort neither retard nor advance the resurrection. Anyone who once began to live most certainly comes to life when the dissolution which has come upon him in the meantime through death is rectified in the resurrection. 80. ‘As to how and when the dissolution came about, what has this to do with the resurrection? The investigation of it looks to other criteria, such as whether someone has lived in pleasure or affliction, according to virtue or vice, in a way worthy of praise or of blame, whether he has passed his time wretchedly or well. All these aspects and others like them are ascertained from the length of his life and the character acquired therein. 81. In order to pass judgement on the actions of his life, it would be necessary for the judge to probe what he has undergone, his humiliation, his disease, his old age, his prime, his youth, his wealth, and his poverty: how anyone placed in each of these circumstances ran the course of the life allotted him well or badly; whether he was able to receive many good things or many ills during 146

Macrina/Gregory accommodate the Genesis text to the seaweed on the image of the sea-god Glaucus (Plato, Republic 613C). The coat of skins represents the passions contracted by fallen man through his perverted use of emotions as passions. Cf. the more positive or clinical account of what the human in its unfallen state takes from the animal nature in 3.40, 44. 147

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a long life, or never reached even the beginning of either of these, but ceased to live before his mind was formed. 82. ‘But whenever the time comes that God shall bring the nature of the human being back to its primal state through the resurrection, it will be idle to talk of such matters then, and to imagine that God’s power can be hindered from its goal by such protests. 83. He has but one goal: that once the whole plenitude of our nature is brought to completion from the first human being to the last,148 [Kr. 148] — some having been cleansed straightaway from vice in this life, others having been healed afterwards by the fire in fitting periods of time (cf. I Corinthians 3. 15), while others during this life were equally ignorant of the experience of the beautiful and of vice — to offer to all a participation in the beautiful which is in him, which, as the Scripture says, no eye has seen, or the hearing taken in, or has it entered into his reasonings (Isaiah 64. 4, I Corinthians 2. 9). 84. But this is nothing else, at least in my reckoning, than coming to be in God himself, for that good which is beyond hearing and eye and heart must be that which transcends the universe. 85. ‘But the difference between a life of virtue and a life of vice will be shown hereafter especially in this: whether one comes to participate in the hoped-for blessedness more quickly or slowly. The duration of the healing will be wholly in proportion to the degree of vice present in each. The healing of the soul will consist in its catharsis from vice, which can in no way be accomplished without painful affects, as was examined earlier in our discussion. 86. ‘One would perceive more readily how superfluous and irrelevant are these objections if one only stooped to look into the depths of the apostolic wisdom. In clarifying the mystery concerning these things to the Corinthians, who were perhaps putting the same objections to him as are proffered today by those who mishandle the doctrine in order to disturb believers, he proceeds on his own authority to cut short the audacity of their ignorance, and this is what he says: 87. You will then say to me: How are the dead raised, and with what kind of body do they come? O foolish! he says, That which you sow is not given life unless it dies. And when you sow, you do not sow the body as it shall come to be, but a bare kernel, perhaps of wheat or some other grain. But God gives it a body as he has willed (I Corinthians 15. 35–38). 88. Here, it seems to me, he bridles the mouth of those who betray their ignorance of the due limits of nature and who measure the divine power by their own strength, even to thinking that only so much is possible to the divine as

148

That is, the idea that there is a definite pleroma, sum, or plenitude of human nature to be reached. See 9.22 and note.

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can be encompassed by human comprehension, and that what is beyond us also exceeds the divine power. 89. ‘For the one who asked [Kr. 150] the apostle how are the dead raised? clearly implies that once the body’s elements are scattered there is no way that they can come together again, and that since this is impossible and there is no other body available apart from such a convergence, 90. he asks this in the manner of clever dialecticians, now by some species of logic taking what he had hypothesized as conclusive: if a body is a convergence of elements and a second assemblage of these is impossible, what kind of body will they use who rise again? This argument, which they think put together with some technical sophistication, the apostle calls foolishness on the part of those who have not noticed in the rest of creation the superabundance of the divine power. 91. For he omits the loftier wonders worked by God, which could have led his hearer into a quandary, such as, “What is a heavenly body and where does it come from, that of the sun for example, or that of the moon, or that which appears in the stars? What of the firmament, the air, the water, the earth?” (cf. I Corinthians 15. 40–41). Instead, he refutes the inattention of the objectors by using things we grew up with and are more common. 92. Surely even farming teaches you, he asks, that he is a fool who estimates the superabundance of the divine power by his own measure? Where do the bodies come from that spring up from seeds? What initiates their sprouting? Is it not a death, if death is the dissolution of what has been constituted? 93. For indeed the seed would not begin to germinate unless it were dissolved in the soil and became spongy and porous enough to mingle its own qualities with the surrounding moisture, and thus become transformed into a root and shoot. Yet it does not remain even in that state, but changes again into a stalk with intermittent nodes girding it as with so many braces to enable it to carry on its erect shape the ear weighed with the fruit. 94. ‘Where then were all these features of the full grain before the dissolution in the soil? But of course they come from the seed. If that had not been first, the ear would not have come about. 95. Just as the body of the ear springs up from the seed, when the divine power skilfully draws it from that very thing, [Kr. 152] and it is neither wholly the same as that seed nor altogether different, 96. so, he continues, the mystery of the resurrection is already prefigured for you through these wonders worked in seeds, inasmuch as the divine power, in the exceeding greatness of its command, not only restores to you that which was once dissolved, but also gives you in addition other things great and beautiful, through which your nature is adorned in a manner still more magnificent. 97. For It is sown, he says, in corruption, it is awoken in incorruption; it is sown in weakness, it is awoken in power;

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it is sown in dishonour, it is awoken in glory; it is sown a material149 body, it is awoken a spiritual body (I Corinthians 15. 42–44). Though the grain of wheat on its dissolution in the soil leaves behind its slender bulk and the particular quality of its shape, it does not quit itself, but abides in itself even as it grows into an ear that differs very greatly from itself in size, beauty, complexity, and shape. 98. ‘In the same way, though human nature loses in death all the particular qualities it acquired through its disposition subject to passion — dishonour I mean, and corruption and weakness and the differences of age—yet it does not lose itself. Instead, as if growing into an ear, it is changed into incorruption, and glory, and honour, and power, and consummate perfection. Its life is no longer ordered to material properties, because it has passed over into a spiritual condition free of passion. 99. For it is the particular quality of the material body that through a certain flux and movement, it is always being altered from its present state and passing on to something else, but none of those things150 which are observed not only in human beings but also in plants and irrational animals shall be left in the life that then shall be. 100. ‘It seems to me that the apostolic word supports in every way our conception of the resurrection and demonstrates the very thing that our definition encompassed, where we said that the resurrection is nothing other than the restoration of our nature to its original state.151 101. For in the first creation152 [Kr. 154] we learn from Scripture that the earth first sprouted the green herb, as the Word says, and then that seed came from this sprouting, and when this was shed on the ground, the same form as that which originally sprouted shoots up from it again (Genesis 1. 11–12, Septuagint). 102. This, the divine apostle says, also comes about in the resurrection. We learn from him not only that our humanity will then be changed into something nobler, but also that what is hoped for is nothing other than what was in the first place. 103. For since in the beginning it was not the ear that came from the seed, but the seed from the ear, and after this the ear sprang up around the seed, the sequence in the example clearly indicates that the entire

149

øõ÷éêÎí, transliterated: ‘psychic’, interpreted variously as ‘natural’, ‘material’, and ‘unspiritual’. 150 Setting aside the êáë (beautiful things) which appears anomalously in some manuscripts and in Krabinger’s edition, but is not in all manuscripts. 151 152

See above at 10.70.

Literally, ‘the first cosmogony’. The second creation was inaugurated by Christ’s resurrection and is extended in the general resurrection.

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blessedness that shall sprout again for us through the resurrection is a return to the grace of the beginning. 104. At the beginning we too were in a way the full ear,153 but we were withered in the scorching heat of vice, and the earth received us when we were dissolved in death, but in the springtime of the resurrection it will again manifest this bare kernel (I Corinthians 15. 37) of our body as an ear, tall, flourishing, and erect, reaching up to the heavenly heights, and instead of stalk and filaments, adorned with incorruption and with all the other God-befitting marks. 105. For this corruptible, it says, must put on incorruption (I Corinthians 15. 53). This incorruption, and glory, and honour, and power are acknowledged as proper to the divine, and they once attended him who came into being in God’s image (Genesis 1. 27) and are still hoped for again. 106. The first human being, Adam, was the first ear. But with the entry of vice, human nature was divided up into a multitude, and, as happens to the grain in the ear, each was stripped of the form of that ear and put to moulder in the soil. But in the resurrection we spring up beautiful again as in our ancient generation, only instead of that single primal ear we become the countless myriads of ears in the cornfields (cf. Mark 4. 28–29, John 4. 35). 107. ‘The life of virtue will be distinguished from that of vice in this: those who cultivated themselves in virtue during their life here [Kr. 156] spring up immediately as a perfect ear. 108. Those on the other hand in whom the power of the material seed becomes depleted and wind-blasted through vice during this life, as the experts in such things say happens to ‘hornstruck’ seeds so-called,154 though they spring up at the resurrection, will meet with great severity from the judge, because they have no strength left to shoot up again into the form of the ear and

153

Macrina/Gregory are speaking of man’s collective spiritual history, meaning here the prelapsarian state of the first creation. Gregory does have a strong doctrine of man’s Fall, and at the same time a great emphasis on the free will of each human being, but has not quite integrated these two stances to explain how each human being comes into being handicapped by the collective Fall of man, though no personal vice has yet been entered into. 154

A string of three rare words occurs here: ¦îßôçëüò (faded, depleted, attenuated), occurring (inter alia) in Plato, Republic 497B for seed sown in alien soil; •ígìüöèïñïò (blasted by the wind) in the Septuagint, Deuteronomy 28. 22, and Hosea 8. 7; êgñáóâüëá (hornstruck) in Theophrastus On the Causes of Plants, 4.12.13, Plutarch Convivial Questions 2.700c, referring to seeds too hard to germinate or use in cooking, because, so it was believed, they had hit against the horns of the ox while being sown. Moore (NPNF2 , V , 467, n. 4) quotes hexameters of Gregory Nazianzen, referring to ‘Opp. t. II, pp. 66–173’: ‘there is a dry unsoakable seed which never merges into the soil or swells with the rain; it is harder than horn; its shell has struck the horn of the ox when the ploughman’s hand is scattering seed over his land’. Plato uses êgñáóâüëá in Laws 853D, to refer to someone who is stubborn and intractable in their adherence to evil.

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become what we were before the fall to the earth.155 109. The cure undertaken by the overseer of the crop is to collect the weeds and the thorns which have grown up with the seed, all the power of whose root has been so diverted to nourish the bastard plant that the genuine seed has had to remain unnourished and stunted, choked by this sprouting contrary to nature. 110. Then, when all that is bastard and alien is culled from the part needing nourishment and is made to disappear in that fire which consumes all that is contrary to nature (cf. Matthew 13. 24–30),156 nature shall thrive also among these and ripen into fruit, thanks to such a cure, and then after long cycles of ages it shall receive again that common form which was bestowed on us by God at the beginning. 111. ‘Blessed are they in whom the perfect beauty of those ears shall appear together with them as soon they spring up in the resurrection. Yet we say this not as though any bodily differences will be manifest at the resurrection between those who have lived according to virtue and those who have lived according to vice, as if to suppose that one will be imperfect of body, while another will be perfect. 112. Just as the prisoner and the free are both much alike in body in this life but there is a great difference between them with regard to pleasure and grief, so I think we should reckon the difference between the good and the bad in the time after this.157 113. For the perfection of bodies that spring up again from that sowing in death is said by the apostle to consist in incorruption and glory and honour and power (cf. I Corinthians 15. 42–43), but any deficit in these does not imply some bodily mutilation of the one who has sprung up, but a privation and estrangement from each of those things understood [Kr. 158] as belonging to the good. 114. ‘Since one or the other of these two opposed concepts, that is either good or vice, must certainly apply to us, it is clear that to say someone is not in the good demonstrates that he is certainly in vice. 115. But in connection with vice there is no honour, no glory, no incorruption, and no power. Hence we must necessarily dismiss all doubt that anyone to whom all these do not apply is involved in their opposites, that is, with weakness, dishonour, corruption, and everything else of that kind. We spoke of this earlier in our discussion when we said that the passions that come from vice become very hard to expel from the soul, because they have 155

The ambiguity here seems to arise from the conflation of that primal fall in the moral sense which impaired man collectively, and the fall of the seed on the ground according to the metaphor. It cannot mean the fall of souls to the earth into bodies, a notion advanced by Origen but rejected by Macrina/Gregory above in 9.19.

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156

This reprises earlier exposition of the Gospel parable at 3.51–58.

157

That is, between the general resurrection and the final apocatastasis / restoration.

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permeated the whole of it and grown up with it and become one with it. 116. But when these passions have been purged from it and made to disappear through the medicinal work of the fire, then each of the things reckoned to be for the better shall enter in their stead: incorruption, life, honour, grace, glory, power, and anything else of the kind that we conjecture is contemplated in God and in his image, which is human nature.

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M ACRINA , A L ETTER W RITER?

P

ierre Maraval, in his Grégoire de Nysse: Lettres published an intriguing scholion found in a fourteenth-century manuscript, Vatican gr. 578/II, folio 189. A translation of the note is as follows:

Indeed, most noble sir, we have copied the letters of Theano up to this point, but we will not add those of the holy Macrina: for we appreciate the great interval of time which separates the one from the other, fixed like a great gulf between them. Certainly both of them were sages, so that even in the gossip of the Greeks1 the female sex is glorified, but the one of them is a sage of God,2 in whom was manifested superabundant grace and the charism of illumination that rested in her.3

What are we to make of this? The note follows the four letters of Theano, a woman philosopher who was reputed to have been a disciple of Pythagoras in the fifth century BC, but which probably were probably composed in the Hellenistic era. On the face of it, the copyist had before him a codex which included letters of Macrina as well as those of Theano. He forbore copying them because of the wide gap of time separating the two women, and because the reputation of Macrina as a philosopher was eclipsed by her reputation for outstanding holiness. One can only surmize that he was catering to the interests of his client, clearly a new-style humanist, who, though probably a Christian like the copyist, was more interested in searching out the ancient Greek classics than the Christian saints.

1 ôäí ´ÅëëÞíùí. The weight of this word is a little uncertain. In Macrina and Gregory’s time it would have referred to those devoted to classical literature. 2 3

ègüóïöïò, or perhaps ‘divinely wise’.

Grégoire de Nysse: Lettres, ed. and trans. by Pierre Maraval, Sources Chrétiennes, 363 (Paris: Cerf, 1990), pp. 272–73,

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Macrina, A Letter Writer?

It would be stirring to think that a manuscript of Macrina’s letters might have survived as late as the fourteenth century. One has only to recall that the transmission of some of Gregory’s letters hangs on only one manuscript. But Maraval is doubtful. He knows of no other testimony to Macrina as a letter writer, and suggests instead that the copyist is confusing the work with On the Soul and the Resurrection, where Macrina is certainly presented as a philosopher in the ancient sense and which the manuscripts refer to in the plural as ԏ Ìáêñßíéá. Or perhaps he even refers to the VSM, which of course introduces itself as a letter. Yet there can be no doubt that Macrina certainly did write letters, particularly if she had disciples like Vetiana who were periodically absent in Constantinople. Basil’s Letter 46.2g–h, possibly to his and Macrina’s little sister, attests that dedicated virgins both wrote and received letters in a certain appropriate circle. Peter too, certainly wrote letters, but except for one,4 they never achieved permanent record. St Melania the Elder, also a ‘sage of God’ who was bilingual and highly literate, was a known letter writer. But the collection of her letters, partly due to Jerome’s ‘blackening’ of her name, never survived. When one considers that Gregory of Nyssa was a great letter writer, and yet how few of his letters have survived, and there are even letters of Basil that are known not to have survived, it is not surprising that even if someone did once compile a collection of Macrina’s letters, that is, an ‘epistolary’, it has, alas, disappeared forever.

4

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Letter 30 in the corpus of Gregory of Nyssa’s letters, Silvas, Gregory, pp. 208–10.

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G ENERAL INDEX

Aeschylus, 91 n.35 Annisa, 9–12, 32–5, 38–9, 43–6, 46–9, 56, 58, 65, 69 n.29, 73–4, 77, 87 nn.12, 14, 121–2, 165, 166, 167 Anomoianism / Eunomians, 131 n.88 Anthenaeus, 182 n.22 Anthropology, 157–8, 186 n.28, 209 n.72 Araxius (local bishop), 89 n.27, 143 and n.130 Araxius (senator), 137, 167 Aristophanes, 146 n.142 Aristotle, 157, 189 n.33, 193 n.42, 225 n.109

Emmelia (Macrina’s mother), 1, 9, 11, 20, 27, 31, 32, 33, 35, 37, 47, 57, 63, 81, 104, 111–13, 124, 130, 141, 144 n.133, 165 Empedocles, 173, 218 n.94 Epicharmus, 179 n.18 Epicurus / Epicureanism, 167, 175, 208 n.70 Eros, 132 n.92, 156 Eschatology, 158–9, 199 nn.53, 54, 214 n.82, 215 n.86 Eustathius of Sebasteia, 13, 21, 22–8, 31–4, 39, 40, 48, 57, 74, 126 n.71, 167

Basil of Ancyra, 26 n.84 Basil the Elder (Macrina’s father), 1, 3, 5, 9, 11, 27, 31, 47, 77, 111–12, 114, 130–1, 144 n.133 Basil the Great (Macrina’s brother), 2, 4, 6, 9, 12, 13, 17, 22, 23 and n.67, 25–7, 28, 33, 36–8, 39–40, 44, 46–8, 55–78, 79–81, 103, 112 n.14, 113 n.21, 117–18, 118 nn.39, 40, 42, 123 nn.57, 59, 60, 124 n.62, 125, 127 n.76, 128, 132 n.90, 135 nn.100, 104, 139 n.111, 141 n.120, 146 n.140, 158, 165, 166, 183 n.23, 212 n.80, 215 n.86

Famine, 123–4, 137 Forty Martyrs of Sebasteia, 32–4

Ctesibus, 182 n.22 Demosthenes, 31–2, 82–3, 85 Diotima of Mantineia, 156 Domestic ascetic movement (family asceticism), 2–9, 46–9, 53–4, 103

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Gangra, Council of, 21–2, 39, 41–3, 130 n.86 Gregory Nazianzen, 1, 2, 4, 5, 6, 10, 12, 17, 18 and n.56, 34, 51, 55, 64, 70 n.30, 63–4, 79–82, 91 n.38, 103, 111 nn.10, 12, 115 n.29, 118 n.39, 119 n.45, 124 n.62, 131 n.87, 141 n.122, 143 n.130, 165, 212 n.80 Gregory of Nyssa (Macrina’s brother), 2, 6, 7, 20, 22, 32, 49, 53, 55, 57, 58, 63, 82 and n.13, 83–92, 101–4, 126–48 Against Apollinaris, 227 n.116 Against Fate, 212 n.80 Catechetical Discourse,158, 183 n.23, 203 n.57, 212 n.79, 215 n.85, 224 n.106 Encomium on his Brother, 51, 118 n.42 Funeral Oration on Pulcheria, 239 n.145 Letter 2, 107 n.4

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258 Letter 3, 110 n.4 Letter 13, 36 Letter 17, 212 n.80 Letter 19, 49–52, 83–92, 101–2, 127 n.74, 143 n.130, 154, 235 n.139 Letter 31 to Letoius, 122 n.55 Letter to the monk Philip, 167 Letters to women, 166 Life of Gregory Thaumaturgus, 10, 13–16, 32 Life of Macrina, 49, 79, 93–148, 155 On the Dead, 239 n.145 On Ecclesiastes, 118 n.40, 239 n.145 On the Forty Martyrs, 132 n.99 On the Holy Spirit against the Macedonians, 141 n.122 On the Lord’s Prayer, 108 n.20 On the Making of Man, 110 n.6, 157–8, 186 n.28, 215 n.85, 218 n.93, 227 n.116, 229 n.121, 234 n.138, 237 n.143, 239 n.145 On the Pasch or the Resurrection, 144 n.132, 158 On the Song of Songs, 19 n.59, 20 On the Soul and the Resurrection, 149–246 On Virginity, 53–4, 173 n.3, 239 n.145 Gregory Thaumaturgus, 10, 12–17, 113 n.18, 165 Gregory (Macrina’s maternal uncle), 11 n.38 Heraclitus, 236 n.143 Homer, 92 n.42, 113 nn.19, 21, 116 n.33, 165 Homoiousianism, 11–12, 25, 238 n.90 John Chrysostom, 5 n.18, 6, 84, 114 n.28 Jovian (emperor), 12, 90, 268 n.189 Julian (emperor), 3 n.9 Krabinger, J. G., 149–51, 153, 218 n.92, 243 n.150 Lampadion (superior at Annisa), 39, 116 n.35, 127 n.81, 138–9 Libanius, 5 n.18

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General Index Macrina the Elder (Macrina’s grandmother), 1, 4, 9, 12–17, 47, 63, 67, 75, 113 n.18, 130, 165 Macrina the Younger, 1–2, 57–8, 63, 65, 73, 74, 77–8, 82, 87–9 agent of later changes at Annisa, 43–6 and Eustathius, 23, 27, 31–2, 35 and Gregory, 87–9, 87 n.12 as philosopher, 103, 110 and n.8, 117, 128–9, 155, 159, 163–9 as teacher, 37, 153, 155, 156, 171 n.1 date of death 49–52, 101 death 107, 135–6, 154, 161 education, 113–14 family background, 1–2 in the early 340s, 28–32, 35 influence on Basil, 36–8, 42, 46–9, 117–18 influence on Emmelia, 35, 37, 69 n.29, 104, 117–18, 120 living ideal of virginity, 53–4, 108, 155 martyrion (where Macrina was buried), 11, 33, 124 and n.63, 144 and n.133, 145 and n.136 planned betrothal, 114–15 reality and literary invention, 103–4, 160–1 spirituality, character, and style, 59, 76 n.43, 116–17, 162–3, 168–9 virgin widowhood, 30–1, 115–16, 168 Maraval, P., 49–52, 93, 95–6, 97, 102, 103, 114 n.25, 116 n.35, 126 n.70, 127 n.78, 140 n.114, 166 n.28 Marriage, age for, 28–9 Mary the Virgin, Mother of Jesus, 16–17, 48, 54, 121, 129, 131, 231 n.64 Medicine, 141 and n.120, 147 n.148, 157, 161, 222 n.101, 235 n.141 Methodius, 20, 107, 156–7, 165 Middle Platonism, see Neo-Platonism, Origen Mitchell, S., 60, 102 Moore, W., 151, 188 n.31, 215 n.85, 217 nn.90, 91, 239 n.145, 244 n.154 Mystagogy, 104–8

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General Index Naucratius (Macrina’s brother), 2, 4, 6–7, 26 n.86, 33–5, 36 n.112, 38, 44, 46, 56, 97–9, 118–21, 123 n.50, 136 n.106 Neocaesarea, 9–10, 12, 13, 17, 27–8, 31–3, 36 n.111, 45, 73–4 Neo-Nicenes, 39, 46, 101 Neo-Platonism, 15, 183 n.23, 210 n.77, 211 n.79, 214 n.81, 215 n.85 Old Nicenes, 25, 74, 131 nn.87, 88 Olympias, 6, 19 n.59, 166, 204 n.60 Origen, 12–17, 20, 113 n.18, 156, 158, 164, 165, 183 n.23, 199 n.53, 208 n.70, 210 n.77, 212 n.79, 215 n.85, 218 n.93, 220 nn.96, 98, 228 n.117, 245, n.155 Peter (Macrina’s brother), 2, 43–6, 48, 56, 58, 63, 65, 74, 88 n.18, 117 n.35, 122–4, 125, 127 n.74, 147, 158 Plato / Platonism, 105, 113 n.21, 122 n.54, 155, 156, 159, 165, 174 n.5, 180 n.19, 89 n.32, 190 n.35, 192 n.40, 195 n.45, 196 n.47, 198 n.50, 205 n.62, 207 nn.66, 68, 208 n.70, 210 n.76, 215 n.86, 218 n.93, 220 nn.97, 98, 222 n.99, 225 n.107, 233 n.136, 236 n.143, 239 n.145, 240 n.146, 244 n.154 Plotinus, see Neo-Platonism Pouchet, J.-R ., 50–2, 101, 125 n.67, 126 nn.68, 70

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259 Prayer, 76 n.43, 77 n.44, 105–8, 132–5, 137 Pythagoras / Pythagorianism, 176 n.12, 218 n.93, 220 n.96 Roth, C. P., 152, 207 n.68, 209 n.74, 225 n.107 Sebasteia, 27, 175 n.8, 83–5, 90–1, 123 n.59 Small Asketion, compared with VSM, 38–43, 78 Soranus, 157, 222 n.103, 228 n.117 Stoics / Stoicism, 157, 175, 222 n.101, 227 n.115, 228 n.117 Tertullian, 157 Thecla (Paul’s disciple), 17–20, 107, 112, 155 Theophrastus, 244 n.154 Theosebia (Macrina’s sister), 2, 7, 64, 82 Translation, approach to, 100–1, 151–4 Valens (emperor), 49–52, 89 n.23, 131 and nn.87, 88 Vetiana (Macrina’s disciple), 137–8, 139–42, 167 VSM, compared with Small Asketikon, 38–43 Woods Callahan, V., 91, 95 n.4, 97–8, 99, 152, 192 n.40

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INDEX OF S CRIPTURAL C ITATIONS AND A LLUSIONS

The listing of books of Scripture and of the psalms follows the order of the Septuagint and Vulgate. Genesis 1. 11–12: 243 1. 26–27: 184, 209, 215 1. 27: 110, 190, 244 1. 28: 195 2. 7: 134, 190 2. 8: 107 2. 17: 204 3. 19: 134 3. 21: 239 3. 24: 134 9. 23: 145 9. 24–25: 145 12. 1: 205 39. 7–12: 71 Exodus 3. 14: 233 13. 2: 124 22. 26: 59 23. 16: 231 30. 1–10: 232 30. 25–29: 59 34. 22: 231 38. 3: 59 40. 1–8: 232 40. 9: 59 40. 10: 59 40. 18–32: 232 44. 23: 59

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Leviticus 8. 11: 59 10. 9–11: 59 10. 10: 59 16. 11–14: 232 18. 7: 145 22. 15: 59 22. 21: 59 23. 33–35: 231 23. 39–43: 231 27. 28: 59 Numbers 7. 3: 191 8. 3: 59 18. 21: 124 25. 6–8: 67 25. 11: 192 Deuteronomy 5. 21: 66 16. 13–16: 231 17. 6: 70 28. 22: 244 I Chronicles 22. 19: 59 II Chronicles 5. 5: 59 24. 14: 59 Nehemiah 8. 14–18: 231

Job 2. 8: 128 3. 25: 69 7. 5: 128 Psalms 1. 2: 88 5. 13: 87 10. 2: 76 13. 1: 176 18. 2–4: 176 21. 11: 134 22. 2: 134 26. 1: 216 30. 6: 135 30. 22: 87 33. 6: 216 38. 14: 134, 135 44: 58 44. 10: 59, 69 44. 14–15: 59 44. 16: 60 49. 3: 72 50: 77 52. 2: 176 59. 11: 87 59. 16: 134 60. 4: 87 65. 12: 134

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Index of Scriptural Citations and Allusions 73. 13, 14: 134 79. 6: 88 94. 6: 72 103. 29–30: 230 106. 16: 134 117. 27: 231 118. 48: 88, 131 118. 70: 88 118. 105: 216 118. 120: 135 140. 2: 135 145. 17: 72 Proverbs 8. 21: 238 9. 10: 192 13. 10: 86 26. 4–5: 176 Song of Songs 1. 7: 134 Wisdom 2. 23: 115 8. 7: 192 Sirach (Ecclesiasticus) 1. 25: 238 4. 18: 238 Isaiah 1. 8: 72 1. 21: 68 22. 2: 66 25. 8: 72 64. 4: 241 Jeremiah 2. 10–11: 70 2. 11–12: 70 3. 7: 71 8. 4: 71 8. 22: 71 9. 1: 66 18. 13: 68 20. 9: 69 Ezekiel 3. 4: 231 37. 1–14: 233–4 Daniel 3. 51: 144 7. 9–10: 72

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9. 23: 192 10. 11: 192 10. 19: 192 Hosea 2. 13: 70 8. 7: 244 Amos 5. 19: 86 Zechariah 3. 1: 135 Malachi 4. 2: 107 Matthew 5. 3: 216 5. 4: 75 5. 19: 216 5. 26: 214 5. 28: 66 6. 19–20: 138 6. 25: 76 9. 6: 135 9. 12–13: 73 9. 15: 60 9. 18–25: 234 13. 7: 75 13. 22: 75 13. 24–30: 245 14. 4: 57 16. 18: 134 16. 24: 75 16. 27: 72 18. 7: 71 18. 24: 214 18. 28: 214 18. 34: 215 19. 12: 75 19. 17: 196, 210 19. 28: 216 22. 11–12: 216 22. 30: 237 24. 31: 72 25. 20: 214 25. 31: 71 26. 24: 71 28. 6: 234

Mark 2. 10: 135 4. 28–29: 244 9. 44–48: 72 9. 47: 72 12. 30: 134 Luke 1. 27: 111 1. 78: 107 7. 1–10: 234 7. 41: 214 8. 18: 148 9. 5: 121 12. 21: 216 12. 32: 216 15. 7: 73 15. 17: 202, 209 15. 32: 73 16. 19–21: 203 16. 22: 134 16. 25: 204 16. 26: 135 17. 2: 70 17. 18: 175 20. 38: 116 21. 9: 192 23. 42: 135 24. 36–40: 234 John 1. 12: 54 1. 13: 207 3. 29: 60 4. 14: 217 4. 35: 244 4. 46–53: 234 5. 25–29: 234 5. 29: 72 6. 35: 216 6. 48–58: 216 8. 12: 216 10. 17–18: 234 11. 17–34: 234 14. 2–3: 216 16. 21: 240 19. 25–27: 16 20. 26–27: 234

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262 Acts of the Apostles 2. 43–47: 45 4. 32–37: 45 4. 35: 130 20. 24: 207 23. 6: 116 Romans 2. 6: 72 6. 6: 135 6. 11: 116, 129 7. 24: 207 8. 10–11: 129 8. 13: 75 8. 24: 210 9. 23: 216 12. 5: 45 12. 6: 148 12. 12–13: 88 13. 14: 75 14. 17: 237 I Corinthians 2. 9: 241 3. 13: 241 3. 16: 69 3. 17: 69 4. 15: 87 6. 15: 70 7. 34: 69 7. 35: 76 9. 24: 207 9. 27: 75 12. 6: 230 13. 8: 211 15. 28: 54, 215 15. 35–38: 241 15. 37: 244 15. 40–41: 242 15. 42–43: 245 15. 42–44: 243 15. 45: 190 15. 51–52: 234

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Index of Scriptural Citations and Allusions 15. 52: 134 15. 53: 244 15. 55–56: 66 II Corinthians 4. 10: 75 5. 21: 134 6. 1: 90 7. 10: 192 10. 4: 61 11. 2: 69 11. 3: 69 (x 2) Galatians 2. 19: 135 3. 13: 134 3. 27: 216 3. 28: 54, 110 4. 19: 87 5. 24: 76, 135 Ephesians 1. 18: 216 2. 2: 68 2. 7: 216 2. 14: 233 2. 19–22: 216 4. 28: 76 5. 8: 88 5. 14: 107 5. 19: 76 5. 27: 135 5. 32: 58 Philippians 2. 10: 199 2. 10–11: 233 3. 14: 130 3. 19: 70 3. 20: 53, 68, 76 Colossians 1. 27: 105 2. 11: 135 3. 9: 73

Thessalonians 4. 13: 172 4. 16: 72, 234 4. 17: 122 5. 5: 54 5. 17: 121 5. 23: 69 I Timothy 1. 15: 72 5. 5: 76 6. 12: 67 II Timothy 2. 9: 67 4. 1: 72 4. 7: 130, 207 4. 8: 130 Hebrews 2. 14: 134 2. 15: 133 9. 3: 232 9. 4: 232 10. 29: 71 11. 1: 211 11. 3: 225 11. 4: 67 11. 8–11: 205 I Peter 2. 17: 127 3. 6: 192 4. 5: 72 I John 4. 8: 156 n.15 Revelation 2. 11: 207 12. 10: 135 19. 7: 60 20. 14: 207 I

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M EDIEVAL W OMEN : T EXTS AND C ONTEXTS

All volumes in this series are evaluated by an Editorial Board, strictly on academic grounds, based on reports prepared by referees who have been commissioned by virtue of their specialism in the appropriate field. The Board ensures that the screening is done independently and without conflicts of interest. The definitive texts supplied by authors are also subject to review by the Board before being approved for publication. Further, the volumes are copyedited to conform to the publisher’s stylebook and to the best international academic standards in the field.

Titles in series Jutta and Hildegard: The Biographical Sources, ed. by Anna Silvas (1998) New Trends in Feminine Spirituality: The Holy Women of Liège and their Impact, ed. by Juliette Dor, Lesley Johnson and Jocelyn Wogan-Browne (1999) Medieval Women – Texts and Contexts in Late Medieval Britain: Essays in Honour of Felicity Riddy, ed. by Jocelyn Wogan-Browne, Rosalynn Voaden, Arlyn Diamond, Ann Hutchinson, Carol Meale, and Lesley Johnson (2000) The Knowing of Woman’s Kind in Childing: A Middle English Version of Material Derived from the Trotula and Other Sources, ed. by Alexandra Barratt (2001) St Katherine of Alexandria: Texts and Contexts in Western Medieval Europe, ed. by Jacqueline Jenkins and Katherine J. Lewis (2003) Send Me God: The Lives of Ida the Compassionate of Nivelles, Nun of La R amée, Arnulf, Lay Brother of Villers, and Abundus, Monk of Villers, by Goswin of Bossut, trans. by and with an introduction by Martinus Cawley OC SO and with a preface by Barbara Newman (2003) Seeing and Knowing: Women and Learning in Medieval Europe 1200–1550, ed. by Anneke B. Mulder-Bakker (2004) Writing the Wilton Women: Goscelin’s ‘Legend of Edith’ and ‘Liber confortatorius’, ed. by Stephanie Hollis with W. R . Barnes, Rebecca Hayward, Kathleen Loncar, and Michael Wright (2004)

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Household, Women, and Christianities in Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages, ed. by Anneke B. Mulder-Bakker and Jocelyn Wogan-Browne (2006) The Writings of Julian of Norwich: ‘A Vision Showed to a Devout Woman’ and ‘A Revelation of Love’, ed. by Nicholas Watson and Jacqueline Jenkins (2006) Les Cantiques Salemon: The Song of Songs in MS Paris BNF fr. 14966, ed. by Tony Hunt (2006) Carolyn P. Collette, Performing Polity: Women and Agency in the Anglo-French Tradition, 1385–1620 (2006) Mary of Oignies, Mother of Salvation: Texts and Studies, ed. by A. B. Mulder-Bakker (2007)

In Preparation Virgins and Scholars: A Fifteenth-Century Compilation of the Lives of John the Baptist, John the Evangelist, Jerome, and Katherine of Alexandria, ed. by Claire Waters

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