Saint Macrina the Younger
Nun, teacher of the Cappadocian Fathers
- Feast day
- July 19
- Lived
- c. 327–379
- Patronage
- Women's monasticism, teachers, bereaved families
Called 'the Teacher' by her own brothers Basil the Great and Gregory of Nyssa, Saint Macrina turned the family estate into a monastic community and shaped the theology of the Cappadocian Fathers.
Life
Eldest of ten children, Macrina was betrothed at twelve; when her fiancé died she refused to marry another, saying that he was not dead but living with God. She educated her younger siblings herself and pressed the brilliant, worldly Basil toward the ascetic life after his return from Athens.
With her mother Emmelia she transformed the estate at Annisa in Pontus into a community where mistresses and former servants lived on equal terms under a common rule, giving the Christian East one of its first women's monasteries.
On the Soul and the Resurrection
Gregory of Nyssa's dialogue On the Soul and the Resurrection records the conversation he had with her as she lay dying — she is the teacher and he the pupil throughout. His Life of Macrina describes a woman with no possessions, buried in a borrowed cloak, who had run a household, a monastery, and the theological formation of a family of saints.