One of the most fascinating women saints of the early Church, Macrina was the elder sister and mentor of two of the great Cappadocian Fathers, Bishop Basil the Great, and Gregory of Nyssa. She was also described as "father, teacher, guide, and mother" to her youngest brother, Bishop Peter of Sebaste, the posthumous child of St. Basil the Elder. Macrina, having tragically lost her fiancee, remained a virgin, true to his memory, never leaving the side of her mother, St. Emmelia. Deeply philosophic, she inspired her brothers to become leaders in the early church and to love the intellectual life and the pursuit of perfection through her teaching. She founded one of the first monastic communities for women and is the patroness of breast cancer victims. Macrina and her family of saints and martyrs lived through challenging age of the Great Persecution of the Christians in the Roman Empire and experienced the golden age of the Emperor Constantine the Great.

Here is an award-winning, new translation that brings to light Gregory's complex identity as an early mystic. Gregory (c. 332-395) was one of the Greek Cappadocian Fathers, along with St. Basil the Great and St. Gregory Nazianzen. +

The road to sainthood takes a lifetime to travel. . . . Late in the fourth century, Christians are labeled enemies of the Roman Empire--hounded, arrested, tortured, and executed. Macrina and her husband Basil, once-wealthy Christians, flee with their small son to the mountainous forests south of the Black Sea. So begins Macrina's adventure in faith, as she undertakes the process of becoming one of the most influential women in sacred history, the mother and grandmother of saints. She is truly a great confessor of the Orthodox Christian faith. A chapter book with black-and-white illustrations.

This book presents St Macrina the Younger (c. 327-379), eldest sister of Ss Basil the Great and Gregory of Nyssa. All the sources of Macrina's life are gathered together, translated afresh into English, and provided with up-to-date introductions and notes. Documents include: Testimonies of St Basil, St Gregory Nazianzen's epigrams on Macrina and her siblings; Gregory of Nyssa's letter 19 which appears in English for the first time; The Life of Macrina, a jewel of fourth-century Christian biography; and the dialogue On the Soul and Resurrection in which Macrina appears as the Teacher expounding Christian doctrine with reasoned argument. The introductory shows how Macrina gradually changed the family household of Annisa into the proto-monastic community that became model of the monasticism that has come down under Basil's name. A specially commissioned icon, a map of Central Anatolia, and a report of the author's expeditions to ancient Pontus are included.

Saint Macrina (327 - 370) was a major guiding force in the early development of monasticism and it was through her example that her brother, Saint Basil the Great, was inspired to establish one of the first monastic communities. This life, written by her other famous brother, Saint Gregory of Nyssa, is one of the masterpieces of Christian literature.

Both carefully researched and engaging, this small book invites the reader into the story of a remarkable fourth-century Cappadocian woman, St. Macrina the Younger, who met challenges that may seem familiar today. Surrounded by polarizing political conflict, in an empire divided by growing disparities between rich and poor, Macrina lived through earthquakes and disastrous droughts. She saw people displaced by war and severe weather, pushed into the ranks of the hungry and houseless. She suffered breast cancer and lost loved ones in tragic, unexpected deaths. Her response was nothing less audacious, fascinating, and inspiring than a commitment to know, reveal, and reflect God in her actions, and to make her home a microcosm of gospel life--an inclusive community of love, equality, simplicity, labor, caring, and generosity. The story begins with Macrina's parents among Christian refugees hiding in the hills during the Great Persecution. Restored to their family estates after the Edict of Milan, they raised two of the Cappadocian Fathers and two other saints. In this book, we follow their eldest child, Macrina, as her lived faith changes the course of her own life, and gradually and steadily permeates and remakes her family and community.

This book presents St Macrina the Younger (c. 327-379), eldest sister of Ss Basil the Great and Gregory of Nyssa. All the sources of Macrina's life are gathered together, translated afresh into English, and provided with up-to-date introductions and notes. Documents include: Testimonies of St Basil, St Gregory Nazianzen's epigrams on Macrina and her siblings; Gregory of Nyssa's letter 19 which appears in English for the first time; The Life of Macrina, a jewel of fourth-century Christian biography; and the dialogue On the Soul and Resurrection in which Macrina appears as the Teacher expounding Christian doctrine with reasoned argument. The introduction shows how Macrina gradually changed the family household of Annisa into the proto-monastic community that became model of the monasticism that has come down under Basil's name. A specially commissioned icon, a map of Central Anatolia, and a report of the author's expeditions to ancient Pontus are included. 'In contrast with those works that seek to translate the ancient texts into colloquial English with a pedestrian tone, Silvas' translations have a grand and noble quality about them that is fully fitting Gregory's rhetoric and that conveys to the reader the seriousness of the lofty subject. Silvas does not "over translate"; her translation preserves those points of ambiguity in Nyssen's writing that should be resolved (if possible) not in the translation itself but in scholarly debate'. Warren Smith, Duke University