Macarius the Great

Life events

1. Born — 300

   Born in Lower Egypt around 300 AD; a late tradition places his birthplace in the village of Shabsheer (Shanshour) in Roman Egypt. As a boy he tended cattle.

2. Other

   As a young man Macarius built a small cell near his home for continuous prayer and mat-weaving. He had also made his living smuggling saltpeter near Nitria, which taught him to survive and travel in the desert wastes.

3. Educated

   After being widowed young and distributing his inheritance among the poor, Macarius found an experienced elder in the nearby desert who guided him in the practice of watchfulness, fasting, and prayer, and taught him basket-weaving as a manual trade.

4. Pilgrimage

   Macarius traveled to visit Anthony the Great in the desert and learned from him the laws and rules of monasticism. He then returned to the Scetic Desert (Wadi El Natrun), where he was ordained a priest around the age of forty.

5. Ordained — 340

   Returning to the Scetic Desert at approximately age forty, Macarius was ordained a priest. His reputation drew many followers, and he presided over a semi-eremitical community whose members gathered for communal worship only on Saturdays and Sundays.

6. Exiled

   Emperor Valens, under pressure from Bishop Lucius of Alexandria during the Arian controversy over the Nicene Creed, banished Macarius of Egypt along with Macarius of Alexandria to an island in the Nile. On the island both men prayed over the ill daughter of a pagan priest; the source reports her healing, following which the islanders abandoned their pagan worship and built a church. When the event became known, Valens and Lucius permitted both men to return.

7. Died — 391

   Macarius died in 391. Villagers from Shabsheer took his body and built a church there; Pope Michael V of Alexandria later returned the relics to the Nitrian Desert on 19 Mesori. His body rests today in the Monastery of Saint Macarius the Great at Scetes.

Relationships

Documented claims

• His contemporaries called him Paidarion Geron (Greek: Παιδάριον Γέρων, "the young man with an elder's wisdom"), a compound name that passed into Coptic as Pidar Yougiron. (likely)
• A pregnant woman falsely accused Macarius of fathering her child; he accepted the accusation in silence and cared for her needs. Her labor became protracted until she confessed his innocence, after which he fled to the Nitrian Desert rather than accept the popular vindication. (plausible)
• The Monastery of Saint Macarius the Great at Scetes (Wadi El Natrun) has been continuously inhabited by monks since its fourth-century foundation and today belongs to the Coptic Orthodox Church. (certain)
• The entirety of the Nitrian Desert is sometimes called the Desert of Macarius; local tradition held that his cloisters there were equal in number to the days of the year, supported by ruins of numerous monasteries throughout the region. (plausible)
• Macarius the Great is depicted on the right edge of the Triumph of Death fresco in Pisa, standing apart from a group of horrified aristocrats confronted by open sarcophagi, reading from a scroll as a teacher of mortality. (likely)