01 — Foundations
The starting points for any study of St. Macarius the Great: the little that the sources let us say of his origins in the Nile Delta and his withdrawal into the desert, and the recurring confusion — already flagged by Palladius — between Macarius the Egyptian and his younger contemporary Macarius of Alexandria.
Tradition: Pan-Orthodox (Church Father)
This section lays the foundation in two senses. The first file traces what the hagiographic sources attest of Macarius’s beginnings: birth in Lower Egypt, the trade of the camel-driver carrying natron, the celebrated episode of the false accusation borne in silence, and the withdrawal that made him a desert father. The second file performs the indispensable preliminary act of distinguishing him from Macarius of Alexandria — two great ascetics, near-contemporaries, both priests in the Nitrian-Scetiote desert, both exiled together under the Arians, and constantly merged in the later tradition. Get the two Macarii straight, and the rest of the collection reads cleanly; leave them merged, and half the sources contradict each other.
Files in This Section
| File | Description |
|---|---|
| Lower Egypt and the Call | Birth in the Delta; the camel-driver and the natron trade; the false accusation borne in silence and the girl’s vindication in childbirth; the withdrawal into the desert. |
| The Two Macarii | Distinguishing Macarius the Great (the Egyptian, of Scetis) from Macarius of Alexandria (of Kellia) — the recurring confusion in the sources and how the scholarship sorts it. |
See Also
- Founding of Scetis — where the withdrawal led
- Macarius in the Sayings — the Apophthegmata source for the false-accusation story
- The Macarian Writings Problem — a third Macarius-confusion: the homiletic corpus under his name
- Orthodoxy: Church Fathers — the patristic context
References
- The Sayings of the Desert Fathers: The Alphabetical Collection. Trans. Benedicta Ward. Rev. ed. Kalamazoo: Cistercian Publications, 1984.
- Palladius. The Lausiac History. Trans. R. T. Meyer. Ancient Christian Writers 34. New York: Newman Press, 1964.
- Vivian, Tim, trans. St. Macarius the Spiritbearer: Coptic Texts Relating to Saint Macarius the Great. Crestwood, NY: St Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2004.