02 — The Sources
The methodological core of the collection. St. Macrina left no writings; virtually everything known of her descends from two highly literary works by one author, her brother St. Gregory of Nyssa. This section inventories those sources as dated artifacts, sets out the single-witness situation, and presents — with named scholars — the central debate over whether Macrina’s “voice” is historical testimony or Gregory’s literary construction.
Tradition: Pan-Orthodox (Church Father / Mother)
Macrina is the limit case of a particular kind of patristic knowledge: a teacher of immense reputation who wrote nothing and is heard only through a relative who was also a master of Greek rhetoric, writing after her death, in a hagiographic vita and a Platonic dialogue. This is a thin-source, single-witness subject, treated on the model of the repository’s flagship source-critical files (the St. Xenia methodology and the St. Mary of Egypt “Hagiography and History” section). This is the section to read first by anyone who wants to know how much we actually know about Macrina — and on what authority. Provenance is foregrounded as a topic, not concealed as an embarrassment (METHODOLOGY §§3, 4, 3.5).
Files in this Section
| File | Description |
|---|---|
| Gregory’s Two Works: The Whole of Our Knowledge | The flagship source-criticism: the dated source inventory; the single-witness situation; the full Clark/Burrus vs. Silvas/Maraval debate; the repository’s stated middle rule. |
| The Question of Her Voice | The ventriloquism problem in focus: hē didaskalos who is never named; the Phaedo model; whether a woman ever “speaks” in these texts; how to weigh a theology genuinely voiced through her even when the words are Gregory’s. |
See Also
- The Family of Saints — the biography these sources transmit
- The Vita and Its Genre — the Life of Macrina as a literary and hagiographic artifact
- What Is Voiced Through Macrina — the theology whose authorship is at issue
- Modern Scholarship — the named scholars surveyed
- METHODOLOGY.md — the repository’s citation and verification standard, esp. §§3.5 and 4
References
- Gregory of Nyssa. The Life of Saint Macrina. PG 46:959–1000; GNO VIII/1, ed. V. Woods Callahan. Leiden: Brill, 1952. SC 178, ed. Pierre Maraval. Paris: Cerf, 1971.
- Gregory of Nyssa. On the Soul and the Resurrection. PG 46:11–160. Trans. Catharine P. Roth, Popular Patristics Series. Crestwood, NY: SVS Press, 1993.
- Clark, Elizabeth A. “The Lady Vanishes: Dilemmas of a Feminist Historian after the ‘Linguistic Turn.’” Church History 67, no. 1 (1998): 1–31.
- Burrus, Virginia. Begotten Not Made: Conceiving Manhood in Late Antiquity. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2000.
- Silvas, Anna M. Macrina the Younger, Philosopher of God. Turnhout: Brepols, 2008.