A Dictionary of Greek and Roman biography and mythology

(Μακάριος).

1. AEGYPTIUS, the EGYPTIAN. There were in the fourth century in Egypt two eminent ascetics and contemporaries, though probably not disciples of St. Antony, as is asserted by Rufinus, and perhaps by Theodoret. [ANTONIUS, No. 4, p. 217b.] Of these the

subject of the present article is generally distinguished as the EGYPTIAN, sometimes as MAGNUS, the GREAT, or as MAJOR or SENIOR, the ELDER; while the other is described as Macarius of Alexandria. [No. 2.]

Macarius the Egyptian was the elder of the two, and was born, according to Socrates, in Upper Egypt. At the age of thirty he betook himself to a solitary life. His place of retreat was the wilderness of Scete or Scetis, a part of the great Lybian desert, which D'Anville places about 60 miles, but Tillemont as much as 120 miles S. of Alexandria, a wretched spot, but on that account well suited to the purpose of the ascetics who occupied it. Here Macarius, though yet a young man, gave himself up to such austerities as to acquire the title of παιδαριογέρων,"the aged youth." At forty years of age he was ordained a priest, and is said to have received power to cast out evil spirits and to heal diseases, as well as the gift of prophecy; and many marvellous stories are related by his biographers, Palladius and Rufinus, of his employment of these supernatural qualifications. It was even reported that he had raised the dead in order to convince an obstinate heretic, a Hieracite [HIERAX, No. 3], with whom he had a disputation: but this miracle was too great to be received implicitly even by the credulity of Rufinus and Palladius, who have recorded it only as a report.

During the persecution which the orthodox suffered from Lucius, the Arian patriarch of Alexandria [LUCIUS, No. 2] during the reign of the emperor Valens, Macarius was banished, together with his namesake of Alexandria and other Egyptian solitaries, to an island surrounded by marshes and inhabited only by heathens. He died at the age of ninety; and as critics are generally agreed in placing his death in A. D. 390 or 391, he must have been born about the beginning of the fourth century, and have retired to the wilderness about A. D. 330. He is canonized both by the Greek and Latin churches; his memory is celebrated by the former on the 19th, by the latter on the 15th January. (Socrat. H. E. 4.23, 24; Sozomen, H. E. 3.14, 6.20; Theodoret, H. E. 4.21; Rufin. H. E. 2.4; and apud Heribert Rosweyd, De Vita et Verbis Senior. 2.28; Apophthegmata Patrum, apud Coteler. Eccles. Graec. Monum. vol. i. p. 524, &c.; Pallad. Histor. Lausiac. 100.19; Bolland, Acta Sanctor. a. d. 15 Januar.; Tillemont, Mémoires, vol. viii. p. 574, &c.; Ceillier, Auteurs Sacrés, vol. vii. p. 709. &c.)