11. HIEROSOLYMITANUS, or of Jerusalem. Two Macarii were bishops of Jerusalem, one in the early part of the fourth century, before that see was raised to the dignity of a patriarchate; the other in the sixth century.
Macarius I. became bishop in A. D. 313 or 314, on the death of Hermon, and died in or before A. D. 333. He was computed to be the thirty-ninth bishop of the see. His episcopate, therefore, coincides with one of the most eventful periods in ecclesiastical history. There is extant in Eusebius (De Vita Constantin. 3.30-32) and in Theodoret (H. E. 1.17), a letter from Constantine the Great to Macarius, concerning the building of the church of the Holy Sepulchre at Jerusalem. Socrates (H. E. 1.17), Sozomen (H. E. 2.1), and Theodoret (H. E. 1.18), also ascribe to him the discovery, by testing its miraculous efficacy, of the true cross, which had been dug up, with the two on which the thieves had suffered, near the Holy Sepulchre. Macarius was present at the council of Nice (Sozomen, H. E. 1.17; comp. Concilia, vol. i. col. 313, 314, ed. Hardouin); and, according to the very doubtful authority of Gelasius of Cyzicus (apud Concilia, col. 417), took part in the disputations against the Arian philosophers. He separated himself from the communion of Eusebius, the historian, bishop of Caesareia, who was his ecclesiastical superior, on account of his supposed Arianism. (Sozomen, H. E. 2.20; Fabric. Bibl. Gr. vol. viii. p. 369; Bolland. Acta Sanctor. Martii, vol. ii. p. 34, and Maii, vol. iii. Tractatus Praelim. pp. xvi. xvii.; Tillemont, Mémoires, vol. vi.)
Macarius II. was first appointed to the see A. D. 544, by the influence of the monks of Neolaura, "the new monastery," on the death of Petrus or Peter; but his election was disallowed by the emperor Justinian I., because it was reported that he avowed the obnoxious opinions of Origen, and Eustochius was appointed in his room, who bitterly persecuted the Origenists, who were numerous in the monasteries of Palestine. Eustochius was, however, afterwards deposed, but in what year, or from what cause, is not clear and Macarius was restored, after purging himself from suspicion of heresy, by pronouncing an anathema on the opinions of Origen. Victor of Tunes places his restoration in the thirty-seventh year of Justinian (A. D. 563 or 564), and Theophanes in the reign of Justin II., who succeeded Justinian in A. D. 567. He died about A. D. 574, and was succeeded by Joannes.