Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Series 2, Vol. 5 (Gregory of Nyssa)

without choosing a profession, living on his share of the paternal property, and educating himself through a discipline of his own.

He remained for years unbaptized. This is a very noticeable circumstance that we encounter in the lives of many eminent saints and bishops of the Church; they either delayed their own baptism, or it was delayed for them. Indeed, there are instances of bishops being baptized and consecrated on the same day.

Gregory’s first inclination or impulse to make a public profession of Christianity is said to have been due to a remarkable dream or vision.

His mother, Emmelia, at her retreat at Annesi, urgently entreated him to be present and take part in a religious ceremony in honor of the Forty Christian Martyrs. He had gone unwillingly, and wearied by his journey and the length of the service—which lasted far into the night—he lay down and fell asleep in the garden. He dreamed that the Martyrs appeared to him and, reproaching him for his indifference, beat him with rods. Upon waking, he was filled with remorse and hastened to amend his past neglect with earnest entreaties for mercy and forgiveness. Under the influence of the terror his dream inspired, he consented to undertake the office of Reader in the Church, which, of course, implied a profession of Christianity. However, some unfitness—and perhaps that love of eloquence which clung to him to the last—soon led him to abandon the office and adopt the profession of a rhetorician or advocate. For this desertion of a sacred for a secular employment, he was severely taken to task by his brother Basil and his friend Gregory Nazianzen. The latter does not hesitate to charge him with being influenced not by conscientious scruples, but by vanity and a desire for public display—a charge not altogether consistent with his character.

It is common to place the marriage of Gregory with Theosebeia here; she is said to have been a sister of Gregory Nazianzen. Certainly, the tradition of Gregory's marriage gained enough credit to be used in later times as a proof that the bishops of his age were not celibate. But this rests mainly on two passages that, taken separately, are not in the least conclusive. The first is the ninety-fifth letter of Gregory Nazianzen, written to console someone for a loss by death—specifically, "Theosebeia, the fairest, the most lustrous even amidst such beauty of the adelphoi (brothers/brethren); Theosebeia, the true priestess, the yokefellow and the equal of a priest." J. Rupp has well pointed out that the expression 'yokefellow' (syzygon), which has been insisted upon as meaning 'wife,' may, especially in the language of Gregory Nazianzen, be equivalent to 'adelphos' (brother/sibling). He sees in this Theosebeia a sister of the Cappadocian brothers. The second passage is contained in the third chapter of Gregory’s treatise On Virginity. Gregory there complains that he is "cut off by a kind of gulf from this glory of virginity" (parthenia). The whole passage should be consulted. Of course, its significance depends on the meaning given to parthenia. Rupp asserts that, toward the end of the century, this word increasingly acquired a technical meaning derived from its purely ideal side—i.e., purity of soul—and that Gregory is alluding to the same thing his friend had blamed him for shortly before: the keeping of a school for rhetoric, where his object had been merely worldly reputation, and the truly ascetic career had been marred. Certainly, the terrible indictment of marriage in the third chapter of this treatise comes poorly from one whose wife must not only have been still living, but possessed the virtues sketched in the letter of Gregory Nazianzen; while the allusions at the end of it to the law courts and their revelations appear much more like the professional reminiscences of a rhetorician than the personal complaint of one who had cause to disparage marriage. The powerful words of Basil (de Virgin. I. 610, a. b.) also favor the above view of the meaning of parthenia; and Gregory elsewhere distinctly calls celibacy "parthenia of the body," regarding it as merely a means to this higher parthenia (III. 131). Nevertheless, when combined, these two passages may have led to the tradition of Gregory's marriage. Nicephorus Callistus, for example, who first mentions it, must have interpreted parthenia according to the definitions of his own time (the thirteenth century).