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

deposed from his Bishopric. His deposition was followed immediately by a decree of banishment from the Emperor in A.D. 376. He retired to Seleucia. But his banishment did not secure him from the malice and persecution of his enemies. He was obliged frequently to shift his quarters and was subjected to much bodily discomfort and suffering. From the consoling answers of his friend Gregory of Nazianzen (for his own letters are lost), we learn the crushing effects of these troubles upon his gentle and sensitive spirit and the deep despondency into which he had fallen.

At length, there was a happier turn of affairs. The Emperor Valens was killed in A.D. 378, and with him Arianism "vanished in the crash of Hadrianople." He was succeeded by Gratian, the friend and disciple of St. Ambrose. The banished orthodox Bishops were restored to their Sees, and Gregory returned to Nyssa. In a letter 2, most probably to his brother Basil, he gives a graphic description of the popular triumph with which his return was greeted.

But the joy of his restoration was overshadowed by domestic sorrows. His great brother, to whom he owed so much, died soon after, before he was 50 years of age, worn out by his unparalleled toils and the severity of his ascetic life. Gregory celebrated his death in a sincere panegyric. Its high-flown style is explained by the rhetorical fashion of the time. The same year, another sorrow awaited him. After a separation of many years, he revisited his sister Macrina at her convent in Pontus, only to find her on her deathbed. We have an interesting and graphic account of the scene between Gregory and his dying sister. To the last, this admirable woman appeared as the great teacher of her family. She provided her brother with arguments for, and confirmed his faith in, the resurrection of the dead; and she almost reproved him for the distress he felt at her departure, bidding him, with St. Paul, not to sorrow as those who have no hope. After her decease, an inmate of the convent named Vestiana brought to Gregory a ring in which was a piece of the true Cross, and an iron cross, both of which were found on her body when it was laid out. Gregory kept one, and gave the other to Vestiana. He buried his sister in the chapel at Annesi, in which her parents and her brother Naucratius slept.

From henceforth, the labors of Gregory had a far more extended range. He stepped into the place vacated by the death of Basil and took foremost rank among the defenders of the Faith of Nicæa the creed established at the Council of Nicaea, 325 A.D.. He was not, however, without trouble from the heretical party. Certain Galatians had been busy sowing the seeds of their heresy among his own people. He was also subjected to great annoyance from the disturbances arising from the wish of the people of Ibera in Pontus to have him as their Bishop. In that early age of the Church, election to a Bishopric, if not dependent on the popular voice, at least called forth the expression of much popular feeling, much like a contested election among ourselves. This often led to breaches of the peace, which required military intervention to suppress, as it appears to have done on this occasion.

But the reputation of Gregory was now so advanced, and the weight of his authority as an eminent teacher so generally acknowledged, that we find him as one of the Prelates at the Synod of Antioch, assembled to heal the long-continued schisms in that distracted See. By the same Synod, Gregory was chosen to visit and endeavor to reform the Churches of Arabia and Babylon, which had fallen into a very corrupt and degraded state. He gave a lamentable account of their condition, as being beyond all his powers of reformation. On this same journey, he visited Jerusalem and its sacred sites; it has been conjectured that the Apollinarian heresy a heresy claiming Christ had a human body but a divine mind drew him thither. Of the Church of Jerusalem, he could give no better account than of those he had already visited. He expressed himself as greatly scandalized at the conduct of the pilgrims who visited the Holy City under the plea of religion. Writing to three ladies he had known at Jerusalem, he took occasion, from what he had witnessed there, to speak of the uselessness of pilgrimages as aids to [faith].

2: Epist. III. (Zacagni's collection).