Gregory of Nazianzus

Gregory of Nazianzus, also known as Gregory the Theologian and Gregory Nazianzen, was a fourth-century Christian bishop, theologian, and orator, numbered among the Cappadocian Fathers and later honored as a Doctor of the Church. He was born about 329 at Arianzus, a rural family estate near Nazianzus in Cappadocia, then a province of the Roman Empire in Asia Minor. His father, also named Gregory, had belonged to a syncretic sect known as the Hypsistarians before being converted by his wife Nonna; the elder Gregory subsequently became bishop of Nazianzus. Nonna and both of Gregory’s siblings—his brother Caesarius, a physician who served at the imperial court, and his sister Gorgonia—were later commemorated as saints. Gregory received an extensive classical education, studying first at Caesarea in Cappadocia, then at Caesarea Maritima in Palestine and at Alexandria, and finally for several years at Athens, where he formed a lifelong friendship with Basil of Caesarea and encountered the future emperor Julian. After completing his studies he returned to Cappadocia, received baptism, and spent a period in ascetic retirement with Basil at Annesoi in Pontus.

In the early 360s Gregory’s father ordained him to the priesthood at Nazianzus, an act Gregory later described as having been performed against his will; he briefly fled before returning to assist in the pastoral care of the local church and to compose a major early oration defending that withdrawal. Throughout the 360s and 370s he supported Basil in the defense of Nicene orthodoxy against Arianizing imperial policy. In 372 Basil, by then metropolitan of Caesarea, consecrated Gregory bishop of Sasima, a small and uncongenial see created in the course of a jurisdictional dispute; Gregory never effectively occupied the post, and the episode strained his friendship with Basil. He continued instead to help his aging father at Nazianzus. After the deaths of Basil in 379 and of the Arian emperor Valens, a small Nicene congregation in Constantinople invited Gregory to organize their community. He arrived in 379 and preached in a private chapel called the Anastasia. There he delivered the Five Theological Orations, a set of carefully argued sermons on the Trinity that earned him the epithet of Theologian and remain among the most influential statements of Nicene doctrine.

When the emperor Theodosius I entered Constantinople in 380, he expelled the Arian bishop and installed Gregory in the cathedral. Gregory was recognized as archbishop of Constantinople and is counted among the holders of that see, which the First Council of Constantinople in 381 ranked immediately after Rome. He took a leading part in that council, the second ecumenical council, which reaffirmed the Nicene faith and elaborated the church’s teaching on the Holy Spirit. Opposition soon arose, partly on the canonical ground that he was already bishop of another see and partly from ecclesiastical rivals. Gregory resigned, delivered a farewell oration to the council and the city, and returned to Cappadocia. He administered the church of Nazianzus for a time and then withdrew to Arianzus, where he devoted his remaining years to poetry, correspondence, and a more retired ascetic life. He died at Arianzus in 390 and was buried at Nazianzus. His relics were later translated to Constantinople; after the Fourth Crusade portions were taken to Rome, and in the early twenty-first century some were returned to the Ecumenical Patriarchate.

Gregory’s surviving works include forty-five orations, a large body of letters, and several hundred poems, among them autobiographical verses that are an important source for his life. Together with Basil the Great and Gregory of Nyssa he is counted as one of the three Cappadocian Fathers whose theology shaped the classical doctrine of the Trinity. In the Eastern churches he is commemorated as one of the Three Holy Hierarchs, alongside Basil and John Chrysostom. The Roman Catholic Church lists him among the Doctors of the Church. He never married and lived as a celibate cleric and ascetic; no religious order in the later canonical sense is associated with him.