Macarius of Alexandria

Macarius of Alexandria, often called Macarius the Younger to distinguish him from his more famous contemporary Macarius the Great of Egypt, was a fourth-century Egyptian monk and priest of the desert settlements of Nitria and Kellia. Ancient monastic literature, above all the Lausiac History of Palladius of Galatia, presents him as a native of Alexandria who had earned his living as a merchant—Palladius specifies a trade in sweetmeats—before he received baptism as an adult and withdrew from the city to take up the eremitical life. He is not to be confused with the Coptic popes named Macarius, nor with Macarius Magnes or other homonymous figures; the subject of this notice is the ascetic commemorated among the Desert Fathers.

Having entered the desert, Macarius settled among the monks of Kellia (the Cells), a cluster of hermitages lying in the Nitrian region west of the Nile Delta, and in time was ordained priest for that community. Palladius, who says he knew him personally, describes him as already of great age when they met in the late fourth century and ascribes to him a reputation for severe fasting, prolonged vigils, and unusual endurance. Anecdotes preserved in the Lausiac History and in the alphabetical collection of the Sayings of the Fathers tell of extreme experiments in mortification: a long sojourn standing in a mosquito-infested marsh as penance for having killed an insect, periods of eating only raw food, and attempts to go without sleep. The same sources credit him with gifts of healing, clairvoyance, and power over demons, and they relate a journey into the inner desert in search of the fabulous garden of Jannes and Jambres, the magicians of Pharaoh in Jewish and Christian legend.

Macarius's lifetime coincided with the Arian controversies and with the episcopates of Athanasius and Theophilus of Alexandria. Later ecclesiastical historians and hagiographers sometimes associate the Nitrian monks, including men named Macarius, with resistance to Arian bishops and with episodes of exile under the emperor Valens; the two Macarii are not always clearly distinguished in these narratives, and the details cannot be established with certainty. What is consistent is his standing as a priest-monk rather than as a bishop or patriarch. He is reported to have died in the Nitrian desert in the last decade of the fourth century, the dates 394 and 395 being those most often given in modern reference works.

Veneration of Macarius of Alexandria belongs to the early, pre-congregational layer of Christian sanctity. The Roman Martyrology assigns his feast to 2 January; the Eastern Orthodox Church commemorates him on 19 January, a date he sometimes shares in the calendar with Macarius the Great. His portrait in the sources is that of a converted townsman whose later life was spent in the cells of the Egyptian desert, and whose memory was transmitted through the sayings and miracle stories of the Desert Fathers rather than through a formal episcopal career or a well-documented family history. Precise years of birth, the names of any relatives, and the exact place of burial are not preserved in the surviving historical record.