Macarius of Egypt
Egyptian Christian monk and hermit
Macarius of Egypt (c. 300 AD – 391 AD) was an Egyptian Christian monk and grazer hermit. He is also known as Macarius the Elder or Macarius the Great.
Life
Macarius was born in Lower Egypt. A late tradition places his birthplace in the village of Shabsheer (Shanshour), Roman Egypt around 300 AD. He tended cattle as a boy. As a young man, with a strong call to solitude, he constructed near his home a small cell where he prayed continually and wove mats. At some point before his pursuit of asceticism, Macarius made his living smuggling saltpeter in the vicinity of Nitria, a vocation which taught him how to survive in and travel across the wastes in that area.
Macarius is known for his wisdom. His friends and close kin used to call him Paidarion Geron (Ancient Greek: Παιδάριον Γέρων, which when compounded as Paidiogeron led to Coptic: Ⲡⲓⲇⲁⲣ Ⲓⲟⲩⲅⲉⲣⲟⲛ, Pidar Yougiron) which meant the "old young man", i.e. "the young man with the elders' wisdom."
At the wish of his parents Macarius entered into marriage, but was soon widowed. Shortly after, his parents died as well.
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This entry incorporates text from “Macarius of Egypt” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.