The Pious Household and the Virgin Chorus: Reflections on Gregory of Nyssa's Life of Macrina

This article suggests that Macrina presided over an ascetic community more domestic than institutional. After exploring the distinction between a personal view (in this case Gregory's) and objective reportage, the author analyses, first, vocabulary that refers most to family and household; and, second, vocabulary that might anticipate later institutional developments. The first set at once enfolds and modifies the second. The conclusion is that Macrina was, throughout her life, a thoroughly domestic figure and that the community described in the Life is best thought of as an extended family. The setting of the successive anecdotes and the long description of Macrina's death and funeral are compatible with—indeed, supportive of—that "pre-institutional" portrayal.