Life of Gregory Thaumaturgus

Contents

Reading pages: 893–911 · 913–929 · 931–947 · 949–957

1. 893Gregory of Nyssa opens his panegyric on Gregory Thaumaturgus by praying for the Spirit's help and explaining that remembering a virtuous life guides hearers like a beacon.
2. 895Christian praise, Gregory says, honours not birthplace, family, or wealth but the heavenly homeland and kinship with God gained by free choice.
3. 897Gregory declines to praise Thaumaturgus for his homeland, though Pontus and Neocaesarea could be praised, since only virtue is truly one's own.
4. 899Gregory passes over Thaumaturgus's pagan ancestors and begins with the virtue he showed as an orphaned youth, comparing him to the palm tree of the psalm.
5. 901Like Abraham rising from astronomy to God, Thaumaturgus passed through Greek philosophy to the simple faith of the Gospel, lived chastely in Alexandria, and was there the target of a slanderous plot.
6. 903Slandered by a harlot who demanded her wages, the young Gregory calmly had her paid; she was at once seized by a demon until he prayed for her.
7. 905Gregory compares Thaumaturgus's chastity favourably with Joseph's and tells how, with Firmilian, he studied under Origen before returning home.
8. 907Refusing invitations to stay abroad and public fame at home, Gregory withdrew to a solitary life, like Moses but without a wife.
9. 909Bishop Phaedimus of Amasea, unable to catch the fleeing Gregory, consecrated him in his absence for Neocaesarea, which had only seventeen Christians; Gregory then sought a revelation of the true faith, and an old man appeared to him by night.
10. 911In the vision Mary asks John the Evangelist to reveal the true faith to Gregory, who writes down the creed that begins “One God, Father of the living Word.”
11. 913The creed ends by confessing an undivided, uncreated, unchanging Trinity; its autograph, kept at Neocaesarea, is compared to Moses' tablets, and Gregory sets out to fight the demons of his pagan city.
12. 915Sheltering overnight in an oracular temple, Gregory drove out its demons by prayer; when the furious temple-warden demanded proof of his power, Gregory gave him a note reading “Gregory to Satan: Enter.”
13. 917When Gregory moved a great stone at a word, the temple-warden believed, left family, wife, priesthood, and property, and followed him.
14. 919Gregory entered Neocaesarea with the converted temple-warden, ignoring the curious crowd that came out to see him, and was escorted in by the whole city, though he owned no house.
15. 921Without a house, Gregory tells his followers that God is their dwelling and accepts the hospitality of Musonius; by evening of his first day enough had believed to form a congregation.
16. 923Gregory's preaching and healings won the whole city; he built a church that alone survived a later earthquake, and the people brought all their disputes to his judgment.
17. 925Gregory's judgment is compared to Solomon's between the two mothers: when two brothers prepared to fight over a lake, Gregory, failing to reconcile them, prayed all night on its shore.
18. 927By morning the lake was dry and the brothers reconciled; Gregory judges this greater than Solomon's judgment and than the drying of the Jordan and the Red Sea, which returned to their courses.
19. 929The people living by the flood-prone river Lycus begged Gregory for help, and he walked with them, leaning on his staff, to see the breach in the bank.
20. 931Declaring that only God sets limits to waters, Gregory planted his staff in the broken bank; it grew into a tree, called “the Staff,” which the river never passes.
21. 933Gregory's work outlasts the prophets' wonders because it protects the people permanently; invited to Comana to give it a bishop, he looked not for eloquence or birth but for virtue.
22. 935A scornful elector proposed Alexander the charcoal-burner; Gregory had him brought in and discerned that the ragged man was a hidden philosopher, later a martyr, who disguised himself to guard his chastity.
23. 937Gregory had Alexander washed and dressed in his own clothes, rebuked the electors for judging by appearance, and consecrated him bishop; a sneering Athenian was corrected by a vision of shining doves.
24. 939Gregory's choice showed a mind that valued only virtue; on his way home two Hebrews staged a fake death to trick him, and he gave his cloak for the “corpse.”
25. 941The man who feigned death was found truly dead, which Gregory compares to Peter's judgment on Ananias; Gregory also freed a demon-possessed youth by breathing on his linen cloth.
26. 943With Neocaesarea and its region Christian, the emperor, angry at the church's growth, ordered governors to force Christians back to the gods by torture; the local governor zealously enforced it.
27. 945The persecution brought every kind of torture, informers, and betrayals within families; seeing human weakness, Gregory advised the church to flee and fled first himself.
28. 947Hunted on a hill, Gregory and his deacon (the former temple-warden) stood in prayer and appeared to the searchers as two trees; the informer believed, and the persecution turned on the rest of the Christians.
29. 949Like Moses praying against Amalek, Gregory in hiding saw in spirit the martyrdom of the young Troadius in the city; his deacon, trusting his prayers, went there to see.
30. 951In the city the deacon insisted on bathing at night in a bath haunted by a murderous demon; protected by the sign of the cross, the name of Christ, and Gregory's prayer, he came out unharmed and confirmed Troadius's martyrdom.
31. 953After the persecution Gregory instituted martyrs' festivals, allowing the new converts some festive enjoyment; before his death he found only seventeen pagans left, as many as there had been Christians at his coming.
32. 955Gregory died leaving orders that he be buried in a borrowed tomb; Gregory of Nyssa then tells how, early in his episcopate, a festival crowd cried “Zeus, make room for us,” and a plague followed his warning.
33. 957During the plague only Gregory's prayer saved the houses marked by an apparition, and the people turned to Christ; Gregory of Nyssa omits other wonders lest they be disbelieved and ends with a doxology.