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MACARIUS

MACARIUS MAGNES

MACARIUS (5) (Arius, “A peioy), bishop ofPetra in Palestine, who with Asterius, an Arabianbishop, forsook the Eusebian party and wentover to the Catholics at the council of Sardicain 343 (Ath. Apol. c. Ar. cap. 48; Id. Hist.Ar. ad Monach. cap. 15; Theodor. H.E. ii. 8;Tillem. Mem. viii. 98, 99 ; Hefele, Councils , ii.100). In the second passage of Athanasius thename is Arius, as also in the list of those whoaccepted the decrees of Sardica {Apol. c. Ar.cap. 50; Mansi, iii. 39, 42). Macarius andAsterius were banished by the emperor Constan-tius, through the intrigues of the Eusebians, intothe interior of Libya, where they were contume-liously treated {Hist. Ar. cap. 18; Tillem. vi.340). In this place Arius is again the name ofthe bishop, and here alone in Athanasius is his seementioned. Besides the famous Arabian townof Petra in Palestina Tertia, to which Asteriusis assigned (Le Quien, Or. Chr. iii. 723), therewas another in Palestina Prima, which is believedto have been the see of Macarius (ib. 667).Wiltsch ( Handbook , i. 222) places it east ofSichem. The two Petrae in connection withthese two bishops are fully discussed by Reland(in his Palestina Illustrata, pp. 210, 926), and byLe Quien {Or. Chr. iii. 663, 721). [C. H.]

MACARIUS (6), one of the Eastern semi-Arian bishops at the council of Seleucia in 359.(Hilar. Frag. x. in Pat. Lat. x. 705.) [C. H.]

MACARIUS (7), bishop at the synod ofAlexandria in 362. (Athanas. Tom. ad Antioch, inOpp. t. ii. p. 615; Mansi, iii. 346.) [C. H.]

MACARIUS (8). bishop of Magnesia, bywhom, at the synod of the Oak in 403, the chargesagainst Heraclides bishop of Ephesus werebrought forward (Phot. cod. 59; Le Quien, i.698; Tillem. xi. 166); vid. the following article,s-f. [E.V.]

MACARIUS (9) MAGNES, a writer ofthe end of the 4th century. Some 400 yearsafter, his name had sunk into almost completeoblivion, when in the course of the imagecontroversy, a passage from his writings wasproduced on the Iconoclastic side. Nicephorus,then or afterwards patriarch of Constanti-nople, had never heard of Macarius, and itwas only after long search and labour that hewas able to procure a copy of the work whencethe extract had been taken. His account of itwill be found, Spicilegium Solesmense , i. 305. Heevidently knows no more of the author thanhe could learn from the book itself. The wordsMacarius Magnes may be understood as bothproper names, or else may be translated eitheras the blessed Magnes, or as Macarius the Mag-nesian. Nicephorus understood Macarius as aproper name, and so he found it understood inthe title of the extract which he discusses; butconcerning Magnes he will not undertake to saywhether it is a proper name or a geographicalterm. He concludes that Macarius had been abishop, both because the title described the authoras lepdpxys, and also because the very ancientMS. from which his information was derivedcontained a portrait of the author in a sacerdotaldress. He dates Macarius as 300 years laterthan the “ Divine and Apostolic preaching ; ” butthis he would have gathered from two passages

in the work. In one, a heathen objector assertsthat our Lord’s prediction “ Many shall comesaying I am Christ ” had been falsified, seeing300 years had passed since, and none such hadcome, unless we should so count Apollonius ofTyana: in the other passage the objector simi-larly comments on the disappointment of Paul’sexpectation that he should “be alive and remain”to the coming of our Lord, 300 years havingpassed without his ever having been caught upto meet his Lord in the air. We further learnthat the work of Macarius was called Apocritica ,that it was addressed to a friend of his namedTheosthenes, and that it contained objections bya heathen of the school of Aristotle, together withreplies by Macarius. Nicephorus finds that theextract produced by the Iconoclasts had beenunfairly garbled, so as to misrepresent the realviews of Macarius, the context shewing that hehad only heathen idolatry in view, and that hiswords have no reference to the lawfulness of theuse of images among Christians. But howeverfree from error Macarius may be on this point,Nicephorus has no favourable opinion of him onthe whole, thinking that he discerns in passagesof his writings, Manichaean, Arian, or Nestoriantendencies, but especially because he finds himagreeing with “ the impious and senseless Origen ”as to the non-eternity of future punishments.After Nicephorus, Macarius again sank into ob-scurity, but not so complete as before; somevery few extracts from his writings being to befound in MSS. of the succeeding centuries. Itwas near the end of the 16th century that he be-came again the subject of controversy, the JesuitTurrianus, who had found a copy of the Apocriticain St. Mark’s Library at Venice, adducing pas-sages from it, which bore on the Eucharistic con-troversy, and on that concerning the relation offaith and works, and claiming for the author theantiquity of the sub-apostolic age. His Protestantopponents naturally refused to bow to an autho-rity of which they had never heard before, andfreely imputed fraud to the discoverer. Turria-nus did not publish the MS. himself, and whenit was sought for with a view to publication ithad disappeared from St. Mark’s Library. A likefate befel another work of Macarius, one onGenesis, which was found in the OttobonianLibrary, and of which a transcript was made andsent to Boivin, who was in charge of the RoyalLibrary at Paris. This work was not published,and now neither MS. nor transcript is to befound. Boivin’s papers however had been seenby Magnus Crusius, who, in 1737, 1745, pub-lished dissertations on Macarius Magnes whichmay be read in Migne {Pat. Gr. vol. x.). Atlength in 1867 there was found at Athens whatthere is good reason to believe was the same copyas was read by Turrianus at Venice, and whichafterwards, by theft or otherwise, found its wayto Greece. This was prepared for publicationby Blondel, a member of the French school atAthens, and on his premature death was actuallypublished by his friend Paul Foucart (Paris,1876). Shortly after, Duchesne, who had beena member of the same school, published a dis-sertation on Macarius (Paris, 1877), to which headded the text of all the fragments now attainableof Macarius’s homilies on Genesis. The Apocri-tica consisted of five books: of these we haveonly the third complete : the Athenian MS.