Was Gregory married?
biography
precisely addresses a man who appears to have adopted a career in rhetoric after having previously been in monastic life.
Gregory then, did not abandon his Christian profession or perhaps, at least to begin with, his celibate commitment. Nevertheless, it was a state in life which put a whole-hearted dedication to spiritual progress under severe stress, to say the least. Spiritually speaking, he did not find himself equal to the proposal, he was barely marking time, he was in a spiritual backwater. We have his own word for it in his comments on his own situation in On Virginity, especially chapter 3, of which more in the next two sections.
Some further beckoning call, some impetus from without was needed for Gregory's inner reawakening. His brother Peter suggests something of what happened in letter 30.6: 'now however, you show such good will towards him [Basil] who led you to the light through his spiritual travail'. Whatever other factors and personal influences were at work, Basil at any rate, was certainly instrumental in Gregory's spiritual regeneration. It is one of the great providential chain of events, that Basil's election as bishop in Caesarea created just the circumstances that made it possible for Gregory of Nyssa, then practising rhetoric in Caesarea, to be recalled to a higher purpose. Indeed, Gregory was in a sense, spiritually reborn twice, as he committed himself to a religious vocation again, a more remarkable grace than if he had never lapsed at all from his earlier purpose.
Was Gregory married?
In order to discuss Gregory's life in the period 364–372, it is necessary to face a question already discussed by church writers and scholars for some centuries: was Gregory of Nyssa married or unmarried?
There are two primary texts in favour of the case that Gregory was married:
• On Virginity 3 where Gregory described himself as cut offby a gulf from the glory of virginity.
• Gregory Nazianzen's letter 197, written to console the younger Gregory on the death of Theosebia, his syzygos, or 'yolk-fellow'.
On the question of Theosebia's identity, see the study of the sources in the notes prefacing Nazianzen's letter 197 in this volume. The
biography conclusion there is unambiguous: Theosebia was not Gregory's wife, but his own sister, a virgin ascetic in Macrina's mould who lived in close association with him at Nyssa.
The whole question therefore comes down to the evidence of On Virginity 3.
This is very fitting, since On Virginity marks the end of the phase of Gregory's life under discussion, being written in 371.31 We might hope that it affords some hints of Gregory's preoccupations and experiences in the years immediately preceding and we shall find that an in-depth reading does not disappoint. The strongest evidence that Gregory was married is in the following passage:
But as things are, my knowledge of the beauties of virginity (t«n t∞w paryen¤aw kal«n) is in some measure sterile and useless to me as is the grain to the muzzled ox (1 Cor 9.9–10) which goes round and round the threshing floor, or a waterfall to the thirsty if the water cannot be reached. Blessed are they who are in a position to choose the better things and are not debarred by having previously chosen the common life (t" ko¤nƒ prolhfyenÄtew b¤ƒ), as we have done, who are hindered from the glory of virginity (tÚ t∞w paryen¤aw kaÊxhma) as by a gulf, to which one cannot return once one has set one's foot on the path of the worldly life (t" kosmik" b¤ƒ). So we are but spectators of the beauties that belongs to others and witnesses of the blessedness of others.
And even if we come to some fitting conception of virginity, we experience the same as the cooks and attendants who flavour the tablefare of the rich, but do not themselves partake of what they have prepared. How blessed if it were not so, if we had not come to recognize the beauty through reflection all too late. But as things are, they are the truly enviable who realise what is beyond all prayer and desire, who are not excluded from the power of enjoying these goods.32
Other passages in On Virginity also tell against celibacy for Gregory.
In the letter prefacing the treatise, Gregory twice refers to the difficulties of 'the more common life' (toË koinot°rou b¤ou), those engagements in worldly activities that hinder attention to the more divine life. But when he proposes models who can show the way to 31 Daniélou has questioned this ('Chronologie', p. 159), considering that though in the prefatory letter Gregory refers to Basil as 'our most God-beloved bishop and father', this does not exclude his being a bishop himself, and citing Basil's reference to their uncle Gregory in letter 58. Still, Gregory as a practicing rhetorician addressing students best fits the context of this letter. Gregory did revise his work later when he was a bishop.
32 GNO 8.1, 247–343 at 256.
biography
attain 'true virginity', he immediately refers to the unmarried (égam¤&) or celibate saints, some of them still living—notably and specifically his brother Basil. In short, choosing marriage or not is a point of departure in the spiritual project of which he speaks. In chapter 1 he does not elide over bodily virginity in favour of the higher virginity, but insists on the 'incorruption' and 'purity' that are proper to the bodily state alone. In chapter 2 he speaks of 'the immaculate
Mary' (as he does several times in the treatise) through whose quite bodily virginity—her 'incorruption' or physical integrity—'the fullness of divinity shone forth in Christ', also in concrete fashion. In Chapter 3, as we have seen, he says that he himself is cut of from 'the boast of virginity' by having committed himself to the 'worldly life'. But when he begins to detail what 'this burdensome way of life' entails, he immediately speaks of marriage. All these resonances mean that he himself is involved in this primary element of 'the worldly life' of the passage cited above, 'the more common life', i.e. the choice of marriage. He considers himself disqualified from 'the boast of virginity', not simply because his secular career keeps him distracted from spiritual realities, but because he forsook virginity of body by choosing to marry instead.
With longer experience and upon reflection, he perceives all too late the beauty of the ideal he had observed lived at close quarters by his sisters Macrina and Theosebia, and his brothers Basil, Naucratius and Peter. Indeed he had tentatively participated in it. He now feels the full force of his season of refusal, he realises the obtuseness and dullness of his lapse of spiritual vision that made such a decision possible.
Confirmation that the argument of On Virginity 3 points to Gregory's married status is found in the critical edition of On Virginity.33 The editor, Cavarnos, ultimately grouped the three text families and the independent manuscripts into two streams of tradition. One stream, to which most manuscripts belong, contains a full apparatus of prefatory letter, a numbered index of chapters with chapter titles, and chapter-titles in the body of the text. The other stream originally had none of these elements, and seems only to have begun some way into the current text of Chapter 1, preceded by a brief general
33 John P. Cavarnos (ed.), De Virginitate, GNO 8.1 (Leiden: Brill, 1963), Preface
217–246, Text 247–343.