Macedonius the Hermit of Syria
Our Venerable Father Macedonius the Hermit, the Barley-Eater
Venerable · Wonderworker · d. c. 420, in Syria
Commemorated 24 January — Repose in the Syrian wilderness
Macedonius (†c. 420), surnamed Kritophagos, "the barley-eater," was one of the great ascetics of the Syrian wilderness at the turn of the fourth and fifth centuries, known to us at first hand from Theodoret of Cyrrhus, who owed his own birth to the hermit's prayers and set his life among the Religious History. For some forty-five years Macedonius wandered the mountains of Syria, Phoenicia, and Cilicia with no roof and no settled place, living on nothing but barley moistened with water — whence his name — and later sheltering in a pit dug in the ground and, in old age, a small hut. Sought out from far off for his holiness, he healed the sick, cast out demons, and cured the barrenness of Theodoret's mother; famed for his gentleness and his refusal of all comfort, he reposed in peace, past the age of seventy, about the year 420.
The barley-eater in the wilderness
Macedonius belongs to the golden age of Syrian monasticism, and his portrait is drawn by an eyewitness. Theodoret, bishop of Cyrrhus, who as a boy and young man knew the old hermit and revered him, gives his life the thirteenth place in his Philotheos Historia (the Religious History), the great gallery of the ascetics of the Syrian mountains. From Theodoret we learn that Macedonius chose the hardest form of the solitary life: he would not build or settle, but for about forty-five years ranged over the high country of Syria, Phoenicia, and Cilicia, living beneath the open sky in summer heat and winter cold. His only food, through the whole of that time, was barley — the coarse grain, soaked in water and eaten uncooked — from which the people gave him the surname Kritophagos, "barley-eater" (the Syrians called him also Gouba, "the pit," from the hollow in the earth in which for a long time he took shelter). Only in his later years, and at his disciples' urging, did he consent to a small hut, and at the last to take a little bread, when age had worn out his strength for the older rigour.
Healings and the birth of Theodoret
Macedonius's holiness could not be hidden, and men came to him from the towns and the countryside for healing of body and soul; the tradition credits him with the gift of miracles and of exorcism, curing the sick and delivering the demon-troubled by his prayer and the sign of the Cross. The most cherished of these wonders touches the historian himself: Theodoret's mother, long childless, came to the hermit in her distress, and Macedonius, tracing the sign of the Cross over water and giving it her to drink, promised her a son, who should be dedicated to God — and that son was Theodoret, who therefore counted his very existence a gift of the saint's intercession and wrote his life in gratitude. Of Macedonius's spirit Theodoret preserves a saying that has become his emblem: asked why he clung so to his hard and hidden life, the old man answered that he was a hunter, hunting for his God, and would never leave off the chase until he had taken hold of Him.
Ordination and repose
Theodoret relates that Macedonius, in his humility, had no wish for the priesthood, and was ordained almost against his will, hardly understanding what was done to him — a detail the tradition preserves as a mark of his simplicity and his flight from honour. He lived past seventy years, ever in the same poverty, and reposed in peace about the year 420, mourned as one of the fathers of the Syrian desert.
Feast and commemoration
January 24 (church date; New Calendar civil January 24, Old Calendar civil February 6), a commemoration of the Byzantine rite, kept among the saints of the day. The date is that of his repose in the Syrian wilderness.
Hymns
Troparion — Tone 8
With the streams of thy tears thou didst till the barrenness of the desert, and with sighs from the depths thou didst bear fruit a hundredfold in labours; and thou becamest a luminary, shining upon the world by thy wonders, O Macedonius our father. Intercede with Christ our God, that our souls may be saved.
Original translation from the Greek
Iconography
Macedonius is shown as an aged, emaciated hermit of the Syrian type — long grey hair and beard, clad in a rough garment or a mantle of skins — standing in the wilderness before the pit that sheltered him, his hand raised in blessing or prayer. No securely identified pre-modern image is known to this entry, and no image is stored here; the icon is noted as wanting.
Disputed questions
- Not to be confused with the several other saints named Macedonius of the calendars — among them the Constantinopolitan martyrs and confessors of that name — nor with the fourth-century heretic Macedonius, the pneumatomachian bishop of Constantinople; the barley-eater of Syria is a wholly distinct and orthodox ascetic.