Theosebia the Deaconess
The Blessed Theosebia the Deaconess
Righteous · Deaconess · b. 4th century, in Cappadocia — d. c. 385
Commemorated 10 January — Commemoration of Theosebia the Deaconess; kept with her brother (or husband) Gregory of Nyssa
Theosebia (fourth century – c. 385) was a deaconess of the church of Nyssa in Cappadocia, closely bound to the household of the great Cappadocian saints and honoured for a life of virginity, service to the poor and the sick, and care of the Church. The Orthodox tradition numbers her among the children of Emmelia — the sister of Basil the Great, Gregory of Nyssa, Macrina, and Peter of Sebaste — while much modern scholarship holds rather that she was the wife of Gregory of Nyssa, married before his episcopate; the question turns on a single ambiguous word in the letter Gregory the Theologian wrote to console Gregory of Nyssa at her death. Under either reading she was a woman of the first standing in the Church, whom Gregory the Theologian mourned as "the glory of the Church and the ornament of Christ." She is commemorated on January 10, together with Gregory of Nyssa.
A deaconess of the holy family
Of Theosebia's life the record is brief but bright. She belonged, by every account, to the innermost circle of the Cappadocian family of saints — that household of Emmelia which gave the Church Basil the Great, Macrina the Younger, Peter of Sebaste, and Gregory of Nyssa. She served the Church as a deaconess, in the order of women who in the early and Byzantine centuries ministered to the needs of the faithful; and the tradition remembers her as a virgin who gave herself to the works of mercy — caring for the sick, distributing food to the destitute, raising orphans, and preparing women for holy Baptism, in which the deaconesses had their appointed part. She reposed about the year 385, and her death drew from Gregory the Theologian a letter of consolation — addressed to Gregory of Nyssa — that is at once the chief witness to her memory and the ground of the question that surrounds her. In it he calls her "the truly holy, the true consort of a priest," "the glory of the Church, the ornament of Christ, the help of our generation, the hope of women," and grieves for her as for one whose like the age would not soon see again.
Feast and commemoration
Theosebia is kept on January 10 (church date; Old Calendar civil January 23), within the afterfeast of the Theophany, together with Gregory of Nyssa — whether as his sister or his wife, the calendars join them on the one day. The Greek, Russian, and Orthodox Church in America calendars commemorate her; her cultus is modest, without a widely-received proper service.
Iconography
Theosebia is depicted as a holy woman of the fourth century — veiled, in the modest dress of a consecrated woman or a deaconess, often bearing a cross or a scroll, and sometimes shown among the saints of her family. No identity-verified pre-1900 image of Theosebia has been secured for storage here; the entry is noted as wanting an icon.
Disputed questions
- Sister or wife of Gregory of Nyssa? The whole question turns on the letter of Gregory the Theologian (Nazianzus) at Theosebia's death, in which he names her both his correspondent's "sister" and the "true consort (σύζυγος) of a priest." Sister he might use in the wide Christian sense (as of a fellow-believer or a spiritual kinswoman) or in the strict sense of blood; consort or yoke-fellow is the ordinary word for a wife. The received Orthodox tradition, followed by the Menaia and the modern jurisdictional calendars (Greek, Russian, and the Orthodox Church in America), takes her as the sister of Gregory, Basil, and Peter, and lists her among Emmelia's children. Much modern scholarship, weighing "consort" together with Gregory of Nyssa's evident experience of marriage in his treatise On Virginity and the fact that he himself buried her, holds that she was his wife. A further strand (Ilaria Ramelli, Joan Taylor, and others), pressing the Theologian's phrase that she was "truly a priestly personage," has argued that she held a ministry fuller than that of the later deaconess. The sources do not decide the matter; this entry records the readings and adopts none as certain, keeping the calendars' title "deaconess" and their placement of her feast.