Macaire de Scété

See also: Macaire

Macaire de Scété , or Macaire Large the Egyptian monk of the 4th century and “Father of the desert”. It is also called “the Egyptian” to distinguish it from his homonym and contemporary Macaire of Alexandria with which it is often confused. Many a apophtegmes brings back its words or its actions.

Festival: January 19th in the orthodoxe Church, 15 or January 16th in the Catholic church.

Biographical elements

Originating in the High-Egypt where it seems to be born with the whole beginning of IVe century, it became towards age the thirty years member of a monastic colony which populated the desert of Scété in the West of the Delta of the Nile at the place called since Deir Abu Makar (see the chart). Disciple of Holy Antoine, noticed for his early holiness, one had allotted to him the nickname of “young old man”.

Priest at 40 years, it had the Charisme S of cure and prophecy. Firmly opposed to the heresy arienne, it, towards 374, was exiled in an island of the Nile by the bishop Lucius of Alexandria. It could however return to the desert to finish its days there, old of more than eighty ten years. It is for this last period that Évagre Pontique was its disciple. He died towards 391.

The gilded Légende reports that having killed a chip which had it piqué, it remained naked in the desert lasting six months to be thus avenged for the evil that it had made him.

Works of Macaire

There is under his name all a “literature macarienne” which comprises at least three sources:

  • a letter, With the friends of God , undoubtedly authentically of first Macaire,

  • spiritual A hundred and Fifty Homélies , joined together by Syméon Métaphraste, that modern criticism tended a long time to allot to pseudo-Macaire tendency messalienne: Syméon de Mésopotamie. A recent French edition of this capital work concludes with paternity from Macaire de Scété;
  • a cycle Copte of Macaire, with the collection of the Virtues of saint Macaire , also called Macaire copte.

One sees here the importance of an oral tradition inspired by the figure of “Happy”.

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