Macrina died in Pontus about 340. Her son Basil inherited the piety of his parents, and he took to wife Æmilia, a woman of great virtue, the daughter of a man who had been put to death after having been deprived of his goods by the Emperor Licinius. She had lost her mother in early youth.
Basil and Æmilia were very wealthy. They owned extensive estates in Pontus, Cappadocia and Lesser Armenia; they had a large family, ten children, of whom the eldest was Macrina, named after her grandmother; S. Basil was the eldest son, then came Naucratius, Gregory, afterwards of Nyssa, and Peter, the youngest, afterwards of Sebaste. We know no more of the four younger girls than that they were well provided for in marriage, and one of them had daughters who became superiors of a monastery in Cæsarea under the direction of their uncle, S. Basil.
Basil the elder, the father, died about 349, shortly after the birth of Peter. Æmilia was now left a widow with a large family to look after, but she was assisted in everything by her eldest daughter, Macrina, who was her inseparable companion.
When Macrina had been born she had been confided to a nurse, but it was remarked that she was almost always in her mother’s arms. Æmilia took pains to form the mind of the little girl, and give it a religious direction. She taught her first of all sentences from the Book of Wisdom, then made her commit sundry psalms to memory; so that, as her brother Gregory wrote, the Psalter became to her a companion day and night, and she was for ever singing psalms or reciting them in her heart.
Macrina was a good and patient needlewoman. Not only was the house large, but the brothers and sisters needed attention, and their clothes keeping in order, and Æmilia and her eldest daughter were constantly engaged at their needles, to keep pace with the demands of the family; and as they were always together, one mind was but the reflexion of the other.
What tended to make Macrina a still, stay-at-home girl, was an early love affair. She had been engaged by her father’s consent to a high-principled, well-born young man, and the marriage was only deferred because of Macrina’s youth. But before this took place he fell ill of fever and was carried off rapidly. After this Basil thought of uniting his daughter to some other suitable person, but Macrina urgently entreated to be allowed to remain with her mother. “My dear husband,” she said, “is not dead,—he lives with God. He has gone on a far journey—that is all, and I shall remain faithful to him whilst he is away.”
Her father did not press her—indeed, the devotion of Macrina to her mother was so tender and so close that he thought neither could bear to be parted. When he also died, then the union of hearts and interests became closer.
As the children grew up they dispersed, and received their several inheritances; but they all carried away with them indelibly the stamp impressed on their hearts by their mother and eldest sister; and in the end three of them became bishops and saints. Peter, the youngest, had been most in their hands, but the favourite brother was Naucratius.
As soon as all the birds were out of the nest, then Æmilia felt that there was nothing to retain her in the city, and she pined to be away from its dusty streets and noisy market in the green, sweet country, and in quiet with God.
Accordingly she and Macrina retired to a villa they possessed on the banks of the river Iris, at some little distance from the town of Ibora. This they converted into a sort of monastery. The slaves and other servants, if they chose to unite in the same life, were given freedom and accepted on the footing of sisters, no distinction being made between the members of the little community.