The talk examines the way in which Gregory of Nyssa (c. 335 – c. 395) presents his older sister Makrina (c. 327–379) in two interconnected works as a teacher and philosopher—the one work ‘biographical’ (Letter on the Life of Holy Makrina, Spring 382), the other ‘theological’ (Inquiry About the Soul Conducted With His Own Sister Makrina, Winter 383/84). It has been generally assumed by previous scholars (primarily theologians, but also philologists) that the voice of Makrina in these two works is, in fact, the voice of Gregory, who was a philosophically trained orator and mystical theologian. However, a closer literary and stylistic analysis of the texts reveals that this assumption is erroneous, and that Gregory actually conveyed a particular philosophical voice for Makrina distinct from his own. We are thus in a position to appreciate the role of Makrina in the philosophical and theological debates in the Greek East of the Roman Empire at the end of the fourth century, and to grasp the philosophical relation of Gregory to Makrina within these two works.

About the speaker: Panagiotis Agapitos is Fellow of the Gutenberg Forschungskolleg at the University of Mainz, after having served as Professor of Byzantine Literature at the University of Cyprus (1992–2020). His research interests focus on textual and literary criticism, with an emphasis on Byzantine rhetoric and its performance, poetics, erotic fiction, he representation of death in Byzantine literature and the archaeology of Medieval Greek manuscripts. Over the past forty years, he has published some ninety scholarly papers, three single-authored studies, the first critical edition of the thirteenth-century verse romance Livistros and Rhodamne (2006), an English translation of this romance for Liverpool University Press (2021), and an edited volume Between History and Fiction: Medieval Narratives between History and Fiction: From the Centre to the Periphery of Europe, 1100-1400 (2012). He is currently writing a narrative history of of Byzantine literature under contract with Cambridge University Press. He has a side interest in crime fiction and has published three “Byzantine mystery novels” (2003–2009) and two short stories.

For further question and the Zoom-Link, please write to: contact@historyofwomenphilosophers.org.