exandria, whose feast-day--a day which he never
observed himself--is still kept by the Latins on the 2nd, and by the
Greeks on the 19th of January. This famous saint died A.D. 394, after
sixty years of austerities in various deserts: he first retired into the
Thebaid in the year 335, and about the year 373 established himself in a
solitary cell on the borders of the Natron lakes. Numerous anchorites
followed his example, all living separately, but meeting together on
Sundays for public prayer. Self-denial and abstinence were their great
occupations; and it is related that a traveller having given St.
Macarius a bunch of grapes, he sent it to another brother, who sent it
to a third, and at last, the grapes having passed through the hands of
some hundreds of hermits, came back to St. Macarius, who rejoiced at
such a proof of the abstinence of his brethren, but refused to eat of it
himself. This same saint having thoughtlessly killed a gnat which was
biting him, he was so unhappy at what he had done, that to make amends
for his inadvertency, and to increase his mortifications, he retired to
the marshes of Scete, where there were flies whose powerful stings were
sufficient to pierce the hide of a wild boar; here he remained six
months, till his body was so much disfigured that his brethren on his
return only knew him by the sound of his voice. He was the founder of
the monastic order which, as well as the monastery still existing on the
site of his cell, was called after his name. By their rigid rule the
monks are bound to fast the whole year, excepting on Sundays and during
the period between Easter and Whitsuntide: they were not to speak to a
stranger without leave. During Lent St. Macarius fasted all day, and
sometimes ate nothing for two or three days together; on Sundays,
however, he indulged in a raw cabbage-leaf, and in short set such an
example of abstinence and self-restraint to the numerous anchorites of
the desert, that the fame of his austerities gained him many admirers.
Throughout the middle ages his name is mentioned with veneration in all
the collections of the lives of the saints: he is represented pointing
out the vanities of life in the great fresco of the Triumph of Death, by
Andrea Orcagna, in the Campo Santo at Pisa. In his Life in Caxton's
'Golden Legende,' and in 'The Lives of the Fathers,' by Wynkyn de Worde,
a detailed account will be found of a most interesting conversation
which Macarius had with t