St. Macrina the Younger

The eldest of the ten children of a Cappadocian family that gave the Church three bishops, and by the account of her brother Gregory of Nyssa the one who taught them all. After her betrothed died she refused to marry, turned the family estate at Annesi into a community of women where she and her mother lived with their former servants as equals, and drew her brother Basil, back from Athens full of himself, toward the monastic life. Gregory wrote her Life, and set his dialogue On the Soul and the Resurrection at her deathbed, where she argues with him about death and wins. She died in 379. Feast: July 19.