Gregory of Nazianzus
Gregory of Nazianzus preached the Trinity into the Nicene creed in five sermons in a private house in an Arian capital, presided over the council that adopted it, and resigned from the council and the see in the same speech because the bishops could not stand him or he them. He was born about 329 near Nazianzus in Cappadocia, the son of its bishop, and studied at Caesarea, Alexandria and for ten years at Athens, where his friend was Basil and his fellow student was the future emperor Julian, whom he later wrote two invectives against. He wanted the contemplative life and was ordained by his father against his will at Christmas 361, ran away to Basil's retreat and came back. In 372 Basil, now metropolitan and fighting the Arian emperor Valens for control of Cappadocia, made him bishop of Sasima, a posting station he called a hole and never took up, and the friendship did not fully recover. In 379, when Theodosius became emperor and Constantinople had had an Arian bishop for forty years, the Nicene minority asked him to come, and he preached from a relative's house he called the Anastasia. The Five Theological Orations he gave there in 380 are the argument that the Son and the Spirit are God as the Father is, and the eastern church calls him the Theologian for them, a title it gives to two other men. Theodosius installed him in the great church in November 380 and in May 381 the council he had summoned made Gregory its president and the city's bishop. Then the Egyptian bishops arrived and objected that he already had a see, and the council, which had adopted the creed he had preached, would not defend him. He resigned in June with a farewell oration that told them what he thought of them, and went home. He spent his last years at Nazianzus and on his estate writing, including seventeen thousand lines of verse and the first Christian autobiography in poetry, and died about 390. His letters are the first collection a Greek author published himself.
- Lived: 329 CE – 390 CE
- Nationality: Cappadocian
- Roles: bishop, theologian, poet
