The Seba library treats Macrina in 3 passages, across 1 author (including Richard Sorabji).
His sister Macrina is represented as letting him grieve initially at her impending death. On the other hand, apatheia, freedom from emotion, is accepted as an ideal.
Sorabji demonstrates that Gregory of Nyssa uses Macrina to embody the nuanced position that moderated grief and the ideal of apatheia can coexist within a single Christian framework.
, Emotion and Peace of Mind: From Stoic Agitation to Christian Temptation, 2000thesis
But Gregory of Nyssa represents Macrina as enjoying apatheia 392–3; Seneca, through believing in apatheia, enjoins on Marcia only metriopatheia 394
Sorabji’s index entry crystallises the interpretive claim that Gregory’s portrait of Macrina is the primary locus in fourth-century Christian literature for apatheia as an achieved, not merely aspirational, state.
, Emotion and Peace of Mind: From Stoic Agitation to Christian Temptation, 2000supporting
Gregory of Nyssa, Church Father: Apatheia an ideal 207, 392–3; 2 kinds, higher leaves
The index confirms Macrina’s place within the broader treatment of Gregory of Nyssa’s two-tiered schema of apatheia, signalling that her example anchors the higher form of emotional transcendence in his thought.
, Emotion and Peace of Mind: From Stoic Agitation to Christian Temptation, 2000supporting