Venerable Makedonios ‘the Barley-Eater’ of Antioch

Saint Makedonios of Antioch

The twenty-fourth of February is the feast-day of Saint Makedonios, another late-antique Syrian ascetic of the fourth and fifth centuries. Saint Makedonios [Gk. Μακεδόνιος, Ar. Maqadûniyyûs مقدونيوس], also known by the cognomen ‘Barley-Eater’ [Gr. Κριθοφάγος] on account of his diet, was born sometime in the middle of the 300s. When he chose to embark on the path of a Christian ascetic, he did so first as a mendicant. He imitated Christ in the wilderness, as it says in the Gospel of Saint Luke – ‘ Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests; but the Son of man hath not where to lay his head.’ He wandered between Phœnicia, Kilikia and Syria for the earliest part of his life.

The reason for his mendicant life was that Saint Makedonios gained a great deal of renown as a holy man, and had to flee from the great throngs of people who would gather around him wherever he went. ‘The mountain peaks,’ so says his hagiography, ‘were his palace and his arena’, though never in the same spot. There came a time that he found a certain place in Syria where he found himself able to settle. It was a deep pit in a remote place in the Syrian desert, without so much as a roof. He lived there for forty-five years under the open sky, shunning all human vainglory. So closely was Makedonios associated with this pit that he even earned the nickname of Saint Goubas [Gk. Γουβάς, from W Syr. gubba ܓܘܼܒܵܐ ‘pit’, cognate with Ar. hufra حفرة and Heb. gov גֹּב]. At length, when he was much older, Saint Makedonios gave in to the urgings of some among his disciples and built a small hut for himself with a roof, and continued in his ascetic struggle there for a further twenty-five years. Seventy years in all he passed in this manner, waging a constant war against the passions.

Makedonios gained his other cognomen, ‘Barley-Eater’, from his ascetic struggles. He would eat only a gruel made from raw ground barley mixed with water. It was only when he was advanced in age and when his strength began to decline that he would start eating baked bread.

It happened that one day that a man clad in military uniform out riding with his dogs and retainers, went up the mountain where the pit-cell of Saint Makedonios lay. He chanced upon the frail and rag-clad form of the hermit at a distance, and asked his retainers what manner of man this was. The retainers told him about Saint Makedonios’s life and struggles, and the commander desired speech with him. At once their commander got out of the saddle and strode toward him, hailing the hermit.

‘Is there anything lacking in what I do?’ the commander asked him.

Saint Makedonios answered him with another question. ‘Why have you come to this place?’

‘To hunt.’

Saint Makedonios answered this: ‘I, too, am a hunter. I hunt for my God. I hope to capture Him. I long to contemplate Him, and I shall never cease from this beautiful quest.’

The commander was impressed with Makedonios’s answer, and left him edified.

Saint Makedonios was granted the ability to heal diseases and to expel devils. One tale tells of how a woman was brought to him who was possessed with a devil. The devil’s powerful energy and hunger overwhelmed the poor woman, and Saint Makedonios, taking pity upon her, dipped his right hand in the water of a well nearby and made the sign of the Cross in it. When the woman drank the water thus blessed, the gluttonous devil fled her, and she departed healthy in body and spirit.

The holy hermit Makedonios reposed in the Lord between the years of 420 or 430, depending on the hagiographic source. Saint Makedonios was buried in the same tomb as Theodosios the Cœnobiarch and Frahât the Persian Sage. Holy hermit Makedonios, crevice-dwelling and barley-eating ascetic of Christ, pray for us in darkness that we might join the feast of the Bridegroom!