There are two Saints Macrina, one the grandmother of the other. St. Macrina the elder was the matriarch of a remarkable spiritual family living in Pontus-in-Asia (modern Northern Turkey, by the Black Sea), the mother of St. Basil the Great and his younger brother, the theologian St. Gregory, bishop of Nyssa. These are two of the so-called ‘Cappadocian Fathers’. Macrina herself was a disciple of the distinguished Bishop of Neo-Caesarea in Pontus, St. Gregory the Wonderworker (+270). She suffered much for the faith, including loss of property, but transferred to her children and her holy grandchild the love of Christ which sustained her. She died in 340.