The Brother Who Became a Philosopher

Gregory of Nyssa was born around 335 into the same Cappadocian family as Basil the Great, apparently a decade or so his junior, and was educated largely at home rather than at the great schools of rhetoric his elder brother and their friend Gregory of Nazianzus attended, a fact he later treated as a minor embarrassment among more polished contemporaries. He first pursued a secular career as a teacher of rhetoric and reportedly married, an unusual biography for a man later ranked among the great fathers of Eastern monastic theology, before Basil, after becoming Bishop of Caesarea, drew him into church affairs and had him consecrated bishop of the minor town of Nyssa around 372, part of the same effort to fill Cappadocia's sees with reliable Nicene allies that had sent Gregory of Nazianzus to Sasima.

Gregory of Nyssa proved a poor administrator, was accused by Arian opponents of financial irregularities and briefly deposed and exiled around 376, and only returned to his see after the political tide turned with Theodosius I's accession. Basil's death in 379 affected him deeply, and in the years that followed Gregory emerged, somewhat unexpectedly given his rocky start, as the most philosophically sophisticated of the three Cappadocians, attending the Council of Constantinople in 381 as one of its leading theological voices.