Gregory of Nyssa

Born ca. 335 and partly educated by his older brother Basil, Gregory was lector when he decided to marry and to teach rhetorics. After a period in Basil’s little monastery in Pontus following the death of his young wife, he was obliged by Basil to accept episcopal consecration and to occupy the see of Nyssa in the interest of his brother’s metropolitan administration. Outstanding as a speculative theologian and a mystical thinker, he played a prominent role at the Council of Constantinople in 381. He died probably in 394. His written work dates mainly from the last fifteen years of his life. With Origen, he is the most studied Greek Father in recent decades.

Charles Kannengiesser, Handbook of Patristic Exegesis: The Bible in Ancient Christianity (Leiden: Brill, 2006), 753.