St. Macarius is one of the founding fathers of Christian monasticism. St. Anthony the Great knew him and praised his wisdom. When followers gathered around his hermitage in Scetis, he first built a church in which they could pray. Eventually a monastery grew up around the church and the scattered hermitages. To his followers he was the "aged youth," for though he was only thirty when he settled in Scetis, he had the depth and wisdom of a person much older. Arians exiled him to an island in the Nile Delta because he defended the teachings of St.
