Notable Early Skete Leader Saint Macarius
St Macarius was born into a middle-class family in upper Egypt in the year 300. His father was a camel driver and merchant. His early desert excursions with his father are how he came to know the Scetis valley. When his parents arranged a marriage for him he feigned an illness and retreated to the desert to contemplate what to do. When he returned he found that his fiancé had died. Soon after his parents also died and he gave all the money he had to the poor.
Seeing his piety the bishop of Ashmoun and he was ordained a priest. Later he was accused by a village woman of impregnating her. He did not defend himself, but the women had a difficult labor and did not deliver until she confessed that Macarius was not the father. Following this incident he fled to the Scetis valley to live as a desert hermit.
Soon he began to draw followers and sought the advice of Saint Anthony, who inspired him to become a teacher and found a monastic community. That monastic community reflected Macarius’s own thoughts on the need for solitude and contemplation and allowed monks to live for the most part separated from one another, coming together when needed for mass on the weekends and in times of trouble.
He was exiled to an island in the Nile along with Saint Macarius of Alexandria by emperor Valens over a dispute over the Nicene creed. This was short lived and he returned to his monastery where he lived until the time of his death in 391. After his death his body was stolen and brought to his home village of Shabsheer, but his remains were later taken back to the Monastery of Saint Macarius in the Scetis where they remain to this day.
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