ABSTRACT
The circumstances of Theodoret’s conception and birth at the end of the fourth century in Antioch remind us of the biblical stories of Samson and Samuel. His mother – married at the age of 17 – had been barren and although her diseased eye was healed by the hermit Peter of Galata, according to whose admonition she embraced a more ascetic life than she had lived before,2 it took seven more years until another holy man, Macedonius, finally promised the birth of a son. The condition put before the future parents was to dedicate the one to be born to the service of God.3 This being accepted, the mother conceived, and after a threatened pregnancy, aided by the holy man’s prayers, a son was born in the year 393.4 His parents named him Theodoret, i.e. ‘the gift of God’, and together with the monks he frequently met, they instructed him to live his life as the fulfilment of this parental offering.5
