Saint Gregory, Bishop of Nyssa

Gregory was a younger brother of Basil the Great, raised in the same Cappadocian family. He trained as a rhetorician. His Life tells that at a night vigil for the relics of the Forty Martyrs on his mother's estate he fell asleep in the garden and dreamed that shining soldiers barred his way; shaken, he took up reading the Scriptures. In 372 Basil made him bishop of the small town of Nyssa.

Under Emperor Valens, who favoured the Arian party, a synod deposed him on a false charge of misusing church funds; he escaped from his guards and wandered until Valens died. He took a leading part in the Second Ecumenical Council at Constantinople in 381, finished Basil's work on the six days of creation and wrote on Moses and the Song of Songs. He died in old age, c. 395.