She shaped the greatest churchman of the fourth century. The Church forgot her name.

Ask any Orthodox Christian, Catholic, or student of church history who saved the Nicene faith — the faith behind the Creed billions of Christians confess every Sunday — and they will name Basil the Great. Ask who made Basil the Great, and almost no one will know the answer.

Her name is Macrina the Younger. She is the Fourth Cappadocian. And this is her story.

THE WOMAN WHO MADE THE CAPPADOCIAN FATHERS

Macrina was born around 327 in Caesarea, Cappadocia, the eldest daughter of Basil the Elder and Emmelia — both venerated Orthodox saints, the children of a grandmother who had hidden in the forests of Pontus for seven years during the Diocletianic persecution rather than deny the faith. When Macrina's famous brother Basil returned from Athens puffed up with the pride of a brilliant education and intending a career in rhetoric, it was Macrina who confronted him with the vanity of his ambitions and redirected him toward the ascetic life that made him Basil the Great, Bishop of Caesarea, Doctor of the Church, defender of Nicene orthodoxy, author of the monastic rules that define Eastern monasticism to this day.

She never wrote a word. She held no office, attended no council, addressed no emperor.

And yet without Macrina, there is no Basil of Caesarea as we know him. Without Basil, the First Council of Constantinople in 381 — the council that completed the Nicene Creed as the Church still confesses it — unfolds differently. The faith once delivered to the saints was preserved in the fourth century, in part, by a woman the tradition has nearly forgotten.