Macarius Magnes

FOURTH/fifth CENTURY. Christian apologist. Nothing is known for certain of his life. Some have identified him with the bishop of Magnesia who accused Heraclides at the Synod of the Oak* (403). He was the author of the Apocriticus, in which the objections formulated against the Christian message by a learned Neoplatonist (possibly Porphyry) were attacked. In the ninth century the treatise was used by the Iconoclasts in defense of their doctrines. It was quoted by Francisco Torres in the sixteenth century from a copy then in the Marciana Library, Venice, but later this was lost. In 1867 a defective MS was found at Athens, but this also is missing. There do survive fragments of a spurious series of Homilies on Genesis which have been ascribed to him.