5th August ~ St Nonna, Model Wife and Mother

They had three children, all of them saints

ST NONNA, Matron (A.D. 374)

Nonna was born towards the end of the third century and, although she was brought up a Christian, married Gregory, the magistrate of Nazianzus in Cappadocia, who was a member of a Judaic-pagan sect called the Hypsistarians. However, this was a case of a “mixed marriage” turning out for the very best, and the resulting family was one of the most famous and brilliant saintly families of Christian history. By her shining example St Nonna converted her husband, and he became a priest, and then a bishop: in those days the now universal law that a bishop must be single or a widower was not yet everywhere in force; he is moreover venerated as a saint and is known as St Gregory Nazianzen the Elder. They had three children, all of them saints, and the eldest, St Gregory Nazianzen the Divine, became one of the greatest of the doctors of the Church; in his writing he often refers to the devoted and virtuous life of his mother Nonna. The next child was a girl, St Gorgonia, who married and had three children. The third was St Caesarius, a physician by profession. St Nonna outlived two of her children: Gorgonia died in her arms, and she heard the funeral sermons preached for her and Caesarius by Gregory the Younger which have continued to be the admiration of succeeding ages. She survived her husband only a few months and died at a considerable age in 374: a valiant woman, whose children rose up and called her blessed, whose husband praised her.

A sufficient account of St Nonna is given in the Acta Sanctorum, August, vol. ii, and in DCB., vol. iv, p. 50.

Taken from Butler’s Lives of the Saints