Makarios Makris, Saint (1383-1431)
Saint Makarios Makris was an eminent figure of the later Byzantine years. An offspring of an important family of Thessaloniki, where he was born in about 1383, he received an outstanding education and, even from a young age, was distinguished by his learning, prudence and virtue. In about 1401, he took up the monastic life at the Monastery of Vatopaidi under the elder Matthaios Harmenopoulos – who before monasticism had been the renowned professor of Law, Constantine Harmenopoulos – for a decade, and afterwards under his ascetic fellow countryman David. Through David he developed relations with the Emperor Manuel II Palaiologos and later with John VII. After 1419, when necessities arose over doctrinal issues, he went to Constantinople at the behest of the emperor, where he was elected abbot of the Pantokratoros Monastery there sometime after 1429. He played a leading role in the local synod of the years 1426–1429, after which he was sent to Rome as head of a three-member delegation to Pope Martin V, where he defended the Orthodox doctrines and set forth the Orthodox theological positions. He died on 7 January 1431 and was buried at Pantokratoros Monastery. His written works are dogmatic (anti-Latin), hagiological and ethical.