Abba Macarius told this tale about himself, “When I was a young man in my cell in Egypt, they took me and made me the cleric for the village. But I didn’t want that and fled to another neighborhood. There I was joined by a devout secular who shared with me the labor of the manual work I was doing and helped me in everything.
Now it so happened that a young woman in that place being tempted by the devil was corrupted and fell. And when her pregnancy became obvious she was asked who the father was and she replied, ‘It was that solitary who slept with me.’ They rushed out of the town, seized me, dragged me back to the town, hung bags of excrement around my neck, and made me go right through the town, beating me as I went, and crying, ‘This is the monk who corrupted our daughter. Get rid of him! Get rid of him!’ And they beat me nearly to death, until one of the older men intervened saying, ‘How much longer are you going to go on beating this pilgrim monk?’
Now the man who lived with me had followed on behind me in some distress, for people had turned on him too, shouting, ‘You supported this solitary monk and look what he has done!’ And when the parents of the girl said, ‘We can’t let him go till he can produce someone who will guarantee the girl’s support’, this man stepped forward as my guarantor and swore an oath on my behalf. We went back to the cell, where I gave him all the baskets I had and told him to sell them and give the money to ‘my wife’ For I had already said to myself, ‘Macarius, seeing you seem to have got yourself a wife you will have to work twice as hard in order to feed her.’ and I worked night and day for her support.
When the time came for her to give birth she spent several days in labour with no result. ‘What is the reason for this?’ they wondered. ‘I know why I am suffering thus,’ she said. Her parents asked her why and she replied, ‘It’s because I laid the blame for this on that monk and falsely accused him when it wasn’t his fault at all.’ And she named the youth who was really responsible. When my companion heard about this he came to me with great joy and said, ‘That girl was unable to give birth until she had confessed that you were not to blame in the matter, and that she had lied about you. And all the inhabitants of the town have decided to come out to you here, to give thanks to God and to make amends to you.’ When I heard this I immediately got up and fled here to Scete, for fear that I should be once again importuned by people, and that is the main reason why I began to live here.”
