13 Facts About Gregory Thaumaturgus

Gregory Thaumaturgus has been canonized as a saint in the Catholic and Orthodox Churches.

Gregory Thaumaturgus was introduced to the Christian religion at the age of fourteen, after the death of his father.

Gregory Thaumaturgus had a brother Athenodorus, and on the advice of one of their tutors, the young men were eager to study at the Berytus in Beirut, then one of the four or five famous schools in the Hellenic world.

Gregory Thaumaturgus took up at first the study of philosophy; theology was afterwards added, but his mind remained always inclined to philosophical study, so much so indeed that in his youth he cherished strongly the hope of demonstrating that the Christian religion was the only true and good philosophy.

Gregory Thaumaturgus returned to Pontus with the intention of practising law.

Gregory Thaumaturgus's plan was again laid aside, for he was consecrated bishop of his native Neocaesarea by Phoedimus, Bishop of Amasea and metropolitan of Pontus.

When Gregory Thaumaturgus was consecrated he was forty years old, and he ruled his diocese for thirty years.

Gregory Thaumaturgus was wise, and people came to him for counsel.

An ancient source attests to his missionary zeal by recording a curious coincidence: Gregory Thaumaturgus began with only seventeen Christians, but at his death there remained only seventeen pagans in the whole town of Caesarea.

Presumably the many miracles which won for him the title of Gregory Thaumaturgus were performed during these years.

Sources on the life, teaching, and actions of Gregory Thaumaturgus are all more or less open to criticism.

Gregory Thaumaturgus relates that before his episcopal consecration Gregory retired from Neocaesarea into a solitude, and was favoured by an apparition of the Blessed Virgin and John the Apostle, and that the latter dictated to him a creed or formula of Christian faith, of which the autograph existed at Neocaesarea when the biography was being written.

Gregory Thaumaturgus tells us in this work that under Origen he read the works of many philosophers, without restriction as to school, except that of the atheists.