Makarios Makres

Saint Makarios Makres was born about 1383 at Thessalonica, of pious and distinguished parents (according to other sources he was a Jew by birth who became a Christian). He was noted for learning, virtue and prudence and bore the nickname Asprofris. As a young man he came to the Holy Mountain (1401) and became a monk at the Vatopaidi Monastery, first under a virtuous elder, Armenopoulos, then under the ascetic David; he was ordained deacon and priest. He went with David to Constantinople at the invitation of the Emperor Manuel II Palaiologos, but the emperor could not keep them long as spiritual advisers. They returned to Athos, where David reposed in 1422.

Later Makarios went again to Constantinople and became abbot and renewer of the Pantokrator Monastery, which had fallen into decline. The Emperor John VIII Palaiologos sent him as his representative to Rome (1429), where he showed himself unbending and truly Orthodox. He was protosyncellus of the patriarch and spiritual father of the emperor. He fell asleep from the plague on Halki, loved by all, and was buried at the Pantokrator Monastery in Constantinople on 7 January 1431.

He wrote lives of Saint Andrew of Crete, Saint Maximus Kausokalyvites and Saint David of Thessalonica, a homily on the translation of the relics of Saint Euphemia, and other works. He also wrote a homily against the Latin teaching of the procession of the Holy Spirit "also from the Son", showing the serious differences between the Orthodox and the Latins. He followed the strict hesychast life and, according to his anonymous biographer, was granted the vision of the uncreated light. He is remembered on 8 January and is honoured locally, at Vatopaidi, without synodal canonization.