During his career at the end of the fourth century, Gregory of Nyssa wrote a significant number of narratives about holy lives. Across his extant texts he articulates the same common goal: to lead the audience into virtue through narrating holy lives. In this, Gregory prompts two questions in the modern reader: why does he believe that these hagiographical texts can lead his audience into virtue, and how does he shape them to do so?

I argue that Gregory envisages that his hagiographical texts lead their audiences through mutually reinforcing cycles of reordering desire (ἐπιθυμία) for virtue, and making a correct distinction (διάκρισις) between virtue and vice. Novice Christians are characteristically in bondage to the passions and are, thus, unable to make a διάκρισις between virtue and vice. By framing virtue in sensually pleasurable terms, the ἐπιθυμία of the audience yearns for it, drags the mind to focus on it, and they imitate the virtuous action of the exemplar. Such aesthetic imitation of virtuous action leads to ontological μίμησις of the Divine Nature qua virtue. The Christian experiences spiritual pleasure in the rational faculty, the passions begin to wane and they experience desire for virtue as the true good. Thus, reordered ἐπιθυμία has made it possible to make a correct διάκρισις, because the mind is not dragged about in pursuit of sensual pleasure. Crucially, now correct διάκρισις leads to an increase in ἐπιθυμία for virtue. Hence, the hagiographer is able to lead intermediate Christians into virtue by persuading them of the difference between virtue and vice, through encomiastic and exegetical techniques. Such reordered ἐπιθυμία leads to further cycles of διάκρισις and desire, purging of the passions, until the mature Christian stands on the threshold of mystical union with God. Here, the hagiographer can once again use rhetoric to further enflame the ἐπιθυμία for contemplation. When this happens, the ἐπιθυμία drags the mind across the threshold into mystical union with God. Throughout the life of the Christian, hagiographical texts lead the Christian through these mutually reinforcing cycles between ἐπιθυμία and διάκρισις, until the soul is exalted up to the mountain peak of the holy life.

The first part of the thesis establishes the key historical and conceptual contexts. Chapter one will propose what the anticipated contexts of performances and who the intended audiences were for my chosen texts. Chapter two will show that for Gregory virtue is a good movement (κῑν́ημᾰ) proper to one of the three faculties of the soul (λογῐσμός, ἐπιθυμία, or θῡμός), which leads to virtuous actions when the soul is correctly ordered and can distinguish between good and evil. These virtues are reinforced when a person chooses the good. Progress in the virtues of the lower faculties reinforce those of the rational faculty and vice versa.

Chapters three and four respond to Allison Gray’s claim that Gregory envisages that his hagiographical texts empower his audience to discern imitable virtues and virtuous actions from an exemplar’s life for themselves. First, chapter three draws on Gregory’s wider oeuvre to offer an anthropological and epistemological account of how hagiographical narratives can empower the rational faculty. I theorise Gregory supposes that narratives describe virtuous actions which reveal something of the virtues that generate them. Upon hearing them, the rational faculty of the hearer is able to make a διάκρισις between virtue and vice, and imitate the virtuous action which instils further virtue. Chapter four exemplifies this theory and completes my argument against Gray’s position. It demonstrates how Gregory uses basic emphasis, allegoresis and paraphrasis in his hagiographical texts to discern what virtues and virtuous actions are, and to foreground them to his audience.

My argument culminates in chapter five, where having critiqued Gray’s position on the way hagiographical narratives empower the mind, I broaden out my discussion to explore the role of desire. Using evidence from Gregory’s wider writings to build my theories, and passages from his hagiographical texts to exemplify them, I argue that Gregory envisages that his hagiographical texts lead their audiences through mutually reinforcing cycles of reordered ἐπιθυμία and correct διάκρισις. As the Christian matures, these cycles enable them to aesthetically imitate virtuous actions of these exemplars, through which they achieve ontological μίμησις of the Divine Nature qua virtue. In these ways, Gregory supposes that his hagiographical texts help restore in his audiences the image of God.