Severus

Severus of Antioch was the principal theologian of the anti-Chalcedonian (Miaphysite) tradition in the early sixth century and patriarch of Antioch from 512 until his deposition in 518. He was born at Sozopolis in Pisidia, in the eastern Roman Empire, in the later fifth century; ancient biographers do not preserve a securely attested year of birth, and modern estimates (often around the 450s or 460s) remain approximate. He came from a pagan family of local standing. As a young man he studied grammar and rhetoric at Alexandria and then law at Berytus (Beirut). During this period he was drawn to Christian ascetic literature, including the Life of Antony. He received baptism at the shrine of Leontius in Tripoli in the later 480s and thereafter entered monastic life in Palestine, living under a severe ascetic rule and associating with communities linked to Peter the Iberian and the monastery of Romanus.

In November 512, after the removal of the Chalcedonian patriarch Flavian II and with the backing of the emperor Anastasius I, Severus was consecrated patriarch of Antioch. In office he sought to impose a Cyrillian, Miaphysite Christology: he rejected the Council of Chalcedon (451) and the Tome of Leo, while also attacking Eutychian and other views that he regarded as denying the full reality of Christ’s humanity. He preached cathedral homilies, issued synodical letters, and conducted a wide correspondence. His Greek works—homilies, letters, hymns, and dogmatic treatises—survive chiefly in Syriac translation and constitute one of the largest surviving bodies of late antique theological writing. He was a monk-bishop and is not recorded as having married or had children.

The accession of Justin I in 518 reversed imperial policy in favor of Chalcedon. Severus was deposed, ordered arrested, and fled Antioch for Egypt. He spent the remaining two decades of his life in concealment, moving among monasteries and sympathetic households in Egypt while continuing to direct his supporters by letter. In exile he carried on a major controversy with Julian of Halicarnassus over whether the body of Christ was corruptible before the Resurrection, and he worked to hold the anti-Chalcedonian communion together against both imperial pressure and internal schism. He died in Egypt on 8 February 538. The precise town of his death and the place of his burial are not securely established in the surviving sources.

The imperial Chalcedonian church never accepted Severus as orthodox, and he is not commemorated as a saint in the Roman Catholic or Eastern Orthodox calendars. In the Oriental Orthodox churches—especially the Syriac Orthodox, Coptic Orthodox, Armenian Apostolic, and Ethiopian Orthodox communions—he is venerated as a saint and teacher of the faith, sometimes styled a crown of the Syrians. His principal feast is 8 February in the Syriac tradition. He was patriarch of Antioch, not bishop of Rome and not Coptic pope of Alexandria, and later veneration of him arose within those churches without a single, documented act of canonization comparable to the later Latin process.