Letter 120: Severus warns the monks of Bassus not to shelter a man whose monastic life may be built on household injustice.

Severus writes to the monks of the monastery of Bassus after respectable men have asked him to dismiss a man who entered the monastery improperly. The report is that the man left behind a wife and children and then took up monastic life as if those obligations could simply vanish. Severus tells the monks not to hide behind uncertainty. If the facts are false, they should make that clear. If they are true, the man should be sent back to the life from which he fled, because monastic discipline must not become a cover for injustice against a household. The community must take care to do what is honorable not only before God, but also before men.

Some respectable men have come to us, asking me to write to your love of God, in order that you may dismiss the man who has renounced the world, who is from the village and has in unapproved fashion put on the garb of monasticism among you, so that he may continue to till the soil and not dishonour the holy pro- fession of monks, since it was not in quest of virtue for its own sake that he came to this. I hear that he has left his wife contrary to the apostolic law and without consent, while they have, I learn, children also, born of their common cohabitation. But this will certainly p. 504. seem a crime to you also, and a thing contrary to the divine laws. Either therefore explain what the truth of the matter is, or, if the case is as we have been in- formed, send the man to live in the world. We must provide "things honest," as it is written, "not only before God, but also before men