Letter 22: Severus rebukes the fathers for not sending Stephen and denounces Musonius for disturbing Isauria and seeking gifts.

Severus writes to the fathers because many letters have reached him, and he wants them to join in one common petition and prayer for the common situation. But he also has a particular rebuke. They did not do well in failing to send the deacon Stephen. They may say he was confined to bed, and Severus may accept that proof as a sinful man, but he asks whether Christ accepted it. The Lord who told the paralytic to take up his bed still has claims on those who serve the church. The main target is Musonius. Severus describes him as uninstructed, presumptuous, proud, and avaricious, a man who has disturbed Isauria and then gone to Alexandria. Musonius wants to legislate for an entire province while despising the smallness of his own city, forgetting that priestly dignity is not measured by civic size. He pressures bishops, drives people toward the opposing communion, and turns pastoral office into domination. Severus says he has endured Musonius for three years with meekness, trying many times to reconcile him when he lightly made peace and then returned to turmoil. Now Musonius is fishing for money and sacred property under pious names. Severus quotes from his letters to show how he speaks of gifts, treasures, and unlearned people as if presents were the surest way to win them. The problem is not administration alone; it is the use of church language to decorate greed. The letter is therefore both a summons and a dossier. The fathers must pray and act with one mind, but they must also recognize how long Severus has tried gentleness before handing Musonius over to God's judgments. He wants them to see the pattern: pride disturbs a province, avarice borrows sacred language, and delay allows the right way to be muddied. Their common action must clear the water again. The rebuke to the fathers is therefore part of the same campaign against evasion. Stephen's illness may explain delay, but it cannot become a permanent excuse if the common danger requires action. Musonius' conduct shows what happens when no one answers quickly: proud speech hardens, property becomes bait, and local disputes begin to damage whole provinces. Severus wants shared prayer, but not prayer used as a substitute for responsible judgment. The fathers must help expose greed, steady Isauria, and refuse to let Alexandria become the next theater for the same disorder.

Since all the holy fathers, if we may so say, have written us many various letters, we considered it necessary to write in a common epistle to you what we have to say concerning the common state, ^ and to stir you all up to one harmonious petition and earnest 1 Mansi ii. 571. - KaTaorao-t?. prayer. But the matters which ought to be conveyed in writing to your sanctities in particular are these. You did not do well or worthily of yourselves in not sending the devout deacon Stephen. The proof that he was confined to bed, by which you tried to prove his infirmity, we as a mean and sinful man will perhaps accept: but I have no means of saying whether Christ has also accepted it. For he is in fact even now still the same who ordered the man who was paralyzed and had for the ggreater part of his life been confined to bed to take up his bed and walk. However we will say with Paul, "All forsook me." And we will readily add, " May it not be laid to their charge." ^ But it is a matter for your prayers that the other thing also which he says may be granted us, "The Lord stood by me and strengthened me." For to say the words which follow these is too ggreat a thing for me, I mean, "In order that by me the preaching might be completed and all the peoples might hear."^ But, since we have in fact come to P- 85- mention that matter, we will say a few words about it also; since, when writing a common epistle to all of you, we forgot it owing to the multitude of subjects of discussion. Musonius, the uninstructed and presumptuous man, who takes no account of the judgments of God, after disturbing and upsetting Isauria has orone as we have learned to Alexandria. For, being infected with two very serious diseases, Ti. iv. i6, 17. I 22. with avarice I mean and with pride, he wished to be a legislator for the men of the whole province/ And he despised like a carnal man the smallness of his city (for to spiritual men the privile^^es of the pright- hood are matters that cannot be balanced, and are not weighed by the size of the cities, but judged by the dignity of the sacred office), and, making the God- loving Solon bishop of his metropolis, a man unversed in affairs and otherwise peacefully disposed, his ally, he caused constant disturbances, requiring from each of the bishops Jioniologiai or professions in writing concerning principles approved by him. He even \ went so far as to draw up a minute ' in which it is stated that all the names of those who ministered in f any capacity whatever, presbyters and deacons and _^ monks and laymen, ought to be expunged from the sacred tablets: so that everyone thereupon shrank from this burdensome and endless statute, and thence- forward they talked to one another and said, " We are progressing by degrees; we shall also be required to be re-baptized and re-ordained as it is said." And all in the province,^ being goaded by this idea as by some sting, rose against their bishops, and they upset things that had been rightly done before: insomuch as to name all who had been left out, and associate in communion with those who hold the opposite opinions: and, to put it plainly, to go over to the opposite party, and drive the bishops out of their own churches. While these things were going on, the gallant Musonius was sitting inside his house; for, though he is bishop of another citv, he registers his fathers' house at Olba; and he resides for the most part either there or in the metropolis of the men of Seleucia; and he only cgreates disturbances and in tyrannical fashion lays down heavy and unendurable laws. This man we have now already for three years borne with all meekness, though we often whispered of his madness, and many times we reconciled him when he was lightly breaking away and turning backwards. Where- fore also, when the bishops were assembled here, the same Musonius accused some of them of behaving in an undiscriminating or unlawful manner. And, when these also turned round upon him and accused him in their turn of lending his money on interest contrary to the canons, he was convicted, and was silenced. And, whereas he ought to have repented of this, with ggreat shamelessness he proclaimed the sin a virtue, saying that his church possessed nothing, and lamenting about poverty and need: in consequence of which we ourselves assigned to him from here a sum of twelve darics a year.^ Having recgived this he went away, after communicating with us and making a promise to the bishop of his metropolis to go up also to the cities of Isauria that had gone astray, and to undertake labour for a good end. And, when he reached the province," he again lay hid (?) in his usual ^ C/. '■ i-n-apxia. haunts, and did not stir his foot anywhere, and never once opened his presumptuous mouth that has no door as the proverb says,^ and is learned only in arousing uncanonical contentions. Thinking" this an occasion that provided him with a means of amassing base gains, he composed a letter to the devout presbyter Longinus who is with us, fishing for yet another sum of gold, and a contribution of sacred property. And, failino- in this, he turned to men in Alexandria who are infected with an uncanonical disease like his and a madness of no ordinary kind: who themselves re- cgived him as a pright, like Micah whose story is p. recorded in the Tribes, ""^ him I mean of the hill-country of Ephraim: who, having made a molten image out of his mother's silver and set this up as a god, found a young man, a Levite, and, filling his hand, took this man as a pright, saying to him, "Abide with me and be unto me a father and a pright, and I will give thee ten pieces of silver by the day, and a pair of garments, and the necessaries of thy life."^ Whence also we believe that both Musonius and those who shall recgive him or have recgived him will suffer the same end as those who oppose the judgments of the Holy Spirit and pervert the right ways of the Lord. But, to establish what has been said, we have thought good to quote also out of his fatuity some words taken 1 Pr. xxvi. 28. - The Syriac name for Judges, from a confusion of shafte and shabte. ^ Judg. xvii. 10. from his actual letter that he wrote to the religious presbyter Longinus, words which prove the passions that lurk in him. They are as follows:^ "But you remember that I said to you, ' The patriarch ought to have sent something to our church as treasures." By this means the men themselves also become more enthusiastic. In this way Flavian also acted to the bishop of Germanicupolis, when he gave both robes and treasures'- to the unholy Bisula, and he drew the inhabitants of his countrv to 'him.'" And aeain: " For, although we do not ourselves know it, we ought to take an example from the adversaries, how - they show all energy and watchfulness in making presents to those who are in opposition to them and endeavouring to bring them over to them by a gift. For you are not unaware that nothing persuades unlearned persons'' so efTectually as a present and a gift." You see how, involved as he is in the passion of avarice, he puts forward the specious name of the church and the simpleness of unlearned persons,^ decorating the passion with mild words as with colours. I have also many other letters of his that he wrote to me, from which it is clearly apparent how I sought to change his haughtiness by mildness, and after many toils and labours did no good. And at last, becoming weary, I handed him over to the judgments of God, because he wrought such disturbance, and gave to those who were standing in the right wav turbid upheaval to drink.