Letter 63: Severus tells Misael not to treat pious spending or court favor as excuses for violating legal, canonical, or doctrinal conscience.

Severus tells Misael that he received his letter from Alexandria through Andrew the reader on July 8. After answering other matters, he turns to a question about property and conscience. Basil, he says, teaches that even the head of a monastery may not spend the community's property on a pious cause without authority, whether for the poor, the needy, or the ransom of captives. Piety does not erase stewardship. If the law and the will make the legacy Severus' property, Misael had no right to dispose of it without his consent, however noble the intended recipient may seem. Severus refuses to let polite friendship language settle a legal and moral question. Friends may say, "What is mine is yours," or call one another lord of themselves and their goods, but those courtesies do not change the actual facts. The man in question, probably Theodosius, does not lack support: the empress can provide more than he needs, and the orthodox honor him for his steadfast confession. Severus writes this not from stinginess, but to preserve the gospel's law and a blameless conscience. If the case were otherwise, he says, he would count Misael's gifts as his own. He then turns to Sergius Bar Fathya. Far from advising Sergius' ordination as deacon, Severus anathematizes both Sergius and the man who ordained him, if Sergius' story is true. Sergius is condemned for living unlawfully with his father's wife or concubine; the ordainer is condemned for performing ordinations in cities not his own, without witnesses, without invitation, on his own authority, and for money. Anatolius, who married a second time after becoming a deacon and holds impious doctrine, falls under the same judgment, as does Podolirius, who trained his children in music and dancing in a way Severus treats as service to the devil. Those who create confusion against the orthodox faith share the guilt. Severus is also distressed by what Misael reports about the empress. She has mocked holy fathers whose theology she does not understand, including Alexander of Alexandria, a leader at Nicaea and father of Athanasius in the faith. Severus says that if a shared name is enough for mockery, then she may as well mock Alexander of Constantinople, whose prayer exposed Arius' hypocrisy. He chooses silence over a full reply, but his grief is plain. The fathers' expressions, collected in his treatise against the Grammarian, shine like lightning against the inventions of heretics and give understanding to the orthodox. The final rebuke is personal. Severus suspects that the empress has also dismissed his own treatise on whether Christ should be said to be from two substances as from two natures. She had once agreed to accept it when Misael copied it in large letters, or perhaps she feared the king's laws against Severus' writings and refused it. Severus had written from Chios to Misael and to Julian the chamberlain about having the treatise copied, but Misael did not answer on that point. A proper reply, Severus says, should answer every point in the letter.

I received the letter of your religiousness, which was forwarded to me from Alexandria, from the devout Andrew the reader on the eighth of July. And after other things. The holy Basil also, the teacher of truth, says in his ascetic treatise that he who is entrusted with the duty of ministering to the needs of a monastery, even if it be the archimandrite, ought not to use or spend any of the property of the brotherhood on any pious object, for example on the support of the poor and needy or on the ransoming of captives. Therefore neither would the case of the saintly man, though it seems to be a matter of piety, have given you a right to do anything without my consent, if you are certain from the laws and from the will ^ which left the legacy- that it is mine. For you must excuse me from adopting the honorary expressions used by friends or by men who are otherwise on familiar terms with one another, " My things are yours," and, " You are my lord, lord both of my own person and of what I possess." For the subject of the present argument is the true state of the facts. Moreover also the saintly man ■' does not need a gift from us, seeing that he has the serene queen, who will provide him ' Sia^€frt5. - Xqyarov. '' Marg. "he speaks of Theodosius." if he wish even with more than he needs, and now he has all the orthodox also on account of his attested steadfastness in the matter of the confession of the faith. These things I have written for the sake of the principles of the evangelic laws, and for the sake of preserving a blameless conscience. If it were not so, I reckon things once given by you just as if they had been given by me. And after other things. As to the impious Sergius, who is called Bar Fathya ^ and has become broad in impiety, so far am I from saying that it was by my advice that he was ordained deacon that I even anathematize him and the man who, if even in this he speaks truth, ordained him: the one for unlawfully sleeping with his father's wife or concubine, and the other for daring to perform ordinations without witnesses in other men's cities which do not belong to him at all, without an invitation and on his own authority, and not even without price but for filthy lucre. Under the same anathema lies also Anatolius, who after ordination to the diaconate has married a second time and is godless in his doctrines, even if it is not stated by us, and Podolirius- who has taught his children to play the harp and dance, and has made them serve the devil, and has fallen under the divine canons of the apostles. To the same anathema those also are liable who cause confusion ^ I.e. son of the broad. Probably a rendering of some Greek, name (Platys?). -Sic. besides these, and imagine vain things against the orthodox faith, Hke those who once " imagined vain things against the Lord and against his Anointed,"^ and fell from His glory. For these too by always reckoning the belly and the passions that are subject to the belly as a god inflicted a stain and a blot upon us by being numbered with the orthodox. Therefore they must plead not to us but to God, whose name they are profaning among the nations as Isaiah and Paul say.- And aftei' other things. But I was much dis- tressed that the serene queen presumes to say such grievous, not to say blasphemous, things against the holy fathers in respect of doctrines which she does not understand, and mocks at the holy Alexander the archbishop, who is one of the prelates of the holy synod at Nicaea, and father of the apostolic preacher Athanasius, on the ground that even in the theology of the Trinity he termed person "nature," and jeers at him as one of those who practise manual crafts, a coppersmith for instance or a carpenter of the name of Alexander, or as she says by way of accusation an advocate of the treasure-chambers.^ Let her then mock and jeer at the other saintly Alexander also, who was in the same times bishop of Constantinople, and by stretching out his hands all night and praying brought it about that, when the impious Arius was going to communicate hypocritically with the orthodox, his entrails fell through his belly and he gave up the ^ Ps. ii. I, 2. '■' Is. Hi. 5; Ro. ii. 24. ■' I.e. advocatus fisci. p-host; if the fact that a man is called Alexander is a jest, and an occasion and subject^ for jeering. What are we to do about these things, except be silent and grieve our heart, and ask God to have mercy upon our many lawlessnesses? For, though much might have been said in answer to these things, it is better for us to be silent. As to the mischievous words that the heretics invent, the expressions of the holy fathers show what they are, blinding as they do like some lightning-flash their keen eyes, and enlightening the minds of the orthodox and understanding, while the uninstructed and unlearned see that God is glorified and admired among His saints, as David says in song,"^ for the things at which they jest and against which they blaspheme. I speak the truth and do not lie when I say that, since I wrote the treatise "Against the Grammarian," ^ there has been no one among the believers who had a high or moderate or small share in divine knowledge who was not astonished when he found such expressions of the holy fathers collected there, some expressed at length others in few words, and stopping the mouth of the blaspheming heretics, who plot against the truth itself. From what you now say, that the serene queen has not shrunk from saying such presumptuous things against the holy fathers, I certainly imagine that she has also spurned and despised, as vain trifling and superfluous futility, ' vTTo^eo-ts. '" Ps. Ixxxviii. 8. ■■' Add. 17,154; cf. Zach. Rh. vii. 10. my little treatise on the question whether our Lord and God Jesus Christ should be said to be from two substances even as from two natures, which she thought good to accept when it was copied by you in large letters, or through fear of the king's laws which were put forth against my writings has not dared to accept it. I wrote to you at that time from Chios and to the magnificent and Christ-loving chamberlain Julian to give it to be copied: but you wrote nothing at all to me upon these matters. He who writes an answer should reply to all the points contained in the letter.