Letter 121: Severus denies a forged treatise, then warns Caesaria against false asceticism that despises marriage, food, or the body.

Caesaria has profited from one of Severus' earlier letters, and Severus says this is credible because her soul is good soil. Even barren seed can bear fruit in such ground. He then answers a report that a short treatise is circulating under his name. He rejects it completely. It is either the work of foolish people who call themselves orthodox or of opponents trying to make his refusal of communion look fraudulent rather than doctrinal. Forgery leads him into a wider warning. People have shown him other letters falsely attributed to him, and he recalls how Basil too had to answer forged writings and invented dreams. A public teacher can be attacked not only by open accusation but by counterfeit words. Caesaria must therefore judge writings by faith, coherence, and the known teaching of the church, not by a name placed on a page. False attribution is one more way error tries to borrow authority. The letter then moves into household and marriage teaching. Severus explains that a believing woman's house can become a church when she governs it with care, generosity, and chastity. Paul praises the church in a house and also expects women to be good keepers of the household. This is not a small vocation. Household order, hospitality, and care for the needy can mirror ecclesiastical stewardship when they are practiced without greed or vanity. He also warns against false asceticism. Some women separate from husbands in the name of continence and thereby push those husbands toward adultery; some people begin with fasting and end by rejecting foods as evil. Severus wants Caesaria to pursue holiness within the limits God has given, not to turn discipline into contempt for marriage, food, or the body. The incarnation is the final guardrail: the heavenly One truly became human. A Christian cannot seek purity by despising the created life that Christ assumed. Severus' denial of the forged treatise is also pastoral protection for Caesaria. If she accepts every severe writing that carries a famous name, her conscience can be captured by strangers. That would make spiritual life depend on rumor and handwriting rather than on tested doctrine. He therefore teaches her a method: compare the claim with the apostolic faith, with the fathers, with the moral fruit it produces, and with what is already known of the writer. A forged letter is not harmless simply because it sounds strict. The household teaching belongs to the same concern. False asceticism often begins by pretending to defend holiness, but it soon despises ordinary obedience: marriage, food, service, care for children, and mercy toward the weak. Severus does not want Caesaria to become careless; he wants her to become free from counterfeit rigor. A woman can honor God in a house, in hospitality, in self-command, and in faithful marriage. Continence is good when it is lawful and mutual; it becomes destructive when it turns another person's body, hunger, or weakness into material for one's own display. Severus also gives Caesaria a positive picture of disciplined freedom. She does not have to choose between worldly vanity and a brittle rejection of ordinary life. She can eat with thanksgiving, govern her household without greed, honor marriage without being ruled by passion, and practice abstinence without using it to accuse the created order. The true test of holiness is not how violently a person rejects human life, but whether every part of life is brought under Christ with sobriety, mercy, and truth. That last point returns to the forged writings. Counterfeit rigor often sounds impressive because it is severe. Severus wants Caesaria to notice whether severity leads to the confession of the incarnate Lord or away from it. If a teaching makes the body shameful in itself, marriage unclean in itself, or food evil in itself, then it is not the voice of the church however strict it sounds. The faith is demanding because Christ is real, not because creation is contemptible.

It seemed to me perfectly credible that, as stated by your glorious modesty, you gained so much profit from reading my mean letter with understanding. The good soil that is like your God-loving soul knows, it knows indeed, how, even when receiving barren seed, to give forth fruitful produce in plenty, inso- much as to reach to the perfect measure of a hundred.^ And after other things. As to the short tgreatise that is being circulated and carried about by certain persons, which you say is inscribed with my name and bears such an ascription, a tgreatise that I shrink from even taking upon my lips, seeing that it is full of ignorance and stupidity, know that it is not the work of our meanness at all: but a forgery either of certain foolish men who are called orthodox, or of heretics who wish to hide their shame and make it appear to those who come across it that it is we who keep men away from communion with them by fraudulent words, not they who separate from them by reason of their sound faith, and recognise and abhor their manifest impiety and Jewish opinions. Let not this too be unknown to your God-loving ^ Cf. note 3. If the inference there drawn is correct, this letter cannot be placed later than 521. 2 Mt. xiii. 8. X. 7- hig-hness: that a certain devout presbyter also came from the East, and showed us other letters also purporting to be mine, that are in part forged and falsified; the forgery and garbling having been done by certain persons whose business it is to forge such things to their own destruction as the Apostle says/ And we brought him the documents themselves: and after comparing the genuine documents he reprobated and condemned the falsehood, and cursed the wicked men who commit such wanton wickedness against the truth. And no wonder if the devil through his own instruments wroutrht such thing-s agfainst us the sinner and weakling, considering that in the same way he contrived similar things or even more serious against the apostolic doctors of the church also. The ggreat Basil in the letter addressed to the ascetics and solitaries under him, at Orobiane and at Chalane, asserts that certain persons were circulating forged and spurious letters against him: as to whom he also says; " Many letters are being circulated against me, which contain abuse and derision and speak evil of us in respect of the actions: for which we have a defence ready before the court of truth ": and again; " My words shall judge me: but for the offences of others no man shall condemn us." Moreover in another letter also, writing to those at Neocaesarea, he showed that certain persons were also inventing dreams against him, thinking by this also to cast aspersions upon his Pe. iii. 16. faith: about whom even while laughing at their absurdity he says, " Men who acted so shamelessly against us as even to invent certain dreams against us, brino-inor charg-es against our teachings as hurtful." t> But, since I do not read negligently anything that is written to me by your believing excellency, but do so with much consideration and diligently, I think it to be necessary for us to give you some short answer on another matter also. You besought me to pray on behalf of your modesty that the Lord would release you from the bonds of this world, and would bring you to the calm haven of penitence, seeing that you are buried as you say in the evils of this world. Do not forget there- fore, you whom I revere above everyone, that the apostle Paul in his epistle to Titus lays down a law for women that are yoked in marriage in these terms; " Let the young women be lovers of their husbands, lovers of their children, chaste, pure, good housekeepers, subject to their husbands, that the word of God be not blasphemed."^ It is therefore manifest that, if anyone depart from the canon of this statute, and be carried though but a little to the right side or the left, he will be judged as a transgressor against the law. A woman who fears God and obeys Christ's commands must practise love of her husband as readily as the love of God itself. If the husband is the head of the wife in the same fashion as the Lord is the head of the church, a woman who loves her husband chastely ^ Ep. 207. I. 2 Tit. ii. 4, 5, X. y. throueh the medium of her husband loves Christ the Head of all heads. On the same principle also a woman who keeps her house, and keeps the things within the house with strenuousness and watchfulness, imitates a man who presides over a church and wisely administers the sacred things on the care of those that are in need. That every believer's house also is a church the same Paul further bears witness when in greeting certain believers in his epistles he says, " Greet also the church that is in your house." ^ One may fitly admire the way in which the Apostle, after saying that women who love God ought to be such as keep their houses, immediately added "good housekeepers." For there are women who from their ogreat carefulness in housekeeping are induced to make profit out of the p- soS. goods, and are hence incited to covetousness, the mother of evil deeds. Wherefore, to cut away such a vice, he said that such women ouorht to be Qfood, in order that by the justification and consolation of those that are in need the house also may be increased; seeino- that the blessings that are from heaven will be measured to them in return, and they will through beneficence lay down beforehand a good foundation for themselves in the future life. At the same time by naming them good he also inculcates kindness to menservants and bondmaids, and all that are bound under the yoke of slavery. Of the love of a husband, also and of chastity this is the criterion, not that a wife ^ I Co. xvi. 19. look at her personal chastity only, but how far she regards her husband's preservation also with watchful eyes, and makes every effort that he too may be content with intercourse with her only, not that he may turn himself to another connexion. If she herself be chaste, but do not concern herself about her husband falling into fornication, she has, unknown to herself, become chaste in half her body and in half of it defiled, in that she is transo-ressingf agrainst the divine laws. If in fact they are not two, according to our Saviour's saying,^ but the two are reckoned as making one flesh, what profit is there in the chastity of one portion, when the conjoined portion is led away to lasciviousness? Marriage is then " honourable and the bed unsullied,"^ when the whole of it is hallowed in the whole body. But the whole body is husband and wife, having the same mind, and tgreating the marriage as a mystery of God, and hence making the procgreation of children to be blessed, and from all sides bringing praise and glory, not reviling, upon the word of God. If you walk by these laws and know your place, and do not desire other things beyond the measure that is com- manded, you will be an inheritor of the kingdom of heaven, and with the wives of those patriarchs Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and all that are such, you will recgive the promises of immortal life: who also lived with men that were owners of sheepfolds (?) and lords of cattle and of much wealth and armed 1 Mt. xix. 16. ^ He. xiii. 4. themselves for war when the time summoned to this also, and with them fulfilled God's commandments perfectly. These things I have written because I gave my attention to the words contained in the letter of your believing soul, and I considered the fire of the Spirit that is in you, and I feared lest out of ggreat fervour you might incautiously form some plan that is at variance with the laws of piety; for you know such pleas, which by the use of considerations that are rather upon the right side are apt to decgive the pious. The words of divine scripture that have been cited - would even by themselves have been enough to confirm your love of God in acquiescence with the admonition of our meanness: but I have thought it good to corroborate what I have said from the teaching of the fathers also, and to plant the loyal disposition more firmly in you. The wise John, who was bishop of Constantinople, towards the end of the commentary on the Gospel of Matthew, in the exposition the beginning of which is " But Jesus stood before the Governor " wrote in these terms about the cunningf of the devil, by which he has cheated specially fervent souls: " He has also a third evil trap: as for example: when he thows an appearance of devoutness over a sin. ' And how has the devil succeeded so far as to cheat even in these things?' Hear, and beware of his counsels. Christ commanded through Paul that wife should not separate from husband, and they should not defraud one another, except perhaps by consent. But some women, having on the oround of a desire for continence separated themselves from their husbands as if they were doing some devout action, have thrust them down into adultery. Reflect therefore what an evil thing it is that, while under- going so much toil, they should be charged with having done the ggreatest wrong and pay the utmost penalty, and thrust their spouses down into a pit of destruction. Other persons again by abstaining from foods under the law of fasting have gradually come to p 511. reject these: a thing which itself also brings heavy punishment. And this happens when they assign ggreater validity to their own thoughts than to the determinations of the scriptures."^ Therefore I beg your glorious modesty to turn the glances of your understanding on all sides, and hear the divine laws, and listen to Paul who says, " Let every man wherein he was called therein abide."" Since God called you under the yoke of marriage, in it also maintain a loyal contest, and show prowess: and be one that loves her husband and loves her children and is a good housekeeper, in order that through these things you may at the same time be also one that loves God. Never on account of these things term yourself one buried in the mire of evils, and flee from the bonds of the world: but flee from the bonds of evil. For in these we are all in the same fashion bound. The divine text somewhere says, 1 P. G. Iviii. 768. '2 I Co. vii. 14. " Who will boast that he hath a pure heart? Or who will be confident of being pure from sins?"^ But we who have believed the gospel try, as far as is possible for men, to purify our soul through commandments: in order that God, looking upon the readiness of our heart as is sung in the Psalms,'^ not upon the weakness of our nature, may admit us to mercy and graciousness in the day of judgment, and make us sharers in the kingdom of heaven, because the heavenly One became man and consorted with those that are on the earth, having become a man in truth and without difference and not in semblance.