The letter exposes a pressure campaign around simoniac ordinations, involving bishops, court representatives, powerful friends, and monastic leaders. Source id I.48; Brooks page 130; source-facing English extracted by adjudicated body markers from the Archive OCR text; original Syriac source-text backfill remains pending.
Severus asks Philoxenus for advice because Scripture itself says that salvation comes through much counsel. The question is one they have discussed before: what should be done with men who bought ordination from Flavian, whom Severus calls a trafficker in divine things? These men claim they did not understand the strictness of the canons and have asked for forgiveness on the ground of ignorance.
They have not merely asked once. They have collected sympathetic letters from various people, gone to the royal city, and shown those letters to Severus' representatives and to powerful friends who care about him. Those friends, moved by pity, have accused him of cruelty, though in a friendly way. When Severus still did not yield, the men went to orthodox monasteries and stirred the leaders of the ascetic communities to compassion. Those leaders too wrote to Severus, grieving over the fall of the offenders and asking that they be freed from their predicament.
Pressed from every side, Severus now turns to Philoxenus. Should these men receive forgiveness at Epiphany, or not? If Philoxenus thinks they should, Severus asks him to make the effort to come to Antioch after the feast and help carry out a course of mercy toward men who sinned from ignorance. Such leniency, he says, may not be wholly inconsistent with canonical strictness, since the payment was supposedly hidden under the name of a gift by profiteers who deceived them.
Hearing the divine writings which say, " Salvation cometh by much counsel," ^ I wish yet now again to ask your sanctity even about a matter upon which we have often already counselled and deliberated. You know that those who received ordination for payment and bought for themselves from Flavian the trafficker in all divine things the grace_of the^Spirit that is not to be bought, alleging ignorance of the strictness of the holy canons, begged you and the other bishops of the other resplendent metropolitan cities that they might obtain forgiveness on the ground of ionorance of the sin. And, though the same said men further brought us letters written in lenient terms from one and another set of persons, even so they did not obtain release from the interdicts. And some of them even went up to the royal city, and showed letters of this kind to those who conduct our apokriseis and to all those who are in power and deign to love our meanness, and caused them all, though certainly in a friendly manner,' to charge me with cruelty. For all being moved to pity for them granted them forgiveness. And, when they returned thence, they did not desist from this course of action, since we even after this would not incline our ear to their entreaty and lamentation: but they went to the holy cloisters of the orthodox and moved the chiefs or rulers of the solitary and sacred orders to compassion. And they also, after weeping for the fall of certain persons, in an exactly similar manner and much more earnestly than the others, addressed supplications to us in writing with the object of procuring for them liberation from their evil plight. Being in some sort harassed and troubled by all the facts stated, I have taken the course of asking your holiness by this letter whether these men ought to receive forgiveness at the feast of the Epiphany or if they ought not, let your love of God put yourself to a little trouble, and after the feast mentioned repair to this great Christ-loving city of Antiochus, and assist in a course of lenient mildness towards men who have sinned from ignorance, a course perhaps not wholly inconsistent with canonical strictness: for they say that the gift was concealed under the name of a present by those gain-hunters, and it deceived them.
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Severus asks Philoxenus for advice because Scripture itself says that salvation comes through much counsel. The question is one they have discussed before: what should be done with men who bought ordination from Flavian, whom Severus calls a trafficker in divine things? These men claim they did not understand the strictness of the canons and have asked for forgiveness on the ground of ignorance.
They have not merely asked once. They have collected sympathetic letters from various people, gone to the royal city, and shown those letters to Severus' representatives and to powerful friends who care about him. Those friends, moved by pity, have accused him of cruelty, though in a friendly way. When Severus still did not yield, the men went to orthodox monasteries and stirred the leaders of the ascetic communities to compassion. Those leaders too wrote to Severus, grieving over the fall of the offenders and asking that they be freed from their predicament.
Pressed from every side, Severus now turns to Philoxenus. Should these men receive forgiveness at Epiphany, or not? If Philoxenus thinks they should, Severus asks him to make the effort to come to Antioch after the feast and help carry out a course of mercy toward men who sinned from ignorance. Such leniency, he says, may not be wholly inconsistent with canonical strictness, since the payment was supposedly hidden under the name of a gift by profiteers who deceived them.
AI-assisted translation - This translation was produced with AI assistance and has not been peer-reviewed. See the 19th-century translation or original Latin/Greek below for scholarly use.
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