Letter 61: A damaged letter in which Severus urges restraint, witness-based judgment, and canonical procedure in a dispute involving clergy and monastic women.

Severus writes into a damaged context, with the heading already lost, but the surviving argument is clear. A newly ordained bishop, he says, should not act like someone dragging an opponent to court, answering insult with insult, or filing a legal action over personal injury. Ordination marks a person with a spiritual dignity that calls for restraint, patience, and careful judgment. He then turns to evidence. The recipient has reported what several people said about disputes involving Joseph, John, Zacharias, Heracliana, and others, but Severus refuses to condemn anyone at a distance on a single report. Scripture and church order require two or three witnesses. The right course would have been to gather bishops and examine the charges gently, with God before them and Christ's judgment in view. If that orderly inquiry had shown that John had insulted the recipient or lived disgracefully, Severus says he would have confirmed the decision without hesitation. But discipline must be carried out in the open, with evidence and canonical procedure, not through anger, rumor, or retaliation. The fragment ends by warning that if anything displeasing to God is being done secretly, it cannot remain hidden to the end.

law-court, or to cry out or to annoy in return those who annoyed him. or to insult in return those who insulted him, or to bring an action against them for the insult to him, similarly and much more is it unbecoming for him who has just received the high-priestly chrism upon the crown of his head, and from whom the sweet savour therefrom is newly breathing, to involve himself in any of the said matters. Do not think to yourself, because the man who was ordained highpriest is not clad in white raiment, that he is without the garments that are suprasensual and shine more brightly than the brilliancy of the sun, and are as much better than those of men who have just been baptized as a high-priest is greater than one who is among the people, and as a shepherd is higher than a sheep. And again after other things. But you say that the deyout brother Joseph told you such-and-such a thing about the deyout brother John, and the deyout father Zacharias such-and-such a thing about another topic. ^ But know that in every matter it is not the word of one man that is needed, but that of two or three witnesses. For the sacred law says of everyone soever who is tried, whether he be good or whether he i4« be evil, that "under two or under three witnesses he shall die that dieth: he shall not die under one witness: ^ and again, " One witness shall not continue to testify against a man, [in all] iniquity and in all sin and in all sinfulness soever that he commit. At the mouth of two witnesses, and at the mouth of three witnesses shall every word be established.""' I have used these arguments not in order to show that your religiousness is lying (I am convinced that you wrote as you heard): but in order to establish the fact that, according to church regulations and the precepts of the holy fathers, and the laws of the God-inspired scripture, I cannot upon this report pronounce a sentence of censure or of condemnation against anyone, while I am far away. Your love of God ought therefore to have devoted that evening to thoughts of patience: and on the next day taken with you in the morning the saintly bishops the lord Constantine and the lord Victor, as in fact you actually did, and [with] all gentleness and humility, [and with] God.... also present.... at the discussion [first described] the circumstances of the annoyance that the deaconess and archimandritess Heracliana inflicted upon you, and the insults which, as you write, were levelled against you by brother * John; and thus your sanctity would have judged, with the awful tribunal of Christ, before which we shall all stand, before your eyes, whether it was right for your love of God on account of the annoyance that you justly felt to remove those sisters from the monastery of the religious Heracliana as persons who were suffer- ' De. xvii. 6. -' Id., xix. 15. 1.62. SKl-KCT LETTERS OF THE IIOLV.SEVERUS. 193 in<j^ injury or not, and what method of treatment ought to be devised (?) for the affair in order to remedy the injury; and the use of this method would have been decreed; and besides this fitting punishment would also have fallen upon brother John, inasmuch as he would have been shown by proofs to be an utterer of insults, and a man who is living an unchaste and indiscriminate life. If these things had been thus decided by discussion, and made known to my meanness, I would without anv hesitation have confirmed them, seeing that they would have been carried out in accordance with the custom of the holy churches, and in accordance with the rules of the monastic life. And again after other things. But, since these things are thus recorded and supported by evidence, if anything displeasing to God be done in secret, know that it is not possible that until...