Kevin Clarke: Maximus the Confessor's Anti-Severan Polemics in the Opuscula

Severus of Antioch is mentioned just as often in the Opuscula as is Nestorius; so why is there not a more specific polemic against the theological opponents of Maximus’s own day? Maximus is convinced that there is nothing new in the innovation of his day, but that it is a repetition of the Severan approach to nature (φύσις). This is a fascinating twist of irony in light of Severus’s anti-Chalcedonian attempt to be faithful to the thought of Cyril of Alexandria. Maximus shows how Severus not only fails to align with Cyril but actually sets himself up against Cyril, albeit in a reciprocal fashion from Nestorius’s opposition. For Maximus, Cyril is the midpoint between Nestorius and Severus, each of whom treads out his own path of resistance to Cyrillian Christology. With Nestorius, there is difference in the wrong place, while with Severus, there is mixture in the wrong place. It is quite a clever strategy because Maximus’s Constantinopolitan opponents do not want to be Severans any more than Maximus does. Such polemics also helps to explain why Maximus is not as keen on naming names in the more traditional sense of polemics, which would also present quite a risk if he were to openly indict his imperial adversaries by name. This essay will present a brief treatment of Maximus’s thought on nature against that of “Severus the senseless sophist” in the Opuscula. The Severan approach to nature renders the question of will and operation moot.

Simon Ford: Confronting Cyprian: Anti-Rigorism in the Letters of Severus of Antioch and Philoxenus of Mabbug

The period between 475 and the mid-sixth century witnessed the flourishing of rigorist sentiments among the anti-Chalcedonian communities in the patriarchates of Antioch and Jerusalem. Although little direct evidence survives for the specific claims made by individual rigorists, the movement appears to have been unified in its demand for the re-baptism and re-ordination of converts from the Chalcedonian church. However, despite both the persistence and diverse popularity of rigorist sects, by the beginning of the sixth century, these demands for the repetition of the sacraments were firmly opposed by the members of the anti-Chalcedonian episcopate under the patriarch Severus of Antioch.Exploring this understudied debate within the anti-Chalcedonian movement, this paper will examine and compare the anti-rigorist positions adopted by Philoxenus of Mabbug and Severus of Antioch. In a series of letters written between 489 and 527, both men developed arguments against rigorist demands for re-ordination and re-baptism that were rooted in their understandings of the sacraments and the historical development of ecclesiastical law in the period after Nicaea. However, their shared framework and common thematic features notwithstanding, the anti-rigorist arguments of each diverge in significant ways, corresponding to the particular apologetic priorities and ecclesiological positions of their respective authors. By contrasting the approaches adopted by each this paper will, therefore, seek to develop a more nuanced picture of anti-Chalcedonian thought surrounding canon law, conversion, and the authority of the sacraments.

Yuichi Tsunoda: Composite physis without particularities: Leontius of Byzantium’s understanding of Severus of Antioch’s Miaphysite Christology

This paper elucidates how Leontius of Byzantium (c. 485-c.543) understood the composite physis, which is the fundamental concept in Severus of Antioch (c. 465-538) ’s Miaphysite Christology. First, Severus of Antioch understood the Incarnation as the process of the dynamic economic activity of the divine Logos, which makes the humanity its own. Severus held that Christ is the one composite physis as the incarnate Logos, which possesses the humanity. The composite physis comprises two particularities, namely the divine particularities and the human particularities. The divine particularities contain the divine properties and the human particularities include the human properties. The notion “particularity” indicates the integrity of entity and the intrinsic otherness. In the single physis of the incarnate Logos, the otherness of the divinity and the humanity continues and thus the two particularities remain without any confusion. Second, Leontius of Byzantium interpreted Severus’s Christology from his perspective of the hypostatic union. Severus held that the two properties indicate the two particularities. In contrast, Leontius thought the two properties should indicate their underlying realities, namely the two distinct physeis. He did not recognize the entities of two particularities and so he did not recognize any real distinction of the divinity and the humanity in the one composite physis. Consequently, without considering the two particularities, he understood that there is a confusion of the divinity and the humanity in the composite physis of Severus’s Christology.

GEORGIOS SISKOS: Fundamental differences on Christological expressions of St Cyril of Alexandria and Severus of Antioch

Severus’s Christological expressions manifest a verbal affinity with those of Cyril, whereas their notional content shows a decisive departure from Cyril. Firstly, Cyril from the formula of reunion 433 onwards, explicitly accepted the antiochean division of scriptural sayings into the manhood and the divinity of Christ, without necessarily supposing that this would lead to division of Christ. Severus considered the formula of reunion as Cyril’s condescension to prattling children and built a chain of argumentation as to why an attribution of scriptural sayings to divinity and humanity of Christ leads inevitably to the division of Christ. Secondly, Cyril’s concept of division of Christ’s natures in theory alone did not signify fictional fantasy, but a real distinction, which does not result to a real division. Severus’s fundamental axiom that for a thing to exist in reality it has to be self-subsistent, namely having a hypostasis of its own, lead him to consider Cyril’s distinction of divinity and humanity in theory alone as univocal with fictional fantasy of a mind imagining the existence of two hypostases and natures in Christ, which never exist as such in reality. Thirdly, Cyril used the expression two hypostases, two natures to describe Christ’s natures, because he never thought of them as necessarily self-subsistent, which inevitably leads to an actual division. Severus by furnishing self-subsistency as the only reality eliminated deliberately every verbal and notional duality in Christ. The paperwill explore Severus’s gradual notional alteration of Cyril’s Christological expression.

Michael Ibrahim: The liturgical hymn “O Monogenis” as a symbol of Post-Chalcedonian Christological convergence.

The idealised Nicene legacy is that of a unifying doctrinal pronouncement. This memory of Nicea impacted on the schema pursued within both the ecclesial and imperial realms, with subsequent councils and controversies attempting to replicate this model with varying degrees of success. From one perspective, the power of the Nicene/Constantinopolitan legacy is the liturgical basis of its central text, the roots of which can be traced to baptismal creeds. The traditional appellation “Theotokos” also connects one of the central Ephesian issues with the liturgical/devotional dimension of ecclesial life. Chalcedon can be seen as marking a departure from this tradition. Caught in the nexus of the power-plays of Eastern patriarchates, growing Western claims of authority, imperial geo-politics and a delicate episcopal ‘consensus’, the Chalcedonian definition signals a shift from the liturgically-based expression to a ‘proto-scholiastic’ one.In the search for signs of post-Chalcedonian Christological convergence, modern scholarship commonly focuses on the Theopaschite controversy or the events surrounding Zeno’s Henotikon and its impact on neo-Chalcedonian Christology. However, one area often overlooked is the liturgical. Of particular interest is the hymn “O monogenis”, which has been incorporated into the vast majority of eastern liturgies. The authorship of this text is attributed by opposing sides to Justinian or Severus of Antioch. In this paper, I will endeavour to demonstrate the likely Severian origins of this hymn, which embodied the convergence of Christology long sought by emperors and bishops, and ultimately achieved it not through polemical victories, but rather through liturgical devotion.

Iskandar Bcheiry: The ascetical life of Severus of Antioch and the image of Queen Theodora by Patriarch Cyriacus of Tikrit 817

During the spring of 2014, I had the opportunity to examine a particular Syriac manuscript (A. 12008), at the Oriental Museum, in Chicago, which had not been fully described or published. Among the unpublished subjects that this manuscript contains, is a historical biography in a form of a discourse regarding the life of Severus, composed by the Syriac orthodox patriarch Cyriacus of Tikrit who died in 817. The life of Severus by Patriarch Cyriacus is an important historical source that has been often cited; however, the text has never been published or translated. In this presentation, I would like to shed light on “The ascetical life of Severus of Antioch and the holy image of Queen Theodora through Severus’s biography written by Patriarch Kyriacos of Tikrit 817. In this hagiographical biography there are special characteristics and images of Severus and Queen Theodora as a holy and ascetical people that are not found in other sources.

Pauline Allen: Post-mortem polemics: the literary persecution of Severus of Antioch (512-518)

One of the most enduring religious conflicts of the late-antique period was that occasioned by the Council of Chalcedon (451 CE). The person who galvanised the anti-Chalcedonian side theologically and politically was Severus, patriarch of Antioch from 512-518. During his lifetime he engaged vigorously in debate with his theological rivals, being eventually exiled in 518 and condemned by imperial edict in 538. The odium that attached to his person and works continued after his death, as can be seen, for example, from the numerous references to him and his works in imperial documents and conciliar acta. However, two sustained post-mortem attacks on the patriarch of a non-theological nature stand out: a long letter by the otherwise unknown monk Eustathius from the mid-sixth century (CPG 6810), and the polemical poem by George of Pisidia (CPG 7836), which dates from between 619 and 634. This paper will investigate the rhetoric employed by these two authors and their hostile representation of the pre-eminent opponent of the council of 451 and his followers, in which negotiation and conflict-resolution did not play a part and damnatio memoriae was paramount.

Zachary Yuzwa - To Live by the Example of Angels: Dialogue, Imitation and Identity in Sulpicius Severus' Gallus

In the Gallus, known also as the Dialogues, Sulpicius Severus undertakes an ostensibly historical project, a project of remembering, in which he fashions by his rhetoric a recent ascetic past (even an ongoing present) and thereby imagines a tradition with which – and against which – to identify himself, his subjects, his audience. The literary act of remembering and representing the monastic deserts of the east is for the author one means of constructing for pro-Martinian ascetics in Gaul a coherent pre-history which gives form to a collective present; it is one means of expressing models for ascetic practice which will serve as a locus of identification and differentiation. Sulpicius engages in the textual process of forging group identity, a process which has at its core an impulse to exemplary imitation.

In my paper, I will demonstrate how the dialogue form – by no means a self-evident choice of genre in this ostensibly hagiographical context – is particularly suitable for just such a project. The Latin tradition of dialogue writing is one in which authors – Cicero, most notably – adopt and adapt diverse cultural and intellectual models as a means of articulating identity and difference. I suggest that a similar impulse motivates Sulpicius' Gallus and  argue the point with particular reference to those sections of the text which Jacques Fontaine has labelled the intermèdes gaulois, the very passages, that is, where the dialogue is at its most dialogic and likewise where the text grapples most directly with the relationship between eastern models and local Gallic practices. By focusing on one such 'interruption' in particular, we will see that these intermèdes gaulois function in some way as a locus of exchange, a point at which the exempla in the text are brought to bear on the situation of the interlocutors.

Natalia Smelova - The homilies “On king Uzziah” by St. John Chrysostom in Syriac translation

A few years ago while working on the manuscript of the Homiliae Cathedrales (HC) by Severus of Antioch in St Petersburg (RNL, Syriaс New Series 10) I identified one leaf bound together with the HC manuscript as an unknown patristic text belonging to a 7^th century manuscript (on the basis of its palaeography). The ‘unknown text’ proved to be a fragment of one of three homilies “On king Uzziah” by St. John Chrysostom in Syriac translation. The rest of homilies are preserved in another Syriac manuscript in St Petersburg dating in fact to the 7^th century (RNL, Syriac New Series 12). 

In the Greek tradition the cycle “On king Uzziah” contains six Homilies properly named “On the words ‘In the year that king Uzziah died I saw the Lord’ (Isaiah 6:1) (CPG 4417). The original Greek text of all the six homilies has survived and their critical edition has been prepared recently by Jean Dumortier. Although the homilies are preserved in numerous manuscripts from the 9^th to 16^th centuries, there are textual problems related to them which are still to be solved.

There are three layers in formation of the cycle of homilies identified by Dumortier in accordance with their original quantity and sequence. The initial layer consists of four homilies: 2, 3, 5, and 6. This archaic tradition is attested by Armenian translation preserved in three manuscripts. Now his reconstruction can be supported by new evidence of the Syriac translation which has never been used by scholars studying the Homilies on Uzziah and not mentioned in CPG. This Syriac translation also includes four homilies on Uzziah: 2, 3, 5, and 6. So far only two Syriac manuscripts are known: one in the Russian National Library in St Petersburg and another one in the British Library (Add. 14612, late 6^th - 7^th century).

The paper presents some preliminary results of the work-in-progress collation of the two manuscripts as well as the study of language and peculiarities of the Syriac translation. 

Tenny Thomas - The Mother of God: Perceptions of the Theotokos in the Hymns & Homilies of Severus of Antioch

The Theotokos plays an important role in the writings, particularly in understanding the Christology of Severus of Antioch, as she stands for the integrity and reality of the humanity of the incarnate Word. She is the subject of a sustained theological reflection on the part of a great many Fathers, even during the period of the Christological controversy. Severus’ writings clearly show her to be more than an incidental figure in the description of a truly Orthodox Christology. The hymns and homilies of Severus of Antioch are an interesting source of insight into the process of Christological reflection on the person of the Theotokos. The method employed by this study will be to consider each of those hymns and homilies, which refer to the Theotokos, and determine how Severus wishes to use each reference.

The hymns of Severus have been translated into English in volumes 6 and 7 of the Patrologia Orientalis by E.W. Brooks. I will be editing the translation for this paper.
There are six hymns in the collection, which are categorized by the ancient transcribers as Hymns on the Holy God-bearer, while there are also 15 hymns on the Nativity and Incarnation, which also have some reference to the Theotokos. Severus never seems to allow the poetic touches of his hymns to diminish the strict application of his Cyrilline theology to the task of composing hymns. In the first hymns in the collection the Theotokos is referred to only in rather general terms in relation to the Incarnation. Even in the later hymns in the collection she is always placed in a theological context rather than simply a poetic or hagiographic one. In the Cathedral Homilies, Severus addresses the Theotokos as prophetess, and as apostle, and as martyr. Severus goes on to detail the role of Mary in salvation history. Severus uses the incarnation through the Virgin to attack Apollinarianism and Nestorianism. The translations of the Cathedral Homilies XIV and LXVII on the Theotokos will be my own.

Yonatan Moss: Severus of Antioch and the Separation of the Non-Chalcedonian Church: A Reassessment

Over the course of the past generation there has emerged a scholarly consensus stressing the role of Severus of Antioch in the formation of a non-Chalcedonian hierarchy independent of the imperial church. While some scholars have appreciated some of Severus’ initial hesitation about setting up a new hierarchy, there is general agreement that it was Severus who planted the seed that would sprout the mass ordinations of John of Tella and Jacob Baradaeus. The independent church that emerged by the second half of the sixth century should be called ‘the Severan Church’.

My paper reassesses this consensus. I show its dependence on the reports of John of Tella’s biographers, Elias and John of Ephesus, that Severus had endorsed John of Tella’s ordination campaign. Severus’ own writings, however, show no trace of this. On the contrary, Severus’ writings portray a dedication to the unified imperial ecclesiastical framework and to the canon law which governs it. John of Tella and Jacob Baradaeus’ campaigns broke with this framework and were in violation of canon law.

I argue that despite Severus’ intransigent doctrinal positions and despite the persecution he suffered as a result, various elements in his ecclesiology demonstrate his unwavering commitment to the traditional eastern, ‘Eusebian’ identification of church and empire. He opposed the rebaptism of Chalcedonians; he was lenient about the inclusion of Chalcedonians in the diptychs; and he remained loyal to the rule of the emperor, no matter what his doctrinal affiliation.

The reports of Severus’ alleged endorsement of John of Tella’s initiative should be read as a later generation’s attempt to grant Severus an active role in the inception of the independent church. I argue, on the contrary, that Severus continued to see himself as the true representative of the divinely sanctioned imperial church: it was the current emperor, not him, who needed to change.

Geoffrey Greatrex: An unnoticed Greek fragment of Severus of Antioch

In the second letter of his exchange with Julian of Halicarnassus in the 520s, the exiled patriarch Severus of Antioch devotes an inordinately long section to demonstrating that there is no inconsistency between Paul and James as to the relative importance of faith and works. This letter is to be found both in a translation into Syriac by Paul of Callinicum and in an independent Syriac translation in the ‘Miscellaneous History’ of Pseudo-Zachariah of Mytilene (ix.13). A very similar discussion of this passage is also to be found in the Catena in epistolas catholicas, ed. J.A. Cramer (Oxford, 1840), where it is left unattributed. We propose to show that it represents a hitherto unidentified fragment of Severus’ work in Greek.