ON ST. SEVERIAN, BISHOP OF SCYTHOPOLIS, MARTYR.
The Year of Christ 452.
HISTORICAL COMMENTARY.
Severian, Bishop of Scythopolis, Martyr (St.)
By the author I. B.
[1] When the Council of Chalcedon, which was the fourth ecumenical council, held in the year 451 against Eutyches (who asserted a single nature in Christ, formed from a commingling of the divine and human), was concluded, disturbances in Palestine in the year 452 certain factious monks, obstinately adhering to Eutyches, stirred up great disturbances in Palestine. These are described by Cyril the monk, an ancient and weighty author, in the Life of St. Euthymius the Great, Abbot, which we gave on January 20th, in chapter 12, from which we shall excerpt a few things.
[2] When that holy Abbot, already seventy-five years of age, had embraced the decrees of the council, brought to him by Stephen, Bishop of Iamnia, and John, Bishop of the Saracens, formerly his disciples, as consistent with the right rule of truth, the report suddenly spread through the whole desert that even the great Euthymius was following the Council of Chalcedon. This would have drawn almost all the monks to it, against the Council of Chalcedon had not a certain Theodosius, a monk in habit but in character a most troublesome impostor and a man of the most corrupt mind, come into Palestine and impiously fabricated certain things about the said council -- that it overturned the dogma of right faith and introduced, or rather recalled, the dogmas of Nestorius. Having won over Eudocia, stirred up by Theodosius the monk, who invades the See of Jerusalem who was then residing in Palestine, through her he led astray all the monks. And then he also shamelessly (O justice!) and impudently invaded the See of Jerusalem, and having obtained power and authority, he waged war against the divine canons and laws. And hence it came to pass that upright and moderate men were expelled from their Sees and from sacred offices, and some were even killed by him, and he polluted his wicked hands (alas!) with the blood of Bishops, while evildoers, impostors, pestilent men worthy of prison rather than of episcopal sees, were created interpreters of sacred things and Priests, and achieved great power with this wicked and destructive man.
[3] The same writer adds further details about those disturbances, and how the Empress Eudocia, widow of Theodosius the Younger, was brought back to the Catholic side through the efforts of St. Euthymius. That he says wicked men polluted their hands with the blood of Bishops is more expressly declared by the Emperor Marcian in a letter to the Archimandrites, monks, and other inhabitants in Aelia and around it, which is found after the Council of Chalcedon, where among other things he speaks thus: "But nothing of what was attempted has escaped our piety, since both from the records of proceedings and the reports of individuals, it has been made clear to us how the city of Aelia was captured by you as if by enemies, the city captured by monks, a Deacon killed you who ought to have dwelt in monasteries and resided only in such places. Moreover, the murder of the Deacon of venerable memory was committed, and after his killing he was deprived even of common burial, dragged insensibly and subjected to indignities. How also houses were burned and the gates of the city were shut, and you guarded the walls as if by your own laws, and the prison was violently opened, and remission of penalties was granted to bold perpetrators of evil, along with the opportunity for dangerous flight. And as the later deeds, advancing to worse, showed that the earlier ones had been minor, Bishop Juvenal was put to flight you wished through a certain man designated for this purpose to kill the most holy Bishop Juvenal and other most reverend Priests. But when he who had been sent was disappointed in his hope, not allowing his madness and that of those who had sent him to be without effect, striking the Bishop Severian of holy memory with a sword, he did not spare even those who were with him."
[4] So says the most religious Emperor, and much more. What he calls Aelia is Jerusalem, rebuilt by the Emperor Aelius Hadrian. The Deacon killed by those seditious persons is St. Athanasius, inscribed in the Roman Martyrology on July 5th. Evagrius in book 2, chapter 5, mentions those disturbances and reports that the pseudo-bishop Theodosius had previously been detected in crimes by his own Bishop and expelled from the monastery, a wicked and infamous man "and while he happened to be at Alexandria... having been torn apart with many blows as a seditious person, placed upon the camel used for criminals, and led around the city." He says that the same man above all others disturbed the Council of Chalcedon, and was the first of all to announce to those monks in Palestine what had been decreed in the council; and that by them, on the very holy day of Easter, he was designated Bishop of Jerusalem.
[5] Nicephorus Callistus in book 15, chapter 9, writes that Theodosius exercised his tyranny in the See of Jerusalem for twenty months. he sat for 20 months He reports that the sedition blazed up in this manner: "Certain monks who had been present at the council and dissented from its decrees, when they had come to Jerusalem, cried out that the faith had been betrayed, lamenting and striving to stir up and impel the monastic order to rescind what had been duly enacted in the council." Concerning the killing of St. Severian, he has: "When the Bishops had not yet returned from the council, he killed St. Severian Theodosius, ordaining others, sent them to various cities. But Severian, Bishop of Scythopolis, because he refused to support his malevolence, he drove from the town and killed."
[6] The name of St. Severian is inscribed in the Roman Martyrology with these words: whose name is in the Martyrology "At Scythopolis in Palestine, St. Severian, Bishop and Martyr." I have found this in no other calendars more ancient than Baronius. Unless he is the one whom, on the Kalends of February, the manuscript Florarium, Hermann Greven in the supplement to Usuard, and many manuscript Martyrologies interpolated for use by various Belgian Churches, mention thus: "On the same day, the holy Bishops Polycarp and Severian." Baronius again mentions St. Severian in the Annals, volume 6, at the year 452, number 29. It is not established in which month and on which day he was killed. Otherwise, if it were established that his martyrdom occurred in the month of February, it would have to be referred to the year 453, the time of his death since in the preceding February Theodosius had not yet been intruded into the See of Jerusalem.
[7] Scythopolis, of which St. Severian was the Bishop, is located in Coelesyria by Ptolemy in the fourth table of Asia -- where is Scythopolis located? not very accurately, since it was situated on this side of the Jordan. Strabo says more correctly: "Scythopolis, which is near Galilee." For it was not far from the Jordan, where it flows out of the Sea of Galilee, or Tiberias. Pliny in book 5, chapter 18, places it in the Decapolitan region and says it was formerly called Nysa, from Father Liber (Bacchus), after his nurse was buried there and Scythians were settled. These are fables. St. Jerome writes of it thus: "Bethshan. From this town the tribe of Manasseh was unable to expel the former inhabitants; and it is now called Scythopolis, a noble city of Palestine, which Scripture sometimes calls the House of Shan, which in our language is interpreted 'enemy.'" Eusebius: "Scythopolis, a notable city of Palestine. Scripture also calls it the House of Shem, which means 'house of the enemy.'" James Bonfrerius, in his Commentaries on Joshua chapter 17, verse 11, asks when the Scythians occupied it and reports that they held it even to the times of Christ and the historian Josephus, and that consequently the people of Scythopolis were considered aliens by the Jews. It was, moreover, as Charles of St. Paul writes in his Notice of the Bishoprics of the Patriarchate of Jerusalem, the Metropolis of the Second Palestine.