SEVERUS OF ANTIOCH

SEVERUS OF ANTIOCH (ca. 465–538). Together with Philoxenus of Mabboug (q.v.) and Jacob of Serug, Severus was the leader of the movement against the definition of Chalcedon (q.v.) in the late 5th and early 6th c. Ruling as Patriarch of Antioch (q.v.) from 512, he was deposed at the orders of Emperor Justin I in 519, but contrived to lead the resistance from exile, in particular through the aid of the Empress Theodora, consort of Justinian (qq.v.). Unlike Philoxenus and Jacob, Severus wrote exclusively in Greek, and his surviving works are preserved almost entirely in a Syriac translation by the Jacobite community (qq.v.). Some fragments in Greek remain, chiefly through citations quoted in different florilegia (patristic anthologies) compiled for instructional purposes, or for the reproof of heresy (q.v.) at the different church councils of the era.