In this paper I will be attempting to draw out some of the implications of the dogmatic disputes arising from the reception or rejection of the Council of Chalcedon for the exercise of pastoral care by a late antique bishop who was a leading figure on the non-Chalcedonian side of the disputes, namely Severus of Antioch. I would like to begin by speaking briefly about the two-fold problematic associated with this topic, firstly the problem of defining pastoral care in late antiquity, and secondly the difficulties inherent in the study of Severus of Antioch.
In an effort to define the concept of pastoral care in late antiquity Wendy Mayer and I have outlined the status quaestionis of the topic as follows. Scholars up to the present have tended to approach pastoral care in late antiquity either from the perspective of pastoral theology and/or practice, or from the standpoint of social history. In the first approach we find a variety of schemata involving three basic elements - the provider, the care given, and the recipient - and the breadth or otherwise of the treatment of these elements depends on the individual scholar. Recent work in pastoral theology does, however, highlight the importance of the socio-cultural context for pastoral care during the post-Constantinian period. Social historians of late antiquity, on the other hand, who are interested in the role of the bishop and the Christianisation of the empire, its institutions and structures, tend to examine what we might term specific aspects of pastoral care, especially social welfare, conversion, the destruction of temples, the ransoming of captives, or the audientia episcopalis. Normally speaking, pastoral care in this approach is not of interest per se, and the term itself is rarely mentioned. It is timely, therefore, to attempt to bring together some modern theories behind the theology of pastoral care and a comprehensive examination of the practice of such care at specific locations and among individual communities. To date we have concentrated our efforts on John Chrysostom and Severus of Antioch.
The importance of Severus as both a historical and a theological figure needs no explanation to a group such as this. Also well known to you will be the fact that, while his dogmatic and polemical works have received considerable attention this century, his letters and homilies, which provide the other side to the `disputatious polemicist' ('der streitbare Polemiker' - the description given him by the late Cardinal Grillmeier), remain largely underexploited. The fact that practically all of Severus' edited works survive in Syriac translation is a disadvantage. In this light, the new publication by Dr Françoise Petit of Greek catenae fragments from Severus on the Book of Exodus has been eagerly awaited. Identification and publication of unpublished fragments surviving in Syriac and Coptic are also assisting the task. I should also mention here a certain bias in the works which survive to us: while all Severus' homilies date from his patriarchate (512-518), the letters which have come down to us were written before and during his office as patriarch, as well as during his exile (518-538). The compiler of one of the two large collections of letters was chiefly interested in Severus' pronouncements on matters such as canonical ordination of bishops and priests, the orthodoxy of clergy, communion with heretics, and the reception of heretics.
In our attempt to lay the foundations for a definition of pastoral care in late antiquity Wendy Mayer and I have been working with seven aspects which cover the material we are examining in connection with John Chrysostom and Severus. I need to stress here that these aspects are not monolithic, that some of them overlap, and that others are more helpful for understanding one of our bishops than they are for the other. The study of pastoral care exercised by other late antique bishops will no doubt confirm this. Our seven aspects are: ritualised care, teaching/instruction, spiritual direction/guidance, charismatic ministry of prayer, administration, social welfare, and mission/conversion. I shall be dealing with each of them in turn with regard to Severus.
Ritualised Care
During his six-year patriarchate
Severus had great scope for ritualised care in the context of
the eucharistic liturgy. He performed eucharistic rituals not
only in the Great Church in Antioch, but also in the martyria
and other churches of the city: the New Church, the Church of
the Angel Michael, the martyria of Babylas, the Forty Martyrs,
Leontius (Daphne), Ignatius (probably in Antioch), Barlaha, and
Julian. His exercise of ritual care included in addition visitation
to monasteries in the hinterland of Antioch and to other towns
in Syria, where he delivered homilies within the context of the
eucharistic liturgy. The developing liturgical cycle in the sixth
century gave Severus the opportunity to celebrate new feasts
alongside the old. Hence we find him celebrating established
or familiar feasts like those of the dedication of the Great
Church (Homily CXII), the local martyrs Romanus (Homily XXXV),
Leontius (Homilies XXVII and L), Babylas (Homily XI), Drosis
(Homilies C and CXIV), and the Syrian saint Simeon the Stylite
(Homily XXX), as well as arguing for the more recently established
feasts like Palm Sunday (Homily CXXV) or Mid-Pentecost (Homily
XLVI). The increasing importance attached to the Theotokos is
reflected in the dedication of Homilies XIV and LXVII to her
under this title. Ritualised liturgical care was also exercised
on the feasts of the apostle Peter, Thecla, Antony of Egypt,
Athanasius, Basil of Caesarea and Gregory Nazianzen. In some
cases, like the celebration of the feast of the martyr Leontius
at his shrine in Daphne (Homily XXVII), stational liturgy was
involved, causing the ritual to spill over into the local streets
during the procession.
Apart from ritualised care within the context of the eucharistic liturgy, however, we have little evidence of Severus' personal involvement in it. Apart from the case where by using chrismation he healed a man suffering from carbuncles, we have only his provision of viaticum for certain of his correspondents at their request. This was not an aspect of pastoral care which Severus, as a provider, believed in, however, because it was often requested so that the recipient could be sure that the bread had been consecrated by an orthodox priest, preferably Severus himself . Although he is asked by two of his correspondents for advice on marriage, there is nothing to suggest that he performed the ceremony himself. The case of baptism is similar: while in Homily LVI he refers to the baptism of children, and in a letter to the parents of a new-born boy, whose name was chosen by him, he urges them to have the child baptised without delay, there is no indication that Severus was personally involved in the rituals. Under ritualised care he understands baptism, ordination, chrismation and penance, which he calls mechanisms which can effect conversion from heresy (i.e. Chalcedonianism), and, as we shall see, the use of these mechanisms looms large in those parts of his correspondence which deal with the reception of Chalcedonian clergy.
That the treatment and reception of such clergy was a serious pastoral concern for Severus can be seen from the frequency with which it is dealt with in his letters. His constant advice is that Chalcedonian clergy who convert are not to be reordained and certainly not rebaptised, but must make a written statement (plerophoria) anathematising their former beliefs, after which they must undergo a period of separation for penitence, to be at the discretion of the local bishop. (Only in the case of converts from the Pneumatomachoi or Macedonians can there be any question of reordination.) In the years when the non-Chalcedonian episcopacy was for a large part in exile in Egypt, this procedure must have been unworkable, however, for in another letter Severus mentions that authority has been given by the bishops to orthodox and hermits to receive those wishing to repent; but forgiveness should still await the assent of everyone, including the exiled bishops. The prevailing christological turmoil was also responsible for the practice of receiving ordination by a bishop from another diocese, as Severus notes, the ordination of exiled Palestinians to the presbyterate and diaconate by the bishops of Egypt being a case in point.
Teaching/Instruction
Severus' surviving works allow us to isolate four types of medium which he used for teaching or instruction: dogmatic or polemical treatises, homilies, letters, and liturgical works. The first three will be used in what follows.
It is significant that most works in the first category were not written and published until after his deposition in 518, the exceptions being the work directed against the Chalcedonian monk Nephalius (Adversus Nephalium), and the refutation of a dyophysite florilegium of the works of Cyril of Alexandria, known as the Philalethes. While he was in exile a significant level of danger attended the production of dogmatic and polemical works (whatever was the case with homilies and letters), because Severus himself informs us that he was obliged to couch the opening section of Contra impium grammaticum in such a way as to give the impression that it was composed while he was still patriarch of Antioch. The production of this tractate was eagerly awaited by a group of intelligent men, to whom he secretly gave readings before its publication. While the target audience of such works written under the constraints of banishment was presumably small, Severus' correspondents read and commented on them, and some addressees were in a position to alert him to the fact that parts of his circulated writings were being falsified or subjected to interpolation.
Severus' teaching in his homilies, on the other hand, was delivered to a more varied audience. The fact that, as we have seen, he delivered them in different churches, shrines, and martyria in Antioch, as well as in monasteries and churches in other towns of his patriarchate, means that a cross-section of non-Chalcedonian society was exposed to his teaching. What his congregations could be expected to understand of what they heard is, however, another matter. Many homilies contain uncompromisingly technical expositions of the one-nature christology which are of considerable length, and even though the patriarch often combines allegorical and literal explanations of scriptural passages one wonders whether his congregations would usually have gone home after the synaxis more mystified or bored than entertained or edified. Still, we find the standard warnings against attendance at horse races, as well as the tried-and-true biblical exempla for right conduct: Abraham, Daniel, Ezekiel, Isaiah, Jacob, Joshua, Moses, and so on. Although the number of catechumens in the sixth century was probably not significant, we find that each year of his patriarchate Severus delivers a homily to them on the Wednesday of Holy Week. The absence of any reference in other homilies preached in Holy Week and on Easter Day to his further personal involvement with them, however, seems to suggest that systematic catechesis devolved onto other members of his clergy.
An excellent example of
Severus' use of the homily as an intelligible teaching medium
within the non-Chalcedonian community is furnished by Homily
CXIX, which was delivered between 6 January 518 and Lent of the
same year. The topic is the marriage feast at Cana, which leads
the patriarch to a detailed denunciation of the doctrines of
Romanus, the bishop of Rhosus in Cilicia. Romanus, whom we can
only characterise as an extreme follower of Julian of Halicarnassus,
was the author of a work entitled The Ladder, cited verbatim
and frequently by Severus in this homily. Romanus' position,
according to Severus, was that fornication is hereditary in human
nature and that children, before all the other passions, have
the desire to corrupt and to be corrupted. Part of the argument
being also that marriage, sexual relations, and procreation are
impure and shameful, it followed that the marriage feast at Cana
was an occasion of unbridled debauchery, a display of lasciviousness
which was aided by the changing of the water into wine. The exegesis
of the "carpenter of The Ladder", as he is called
by Severus (and he says that The Ladder leads down to
hell and not up, and implies that it has many wobbly rungs),
obviously featured an amount of allegory, by which, for example,
Mary was taken to be a type of voluptuous sensation because she
incited her son to perform the miracle of changing water into
wine. Although Severus claims that even one reading of The
Ladder would be enough to convince his congregation that
its nonsense and contradictions were worthy of midwives and criminals,
from the length and specificity of his refutation of its carpenter
it is likely that he considered Romanus' extreme encratite position
attractive to some of his flock. The homily provides us with
unparalleled evidence of the influence which Julianism could
exercise outside the confines of academic theology.
That Severus' homilies had, in addition, an instructional function outside their actual delivery in the context of the eucharistic liturgy is demonstrated by the information contained in one of the patriarch's letters, to the effect that his Cathedral Homilies (i.e. a collection of those he delivered during his patriarchate) were in circulation as a collection during his lifetime. In this connection the tips which Severus gives in a letter to Stephen the reader are revealing. Stephen obviously works in a church frequented by Chalcedonians. He writes to Severus about the homily which the latter had delivered on Simeon the Stylite (Homily XXX) - a homily which Stephen found inadequate because, he says, it included encomium at the expense of historical narrative. The patriarch replies that the homily contains both at once, and that anyway it is customary for encomia of saints to be read in churches. He continues with some practical instruction:
I think that the preface of the same discourse that we wrote on the same holy Symeon will cause you difficulty, seeing that it is unacceptable to the Byzantines [Chalcedonians]. But it is easy for you to use three or four passages that stand at the beginning, and leave out the things that cause difficulty, and read the rest continuously.
While a number of Severus' letters incorporate spiritual instruction to their addressees, these will be more conveniently treated in the discussion of spiritual direction or guidance, an aspect of pastoral care to which we now turn.
Spiritual Direction/Guidance
When it comes to evidence for the spiritual direction or guidance which Severus exercised towards individuals or small groups, we are thrown back completely on his letters. The recipients (to use the terminology of the pastoral care theologians) of this kind of care are numerous and varied: Severus counsels bishops, archimandrites male and female, monastics male and female, clergy, non-Chalcedonian communities and individual laypeople, high secular officials, patrician women, and emperors.
While in the surviving material letters of consolation are almost completely absent, we find a large number of communications directed to individuals or groups which deal with scriptural interpretation, sexual or social morality, and doctrinal orthodoxy. It is self-evident that because of the nature of these topics there is sometimes considerable overlap between spiritual direction on the one hand and teaching or instruction on the other. Because I have to be selective here, I will be concentrating on Severus' letters to high secular officials, and commenting briefly on his contacts with non-Chalcedonian groups or communities.
The officials who figure among the addressees of Severus' letters are mostly non-Chalcedonians, and on the evidence of the letters are almost all well versed in theology and in the prevailing christological controversy. Conon the Silentiary, for example, while he consulted Severus about which of his daughter's suitors he should choose for her, also wrote to him with questions on the topic of original sin. (Conon's theological engagement is known to us from a reference in another letter, where he is said to have discussed theological problems with the new patriarch of Constantinople, John II (518-520)). Oecumenicus the comes is the recipient of three letters from Severus containing a detailed exposition about the operations and properties in Christ, in which the testimony of Cyril of Alexandria and Gregory of Nazianzus is frequently called on. Severus counsels against anathematising those who confess the operations and properties in Christ - a course of action which Oecumenicus is in favour of. For his part Isidore the comes seems to have been worried by trinitarian problems, for in the fragments of three letters Severus advises him about the co-essential nature of the Trinity. However, like others among Severus' correspondents in general, Isidore also seeks guidance with regard to the interpretation of Scripture: how is he to understand passages like Genesis 3, 9, where God says to Adam: `Where are you?', or Matthew 3, 7, where Jesus says to the Pharisees and Sadducees: `Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come?', passages in which the disembodied deity speaks in human words?
The blurring that can occur between the aspects of spiritual guidance and teaching is nowhere more evident in this group of letters than in Severus' reply to the nine questions put to him by the cubicularius Eupraxius, a committed non-Chalcedonian who is also the addressee of the Church History of Zachariah Scholasticus. The letter, the text and translation of which run to sixty-three pages in Patrologia Orientalis, resembles a theological tractate more than a letter. Three of Eupraxius' nine questions are concerned with the interpretation of Scripture; among the others we find fundamental christological questions, for example: why and in what way do we say that God the Word was humanised? How can the fullness of the Godhead dwell physically in Christ (cf. Col. 2, 9)? How can we say that the same suffered in the flesh, and in his Godhead remained without suffering, and while we do not make him alien to suffering, we keep him without suffering?
The cubicularius Misael seems to have been on intimate epistolary terms with Severus. Not only is he one of the patriarch's correspondents who asks for viaticum to be sent to him, but he also consults Severus about the advisability of taking orders. The spiritual relationship was not all one way, however, for at one point during Severus' patiarchate the cubicularius intervened to save the financial situation of the church in Antioch, and in a letter Severus unburdens himself to Misael on the topic of the scant resources of his see. The extent of Misael's commitment to the non-Chalcedonian cause is known to us through his conspiracy with his fellow cubicularius Amantius to topple Justin I; for this act he was sent into exile in Serdica, but here too Severus wrote to him. The case of Misael demonstrates the spiritual and personal relationships which Severus had with non-Chalcedonians at the highest level of government, relationships which could include patronage and which he used to further the non-Chalcedonian cause.
This web of relationships, or networking, is also obvious from Severus' correspondence with non-Chalcedonian groups or communities, about which I promised to speak briefly. We have examples of letters written globally to the `monks of the East' or to `the holy convents of virgins' (female monastics in the non-Chalcedonian diaspora), as well as communications addressed to specific monastic establishments like the monasteries of Mar Bassus (near Chalcis) or Mar Isaac (at Gabboula - its inmates supposedly embraced Julianism). Three letters dating from his patriarchate are addressed to the clergy at Apamea, the suffragans, and the clergy and notables in the same town, which was suffering from internal problems (here, despite the spiritual advice given, there is some overlap with administration). Other letters dating from his exile are sent to the believers at Antioch, to the Syrian bishops in banishment in Alexandria, and the non-Chalcedonian community at Emesa, and are designed as much to keep networks operational and to give groups moral support as they are to iron out some of the difficulties arising from the fact that they were living either under threat or in exile.
Charismatic Ministry of Prayer
The spiritual authority
of the bishop in late antiquity could involve an intercessory
role, in which the charismatic ministry of prayer played a part.
This intercessory role is in evidence in the pastoral care which
Severus exercised throughout his entire career. Even before his
elevation to the patriarchate in 512 he went to Constantinople
to plead his cause and that of his followers who had been expelled
from their monasteries in Palestine by the Chalcedonian monk,
Nephalius. Towards the end of his life, in 532, he was summoned
from Egypt to Constantinople by Justinian with the promise of
immunity, in order to take part in conciliatory discussions between
prominent non-Chalcedonians and Chalcedonians. Although this
invitation recognised his importance in the process of mediation,
he turned it down. His own words, found in a fragment of a letter
probably dating to his patriarchate, are the best testimony to
his vision of his intercessory role in christological debate,
particularly within the non-Chalcedonian camp.
I have stood and stand as a mediator between the holy church of Alexander's city and that of the city of Antiochus, holding the right hand of each of them, and I will hold inseparably to the confessions in which both have been united, although I pass beyond the bounds of Gades or of the end of the inhabited earth.
Severus feels constrained to intercede for his flock while he is absent from his see on visitation; elsewhere, however, he is inclined to exhort them to attentive prayer, or to request their prayers for himself.
Despite the paucity of references in Severus' works to his charismatic ministry of prayer, the temptation of suggesting that by the sixth century this ministry had devolved onto monks, rather than bishops, is to be resisted. The very fact that for the twenty years of his exile Severus was able to exercise pastoral care at a distance, and to intercede by letter in disputes, points to the recognition of his charismatic role by his contemporaries, and the biographies of the patriarch of Antioch attribute to him the power of exorcising demons, prophecy and effecting miracles, all charisms which we would otherwise have to believe were reserved for monks by this time. It may be that after the fifth century the charismatic status of a monk-bishop like Severus has to be considered a peculiar one; but it is even more likely that, just as later in the case of Jacob Baradaeus, Severus' moral and spiritual authority derived in some part from the leadership which he was able to exercise among the scattered and demoralised non-Chalcedonians.
Administration
One of the most varied and far-reaching of Severus' activities relating to pastoral care both during and after his patriarchate was administration. This fact is revealed chiefly by his letters. Although at one point he complains that his patriarchal workload is overwhelming, it is clear that in his administrative role he relied on a large number of people, as we would expect:
... nothing is likely to impair the whole administration of those who preside over a people (not only spiritual administration but also political or any other kind whatever) so much as intercourse with those who are constantly with them and serve them and are entrusted by them with things that cannot be entrusted to those without.
Even so, his letters demonstrate his involvement in sometimes surprising ecclesiastical minutiae. Noteworthy in Severus' exercise of administration is that even after his deposition and exile he considers that his patriarchal authority is intact, to the point that he becomes offended by some of his representatives who act without first asking his advice from his place of banishment.
There is some degree of overlap between episcopal administration and ritualised care, as Severus' concern with correct procedures for the ordination of bishops and clergy demonstrates. In regulating the ordination of a bishop, the patriarch was involved in a personal way, having the casting vote in an episcopal election. If problems arose concerning the choice of an episcopal candidate, it was Severus who referred the matter to the emperor, a procedure which may have been facilitated by his apocrisiarii in Constantinople, who, we gather, were networked with certain powerful individuals there. Normally speaking, however, the candidate was chosen by clergy and local inhabitants from a shortlist of three (Psephismata, the Roman terna) in a process presided over by the bishop of the region. Severus could prohibit a bishop from performing ordinations outside his own district, unless the bishop's presence was necessitated by the `heresy' of the local bishop.
As part of his administrative role Severus included the prohibition of inappropriate erasures of names from the roll of the clergy by the local bishop. He mentions frequently the regular presence of a number of bishops in Antioch, where they probably assisted him in the administration of the ecclesiastical courts. On this point, however, the evidence in the letters refers only to ecclesiastical cases, rather than to secular suits being brought before the audientia episcopalis; in fact, the presbyter Julian of Tarsus, when accused of profiteering from church property, shunned the ecclesiastical court and dragged his case to the secular courts (a fact which Severus found significant enough to report in a letter to the magister militum). At least in some cases brought before the ecclesiastical courts Severus was personally involved.
Severus felt himself responsible for establishing guidelines for bishops and their wives (here there is some overlap with spiritual guidance), and with the inclusion or striking of names from diptychs. Perhaps because of his own monastic background he seems to have taken a great interest in the administration of those monasteries which were subject to the jurisdiction of the patriarchate of Antioch. As I have shown elsewhere, by the time of Severus
a certain protocol had been established with regard to episcopal administration of non-Chalcedonian ecclesiastical establishments, at least in Syria. The archimandrite was in the first instance responsible for the monks; on all matters he was approached by the bishop, and the monks were contacted only through the archimandrite. The bishop, however, laid down the law in matters of ordination, although even here the formal consent of the archimandrite for the ordination of the monk was required. The reception of heretics into monasteries, the dismissal of monks, and the supervision of the archimandrite also fell within patriarchal jurisdiction.
A word needs to be said here about two priest-archimandrites, both called John, to whom a number of surviving letters are addressed. These men, whose exact whereabouts are uncertain, appear to have taken over Severus' responsibilities for the Syrian churches after his banishment. Witness Severus' words to them:
... nor yet can you on your part avoid doing everything in the capacity of my representatives. For, what you do, that men will justly reckon to me; for all, both brothers and strangers, both friends and enemies, know clearly that I and you are one, as in fact we are.
That they may have entered into the role of patriarchal representatives with too much personal initiative and enthusiasm is intimated in the same letter to them from Severus, to the effect that they are seeking to override his ban on the ordination of a certain Epimachus, one of the former apocrisiarii in Constantinople who had in fact served there with Severus' brother Peter. `There is another thing that would have been just and proper', says Sever-us, `I mean if you have asked me first and taken my advice'. Through the two Johns Severus was, we may presume, nevertheless kept up to date with happenings in Syria, and through them also he was able still to exercise some control over the churches there. With regard to Palestine, it seems that Severus was represented by a certain Theodore, who Honigmann conjectures may have been the archimandrite of the monastery of Romanus near Gaza. One of Severus's letters is addressed to the two Johns and Theodore.
Social Welfare
With regard to social welfare
as an aspect of the pastoral care which Severus exercises, we
receive a picture which is hard to interpret. Although under
the reigns of the emperors Zeno and Anastasius (474-518) there
appears to have been a great increase in wealth and building
activity in Antioch and the surrounding region, there is little,
if anything, to be detected of this prosperity in episcopal social
welfare programmes. We may have to assume that in the half century
or more following the Council of Chalcedon the ecclesiastical
turmoil took a financial toll on the patriarchate of Antioch.
Indeed, Severus complains bitterly about the financial straits
of his see, and speaks of the necessity of taking out a loan
to cover debts and repayment of interest. The number of clergy
on the distribution list of the patriarchate is said to be a
cause for concern, so much so that after Severus' banishment
one bishop, Didymus, apparently suggested that elderly clergy
should receive either a reduced stipend, or no stipend at all.
It is to Severus' credit that he rejected this ageist proposition
out of hand. In short, in the surviving sources, apart from a
reference to the construction of a well which Severus financed
through a loan, and the mention of a small gift which he sent
to a monastery being constructed by the presbyter Eustathius
(in both of which cases he refers pointedly to the financial
embarrassment of his patriarchate), we have no evidence of Severus'
involvement in social welfare during his episcopate. This is
in stark contrast to the documented charitable works of John
Chrysostom, or to the recurring concerns of Theodoret of Cyrrhus
about the burdens imposed by the imperial government on his flock.
Apart from the routine admonitions to church-goers to give alms,
we find in Severus' homilies only the injunction to respond in
Lent to the call by the protodeacon to give pieces of linen for
the use of the sick.
Mission/Conversion
The evidence which we have of Severus' mission activities is limited, but once again this may be attributed to the bias in our sources, as well as to the selectivity employed in preserving and transmitting the patriarch's works, especially his letters. Paganism does not feature as an issue in Severus' works. This is somewhat surprising, given the pagan activities in which he was supposedly involved before his conversion to Christianity - activities which two of his biographers, Zachariah Scholasticus and John of Beth Aphthonia, devote most of their works to minimising. It is rather vestigial paganism which draws the patriarch's ire in his homilies; for example, the attendance of Christians at the `pagan' spectacles at Daphne, or at the horse races, theatre, and local Olympic games in Antioch. Similarly, the references to Jews and Judaism are mostly of a literary and stylised character, whereby the Jews are said to confess Nestorian opinions or to divide Christ's natures. Throughout Severus' written works and the accomplishments attributed to him the obvious missionary emphasis is on spreading, or, after his exile in 518 and the banishment of non-Chalcedonian clergy and monastics soon after, on safeguarding the non-Chalcedonian cause. Here there is considerable overlap with ritualised care and episcopal administration, especially the reception of Chalcedonian clergy and the prescription of penitence, as discussed above. However, in the letters there are hints of the patriarch's enthusiastic efforts at promoting conversion. He writes, for example, to the chamberlain Misael, whom we have already mentioned, advising him that, instead of taking orders, he should continue to occupy his influential position, where he has the power to advance the non-Chalcedonian cause. In a letter to Conon `the brigand-chaser', Severus announces that the addressee will be receiving a command from the military general to `support the orthodox and the interests of the church with ample freedom and liberty. You have abundant warrant', continues the patriarch, `for displaying your qualities against God's enemies'. The amount of networking done by Severus in exile with other exiled bishops, such as Sergius of Cyrrhus, Constantine of Laodicea, and Thomas of Germanicia, demonstrates how closely the question of the administration of the non-Chalcedonian church in exile was connected with promoting its cause and providing spiritual guidance by letter.
Conclusion
Let us now review the various aspects of pastoral care that emerge from the works of Severus. In the first place, ritualised care exercised by him is poorly documented in the surviving sources, although he prescribes such care at regular intervals in the case of the reception of converts from Chalcedonianism and the penitence which is to be imposed on them. Severus' teaching role, on the contrary, comes across as being of paramount importance, whether it is carried out through the medium of the homily or of the letter, and there is evidence that he preached at least one catechetical homily per annum. The patriarch's charismatic ministry of prayer, perhaps better understood in his case as spiritual authority, is documented not only before his elevation to the patriarchate of Antioch and during his term of office, but also and more particularly from the influence he exerted throughout the eastern empire during his twenty-year banishment. His letters attest to the fact that he was involved at all levels of society in spiritual direction on a one-to-one basis or with groups, although here there is some overlap with teaching, administration, and his mission activities. The bulk of the evidence for pastoral care, however, resides in his administration of his diocese during and after his patriarchate, and in his administration of the non-Chalcedonian church in the diaspora. Here the emphasis is on ensuring the preservation of orthodoxy by selecting the right bishops and clergy, and having them ordained in a canonical manner. Given this preoccupation, which is also the preoccupation of at least one of the compilers of the collections of letters, it is not surprising that social welfare plays a negligible role in the surviving material, although the turmoil in the non-Chalcedonian church may account partly for the apparent lack of patriarchal largesse at this time. Missionary activities as a part of Severus' pastoral care are concentrated on the expansion and preservation of non-Chalcedonian orthodoxy. However, his concern with the maintenance of orthodoxy is implicit in every aspect of the pastoral care which he exercises.
A consideration of aspects of pastoral care with regard to Severus throws into relief the extensive networks which he had both before and during his exile, and provides a foil to the more conventional picture of him as a dogmatician. Viewed in this way, his correspondence in particular helps us to reconstruct from a non-Chalcedonian point of view a picture of his church in diaspora and in exile in a way that the works of no other non-Chalcedonian author of the sixth century allow us to do. A study of Severus' correspondence with bishops like Constantine of Laodicea, Anthimus, Thomas of Germanicia and Sergius of Cyrrhus will also give us the opportunity to build on and further the classic works of Jean Maspero and Ernst Honigmann. Furthermore, any general examination of late antique bishops will need to include Severus, who, despite the fact that his works were condemned by imperial decree, still boasts the largest and most varied collection of surviving writings of any eastern bishop in the sixth century, non-Chalcedonian or Chalcedonian.
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