SEVERUS OF ANTIOCH (c. 465–538) was a rhetorician, theologian, and monophysite patriarch of Antioch (512–518). Severus was born in Apollonia, Thrace (modern-day Sozopol, Bulgaria), most likely in 465. He studied philosophy in Alexandria and rhetoric in Berytus (present-day Beirut), where, under the influence of Zacharias the Scholastic, he also acquired an interest in religious questions. After his baptism in Tripoli in 488, Severus became a monk at the monastery of Peter of Oberian, at Maiouma, near Gaza. In an attempt to live a more ascetic life, he left the monastery for the desert. But this soon proved harmful to his health, so he eventually returned to Maiouma.

There he established his own monastery and was ordained presbyter and archimandrite. The monophysite monks sent him to Constantinople in 508 to protest the subversive activities of the Orthodox monk Niphalios, who had managed to turn the Maiouma monks against Severus. Once...