From the life of St. Euthymius, written by Cyril the monk; a letter of
the emperor Marcia{}agrius, l. 2, c. 5. Nicephorus Calixt. l. 15, c. 9,
collected by Bollandus, p. 246.
A.D. 452, or 453.
IN the reign of Marcian and St. Pulcheria, the council of Chalcedon
which condemned the Eutychian heresy, was received by St. Euthymius, and
by a great part of the monks of Palestine. But Theodosius, an ignorant
Eutychian monk, and a man of a most tyrannical temper, under the
protection of the empress Eudoxia, widow of Theodosius the Younger, who
lived at Jerusalem, perverted many among the monks themselves, and
having obliged Juvenal, bishop of Jerusalem, to withdraw, unjustly
possessed himself of that important see, and in a cruel persecution
which he raised, filled Jerusalem with blood, as the emperor Marcian
assures us: then, at the head of a band of soldiers, he carried
desolation over the country. Many, however, had the courage to stand
their ground. No one resisted him with greater zeal and resolution than
Severianus, bishop of Scythopolis, and his recompense was the crown of
martyrdom; for the furious soldiers seized his person, dragged him out
of the city, and massacred him in the latter part of the year 452, or in
the beginning of the year 453. His name occurs in the Roman Martyrology,
on the 21st of February.
* * * * *
Palestine, the country which for above one thousand four hundred years
had been God's chosen inheritance under the Old Law, when other nations
were covered with the abominations of idolatry, had been sanctified by
the presence, labors, and sufferings of our divine Redeemer, and had
given birth to his church, and to so many saints, became often the
theatre of enormous scandals, and has now, for many ages, been enslaved
to the most impious and gross superstitions. So many flourishing
churches in the East which were planted by the labors of the chiefest
among the apostles, watered with the blood of innumerable glorious
martyrs, illustrated with the bright light of the Ignatiuses, the
Polycarps, the Basils, the Ephrems, and the Chrysostoms, blessed by the
example and supported by the prayers of legions of eminent saints, are
fallen a prey to almost universal vice and infidelity. With what floods
of tears can we sufficiently bewail so grievous a misfortune, and
implore the divine mercy in behalf of so many souls! How ought we to be
alarmed at the consideration of so many dreadful examples of God's
inscrutable judgments, and tremble for ourselves! _Let him who stands
beware lest he fall_. _Hold fast what thou hast_, says the oracle of the
Holy Ghost to every one of us, _lest another bear away thy crown_.
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