Talk:Pope Severinus

Untitled
I'm new, and don't understand redirects yet. There is a reference to Severinus under Scientific classification but the dates around that person's name indicate it is not this Pope. Thus the Severinus page needs to become a stub instead of a redirect.

Done. Feel like writing the article on Petrus Severinus?  - Nunh-huh 03:54, 14 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Conflict of sources
Here's one reason we need to use in-line citations more: there is a disagreement in the sources about the sequence of events, & the motivations, concerning the Ecthesis, Severinus, & the Exarch Isaac.

The story according to the Liber Pontificalis was that Maurice & Isaac were tasked with getting Severinus to sign the Ecthesis, & while doing so they looted the Lateran. (BTW, this is an unusual strategy to convince anyone to endorse a controversial document -- "Let's rob the Pope. That'll convince him to obey the Emperor & sign this document!") However, the LP is a biassed source who authors not infrequently get details, motivations, & the chronology of the papal reigns wrong. Although its version of the story should be mentioned, we need a reliable secondary source to help interpret it. Turning to Jeffrey Richards, the papal envoys were the only ones who dealt with the matter of papal approval of the Ecthesis: Maurice & Isaac plundered the Lateran out of simple greed (or because the central government was not providing sufficient funds to work with, which I gather was not unusual for the Exarchate), & Severinus made no decision on the document before his death.

Now we come to what the article says, & I was unable to identify its sources for the following. Before I made changes, not only did the article follow the account of the LP, it adds a synod where the Ecthesis was rejected. Richards dates this synod to the tenure of Severinus' successor, John IV. As for the sources used, the Catholic Encyclopedia article is only a short paragraph, & states Severinus professed "as in Christ there were two natures so also were there in Him two wills and two natural operations" -- on one hand implying that he rejected the Ecthesis, but on the other not saying that Severinus actually sent a response to Constantinople. (The Catholic Encyclopedia frequently fudges on facts to preserve the impression that its leaders were infallible, & above human imperfections -- & needs to be used with that POV in mind.) Maybe the article's version came from Maxwell-Stewart's book, but the reference points only to one page in that book. And perhaps that source was used in the same manner as Horace Mann's book below it -- to support statements unrelated to the central story -- so there is no way to know for certain where the account in this article came from. Which is why I may end up removing this version of events, & replacing it with an account based on what the LP states & Richard's interpretation. -- llywrch (talk) 19:59, 17 November 2011 (UTC)