Severus of Antioch was born in Sozopolis in Pisidia about 465.
His family was well-to-do, and as a young man, not yet baptized,
he was sent to Alexandria to study grammar and rhetoric. From
Alexandria he moved to Beirut to study Roman law. Here Severus
came under the influence of Christian students and began to
study the works of Basil and Gregory of Nazianzus. Later he was
baptized at the shrine of Leontius of Tripoli, and after his
baptism became increasingly ascetic, spending much of his time
in church . Severus was an uncompromising critic of the Council
of Chalcedon and the Tome of Leo. The Council adopted the
formula of faith affirming that Jesus Christ was ‘one Person’
made known ‘in two natures’. The Council and the Tome were
rejected by a large part of the Christian East, which has
maintained since that time an organized existence in communities
in Egypt, Syria, Ethiopia, Armenia and India, which are commonly
referred to as the Oriental Orthodox Churches. This group of
Churches maintains that the ‘in