Augustine replied, insisting that in their correspondence he himself was the debtor.
At that time, in the autumn of the year 416, a council of fifty nine bishops from throughout Numidia met at
Mileve.
Mileve was the episcopal seat of Severus. Augustine attended this council.
They did this by taking the step of writing directly to the Pope. (Augustine, Letters 175 and 176).
Their request for papal backing of their condemnation of Pelagius was supported in a reply dated 27th January 417 from Pope Innocent I, who expelled Pelagius from the church.
Little more is known about Severus. He died about the year 426, four years before Augustine died.
Severus is mentioned in the
City of God in an illustration that Augustine is making: "Yet far more astonishing is what I heard about this stone from my brother in the episcopate, Severus bishop of Milevis. He told me that Bathanarius, once count of Africa, when the bishop was dining with him, produced a magnet, and held it under a silver plate on which he placed a bit of iron; then as he moved his hand with the magnet underneath the plate, the iron upon the plate moved about accordingly. The intervening silver was not affected at all, but precisely as the magnet was moved backwards and forwards below it, no matter how quickly, so was the iron attracted above…." (
City of God 21, 4)
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