Serenus (correspondent of Isidore of Pelusium)

Serenus is known only as a recipient of the letters of Isidore of Pelusium, the ascetic priest of the eastern Nile Delta in early-to-mid 5th-century Egypt, who addresses some twenty-two surviving letters to him. The address lines style him variously as a tribune, as "tribune and notary" (a tribunus et notarius, a high imperial secretary), and in at least one letter as a deacon, suggesting a man of standing in imperial service to whom Isidore writes both as an official and as a soul under spiritual direction; one letter sees him being dispatched to Thrace and warns him to keep prayer as his helper amid the perils of court. Isidore's letters to him range across scriptural exegesis (the despoiling of the Egyptians in Exodus, the eagles and the corpse in the Gospels), exhortations to humility and self-control, warnings against the love of money and the purchase of empty dignities, and reminders that true nobility lies in virtue rather than birth. Beyond what these letters reveal of his rank and Isidore's pastoral concern for his conduct, Serenus is otherwise unattested.