Saint Severinus

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Saint Severinus is known as the "apostle to Noricum," (died 482), though it was later claimed that he had been born either in Southern Italy or in the Roman province of Africa, after the death of Attila in 453. Severinus himself refused to discuss his personal history before his appearance along the Danube in Noricum. However, he did mention experiences with eastern desert monasticism, and his vita draws connections between Severinus and St. Anthony of Egypt.

The mysterious high-born Severinus is first recorded as travelling along the Danube in Noricum and Bavaria, preaching Christianity, procuring supplies for the starving, redeeming captives and establishing monasteries and hospices in the chaotic territories that were ravaged by the Great Migrations, sleeping on sackcloth and fasting severely. Eugippius credits him with the prediction that Odoacer would become king of Rome. However, he would rule not more than fourteen years.

The coat of arms of San Severo, Apulia, feature Saint Severinus

He died at Favianae, Noricum (modern Austria) singing Psalm 150. Six years after his death, his monks were driven from their abbey, and his body was taken to Italy, where it was at first kept in the Castel dell'Ovo, Naples, then eventually interred at the Benedictine monastery rededicated to him, the Abbey of San Severino near Naples.

Paul the Deacon, in his eighth-century History of the Lombards,' mentions the monastery founded by Severinus at Eiferingen, at the foot of the Kahlenberg, not far from Vienna:

In these territories of the Noricans at that time was the monastery of the blessed Severinus, who, endowed with the sanctity of every abstinence, was already renowned for his many virtues, and though he dwelt in these places up to the end of his life: now however, Neapolis keeps his remains.

The Vita of Severinus was written by Eugippius. Beyond Eugippius’ work, the only other contemporary source that mentions Saint Severinus is the Vita beati Antonii by Magnus Felix Ennodius, bishop of Pavia.

But compare Saint Severinus of Septempeda, the brother of Saint Victorinus of Camerino, and a bishop of Naples, whose feast day is celebrated on the same day, January 8.

In the History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Edward Gibbon notes that the disciples of Saint Severinus were invited by a "Neapolitan lady" to bring his body to the villa in 488, "in the place of Augustulus, who was probably no more."^[1] The villa was converted into a monastery before 500 to hold the saint's remains.^[2]

[edit] Additional Reading

Brown, P. (1971), The World of Late Antiquity (New York: W. W. Norton & Co).
Eugippius und Severin: Der Autor, der Text und der Heilige (Vienna: Verlag der Osterreichischen Akademie Der Wissenschaften).
Ward-Perkins, B. (2005), The Fall of Rome and the End of Civilization (Oxford: Oxford University Press).