Abbot Severinus

Saint Severinus, known in the liturgical books as Abbot Severinus, was the principal monastic missionary of the Roman province of Noricum in the fifth century and is traditionally called the Apostle of Noricum. Contemporary evidence for his life comes almost entirely from the Vita Sancti Severini written by his disciple Eugippius around the year 511. Eugippius states that Severinus would not reveal his native country or the rank of his family, and modern historians therefore treat his birthplace and the exact year of his birth as unknown. Speculations that he came from Italy, Roman Africa, or the eastern provinces remain unverified. He is first securely attested in Noricum in the period after Attila’s death in 453, when imperial administration along the middle Danube had largely collapsed and the remaining Roman towns were subject to the Rugii and other Germanic groups.

He established a network of small monastic communities, of which the most important was at Favianis (generally identified with modern Mautern an der Donau in Lower Austria). From these houses he organized fasting, nocturnal psalmody, and systematic relief of the poor and of prisoners. The Vita recounts that he repeatedly warned towns such as Asturis, Comagenis, and Lauriacum of impending attack, that he obtained the release of captives from barbarian kings, and that he distributed food during a severe famine. He dealt with the Rugian king Feletheus and the king’s wife Giso, sometimes in tension and sometimes in cooperation, and he is said to have given a memorable audience to the young Odoacer, predicting the latter’s future rule in Italy. Throughout, Severinus refused episcopal office and remained an abbot and ascetic rather than a bishop.

He died at Favianis on 8 January 482. When, a few years later, Odoacer ordered the evacuation of the remaining Roman population of Noricum, the monks carried Severinus’s body with them on the journey into Italy. After temporary stops, the relics were placed in a monastery at Castellum Lucullanum, near Naples, founded for that purpose by a noblewoman named Barbaria. Eugippius, who took part in the translation, composed the Life at the urging of the Roman deacon Paschasius. In subsequent centuries the relics were transferred to the Neapolitan monastery of Santi Severino e Sossio; a further cult center arose at Frattamaggiore. The Roman Martyrology commemorates him on 8 January as Severinus, abbot, who preached the Gospel in that province and is called the Apostle of the Noricans.

Later devotion has named him among the patrons of Austria and Bavaria and has invoked him for prisoners and against famine. He lived as a celibate monk; no source records a wife or children. He was neither Bishop of Rome nor a patriarch of any Eastern church. Like most saints of late antiquity, he was venerated by local cult and episcopal recognition long before the later formal processes of beatification and canonization.