Suggest an Edit — Confessor Severinus

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Biography

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Saint Severinus of Noricum, commemorated as a confessor, is known almost entirely from the Life composed about the year 511 by his disciple Eugippius, later abbot of the monastery that housed the saint's relics near Naples. The year and place of Severinus's birth are not recorded. Eugippius states that the holy man would never disclose his native country or his parentage, even to those closest to him. Later medieval writers sometimes claimed that he came of a noble Italian family or that he had lived in the East or in Africa before appearing on the Danube, but those assertions rest on inference or legend rather than on contemporary evidence. He is therefore best described as a Latin-speaking Roman of the fifth century whose earlier life remains hidden.

After the death of Attila in the mid-fifth century, Severinus appeared in the frontier province of Noricum Ripense, along the south bank of the Danube in the region of present-day Austria. Roman civil and military administration was then disintegrating, and the remaining provincial population was exposed to the power of the Rugii and other Germanic groups. Severinus established himself first at Asturis and Comagenis and then more permanently at Favianis, where he founded a monastery. From these centres he organized the distribution of food in time of famine, arranged the ransom of captives, and repeatedly warned towns of impending raids. He dealt with Rugian kings such as Flaccitheus and Feletheus, and later tradition associated him with a prophecy concerning Odoacer. He founded or directed several small monastic communities along the river, including houses at Quintanis and Boiotro, and he sent at least one disciple, the young Antonius, to the island monastery of Lérins.

Eugippius depicts Severinus as an austere monk rather than as a bishop. He is said to have walked barefoot throughout the year, to have fasted until sunset, and to have spent long hours in prayer and psalmody. The Life attributes to him numerous miracles, the gift of prophecy, and authority over both natural forces and hostile soldiers; such stories belong to the hagiographical genre and cannot be verified independently, though they attest to the impression he made on his followers. He died at Favianis on 8 January in the year 482. Six years later, when Odoacer ordered the evacuation of the Roman population from Noricum, the monks opened his tomb, found the body incorrupt according to the Life, and carried the relics with them into Italy.

The community settled for a time in the region of Montefeltro and was then established at Castellum Lucullanum, the former villa of Lucullus on the Bay of Naples, through the patronage of a noblewoman named Barbaria. There Eugippius wrote the Life. In subsequent centuries the relics were translated into the city of Naples, where the church and monastery of Santi Severino e Sossio became the centre of his cult. The principal feast of Saint Severinus is 8 January. He has been honoured as a patron of Austria and of Bavaria, as a protector of the city and diocese of Linz, and as a saint invoked by prisoners and in times of want. Because he lived before the rise of the medieval religious orders, he is not attached to any later congregation, though monastic communities in both East and West have claimed his example. Modern historians treat Eugippius as a generally reliable witness to conditions on the late Roman Danube frontier in the 460s and 470s, while remaining cautious about the miraculous episodes.

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