Maestro di S. Severino, S. Severinop in Trono e Santi, 1472 ca., da Chiesa SS Severino e Sossio, Galleria Napoletana (Museo di Capodimonte), Napoli
Maestro
di S. Severino, S. Severinop in Trono e Santi, 1472 ca., da Chiesa SS Severino
e Sossio, Galleria Napoletana (Museo di Capodimonte), Napoli
Maestro di San Severino ; Severin of Noricum ; Saint Sossius ; Paintings
of Madonna and Child in the Galleria Napoletana (Museum of Capodimonte) ; Galleria
Napoletana (Museum of Capodimonte)
Darstellung des Severin von Noricum. (Detail aus dem Severinaltar in Neapel)
Saint Séverin de Norique
Abbé en Autriche (+
482)
Protecteur de l'Autriche
et de la Bavière. Moine inconnu, venu sans doute de l'Asie Mineure après les
invasions d'Attila. Il fonda en 454 un monastère à Passau en Allemagne et, de
là, il évangélisa toutes ces régions. Il défendit les pauvres contre les petits
rois barbares et sut faire vivre en bonne entente les Romains et les Barbares.
Il mena une vie ascétique qui impressionnait son disciple et biographe,
Eugypius. Il inculqua à tous ses convertis les mœurs chrétiennes.
En Norique, sur les bords
du Danube, vers 482, saint Séverin, prêtre et moine, qui vint dans cette
province après la mort d’Attila, prince des Huns, y prit la défense des
populations sans appui, adoucit ces hommes sauvages, convertit les infidèles,
construisit des monastères et instruisit dans la foi les ignorants.
Martyrologe romain
SOURCE : http://nominis.cef.fr/contenus/saint/393/Saint-Severin-de-Norique.html
Pfarrkirche hl. Severin, Anton-Bruckner-Straße 12, Tulln, Niederösterreich - Darstellung hl. Severin gegenüber dem Portal
Pfarrkirche
hl. Severin, Anton-Bruckner-Straße 12, Tulln, Niederösterreich - Darstellung
hl. Severin gegenüber dem Portal
8 janvier. Saint Séverin
du Norique, Apôtre de l'Autriche et de la Bavière. 482.
Pape : Saint Simplice.
Empereur romain, d'Orient : Zénon.
Chute de l'empire romain d'Occident : Julius Népos (+480) ; Romulus Augustule.
Chef des Hérules, patrice romain, etc. : Odoacre.
Roi des Francs Saliens : Clovis
Ier.
" Quand vous aurez vaincu, ne tuez pas les ennemis."
Saint Séverin au chef de la garnison de Vienne.
Dans le Ve siècle, un
Solitaire d'Orient, poussé par l'esprit d'en-haut, vint annoncer la pénitence
et le royaume de Dieu aux peuples barbares du Septentrion. On ne put savoir sa
patrie ; aux questions qu'on lui faisait à ce sujet, il répondait qu'un prédicateur
de l'Evangile n'avait point d'autre âge que l'éternité, ni d'autre pays que le
ciel. Toutefois, on reconnut facilement, à son parler et à ses manières, qu'il
était Romain ou d'un endroit ou d'un endroit où l'on parlait encore le bon
latin. Comme il était humble et qu'il refusait de dire la condition de sa
famille, on crut, non sans raison, que ses parents étaient illustres selon le
monde. Il faisait précéder sa prédication de l'exemple de sa vie ; il était
pieux, austère et charitable envers les pauvres, les malades et tous les
nécessiteux.
Au temps où vécut saint Séverin, il y a plus de treize cents ans, Attila, ce
terrible roi des Huns, dont nous avons déjà parlé, venait de mourir. En
mourant, il laissa plusieurs fils, qui se disputèrent l'empire, principalement
dans les contrées situées le long des deux rives du Danube. Au loin régnaient
la terreur et la désolation. Saint Séverin demeurait alors aux environs de la
ville d'Astures ; il anonça aux habitants de cette ville qu'ils étaient menacés
des horreurs de la guerre, et que leur cité serait détruite, à moins qu'ils ne
fléchissent le ciel par des jeûnes, des prières et des aumônes. Pour leur
malheur, les Asturiens n'écoutèrent pas les sàges exhortations du Saint, et
leur ville fut ruinée de fond en comble, de sorte qu'aujourd'hui l'on ne sait
plus même le lieu où elle s'est trouvée (d'aucuns pensent que Stockeraw, au
nord de Vienne est située sur le site de l'ancienne Astures).
Mais avant le désastre,
saint Séverin s'était retiré dans une autre ville, appelée Cumanis (aujourd'hui
Haynburg, à une vingtaine de kilomètres à l'Ouest de Vienne). Là il renouvela
ses conseils et ses sinistres prédictions ; mais là aussi il ne fut pas écouté.
Alors un vieillard, qui seul avait échappé ua massacre et à l'incendie
d'Astures, raconta aux habitants de Cumanis tous les détails de l'horrible
désastre dont il avait été témoin ; et il ajouta qu'avant l'événement un homme
inconnu était venu leur prédire tout ce qui était arrivé, et les avait exhortés
à détourner ces malheurs par la pénitence :
" Et c'est parce
qu'on ne l'a pas cru, dit-il en terminant son récit, que tous ces malheurs sont
venus sur ma patries !..."
Et le vieillard, ayant vu
saint Séverin qui l'écoutait discrètement mélé à son nombreux auditoire, s'écria
aussitôt :
" C'est lui-même,
écoutez-le !"
Alors les Cumaniens lui
demandèrent pardon de n'avoir pas voulu l'écouter d'abord et pendant trois
jours ils implorèrent le secours du ciel par des prières, des jeûnes et des
aumônes. Pendant ce temps les farouches ennemis s'étaient rapprochée de Cumanis
mais vers la fin du troisième jour leur camp fut ébranlé par un terrible
tremblement de terre, et ils s'enfuirent épouvantés. Pendant la nuit suivante,
ils s'imaginèrent être poursuivis, et, prenant leurs compagnons pour des
ennemis, ils s'entre-tuèrent.
Une autre
ville * plus loin sur le Danube était désolée par la famine.
C'était au cœur de l'hiver, et l'on attendait des vivres qui devaient arriver
des pays qui sont près de l'Inn. Mais le fleuve était gelé, les bateaux qui
devaient transporter les vivres ne pouvaient arriver. Or, les habitants de
cette ville ayant entendu parler de la merveilleuse efficacité des prières de
saint Séverin, le firent inviter à se rendre auprès d'eux.
Son premier soin, en arrivant, fut de les exhorter à la prière et à la
pénitence. Et presque aussitôt l'on vit arriver une foule de bateaux chargés de
vivres. Que s'était-il donc passé ? Le fleuve, qui depuis longtemps tenait les
bateaux emprisonnés dans les glaces, s'était subitement fondu par l'effet d'un
dégel miraculeux survenu à une époque tout à fait indue. Grande fut la
reconnaissance des Viennois, et grandes furent aussi leurs actions de grâces.
Or, il y avait à Vienne une riche veuve nommée Procule qui avait caché, pendant
une famine, une immense quantité de blé : l'Esprit de Dieu ayant révélé cet
acte d'avarice à Séverin, le Saint reprit publiquement la veuve sans
entrailles, lui reprocha d'être cause, par sa cupidité, de la mort d'un grand
nombre de pauvres, et lui fit voir qu'elle se disait en vain chrétienne,
puisqu'en adorant les richesses elle était tombée dans une détestable
idolâtrie. Procule comprit l'énormité de sa faute et la répara en ouvrant
gratuitement ses greniers.
Dans le même temps, des
barbares menaçaient cette ville par le fer et le feu tout ce qu'ils pouvaient
saisir au dehors des murs, hommes et bêtes, ils l'emmenaient avec eux. La ville
était presque entièrement dépourvue de soldats : saint Séverin harangua leur
chef, lui disant d'avoir confiance en Dieu, et d'aller attaquer résolument
l'ennemi, lui assurant que Dieu lui donnerait la victoire. Il ajouta encore ces
paroles remarquables :
" Mais quand vous
aurez vaincu, ne tuez pas les ennemis !"
Le capitaine partit aussitôt, plein de confiance en Dieu et dans les prières de
son fidèle serviteur. Les barbares, en l'apercevant, furent saisis d'épouvante,
jetèrent leurs armes et s'enfuirent. Ceux d'entre eux qu'on put emmener
captifs, furent conduits devant saint Séverin, qui, après leur avoir reproché
leurs brigandages, leur fit donner à boire et à manger, et puis les renvoya
dans leur pays.
Plus tard saint Séverin se retira dans une solitude, avec le désir de ne plus
vivre que pour Dieu mais il n'y demeura pas longtemps seul. Une foule de gens
allaient le trouver pour lui demander aide et conseil dans leurs besoins
spirituels ou corporels.
Un homme, nommé Rufus,
était malade depuis douze ans : il souffrait horriblement dans tous les membres
de son corps. Or, les moyens employés jusque-là avaient été infructueux. Sa
mère le mit sur une voiture et le conduisit devant l'habitation du Saint. Elle
le supplia de guérir son fils. Le Saint répondit :
" Dieu seul peut
rendre la santé aux malades ; mais je vais vous donner un conseil donnez des
aumônes, selon vos moyens."
Cette femme, n'ayant pour
le moment aucune autre chose à donner, se dépouilla de ses habits pour les
donner aux pauvres. Mais le Saint lui dit :
" Remettez vos
habits ; votre fils va être guéri ensuite, quand vous serez retournée chez
vous, prouvez votre foi par es oeuvres."
Saint Séverin se mit
ensuite en prières ; et aussitôt, au grand étonnement de tous les assistants,
le malade se leva guéri, et s'en retourna chez lui. L'étonnement de tous ceux
qui le connaissaient était si grand, que plusieurs ne voulurent pas croire que
ce fût le même homme qu'ils avaient vu si infirme.
La renommée de la sainteté et des miracles de saint Séverin se répandit au
loin. Plusieurs cités pensèrent que si elles possédaient un tel trésor, elles
seraient à l'abri de toutes les calamités. Le Saint fut donc appelé avec
instance de divers côtés. Or, un jour il se trouvait dans une ville, où une
partie des habitants s'adonnait à l'idolâtrie. Saint Séverin leur représenta
combien grand était ce crime, mais personne ne voulut s'avouer coupable.
Alors il prescrivit un jeûne de trois jours, et ordonna que le troisième jour
chaque famille se rendrait à l'église avec un cierge non allumé. Le Saint
s'étant mis en prières avec les prêtres et le peuple, les cierges des vrais
croyants s'allumèrent d'eux-mêmes, tandis que ceux des idolâtres demeurèrent
non allumés. Etant ainsi miraculeusement convaincus, les idolâtres confessèrent
leur péché ; et le chroniqueur, en rapportant ce fait, ajoute :
" Ô douce puissance
de mon Créateur, qui alluma les coeurs en même temps que les cierges ! Car le
feu se mit aussi aux cierges des coupables, après qu'ils eurent confessé leur
faute et pendant que ce feu consumait la cire qu'ils tenaient en leurs mains,
un feu immatëriel consumait leurs cœurs et faisait couler de leurs yeux des
larmes de componction."
Une autre fois les
campagnes d'alentour furent ravagées par des nuée de sauterelles, et l'on
supplia encore saint Séverin d'éloigner ce fléau par ses prières. Comme
toujours, il recommanda d'avoir recours à la prière, au jeûne et aux aumônes ;
en même temps il exigea que personne n'allât aux champs : " car,
dit-il, vos soins intempestifs seraient faits pour éloigner le secours de Dieu
plutôt que pour chasser les sauterelles ". Tous se conformèrent scrupuleusement
aux prescriptions du Saint, à l'exception d'un tout pauvre homme, qui voulait
absolument aller visiter son champ. Ce champ se trouvait environné de plusieurs
autres, et le pauvre homme s'y rendit pour en chasser les insectes
destructeurs. Mais la nuit même les sauterelles disparurent complètement, en
laissant intacts tous les champs, à l'exception de celui du pauvre incrédule,
sur lequel elles ne laissèrent pas un fruit, ni un brin d'herbe. Ce malheureux
alors courut à la ville, en se lamentant devant tout le monde de ce qui lui
était arrivé. Là-dessus tous sortirent, et virent avec étonnement que leurs
champs avaient été préservés du fléau, et que seul le champ de l'incrédule
avait été dépouillé.
Le Saint alors leur dit
ces simples paroles :
" Apprenez par les
sauterelles à obéir toujours à Dieu !"
Alors le pauvre dit en se
lamentant :
" Je veux bien, à
l'avenir, obéir fidèlement à Dieu, mais qui me donnera de quoi vivre, car mon
champ est dévasté ?"
Le Saint s'adressant à la
foule, dit :
" Il est juste que
celui qui par son châtiment vous apprend à être humbles et obéissants, soit,
pour cette année, nourri par vous."
Et il fut fait une
collecte au profit du pauvre.
Une autre fois une femme,
après avoir été longtemps malade, entra en agonie quelques-uns de ceux qui l'entouraient,
la croyant déjà morte, se mirent à se lamenter, suivant la coutume en pareille
occurrence. Les autres, au contraire, leur imposèrent silence, et, emportant la
malade, ils allèrent la déposer devant la porte de saint Séverin. Le Saint leur
dit :
" Que me voulez-vous
?"
Ils répondirent :
" Nous vous prions
de rendre à ta santé cette femme qui va mourir."
Le Saint reprit :
" Vous demandez trop
à un pauvre pécheur comme moi. Je suis indigne de faire des miracles ; tout ce
que je puis faire, c'est de prier Dieu de me pardonner mes péchés."
Ceux-ci répliquèrent :
" Nous croyons que
si vous priez pour la malade, elle sera guérie."
Alors le Saint se mit à
prier et aussitôt la malade put se lever. Et le Saint leur dit :
" Ce miracle n'est
pas dû à mes mérites, mais à votre foi ; pareille chose arrive journellement en
maint endroit, chez tous les peuples, par la toute-puissance de Dieu, qui seul
peut guérir les malades et ressusciter les morts, afin que tous les peuples
sachent qu'il est le seul vrai Dieu."
Trois jours après, cette
même femme était si bien guérie, qu'elle put de nouveau vaquer à ses travaux
habituels.
Mais, quoiqu'il fît ces prodiges pour gagner les peuples à Jésus-Christ, il ne
voulut point guérir un mal d'yeux qui causait des douleurs très vives à Bonose,
le plus cher de ses disciples ; il aurait cru, en lui enlevant la souffrance,
le priver d'un moyen de perfection. Sa réputation alla si loin que les princes,
même d'au-delà du Danube, infidèles ou Ariens, lui demandaient ses avis pour la
conduite civile de leurs Etats, quoiqu'ils refusassent d'ouvrir les yeux à la
vérité et de corriger les déréglements de leur vie.
Il établit plusieurs
monastères, dont le plus considérable était près de Favienne. Il le quittait
souvent pour aller à deux lieues au delà, dans un endroit écarté, pour prier
plus tranquillement. Mais la charité l'obligeait souvent d'aller en divers lieux,
consoler les habitants dans leurs alarmes car ils se croyaient en sûreté quand
il était avec eux. Il recommandait à ses disciples surtout l'imitation des
anciens et l'éloignement du siècle ; ses exemples leur prêchaient plus encore
que ses paroles. Car, excepté les fêtes, il ne mangeait qu'après le soleil
couché, et en Carême une seule fois dans la semaine il dormait tout vêtu sur un
cilice, étendu sur le pavé de son oratoire. Il marchait toujours pieds-nus,
même lorsque le Danube était gelé. Plusieurs villes le demandèrent pour évêque,
mais il ne voulut jamais se rendre à leurs instances :
" N'est-ce pas assez
que j'aie quitté ma chère solitude pour venir ici vous instruire et vous
consoler ?"
Il ne faut donc pas croire que notre Saint ait établi d'une manière définitive
et durable, ni la religion catholique, ni la vie monastique dans ces pays ; ce
n'était ni le lieu ni le moment. La Providence l'avait amené là, lui Romain,
moine catholique, représentant du monde civilisé qui allait être enfin envahi,
afin d'arrêter un instant, et d'adoucir les envahisseurs ; ainsi Attila trouva
saint Léon au passage du Mincio, saint Aignan sous les murs d'Orléans, et saint
Loup aux portes de Troyes ainsi saint Germain d'Auxerre arrêta Eocharich, roi
des Allemands, au cœur de la Gaule.
L'anachorète qui défendit le Norique, veillait en même temps dans l'intérêt de
toute la Chrétienté. Si le débordement des invasions se fût précipité d'un seul
coup, il aurait submergé la civilisation. L'empire était ouvert, mais les
peuples n'y devaient entrer qu'un à un et le sacerdoce chrétien se mit sur la
brèche, afin de les retenir jusqu'au moment marqué, et pour ainsi dire jusqu'à
l'appel de leur nom. c'était le tour des Hérules : saint Séverin avait contenu
leurs bandes sur le chemin de l'Italie.
Parmi ceux qui venaient
demander sa bénédiction, se trouva un jour un jeune homme, pauvrement vêtu,
mais de race noble, et si grand qu'il lui fallait, se baisser pour entrer dans
la cellule du moine :
" Va, lui dit
Séverin, va vers l'Italie ; tu portes maintenant de chétives fourrures, mais
bientôt tu auras de quoi faire largesse."
Ce jeune homme était
Odoacre, à la tête des Thurilinges et des Hérules ; il s'empara de Rome, envoya
Romulus Augustule mourir en exil, et, sans daigner se faire lui-même empereur,
se contenta de rester le maître de l'Italie. Du sein de sa conquête, il se
souvint de la prédiction du moine romain qu'il avait laissé sur les bords du
Danube, et lui écrivit pour le prier de lui demander tout ce qu'il voudrait.
Séverin en profita pour obtenir la grâce d'un exilé.
Si Odoacre, maître de
Rome, usa de clémence, s'il épargna les monuments, les lois, les écoles, et ne
détruisit que le vain nom de l'empire, c'est qu'il se souvint, notamment, du
moine romain qui avait prédit sa victoire et béni sa jeunesse.
Une autre fois, comme les Allemands ravageaient le territoire de Passau, où il
se trouvait alors, il alla trouver Gibold leur roi, et lui tint un langage si
ferme, que le barbare troublé promit de rendre les captifs et d'épargner le
pays on l'entendit ensuite déclarer à ses compagnons que jamais, en aucun péril
de guerre, il n'avait tremblé si fort. Saint Séverin était donc là comme un
rempart céleste sur les rives du grand fleuve qui ne protégeait plus le
territoire de l'empire. Quand une ville, une contrée de l'empire étaient
menacées par une armée barbare, il entreprenait quelquefois la défense
militaire avec le calme d'un vieux capitaine, rendant d'une parole le courage
aux plus timides, se faisant obéir là où personne ne l'était plus ; s'il
fallait reculer, il organisait la retraite ; s'il n'y avait plus espoir de
salut, il se rendait au camp des vainqueurs, et, au nom de Dieu, il obtenait
que les vaincus seraient respectés dans leurs personnes et dans leurs biens, et
que tous vivraient en paix.
Il avait surtout le plus
grand soin des captifs, d'abord à cause d'eux, en qui il voyait Notre-Seigneur
dans les chaînes et la misère, mais aussi à cause du salut de l'âme des maîtres
qui les opprimaient. Il plaida, selon son habitude, cette sainte cause auprès
de Fléthée, roi des Rugiens, peuplade qui était venue, des bords de la mer
Baltique, s'établir en Pannonie ; peut-être le cœur de ce barbare se serait-il
laissé fléchir ; mais Gisa, sa femme, qui était arienne et plus féroce que lui,
dit un jour à Séverin :
" Homme de Dieu,
tiens-toi tranquille à prier dans ta cellule, et laisse-nous faire ce que bon
nous semble de nos esclaves."
Mais lui ne se lassait
pas et finissait presque toujours par triompher de ces âmes sauvages, mais non
encore corrompues. Sentant sa fin approcher, il mande auprès de son lit de mort
le roi et la reine. Après avoir exhorté le roi à se souvenir du compte qu'il
aurait à rendre à Dieu, il posa la main sur le cœur du barbare, puis se
tournant vers la reine :
" Gisa, aimes-tu
cette âme plus que l'or et l'argent ?"
Et comme Gisa protestait
qu'elle préférait son époux à tous les trésors :
" Eh bien donc,
cesse d'opprimer les justes, de peur que leur oppression ne soit votre ruine.
Je vous supplie humblement tous les deux, en ce moment où je retourne vers mon
maître, de vous abstenir du mal et de vous honorer par vos bonnes
actions."
Saint Séverin avait prédit à ses disciples le jour de sa mort, deux ans
auparavant il les avertit en même temps que les habitants du Norique seraient
obligés de se réfugier en Italie, et leur ordonna de les suivre et d'emporter
son corps. Il fut attaqué d'une pleurésie le 5 janvier 482. Le quatrième jour
de sa maladie, il demanda le saint Viatique ; puis, ayant fait le signe de la
Croix et dit avec le Psalmiste : " Que tout esprit loue le Seigneur
", il s'endormit doucement dans le Seigneur.
CULTE ET RELIQUES
Six ans après, les disciples de saint Séverin furent, selon sa prédiction,
obligés de fuir devant la fureur des barbares ; ils emportèrent le corps de
leur bienheureux Père ; presque toute la contrée l'accompagna, et partout où il
passait on courait lui rendre hommage, de sorte que c'était plutôt un triomphe
qu'une retraite. Il fut déposé à Monte-Feltro, en Ombrie, d'où il fut transféré,
cinq ou six ans après, à Lucullano, entre Naples et Pouzzolles, par l'autorité
du pape saint Gélase.
Saint Séverin est invoqué
particulièrement par les prisonniers, les vignerons et les tisserands.
On y bâtit un monastère
dont Eugippe, auteur de la vie de saint Séverin, fut second abbé. En 910, ses
saintes reliques furent transportées à Naples, dans un monastère de Bénédictins
qui porte son nom. Saint Séverin du Norique est l'un des Patrons de la Bavière,
de l'Autriche, et de Vienne où il est somptueusement fêté dans le quartier de
l'Heiligenstadt, dans le district de Döbling. Il est aussi le saint patron du
diocèse de Linz, de la ville italienne de San Severo.
Les Français, et plus
particulièrement les Parisiens, prendront soin de ne pas le confondre avec
saint Séverin d'Agaume, ou de Paris, ermite, qui, notamment, guérit Clovis
miraculeusement. Ce saint Séverin, quasi-contemporain de notre Saint du jour,
retourna à Notre Père des cieux en 540.
* Probablement
Vienne car le chroniqueur dont s'inspire cette notice - Eugippe, moine
bénédictin de Naples du Ve siècle - nomme cette ville Favienna ou Fabienna. Or,
il n'y a pas loin, philologiquement parlant, de Favienna ou Fabienna à Vienne
qui reçut son nom du général romain Annius Fabianus. Il convient de mentionner
que certains modernes, non sans raisons - lesquelles sont d'être suffisantes
pour le soutenir sans doutes sérieux -, soutiennent qu'il pourrait s'agir de la
ville de Mautern. Cependant, ce que les auteurs catholiques " intégraux
" ont appelé au XIXe " l'hypercritique ", doit être prise en
compte avec une grande prudence compte tenu du fait que ses zélateurs
revisitaient tout au plan historique, hagiographique, etc. Cette
hypercritique, résolument naturaliste, donnera des escrocs contemporains tels
que les sinistres Prieur et Mordillat : leurs descendants directs ;
vulgarisateurs de thèses monstrueuses et hérétiques."
-Saint-Séverin apôtre du Norique (+482)
pnha,n°95, nov. 1998
-Sur la naissance et le
pays d'origine de ce saint règne la plus grande obscurité. Son biographe,
Eugypius, n'en dit rien, et il paraît que Séverin lui-même par humilité, refusa
constamment de répondre aux questions qu'on lui adressait là-dessus. Les historiens
modernes ont émis à ce sujet diverses opinions; voici celle d'un auteur
allemand,Th. Sommerlad
Né en Afrique du Nord
-----Séverin serait né en Afrique, d'une famille distinguée; il aurait été élevé à l'épiscopat dans sa patrie, mais aurait dû prendre le chemin de l'exil, probablement en 437, pour échapper aux vexations que les Vandales ariens faisaient subir aux catholiques. Il se serait retiré en Asie Mineure et y aurait embrassé la vie monastique, selon la règle de Saint-Basile. Ardent défenseur de l'orthodoxie et du monachisme oriental, il serait arrivé dans le Norique, au plus tôt en 434. Peut-être faudrait-il l'identifier avec l'évêque Severianus dont parle Prosper d'Aquitaine (Epitome chronicon, ad an. 437). Cependant, tout cela reste dans le domaine de l'hypothèse.
-----Donc en 454, arrive à Astura, petite ville située au nord du Danube, sur les confins de la Pannonie et du Norique, un inconnu ; Sans aucune lettre de recommandation, il se présente chez le portier de l'église et sollicite une place au foyer. On l'accueille, et sans attirer l'attention, il gagne l'affection de son hôte par sa piété, la pureté de ses moeurs, son zèle charitable. Soudain cet homme obscur sort un jour de son modeste logement ; il parcourt les rues de la ville, appelle à l'église prêtres clercs et laïcs ; là avec un accent d'humilité et de conviction, il avertit ses auditeurs qu'un péril imminent les menace : "Les barbares sont tout près, dit-il, fermez les portes de la ville, mettez-vous en état de défense et, surtout, priez, faites pénitence".
-----Mais c'est en vain, un peuple incrédule méprise ses paroles. Les prêtres eux-mêmes ne veulent pas ajouter foi aux propos de cet étranger qui semble se mêler de prophétiser. Sous le coup d'une juste indignation ; Séverin quitte l'église, rentre chez son hôte, lui prédit le jour et l'heure du désastre : "Pour moi, ajoute-t-il, je quitte cette ville opiniâtre et vouée à une destruction prochaine".
-----Il se rend alors à Comagène, bourg fortifié, situé non loin d'Astura, également au bord du Danube. Une garnison romaine s'était retirée de cette place et les habitants, incapables de se défendre eux-mêmes, avaient traité avec des barbares qui, tyrans autant que protecteurs, s'étaient rendus insupportables.
-----Ils exerçaient une garde sévère sur les portes de la ville. Cependant, sans prendre garde au fugitif d'Astura, ils le laissent passer. Celui-ci va droit à l'église où le peuple est assemblé, et il fait entendre son avertissement sans plus de succès.
-----Dans le même moment, un vieillard, à l'entrée de la ville, demande à y
pénétrer ; il raconte qu'Astura vient d'être mise au pillage, comme cela avait
été prédit par un homme de Dieu. La curiosité s'éveille à ce récit, on laisse
passer le vieillard, qui court à l'église et y reconnaît son hôte dans le
prédicateur improvisé. Devant tout le peuple assemblé, il se jette à ses pieds
et le proclame son sauveur.
Sauvés des Barbares
-----La foule alors se déclare prête à suivre les conseils de Séverin ; dans tout Comagène, ce sont des jeûnes, des prières, des gémissements. Le troisième jour de ces exercices de pénitence, un tremblement de terre se produit, les barbares demandent à quitter la place. Ils se précipitent au dehors ; trompés par l'obscurité, ils croient avoir l'ennemi devant eux, se jettent les uns sur les autres et s'entre-tuent. Le peuple de Comagène est ainsi débarrassé de ses encombrants protecteurs ; on interroge le vieillard d'Astura pour connaître celui qu'il a appelé protecteur. La réponse est que cet homme s'appelle Séverin et vient des régions de l'Orient.
-----A partir de ce moment, la curiosité des habitants de Comagène est excitée au plus haut point ; ils n'osent pourtant pas interroger directement Séverin. Mais après la chute de Romulus Augustule, des Italiens arrivent dans le Norique ; c'est une occasion, semble-t-il de faire parler Séverin qui vient de recevoir comme hôte un prêtre italien nommé Primenius ; on essaie d'employer cet intermédiaire pour en savoir davantage sur les antécédents de Séverin : "Sache seulement, répond-il, à Primenius, que le Dieu qui t'a fait la grâce d'être prêtre m'a ordonné de venir au secours de ces infortunés".
-----Après Comagène, c'est Favianes qui doit à ce saint homme d'être délivré du fléau de la famine et des menaces des Barbares ; il annonce aux habitants auxquels il a prêché la pénitence que Dieu combattra pour eux et, quand cette promesse s'est réalisée, il donne ce dernier avis : "Votre ville n'aura plus à souffrir des déprédations mais à une condition, c'est que, dans la bonne comme dans la mauvaise fortune, vous serez fidèles observateurs du devoir et de la piété". Séverin conçut ensuite le dessein de former une milice spirituelle, et, vers 455, il établit un monastère à quelque distance de Favianes. Homme d'action, il forma ses disciples par ses exemples plus encore que par ses paroles ; en fait de science, il les établit dans un commerce habituel avec les anciens pères ; pour la piété et les moeurs, il les exhorta à ne plus regarder en arrière après avoir quitté le monde et à vivre dans la crainte de Dieu. dans les larmes, les privations et les jeûnes.
-----ll voulut avoir une église dans laquelle il fit placer des autels consacrés aux saints dont il avait pu se procurer des reliques. Sa pratique d'exercer la charité en rachetant des captifs lui valut d'avoir des reliques des saints Gervais et Protais. Il avait entrevu dans une vision un moine porteur de ces reliques, il fit rechercher sur le marché ce moine et réussit à opérer son rachat. Le moine par reconnaissance, céda volontiers les reliques dont il était porteur. Parmi les autres monastères que fonda Séverin dans la région, on ne connaît la situation que d'un seul, celui de Boitro, au confluent de l'Inn et du Danube en face de Passau. Chose étonnante, cet homme d'une activité prodigieuse avait l'amour de la solitude ; il aurait voulu mener au désert la vie contemplative. Jamais il ne voulut accepter la charge de l'épiscopat par humilié et aussi par le désir de garder sa liberté d'allures.
-----Son austérité est à peine concevable ; il avait pour lit un cilice étendu sur le pavé de son oratoire, pour vêtement, en toute saison, une seule tunique ; il ne rompait son jeûne de tous les jours qu'au coucher du soleil ; en carême il ne mangeait qu'une fois par semaine ; en toute saison il marchait pieds nus.
-----Avec une telle austérité pour lui-même, il témoignait aux autres la plus
grande bonté soit pour les âmes, soit pour les corps. Il opéra plusieurs
miracles et même résurrection d'un mort, mais celle-ci ne fut connue qu'après
la mort de Séverin.
Une réputation
grandissante
-----L'action de Séverin s'est étendue à toute une province pour l'amélioration morale de ses habitants, pour la répression des Barbares et leur évangélisation. Trente années d'efforts et d'austérité pour arriver à ce résultat finirent par épuiser ses forces ; il sentait venir son dernier jour et il l'annonça au prêtre Lucillus. Celui-ci était venu le trouver le jour de l'Epiphanie pour lui annoncer que le lendemain il célébrerait l'anniversaire de son ancien évêque, qui avait exercé ses fonctions épiscopales en Réthie. Alors Séverin lui dit : "Si le saint évêque Valentin t'a désigné pour cet anniversaire, je te délègue à mon tour pour me rendre les derniers devoirs et ce sera le même jour". A partir de cet instant, Séverin ne songea plus qu'à se préparer à la mort.
-----Annonçant à ses disciples qu'ils devraient un jour quitter le pays, il leur fit une obligation d'emporter avec eux les ossements de leur père. Le 8 janvier il leur adressa ses dernières recommandations, reçut la sainte communion étendit sa main pour les bénir, entonna le chant du psaume Laudate Dominum in sanctis ejus, ordonnant aux assistants de le continuer et, au dernier verset : "que toute âme loue le Seigneur", il expira (482).
-----Les moines placèrent son corps dans un cercueil, de façon à pouvoir remplir les volontés du défunt quand viendrait l'heure de l'exode, car ils ne doutaient pas que sa prophétie ne se réalisât. Durant les années qui suivirent le monastère fut mis plusieurs fois au pillage.
-----En 486, une invasion de Barbares, les obligea à partir ; on découvrit le corps et, à la grande surprise de tous les témoins, il fut trouvé sans corruption comme au jour du trépas, on changea pieusement les linges et on referma le cercueil.
-----Celui-ci fut placé dans une sorte de chapelle portative et mis sur un charriot traîné par plusieurs chevaux. Le cortège, escorté par des soldats, s'engagea dans les Alpes, descendit vers les côtes de l'Adriatique; sur le parcours, les populations venaient vénérer les saintes reliques, et beaucoup de malades furent guéris.
-----On arriva ainsi à Lucullanum, près de Naples, où une riche dame donna sa
villa pour que les moines en fissent leur monastère. Le corps de Séverin
demeura dans cet endroit jusqu'en 910. Il fut alors transféré à Naples, dans
l'abbaye bénédictine à laquelle on donna le nom de Saint-Séverin. Le
martyrologue romain mentionne ce saint au 8 janvier, que l'on croit avoir été
l'anniversaire de sa mort.
Abbé Vincent Serralda
Vincent Serralda le 22
septembre 1998, à Paris, a rejoint la maison du père. Prêtre magnifique, il
s'était consacré aux Saints d'Afrique du Nord, "ses Berbères" comme
il aimait à les appeler. Il nous a toujours montré de l'affection et a beaucoup
écrit.
Sa mémoire et son oeuvre demeure
SOURCE : https://alger-roi.fr/Alger/religion/pages_liees/st_severin_pn95.htm
Ce
tableau appartient à la cathédrale saint-Étienne de Passau. Les deux premières
lignes de la légende sont en latin : « Un don apostolique est un esprit
qui voit l’avenir. Que d’exploits le père Severinus a-t-il accomplis ! Les deux
lignes suivantes sont en allemand gothique : « Par sa sagesse, son
érudition et ses miracles, il s’est montré apostolique. C’est pourquoi il
convient d’honorer hautement le saint père Severinus ». La forteresse en
feu représentée sur le tableau pourrait être celle de Hainburg/Danube ou de
Salzbourg. (http://www.danube-culture.org/saint-severin-apotre-de-la-frontiere-danubienne-au-cinquieme-siecle/)
Eugippe. Vie de saint Séverin, octobre 1991, Sources Chrétiennes 374. Introduction, texte latin, traduction, notes et index par Philippe Régerat. Ouvrage publié avec le concours du Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique et de l'Institut autrichien de Paris. ISBN : 978-2-204-04460-8. 326 pages
Le Norique (la moderne
Autriche) au 5e siècle, à travers la vie de celui qui fut son apôtre.
Ascète, prédicateur et
homme d'action, Séverin est un de ces témoins qui au Ve siècle incarnent
les vertus évangéliques dans un monde qui voit l'écroulement définitif de
l'ordre romain. Aux avant-postes de l'Empire, dans une province danubienne
agitée en tous sens par les errances des tribus germaniques, il est pour toute
une population désemparée un homme de Dieu, un intercesseur auprès des
puissants et un guide dans les moments les plus critiques. Sa Vie,
composée en 511 par Eugippe, abbé du monastère de Lucullanum près de
Naples, est un document historique d'une valeur inestimable, qui fourmille de
détails concrets sur « la vie quotidienne aux temps des
Barbares » ; elle marque aussi un tournant dans l'évolution du genre
hagiographique et traduit l'émergence d'un nouvel idéal de sainteté où le
service des hommes compte autant que le renoncement aux biens de ce monde.
Philippe Régerat,
agrégé d'Histoire, a été lecteur de français à l'Université de Salzbourg ;
il enseigne actuellement à l'Institut universitaire de formation des maîtres de
Reims.
Le mot du
directeur de Collection
La genèse de cette Vita nous
est connue par la lettre qu’Eugippe adresse au diacre Paschase de Rome pour lui
demander de réviser son ouvrage, et par la réponse de ce dernier. Pour assurer
à son texte une large diffusion, l’auteur a pris le parti de la simplicité.
Divisée en 46 capitula, la Vita accumule les épisodes destinés à
prouver l’élection de S. Séveriin, le grand apôtre du Norique, et l’action de
la grâce divine à travers toutes ses actions. Elle a pour but non seulement
d’offrir un modèle de sainteté à valeur universelle et de remplir le rôle
d’édification de toute littérature hagiographique, mais aussi de fixer la
tradition d’une communauté monastique en lui conservant le souvenir de ses
origines, enfin de promouvoir le culte du saint et de ses reliques. Elle est
surtout un témoignage précieux sur le monachisme sévérinien et sur la vie
chrétienne dans le Norique à l'époque des invasions barbares des Ve-VIe siècles.
Jean-Noël Guinot
Œuvre(s)
contenue(s) dans ce volume
La vie de Séverin est
rédigée en Italie au monastère de Castellum Lucullanum et est documentée par la
correspondance échangée entre Eugippe et le diacre Paschase : elle nous
éclaire sur le refus d’Eugippe d’utiliser la rhétorique classique, et son
dédain pour la littérature profane. Son ouvrage repose uniquement sur la foi et
son but est d’édifier le lecteur.
Nous possédons quatre
familles de manuscrits, dont trois sont intéressantes, classées par Th.
Mommsen :
Une première famille
comprenant les mss Lateranus 79 (Xe s., Rome), Sublacensis 2 (XIe
s., Subiaco), Casinas (XIe s., Monte Cassino), Vaticanus 1197 (XIe
s., Vatican).
La deuxième rassemble un
manuscrit de Turin (biblioteca nazionale, F IV 25, Xe s.), de Rome
(biblioteca Vallicelliana, XII, XIIe s.), et deux de Milan (biblioteca
ambrosiana, D 525 inf., XIe et I 61 inf., XI/XIIe s.)
Troisième
famille : Vindobonensis n. 416 (Vienne, XIe/XIIe s.) ;
Melk, Stifsbibliothek, n. 30 ; ser. nov. 3608 (XIIe/XIIIe
s., Vienne)
L’editio princeps date
de 1570 (L. Surius) et est souvent très défectueuse. L’édition de Th. Mommsen a
longtemps fait autorité ; il a fallu attendre 1963 pour que paraisse une
nouvelle édition de E. Vetter, qui a servi ici. Le texte est divisé en
chapitres et paragraphes conformément à l’usage introduit par H. Sauppe en
1877.
On n’assiste pas aux
progrès continus de Séverin vers un idéal supérieur, mais on lit une
accumulation d’épisodes prouvant son élection divine. On suit la vie de Séverin
dans son déroulement chronologique mais aussi spatial, comme un voyage à
travers le Norique et la Rhétie seconde articulé en trois parties, qui
rappellent certains traits caractéristiques de la structure des
Evangiles : action et prédication dans le Norique ; vallée de Salzach
et Danube jusqu’en Rhétie pour le ramener à son point de départ.
Le texte présente tout
d’abord la correspondance entre Eugippe et Paschase, puis un sommaire en 46
points (ou « mémoires »).
(p. 185)
4. 1. À la même
époque une bande de pillards barbares fit une incursion soudaine et emmena avec
elle tout ce qu’elle trouva hors des murs, les hommes aussi bien que le bétail.
De nombreux habitants de la cité se rassemblèrent alors chez l’homme de Dieu,
tout en larmes, et lui racontèrent les pertes et les malheurs qu’ils venaient
de subir en lui montrant les traces laissées par les derniers pillages.
2. Mais lui interrogea Mamertinus, qui était alors tribun et qui fut par
la suite ordonné évêque pour savoir s’il avait à sa disposition des hommes
armés qui pussent se lancer d’urgence à la poursuite des brigands. Celui-ci
répondit : « J’ai bien encore quelques soldats à ma disposition, mais
je n’ose pas engager le combat contre un ennemi aussi nombreux. Si toutefois Ta
Vénération nous l’ordonne, nous croyons, malgré l’insuffisance de notre
armement, pouvoir grâce à tes prières remporter la victoire. » 3. Et le
serviteur de Dieu dit : « Même si tes soldats sont sans armes, ils en
trouveront maintenant chez l’ennemi : en effet, il n’est besoin ni de la
force du nombre ni du courage de l’homme lorsque Dieu se montre en toute
circonstance notre défenseur. Tu n’as qu’une seule chose à faire : au nom
de Dieu pars sans tarder, pars et garde confiance. »
41, 1. Le jour même où le
très bienheureux Séverin devait quitter son corps, il l’annonça plus de deux
ans à l’avance par l’indication que voici. Le jour de l’Epiphanie, comme le
saint prête Lucillus était venu lui faire part du service solennel qu’il
célèbrerait le lendemain pour l’anniversaire de la mort de son père spirituel
saint Valentin, ancien évêque de Rhétie, Séverin lui répondit : « Si
le bienheureux Valentin t’a désigné pour célébrer cette solennité, moi aussi,
je te laisse le soin de célébrer mes vigiles le même jour quand je serai sorti
de ce corps. » 2. Lucillus fut saisi de tremblement à ces mots et protesta
énergiquement que c’était à lui en quelque sorte de partir le premier vu l’état
de décrépitude où il se trouvait. Séverin ajouta alors : « Il en sera
comme tu l’as entendu, saint prêtre, et les décrets du Seigneur ne seront pas
abolis par quelque volonté humaine que ce soit. »
SOURCE : https://sourceschretiennes.org/collection/sc374
Protasio Crivelli, Madonna col Bambino in trono tra San
Severino Abate e San Sossio Levita e Martire, 1506, 187 x 210, Church of San Giovanni Battista
Also
known as
Severinus of Austria
Severine…
Severino…
Apostle of Austria
Profile
Born to the Roman
nobility. Gave away his wealth to live as a hermit in
the Egyptian desert.
Though he loved the quiet and contemplative life, he felt a call to spread the faith,
and he followed it.
Evangelized in
Noricum (part of modern Austria). Hermit near Vienna.
Prophesied the destruction of Astura, Austria by
the Huns under Attila.
Established refugee centers for people displaced by the invasion. Founded monasteries to
re-establish spirituality and preserve learning in the stricken region
One winter, the city of
Faviana on the River Danube was starving. Following a sermon by Severinus on
penance, the ice cracked, and food barges were able to dock, saving the city.
Noted travelling preacher and healer throughout Austria and Bavaria.
Established funds to ransom and rescue captives.
Ate once a day, less in Lent,
went barefoot, ignored the weather, and slept on a sackcloth that he spread on
the ground where ever he stopped. Foretold the date of his own death, and died singing
Psalm 150.
Born
c.410 in North
Africa
8
January 482 at
Favianae, Noricum (in modern Austria)
of pleurisy
relics moved
to the Benedictine monastery at
Monte Feltre
relics moved
to Castellum Lucullanum in Naples, Italy
relics enshrined in
a chapel at
the Benedictine monastery of
San Severino, Naples in 910
relics moved
to Fratta Maggiore in Avera, Italy in 1807
–
–
abbot in
a tomb with staff and crucifix
with Odoacer (Severinus
prophesied an invasion by him)
Additional
Information
Book
of Saints, by the Monks of
Ramsgate
Lives of the Saints, by Father Alban
Butler
Lives
of the Saints, by Sabine Baring-Gould
Pictorial
Half Hours with the Saints
Roman
Martyrology, 1914 edition
Saints
of the Day, by Katherine Rabenstein
Short
Lives of the Saints, by Eleanor Cecilia Donnelly
books
1001 Patron Saints and Their Feast Days, by Australian
Catholic Truth Society
Our Sunday Visitor’s Encyclopedia of Saints
Saints
and Their Attributes, by Helen Roeder
other
sites in english
images
video
ebooks
Life
of Saint Severinus, by Eugippius
webseiten
auf deutsch
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Martirologio Romano, 2001 edición
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MLA
Citation
“Saint Severinus of
Noricum“. CatholicSaints.Info. 25 April 2024. Web. 18 June 2025.
<https://catholicsaints.info/saint-severinus-of-noricum/>
SOURCE : https://catholicsaints.info/saint-severinus-of-noricum/
Detail
des Hauptportals der Sieveringer Pfarrkirche
Book of Saints
– Severinus – 8 January
Article
(Saint) Bishop (January
8) (5th
century) There is considerable difficulty in identifying this Saint.
The Martyrology notice describing him as brother of the Martyr Saint Victorinus
can scarcely be upheld. He was probably the missionary Bishop or Abbot, Saint Severinus,
who evangelised the
countries bordering on the Upper Danube, and whose body was brought to Naples six
years after his death (A.D. 482).
MLA
Citation
Monks of Ramsgate.
“Severinus”. Book of Saints, 1921. CatholicSaints.Info.
25 December 2016. Web. 18 June 2025.
<https://catholicsaints.info/book-of-saints-severinus-8-january/>
SOURCE : https://catholicsaints.info/book-of-saints-severinus-8-january/
Albrecht Dürer (1471–1528), Die Schutzheiligen
von Österreich, Holzschnitt, ohne Monogramm, 17,7 x 36 cm, Wasserzeichen
kleines gotisches p und Wäppchen (um 1625), späterer Abdruck des II. Zustandes
(Meder 219 g), Drucklegung um 1625. Dorotheum
Albrecht Dürer (1471–1528), Die Schutzheiligen
von Österreich, Holzschnitt, ohne Monogramm, 17,7 x 36 cm, Wasserzeichen
kleines gotisches p und Wäppchen (um 1625), späterer Abdruck des II. Zustandes
(Meder 219 g), Drucklegung um 1625. Dorotheum
St. Severinus of Noricum
Feastday: January 8
Patron: of Noricum (modern Austria); San Severo, Italy
Death: 482
Monk, hermit, and
founder. He labored to evangelize the region of Noricum (part of. modem
Austria), establishing a number of monasteries along the Danube River near
modern Vienna. In his last years, he gave aid and comfort to the many refugees
and victims of the invasion of the region by Attila and the Huns. He was known
for his preaching and prophecies, Severinus died on January 5. His relics were
later carried to Naples. Italy, and enshrined in the Benedictine monastery of
San Severino.
SOURCE : https://www.catholic.org/saints/saint.php?saint_id=2523
Breitenfelder
Pfarrkirche - Statue hl. Severin am Triumphbogen
Severinus of Noricum,
Hermit (RM)
Died at Favianae in
Noricum (Austria), c. 476-78. Severinus was a Roman citizen who gave all his
worldly goods to live for a time in the deserts of Egypt. Here he was torn
between his desire to live alone and God's call for him to evangelize
unbelievers. Guess who's will triumphed? Severinus followed God's call to
Austria, which at that time was a highway of invading barbarians, its towns
plundered and beleaguered.
About 453, Severinus came
as a mysterious and unknown man sent by God in that unhappy hour to bring help
to Noricum's suffering people. He gave no information as to who he was beyond
his name, which indicated his high rank, and it was obvious from his manner
that he was a man of scholarship and distinction. He appeared to be an African
Roman from Carthage and a fellow-countryman of Saint Augustine of Hippo.
Attila, the Scourge of God, had just died, leaving behind him, with the break-
up of his empire, confusion and chaos, and the fair and fertile lands of
central and southern Europe were at the mercy of leaderless armies and
plundering tribes.
Into this scene of
wretchedness and distress came Severinus, who settled as a hermit near Vienna.
The work was not easy. Many people ignored all that he preached, but--knowing
that God doesn't ask us to be successful, only obedient--Severinus continued to
preach and found monasteries along the Danube, seeing these as oases of
Christianity in an evil land.
He warned the inhabitants
of approaching invasion, but his words went unheeded. They replied with scorn
that the proud city of Vienna would never surrender and that they had no fear
of the barbarian hordes. But when his words proved only too true, in their
helplessness they sent for him, and quietly and calmly he came to their rescue
and organized relief. He discovered that a rich woman had hidden away vast
quantities of food, which Severinus persuaded her to give to the starving.
He put new heart into the
people, gave them courage to go out to meet the wild German horsemen, and
strengthened the defenses of the city. Then, providentially, the ice melted on
the Danube and the river was filled with ships of food. Thus Severinus stood in
the path of the Goths, and the fear of him was to them, we are told, as the
hand of God.
During this time
Severinus was a great apostle of penance. He redeemed captives, helped to
comfort the oppressed and the poor, tended the sick, and undertook many efforts
for the instruction of the Catholic people of the Danube valley near Vienna. He
also worked miracles. It seems that he drove away a plague of locusts that
threatened to bring another famine. Slowly many Austrians accepted his faith.
He was saddened that he never managed to heal the blindness of one of his
greatest friends, but Severinus continued to trust in God.
When the cloud of terror
lifted, he retired to his hermit's cell, but still continued his relief work of
securing food, redeeming captives, and conciliating enemy tribes; and to this
he added many other works of sanctity and charity. His difficulty was how to
preserve a life of detachment amid so much pressure of activity, for the more
he longed to dwell in solitude and lead a simple life, the greater were the
demands made upon him.
Even the enemies of
Austria came under this influence. The proud and desperate Odoacer, the boldest
of the barbarians, sought his counsel, but on reaching the cell of the hermit,
found it too small for his great height. "Stoop low," said Severinus,
and the ambitious Goth willingly stooped and entered to receive his blessing.
Severinus also built many
churches and evangelized widely in Austria and Bavaria. To Saint Severinus is
attributed the honor of establishing many monasteries, though he himself
remained a contemplative, living apart in a spirit of great penance and prayer.
He became the popular
saint of that area. He went barefoot, even in mid-winter when the Danube was
frozen, and he insisted on possessing only one tunic. It is said that he never
ate until sunset and that in Lent he permitted himself only one meal weekly. To
the end he preserved a simple and austere life. He refused a bishopric, though
it is doubtful whether he was even ordained.
For 30 years this saintly
and active man, whose origin remained unknown, carried on his noble and
enterprising work, conferring with kings and commoners. It is said that he
predicted the day of his death. As he lay dying of pleurisy those around him
could hear him singing the words of the Psalmist: "Let everything that has
breath, praise the Lord." And so he died happily in peace and tranquility.
Six years after his death, his monks were driven from Austria and carried his
relics to Naples, Italy, where the great Benedictine monastery of San Severino
was built to enshrine them (Attwater, Benedictines, Bentley, Encyclopedia,
Gill).
SOURCE : http://www.saintpatrickdc.org/ss/0108.shtml
Pictorial
Half Hours with the Saints – Saint Severinus
Do Penance
Saint Severinus quitted
the solitudes of the East, where he had been devoting himself to the exercises
of the coenobitic life, in order to evangelize the population of Norica, a
province which comprised the greater part of Austria and the Tyrol. He at first
encountered great resistance, but soon effected wonders of conversion, as well
by reason of his humble and mortified life, as because he announced to his
hearers the calamities wherewith the rebellious nations would be afflicted. “Do
penance,” exclaimed he, “sin is the cause of all the woes that God scatters
upon the earth!” Before consenting to pray for those who were afflicted, and
before releasing them from their infirmities, he required that they should do
penance. His own life showed forth the constant example thereof. He foretold to
Odoacer, king of the Herules, that he was to lay waste Italy, by way of
punishment for its crimes; and the prophecy was amply verified. Hence kings and
nations and rulers ended by holding him in singular veneration, regarding him
as the envoy of Heaven. He yielded up his spirit on the 9th January 482.
Moral Reflection
If not out of tenderness
towards Ood, let us, at least from charity for ourselves, repair our past
guilt, and avoid committing fresh offences; for, “As by one man sin entered
into the world, 80 death passes by sin.” – Romans 5:12
– from Pictorial
Half Hours with the Saints, by Father Auguste
François Lecanu, 1865
SOURCE : https://catholicsaints.info/pictorial-half-hours-with-the-saints-saint-severinus/
.jpg)
Buntglasfenster
in der Kirche von Oberkreuzstetten, Gemeinde Kreuzstetten, Niederösterreich,
Österreich
Stained-glass window at the parish church of Oberkreuzstetten, municipality Kreuzstetten, Lower Austria, Austria
Saint of the Day – 8
January – Saint Severinus of Noricum (c410-482) “The Apostle to Noricum”
Posted on January
8, 2023
Saint of the Day – 8
January – Saint Severinus of Noricum (c410-482) Abbot, Hermit, Missionary,
established Monasteries and refuge centres for those stricken by war. Severinus
was graced with the gifts of prophecy and miracles. He is known as “The
Apostle to Noricum” – Noricum is the Latin name for the Celtic Kingdom or
Federation of Tribes which included most of modern Austria and part of
Slovenia. Born in c410 and died on 8 January 482 at Favianae, Noricum of
natural causes. Patronages – against famine, of linen weavers,
prisoners, vineyards/vintners/wine farms, Austria, Bavaria, Germany, the
Diocese of Linz, Austria. Also known as – Severrin, Severino.
The Roman Martyrology
reads today: “This same day, among the inhabitants of Noricum (now Austria),
the Abbot, St Severin, who preached the Gospel in that country and is called
it’s apostle. By Divine Power, his body was carried to Lucullanum, near Naples
and thence transferred to the Monastery of St Severin.”
It has been speculated
that Severinus was born in either Southern Italy or in the Roman province of
Africa. Severinus himself refused to discuss his personal history prior to
arriving along the Danube in Noricum. However, he did mention experiences with eastern
desert monasticism and his Vita draws connections between Severinus and Saint
Anthony of Lérins (c 428-c 520) https://anastpaul.com/2021/12/28/saint-of-the-day-28-december-saint-anthony-of-lerins-c-428-c-520/
Little is known of his
origins. The source for information about him is the Commemoratorium Vitae
St Severini (511) by Eugippius (c 460-c 535), who was a disciple of
Severinus. In 511 Eugippius wrote to Paschasius and asked his venerated and
dear friend, who had great literary skill, to write a biography of St Severinus
from the accounts of the Saint which he (Eugippius) had put together in crude
and unartistic form. Paschasius, however, replied that the acts and miracles of
the Saint could not be described better than had done by Eugippius. This
Vita is available online at: https://www.tertullian.org/fathers/severinus_02_text.htm
Severinus was a high-born
Roman living as an Hermit in the East. He was an ascetic in practice. He is
first recorded as travelling along the Danube in Noricum and Bavaria, preaching
Christianity, procuring supplies for the starving, redeeming captives and
establishing Monasteries at Passau and Favianae,
While the Western Empire
was falling apart, Severinus, thanks to his virtues and organisational skills,
committed himself to the religious and material care of the frontier peoples,
also taking care of their military defence. He organised refugee camps,
migrations to safer areas and food distribution.
Serverinus offered
practical leadership, as well as spiritual leadership. He was a tireless
preacher and a marvellous Miracle-worker – he miraculously multiplied food
reserves, cured the sick, cast out devils, commanded the elements of nature and
once even resurrected the dead.
The main theme of his
teaching was the value of penance. It was a propitious choice. The sufferings
of his people under the Germanic invasions were acute and, uniting them with
Christ’s sufferings for the reparation of sin and the conversion of sinners,
enabled them to find meaning and strength amid calamity. He also practiced what
he preached. In his constant barefoot journeying throughout Austria and
Bavaria, he ate only one meal a day and slept on a sack which he carried around
with him, wherever he happened to find himself at bedtime.
His efforts seem to have
won him wide respect, including that of the Germanic chieftain Odoacer.
Eugippius credits him with the prediction that Odoacer would become king of
Rome. However, Severinus warned that Odoacer would rule not more than fourteen
years.
Severinus also prophesied
the destruction of Asturis in Austria, by the Huns. When the people would not
heed his warning, he took refuge in Comagena. There he established refugee
centres for people displaced by the invasion and founded Monasteries to
re-establish spirituality and preserve learning in the stricken region.
He died in his monastic
cell at Favianae while 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 in the City
of Naples.
Author: AnaStpaul
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St. Severinus, Abbot, and
Apostle of Noricum, or Austria
From his life, by
Eugippius his disciple, who was present at his death. See Tillemont, T. 16. p.
168. Lambecius Bibl. Vend. T. 1. p. 28. and Bollandus, p. 497.
A.D. 482
WE know nothing of the
birth or country of this saint. From the purity of his Latin, he was generally
supposed to be a Roman; and his care to conceal what he was according to the
world, was taken for a proof of his humility, and a presumption that he was a
person of birth. He spent the first part of his life in the deserts of the
East; but inflamed with an ardent zeal for the glory of God, he left his
retreat to preach the gospel in the North. At first he came to Astures, now
Stokeraw, situate above Vienna; but finding the people hardened in vice, he
foretold the punishment God had prepared for them, and repaired to Comagenes,
now Haynburg on the Danube, eight leagues westward of Vienna. It was not long
ere his prophecy was verified; for Astures was laid waste, and the inhabitants
destroyed by the sword of the Huns, soon after the death of Attila. St.
Severinus’s ancient host with great danger made his escape to him at Comagenes.
By the accomplishment of this prophecy, and by several miracles he wrought, the
name of the saint became famous. Favianes, a city on the Danube, twenty leagues
from Vienna, distressed by a terrible famine, implored his assistance. Saint
Severinus preached penance among them with great fruit, and he so effectually
threatened with the divine vengeance a certain rich woman, who had hoarded up a
great quantity of provisions, that she distributed all her stores amongst the
poor. Soon after his arrival, the ice of the Danube and the Ins breaking, the
country was abundantly supplied by barges up the rivers. Another time by his
prayers he chased away the locusts, which by their swarms had threatened with
devastation the whole produce of the year. He wrought many miracles; yet never
healed the sore eyes of Bonosus, the dearest to him of his disciples, who spent
forty years in almost continual prayer, without any abatement of his fervour.
The holy man never ceased to exhort all to repentance and piety; he redeemed
captives, relieved the oppressed, was a father to the poor, cured the sick,
mitigated, or averted public calamities, and brought a blessing wherever he
came. Many cities desired him for their bishop, but he withstood their
importunities by urging, that it was sufficient he had relinquished his dear
solitude for their instruction and comfort.
He established many
monasteries, of which the most considerable was one on the banks of the Danube,
near Vienna; but he made none of them the place of his constant abode, often
shutting himself up in an hermitage four leagues from his community, where he
wholly devoted himself to contemplation. He never eat till after sunset, unless
on great festivals. In Lent he eat only once a week. His bed was sackcloth
spread on the floor in his oratory. He always walked barefoot, even when the
Danube was frozen. Many kings and princes of the Barbarians came to visit him,
and among them Odoacer, king of the Heruli, then on his march for Italy. The
saint’s cell was so low that Odoacer could not stand upright in it. St.
Severinus told him that the kingdom he was going to conquer would shortly be
his; and Odoacer seeing himself, soon after master of Italy, sent honorable
letters to the saint, promising him all he was pleased to ask; but Severinus
only desired of him the restoration of a certain banished man. Having foretold
his death long before it happened, he fell ill of a pleurisy on the 5th of
January, and on the fourth day of his illness, having received the viaticum,
and arming his whole body with the sign of the cross, and repeating that verse
of the psalmist, Let every spirit praise the Lord, 1 he
closed his eyes and expired in the year 482. Six years after, his disciples,
obliged by the incursions of Barbarians, retired with his relics into Italy,
and deposited them at Luculano, near Naples, where a great monastery was built,
of which Eugippius, his disciple, and author of his life, was soon after made
the second abbot. In the year 910 they were translated to Naples, where to this
day they are honoured in a Benedictin abbey, which bears his name. The Roman
and other Martyrologies place his festival on this day, as being that of his
death.
A perfect spirit of
sincere humility is the spirit of the most sublime and heroic degree of
Christian virtue and perfection. As the great work of the sanctification of our
souls is to be begun by humility, so must it be completed by the same. Humility
invites the Holy Ghost into the soul, and prepares her to receive his graces;
and from the most perfect charity, which he infuses, she derives a new interior
light, and an experimental knowledge of God and herself, with an infused humility
far clearer in the light of the understanding, in which she sees God’s infinite
greatness, and her own total insufficiency, baseness, and nothingness, after
quite a new manner; and in which she conceives a relish of contempt and
humiliations as her due, feels a secret sentiment of joy in suffering them,
sincerely loves her own abjection, dependence, and correction, dreads the
esteem and praises of others, as snares by which a mortal poison may
imperceptibly insinuate itself into her affections, and deprive her of the
divine grace; is so far from preferring herself to any one, that she always
places herself below all creatures, is almost sunk in the deep abyss of her own
nothingness, never speaks of herself to her own advantage, or affects a show of
modesty in order to appear humble before men; in all good, gives the entire glory
to God alone, and as to herself, glories only in her infirmities, pleasing
herself in her own weakness and nothingness, rejoicing that God is the
great all in her and in all creatures.
Rev. Alban
Butler (1711–73). Volume I: January. The Lives of the
Saints. 1866.
SOURCE : https://www.bartleby.com/210/1/082.html
Hauptportal
der Lazaristenkirche in Wien-Währing mit einem bemerkenswerten Tympanon. Das
Relief zeigt Hl. Severin hilft Bedürftigen und Gefangenen. (dehio weiß
nichts über den Künstler)
Sculptures of Severin of
Noricum ; Lazaristenkirche, Währing ; Tympanums in Vienna ; Church portals in Vienna
Baring-Gould’s
Lives of the Saints – Saint Severinus, Priest, Apostle of Noricum
Article
(A.D 482)
[Roman Martyrology and
those of Germany. The life of Saint Severinus was written by his disciple,
Eugippius, in the year 511, as he states in a letter to Paschatius, the deacon.
The following life is extracted from Mr. Kingsley’s “Hermits,” with certain
necessary modifications. What has been once well done, the author is unwilling
to do again, and do in an inferior manner.]
In the middle of the
fifth century the province of Noricum (Austria, as we should now call it), was
the very highway of invading barbarians, the centre of the human Maelstrom, in
which Huns, Allemanni, Rugii, and a dozen wild tribes more, wrestled up and
down, and round the starving and beleaguered towns of what had once been a
happy and fertile province, each tribe striving to trample the other under
foot, and to march southward, over their corpses, to plunder what was still
left of the already plundered wealth of Italy and Rome. The difference of race,
of tongue, and of manners, between the conquered and their conquerors, was made
more painful by difference in creed. The conquering Germans and Huns were
either Arians or heathens. The conquered race (though probably of very mixed
blood), who called themselves Romans, because they spoke Latin, and lived under
the Roman law, were orthodox Catholics; and the miseries of religious persecution
were too often added to the usual miseries of invasion.
It was about the year 455
— 60. Attila, the great King of the Huns, who called himself — and who was —
“the Scourge of God,” was just dead. His empire had broken up. The whole centre
of Europe was in a state of anarchy and war; and the hapless Romans along the
Danube were in the last extremity of terror, not knowing by what fresh invader
their crops would be swept off up to the very gates of the walled towers, which
were their only defense; when there appeared among them, coming out of the
East, a man of God. Who he was he would not tell. His speech showed him to be
an African Roman — a fellow-countryman of Saint Augustine — probably from the
neighbourhood of Carthage. He had certainly at one time gone to some desert in
the East, zealous to learn “the more perfect life.” Severinus, he said, was his
name; a name which indicated high rank, as did the manners and the scholarship
of him who bore it. But more than his name he would not tell.” If you take me
for a runaway slave,” he said, smiling, “get ready money to redeem me with when
my master demands me back.” For he believed that they would have need of him;
that God had sent him into that land that he might be of use to its wretched
people. And certainly he could have come into the neighbourhood of Vienna, at
that moment, for no other purpose than to do good, unless he came to deal in
slaves.
He settled first at a
town, called by his biographer Casturis; and, lodging with the warden of the
church, lived quietly the hermit life. Meanwhile the German tribes were
prowling round the town; and Severinus, going one day into the church, began to
warn the priests and clergy, and all the people, that a destruction was coming
on them which they could only avert by prayer, and fasting, and the works of
mercy. They laughed him to scorn, confiding in their lofty Roman walls, which
the invaders — wild horsemen, who had no military engines — ^were unable either
to scale or batter down. Severinus left the town at once, prophesying, it was
said, the very day and hour of its fall. He went on to the next town, which was
then closely garrisoned by a barbarian force, and repeated his warning there:
but while the people were listening to him, there came an old man to the gate,
and told them how Casturis had been already sacked, as the man of God had
foretold; and going into the church, threw himself at the feet of Saint
Severinus, and said that he had been saved by his merits from being destroyed
with his fellow-townsmen.
Then the dwellers in the
town hearkened to the man of God, and gave themselves up to fasting, and
almsgiving, and prayer for three whole days.
And on the third day,
when the solemnity of the evening sacrifice was fulfilled, a sudden earthquake
happened, and the barbarians, seized with panic fear, and probably hating and
dreading — like all those wild tribes — confinement between four stone walls,
instead of the free open life of the tent and the stockade, forced the Romans
to open their gates to them, rushed out into the night, and, in their madness,
slew each other.
In those days a famine
fell upon the people of Vienna; and they, as their sole remedy, thought good to
send for the man of God from the neighbouring town. He went, and preached to
them, too, repentance and almsgiving. The rich, it seems, had hidden up their
stores of com, and left the poor to starve. At least Saint Severinus discovered
(by divine revelation, it was supposed), that a widow named Procula had done as
much. He called her out into the midst of the people, and asked her why she, a
noble woman and free-born, had made herself a slave to avarice, which is
idolatry. If she would not give her corn to Christ’s poor, let her throw it
into the Danube to feed the fish, for any gain from it she would not have.
Procula was abashed, and served out her hoards thereupon willingly to the poor;
and a little while afterwards, to the astonishment of all, vessels came down
the Danube laden with every kind of merchandise. They had been frozen up for
many days near Passau, in the thick ice of the river Enns : but the prayers of
God’s servant had opened the ice-gates, and let them down the stream before the
usual time.
Then the wild German
horsemen swept around the walls, and carried oif human beings and cattle, as
many as they could find. Severinus, like some old Hebrew prophet, did not
shrink from advising hard blows, where hard blows could avail. Mamertinus, the
tribune, or officer in command, told him that he had so few soldiers, and those
so ill-armed, that he dare not face the enemy. Severinus answered that they
should get weapons from the barbarians themselves; the Lord would fight for
them, and they should hold their peace: only if they took any captives they
should bring them safe to him. At the second milestone from the city they came
upon the plunderers, who fled at once, leaving their arms behind. Thus was the
prophecy of the man of God fulfilled. The Romans brought the captives back to
him unharmed. He loosed their bonds, gave them food and drink, and let them go.
But they were to tell their comrades that, if ever they came near that spot
again, celestial vengeance would fall on them, for the God of the Christians
fought from heaven in his servants cause.
So the barbarians
trembled, and went away. And the fear of Saint Severinus fell on all the Goths,
heretic Arians though they were and on the Rugii, who held the north bank of
the Danube in those evil days. Saint Severinus, meanwhile, went out of Vienna,
and built himself a cell at a place called ” At the Vineyards.” But some
benevolent impulse — divine revelation his biographer calls it — prompted him
to return, and build himself a cell on a hill close to Vienna, round which
other cells soon grew up, tenanted by his disciples. “There,” says his biographer,
“he longed to escape the crowds of men who were wont to come to him, and cling
closer to God in continual prayer: but the more he longed to dwell in solitude,
the more often he was warned by revelations not to deny his presence to the
afflicted people.” He fasted continually; he went barefoot even in the midst of
winter, which was so severe, the story con- tinues, in those days around
Vienna, that waggons crossed the Danube on the solid ice: and yet, instead of
being puffed-up by his own virtues, he set an example of humility to all, and
bade them with tears to pray for him, that the Saviour’s gifts to him might not
heap condemnation on his head.
Over the wild Rugii Saint
Severinus seems to have acquired unbounded influence. Their king, Flaccitheus,
used to pour out his sorrows to him, and tell him how the princes of the Goths
would surely slay him; for when he had asked leave of him to pass on into
Italy, he would not let him go. But Saint Severinus prophesied to him that the
Goths would do him no harm. Only one warning he must take: “Let it not grieve
him to ask peace even for the least of men.” The friendship which had thus
begun between the barbarian king and the cultivated Saint was carried on by his
son Feva: but his “deadly and noxious wife,” Gisa, who appears to have been a
fierce Arian, always, says his biographer, kept him back from clemency. One
story of Gisa’s misdeeds is so characteristic both of the manners of the time
and of the style in which the original biography is written, that I shall take
leave to insert it at length.
“The King Feletheus (who
is also Feva), the son of the afore-mentioned Flaccitheus, following his
father’s devotion, began, at the commencement of his reign, often to visit the
holy man. His deadly and noxious wife, named Gisa, always kept him back from
the remedies of clemency. For she, among the other plague-spots of her
iniquity, even tried to have certain Catholics re-baptized: but when her
husband did not consent, on account of his reverence for Saint Severinus, she
gave up immediately her sacrilegious intention, burdening the Romans,
nevertheless, with hard conditions, and commanding some of them to be exiled to
the Danube. For when one day, she, having come to the village next to Vienna,
had ordered some of them to be sent over the Danube, and condemned to the most
menial offices of slavery, the man of God sent to her, and begged that they
might be let go. But she, blazing up in a flame of fury, ordered the harshest
of answers to be returned. ‘I pray thee,’ she said, ‘servant of God, hiding
there within thy cell, allow us to settle what we choose about our own slaves.’
But the man of God hearing this, ‘I trust,’ he said, ‘in my Lord Jesus Christ,
that she will be forced by necessity to fulfill that which in her wicked will
she has despised.’ And forthwith a swift rebuke followed, and brought low the
soul of the arrogant woman. For she had confined in close custody certain
barbarian goldsmiths, that they might make regal ornaments. To them the son of
the aforesaid king, Frederick by name, still a little boy, had gone in, in
childish levity, on the very day on which the queen had despised the servant of
God. The goldsmiths put a sword to the child’s breast, saying, that if any one
attempted to enter, without giving them an oath that they should be protected,
he should die; and that they would slay the king’s child first, and themselves
afterwards, seeing that they had no hope of life left, being worn out with long
prison. When she heard that, the cruel and impious queen, rending her garments
for grief, cried out, ‘O servant of God, Severinus, are the injuries which I
did thee thus avenged? Hast thou obtained, by the earnest prayer thou hast
poured out, this punishment for my contempt, that thou shouldst avenge it on my
own flesh and blood?’ Then, running up and down with manifold contrition and
miserable lamentation, she confessed that for the act of contempt which she had
committed against the servant of God she was struck by the vengeance of the
present blow; and forthwith she sent knights to ask for forgiveness, and sent
across the river the Romans, his prayers for whom she had despised. The gold-
smiths, having received immediately a promise of safety, and giving up the
child, were in like manner let go.
“The most reverend
Severinus, when he heard this, gave boundless thanks to the Creator, who
sometimes puts off the prayers of suppliants for this end, that as faith, hope,
and charity grow, while lesser things are sought. He may con- cede greater
things. Lastly, this did the mercy of the Omnipotent Saviour work, that while
it brought to slavery a woman free, but cruel over much, she was forced to
restore to liberty those who were enslaved. This having been marvellously
gained, the queen hastened with her husband to the servant of God, and showed
him her son, who, she confessed, had been freed from the verge of death by his
prayers, and promised that she would never go against his commands.”
To this period of
Severinus’ life belongs the famous story of his interview with Odoacer, the
first barbarian king of Italy, and brother of the great Onulf or Wolf, who was
the founder of the family of the Guelphs, Counts of Altorf, and the direct
ancestors of Victoria, Queen of England. Their father was Aedecon, secretary at
one time of Attila, and chief of the little tribe of Turklings, who, though
German, had clung faithfully to Attila’s sons, and came to ruin at the great
battle of Netad, when the empire of the Huns broke up at once and for ever.
Then Odoacer and his brother started over the Alps to seek their fortunes in
Italy, and take service, after the fashion of young German adventurers, with
the Romans; and they came to Saint Severinus’ cell, and went in, heathens as
they probably were, to ask a blessing of the holy man; and Odoacer had to stoop
and to stand stooping, so huge he was. The Saint saw that he was no common lad,
and said, “Go to Italy, clothed though thou be in ragged sheepskins: thou shalt
soon give greater gifts to thy friends.” So Odoacer went up into Italy, deposed
the last of the Caesars, a paltry boy, Romulus Augustulus by name, and found
himself, to his own astonishment, and that of all the world, the first German
king of Italy; and, when he was at the height of his power, he remembered the
prophecy of Severinus, and sent to him, offering him any boon he chose to ask.
But all that the Saint asked was, that he should forgive some Romans whom he
had banished. Saint Severinus meanwhile foresaw that Odoacer’s kingdom would
not last, as he seems to have foreseen many things. For when certain German
knights were boasting before him of the power and glory of Odoacer, he said
that it would last some thirteen, or at most fourteen years; and the prophecy
(so all men said in those days) came exactly true.
There is no need to follow
the details of Saint Severinus’s labours through some five-and-twenty years of
perpetual self-sacrifice — and, as far as this world was concerned, perpetual
disaster. Eugippius’s chapters are little save a catalogue of towns sacked one
after the other, from Passau to Vienna, till the miserable survivors of the war
seemed to have concentrated themselves under Saint Severinus’s guardianship in
the latter city. We find, too, tales of famine, of locust-swarms, of little
victories over the barbarians, which do not arrest wholesale defeat: but we
find, through all, Saint Severinus labouring like a true man of God,
conciliating the invading chiefs, redeeming captives, procuring for the cities
which were still standing supplies of clothes for the fugitives, persuading the
husbandmen, seemingly through large districts, to give even in time of dearth a
tithe of their produce to the poor; — a tale of noble work indeed.
Eugippius relates many
wonders in his life of Saint Severinus. The reader finds how the man who had
secretly celebrated a heathen sacrifice was discovered by Saint Severinus,
because, while the tapers of the rest of the congregation were hghted
miraculously from heaven, his taper alone would not light. He records how the
Danube dared not rise above the mark oi the cross which Saint Severinus had cut
upon the posts of a timber chapel; how a poor man, going out to drive the
locusts off his little patch of corn instead of staying in the church all day
to pray, found the next morning that his crop alone had been eaten, while all
the fields around remained untouched. Also he records the well-known story,
which has a certain awfulness about it, how Saint Severinus watched all night
by the bier of the dead priest Silvinus, and ere the morning dawned bade him,
in the name of God, speak to his brethren; and how the dead man opened his
eyes, and Severinus asked him whether he wished to return to life, and he
answered complainingly, “Keep me no longer here; nor cheat me of that perpetual
rest which I had already found,” and so, closing his eyes once more, was still
for ever.
At last the noble life
wore itself out. For two years Severinus had foretold that his end was near;
and foretold, too, that the people for whom he had spent himself should go
forth in safety, as Israel out of Egypt, and find a refiige in some other Roman
province, leaving behind them so utter a solitude, that the barbarians, in
their search for the hidden treasures of the civilization which they had
exterminated, should dig up the very graves of the dead. Only, when the Lord
willed to deliver them, they must carry away his bones with them, as the
children of Israel carried the bones of Joseph.
Then Severinus sent for
Feva, the Rugian king and Gisa, his cruel mfe; and when he had warned them how
they must render an account to God for the people committed to their charge, he
stretched his hand out to the bosom of the king. ” Gisa,” he asked, “dost thou
love most the soul within that breast, or gold and silver?” She answered that
she loved her husband above all. “Cease then,” he said, “to oppress the
innocent: lest their affliction be the ruin of your power.”
Severinus’ presage was
strangely fulfilled. Feva had handed over the city of Vienna to his brother
Frederick — “poor and impious,” says Eugippius. Severinus, who knew him well,
sent for him, and warned him that he himself was going to the Lord; and that
if, after his death, Frederick dared touch aught of the substance of the poor
and the captive, the wrath of God would fall on him. In vain the barbarian
pretended indignant innocence; Severinus sent him away with fresh warnings.
“Then on the nones of
January he was smitten slightly with a pain in the side. And when that had
continued for three days, at midnight he bade the brethren come to him.” He renewed
his talk about the coming emigration, and en- treated again that his bones
might not be left behind; and having bidden all in turn come near and kiss him,
and having received the most Holy Sacrament, he forbade them to weep for him,
and commanded them to sing a psalm. They hesitated, weeping. He himself gave
out the psalm, “Praise the Lord in His saints, and let all that hath breath
praise the Lord;” and so went to rest in the Lord.
No sooner was he dead
than Frederick seized on the garments kept in the monastery for the use of the
poor, and even commanded his men to carry off the vessels of the altar. Then
followed a scene characteristic of the time. The steward sent to do the deed shrank
from the crime of sacrilege. A knight, Anicianus by name, went in his stead,
and took the vessels of the altar. But his conscience was too strong for him.
Trembling and delirium fell on him, and he fled away to a lonely island, and
became a hermit there. Frederick, impenitent, swept away all in the monastery,
leav- ing nought but the bare walls, “which he could not carry over the
Danube.” But on him, too, vengeance fell. Within a month he was slain by his
own nephew. Then Odoacer attacked the Rugii, and carried off Feva and Gisa
captive to Rome. And then the long-promised emigration came. Odoacer, whether
from mere policy (for he was trying to establish a half-Roman kingdom in Italy)
or for love ot Saint Severinus himself, sent his brother Onulf to fetch away
into Italy the miserable remnant of the Danubian provincials, to be distributed
among the wasted and unpeopled farms of Italy. And with them went forth the
corpse of Saint Severinus, undecayed, though he had been six years dead, and
giving forth exceeding fragance, though (says Eugippius) no embalmer’s hand had
touched it. In a coffin, which had been long prepared for it, it was laid on a
waggon, and went over the Alps into Italy, working (according to Eugippius) the
usual miracles on the way, till it found a resting-place near Naples, in that
very villa of Lucuilus at Misenum, to which Odoacer had sent the last Emperor
of Rome to dream his ignoble life away in helpless luxury.
So ends this tragic
story. Of its truth there can be no doubt. M. Ozanam has well said of that
death-bed scene between the saint and the barbarian king and queen — “The
history of invasions has many a pathetic scene: but I know none more
instructive than the dying agony of that old Roman expiring between two
barbarians, and less touched with the ruin of the empire, than with the peril
of their souls.” But even more instructive, and more tragic also, is the
strange coincidence that the wonder-working corpse of the starved and
bare-footed hermit should rest beside the last Emperor of Rome. It is the
symbol of a new era. The kings of this world have been judged and cast out. The
empire of the flesh is to perish, and the empire of the spirit to conquer
thenceforth for evermore.
Relics in the church of
Saint Severino at Naples.
Patron (but not sole
Patron) of Austria, Vienna, Bavaria.
MLA
Citation
Sabine Baring-Gould.
“Saint Severinus, Priest, Apostle of Noricum”. Lives
of the Saints, 1897. CatholicSaints.Info.
11 August 2018. Web. 20 January 2021.
<https://catholicsaints.info/baring-goulds-lives-of-the-saints-saint-severinus-priest-apostle-of-noricum/>
Wien - Otto-Wagner-Kirche am Steinhof - Kuppel mit hll Leopold und Severin
Wien.
Kirche am Steinhof. Der hl. Severin
Wien. Kirche am Steinhof. Der hl. Severin
Wien. Kirche am Steinhof. Der hl. Severin
LETTER
OF EUGIPPIUS TO PASCHASIUS
To the holy and venerable
Deacon Paschasius, Eugippius sends his salutation in Christ.
About two years ago, in
the consulship of Importunus,1 a
letter of a noble layman, directed to a priest, was offered me to read. It
contained the life of Bassus a monk, who formerly dwelt in the monastery of the
mountain called Titas, above Ariminum, and later died in the district of
Lucania: a man very well known to me and to many others. When I learned that
some were making copies of this letter, I began to reflect, and also to declare
to the clergy, that the great miracles which the divine power had wrought
through Saint Severinus ought not to be hidden.
When the author of the
letter knew of this, he eagerly requested me to send him some memoranda in
regard to Saint Severinus, that he might write a short account of the saint's
life for the benefit of later generations. In response to this offer, I
prepared a memoir, filled full with testimonies from the daily narrations of
the elder brethren, with which I was perfectly familiar. Yet I did this with
great regret; for I deemed it unreasonable, that, while thou wert alive, I
should ask a layman to write a life of Severinus. It |16 seemed
rash to impose upon a lay writer the arrangement and composition of the work.
Cultivated in profane literature alone, he would be likely to compose the
biography in a style difficult for many to understand; so that the remarkable
events, which had too long remained hidden in silence and night, might fail
through the obscurity of his eloquence to shine brightly forth for us, untrained
as we are in polite letters.
But I shall search no
more for the feeble light of that lamp now that thy sun-like radiance is here.
Only veil not the rays of thy knowledge by a cloud of excuse, accusing thine
own ignorance. Lash me not, I beseech thee, with harsh terms; say not, Why
expect water from the flint? Indeed I do not expect water from the flint of
this world's highway, but from thee, who, comparing spiritual things with
spiritual,2 shalt
refresh us from the living rock by that honey of speech with which thou
overflowest; and already from that honey thou sendest a nectar-taste of
sweetest promise, while thou biddest me transmit a memoir or notes upon the
life of Saint Severinus.
Until these memoranda win
admission to a book of thy construction, let them not offend the mind of the critic.
For he who seeks an architect to build a house, carefully prepares the
necessary materials; but if the architect delays, and he puts together in the
likeness of walls unfashioned heaps from the rough stones, ought one to speak
of his work as a building, |17 when
no master has constructed, and no proper foundation has been laid? So I, who
have with difficulty prepared and most miserably put together the precious
material for thy genius, ought I to be thought to have composed what I desire,
when a liberal education has not fashioned the work, nor literary training lent
it elevation and elegance? My work has, indeed, the sure foundation of faith
alone; that foundation upon which, as thou knowest, rose the saint's admirable,
resplendent virtues; and now I commit the materials to the architect, whose
hands shall be thy eloquence; and when the capstone is placed upon thy work, I
shall return due thanks to Christ.
I beg that thou have the
goodness to mention also those miraculous cures, which, either on the journey
or here, were wrought by divine virtue unto the memory of the blessed father
Severinus. Since the trusty bearer, thy son Deogratias, best knows these, I
have entrusted to him to communicate them to thee by word of mouth. And I hope
that I may speedily be able yet again to call him bearer on the completion of
thy work; that so this most faithful servant of God, rich in such great
virtues, while he is carried to the glory of the saints by his merits
vouchsafed through Christ's grace may by thy pen be immortalized to human
memory.
It may perhaps be asked,
and with justice, from what country Severinus sprang; since with this
particular it is the custom to begin the story of any life. I |18 confess
I have no clear evidence. For many priests and clerics, and lords temporal and
spiritual, natives of the country or drawn together to him from afar, often
debated the nationality of this man of such great and resplendent virtue. And
they were at a loss, but no one ventured to question him directly. There was,
however, a certain Primenius, a noble priest of Italy, and a man of the highest
standing, who had fled to him for refuge at the time when the patrician
Orestes 3 was
unjustly slain. This man, it was said, had been like a father to Orestes, and
therefore feared his murderers. He, then, having won the saint's friendship,
and enjoyed it for many days, served as spokesman for the rest, and burst out
with the question. "Reverend master," he said, "from what
province hath the great light come,4 which
God hath seen fit to bestow upon these lands? " The man of God first
answered him with a cheerful jest, "If thou thinkest me a fugitive slave,5 prepare
a ransom which thou canst offer for me when I am claimed." Presently he
added, more seriously, "What profiteth it the servant of God to name his
country or race, when by keeping |19 them
silent he can more easily avoid vainglory? 6 For
vainglory is like the left hand, without whose knowledge 7 he
desireth through the gift of Christ to accomplish every good work; that so he
may deserve to be among those on Christ's right hand,8 and
to be enrolled as a citizen of the celestial country. And if thou knowest that
I, though unworthy, truly desire that celestial country, what need that thou
learn the earthly country of which thou askest? But know that the same God who
called thee to the priesthood, commanded me also to minister unto these
perilled folk." The answer silenced Primenius, nor did any one before or
after presume to question the saint upon this matter.
Yet his speech revealed a
man of purest Latin stock; and it is understood that he first departed into
some desert place of the East because of his fervid desire for a more perfect
life, and that thence, constrained by divine revelation, he later came to the
towns of Riverside Noricum, near Upper Pannonia, which were harassed by
frequent incursions of the barbarians. So he himself was wont to hint, in
obscure language as if speaking of another, naming some cities of the East, and
indicating that he had passed by miracle through the dangers of an immense
journey.9 |20
Even in the lifetime of
Saint Severinus, I never heard other particulars in regard to his native place
than those I have related. The testimonies concerning his marvellous life
accompany this letter, arranged as a memoir, with a table of chapters prefixed.
Grant my request, and let them gain greater fame through thy editorial care.10 It
remains to ask that thou cease not to associate thy prayers with his for the
pardon of my sins. |21
I. How in the
beginning Saint Severinus won fame in the town which is called Asturis,11 by
wholesome exhortation to good works and by most veracious prophecy.
II. Of the
town Comagenis, which he miraculously freed from the enemy.
III. How through his prayer God came to the aid of the inhabitants of the little city Favianis, who had long suffered from famine.
IV. Of the
barbarian robbers, who lost their booty which they had taken without the walls
of Favianis, and all their weapons too; or, Of his mode of life and surpassing
humility.
V. In how
great reverence he was held by the king of the Rugii, Flaccitheus; or, How
Flaccitheus was delivered from the ambushes of the foe by the oracle.
VI. Of the
Rugian widow's only son, who suffered tortures of pain for twelve years, and
was healed through the prayer of the man of God.
VII. How the
youth Odoacer, clad in wretched hides, was told by him of his kingship that was
to come. |22
VIII. That
Feletheus, sometimes called Feva, king of the Rugii, son of Flaccitheus,
mentioned above, for fear of Saint Severinus forbade his wicked wife to
rebaptize Catholics; or, What danger she ran of losing her little son
Fredericus one day when she had spurned the saint's intercession for certain
persons.
IX. Of the
bearer of the remains of Saint Gervasius and Saint Protasius the martyrs, made
known by the marvellous revelation of the man of God; or, With what reply he
refused the honorable office of bishop when he was asked to accept it.
X. Of a
janitor who was one day forbidden to go out anywhere, then was taken by the
barbarians, and humbly restored by them.
XI. Of the
miracle which was wrought in the castle of Cucullis, where the tapers were
lighted by divine power, and the sacrilegious, who had at first concealed
themselves, were manifested and amended.
XII. How the
locusts were expelled from the territory of the castle of Cucullis, after God
had been propitiated by fasting and prayer and almsgivings; while the patch of
corn of a certain poor man, an unbelieving scorner, was swept bare.
XIII. How the
taper was lighted in the hand of the man of God as he prayed, when the fire
required by custom for the evening service of praise was not found.
XIV. Of the
wondrous healing of the woman whose life was despaired of; who, after a
terrible and long continued sickness, was so fully restored to health |23 by
the prayer of the man of God that on the third day she sturdily betook herself
to labor in the fields.
XV. How upon
the posts sustaining the river side of the church, which the water at flood
often more than covered, the servant of God, praying, cut with an axe the sign
of the cross; and how thereafter the water never rose above the cross.
XVI. Of
Silvinus the priest who died; and how, after they had watched through the night
at his bier, the corpse, being addressed, immediately opened his eyes, and
asked the servant of God, at whose voice he had come to life, that he be not
further deprived of the rest which he had tasted.
XVII. How he
ministered unto the poor with anxious care; or, That the Norici also were wont
to send tithes to him for distribution; and that when these were brought to him
according to custom, he foretold that danger threatened those who had delayed
to send.
XVIII. How
the rust, which had appeared and was about to ruin the harvests, was driven
away by the man of God through fasting and prayer.
XIX. That
Gibuldus, king of the Alamanni, was smitten with great trembling in the
presence of the servant of God, and restored a multitude of captives.
XX. How the
murder of the soldiers was revealed to him, and how he sent his people, who did
not know of it, to the river to bury the bodies.
XXI. As the
priest Paulinus, who had come to him some time before, was returning to his own
country, |24 he
foretold that he was to be ordained bishop of Noricum.
XXII. That
when relics were being sought for a new church, he foretold of his own accord
that he should bring to the church the blessing of Saint John the Baptist, and
that in that town while he was away there was to be a massacre; in which
massacre the gabbling priest was killed in the baptistery.
XXIII. How he
received the relics of Saint John the Baptist.
XXIV. Of the
inhabitants of another town, who scorned his prophetic commands and directly
were slain by the Heruli, because though forewarned they would not leave the
place.
XXV. How he
sent letters to Noricum and fortified the castles with fastings and
almsgivings; and how the incursion of the enemy which he foretold was not able
to harm the castles.
XXVI. Of the
cleansed leper, who begged not to be sent back home, lest he might fall into
the leprosy of sin.
XXVII. Of the
victory which the Romans won at Batavis over the Alamanni through the prayer of
Saint Severinus; and how after the triumph those who scorned to follow his
warning prophecy were slain.
XXVIII. How
as the servant of God was ministering unto the poor, the oil appeared to
increase.
XXIX. Of the
men of Noricum who carried on their shoulders loads of clothing to be given to
the |25 poor;
how in midwinter the bear guided them through the snows of the desert to human
habitations; and how the man of God, with his wonted gift of revelation, knew
what had led them.
XXX. How he
divined that the foe would come the next night against the city of Lauriacum,
and with difficulty persuaded the citizens, who dwelt in false security, to
keep watch; and how in the morning they declared that he had done well, and
thanked him, and asked pardon for their unbelief.
XXXI. How he
met Feva, king of the Rugii, who was coming up against Lauriacum with his army,
and received the peoples in his guardian care, to conduct them to the lower
towns, i. e, those nearer the Rugii.
XXXII. How
King Odoacer requested that he should ask him some favor, and at the word of
the servant of God recalled one Ambrosius from exile; and how the servant of
God foretold to the king's flatterers how many years he was to reign.
XXXIII. Of
the son of one of the nobles of the king of the Rugii, who in the town
Comagenis was made whole by the prayer of the man of God.
XXXIV. How a
leper, Tejo by name, was cleansed.
XXXV. Of
Bonosus the monk, who, when he complained of weak eyes, was told by the saint,
"Pray rather that thou may see more with the heart": and thereupon he
earned a wonderful power of endurance in prayer.
XXXVI. Of the
three proud monks, whom he delivered to Satan, that their spirits might be
saved. |26 As
to this matter he rendered a most faithful account in its own place, quoting
the examples of two of the Fathers.
XXXVII. How
he signified the hour of tribulation of Marcianus and Renatus, his monks, which
they underwent while in another province; and enjoined prayer upon the other
brothers, who were with him.
XXXVIII. Of
the dangers of the deadly pustule, which by revelation he foretold forty days
in advance was to come to Ursus the monk, and which he healed by prayer.
XXXIX. Of the
saint's habitation, his bed also and diet, a few things are briefly mentioned.
XL. How, when through the
revelation of God he perceived that his departure was near, he spoke to King
Feva and the wicked queen, and ceased not to forewarn his own followers of his
death: foretelling that a general removal of the people was at hand, and
commanding that his body should be carried away at the same time.
XLI. How he expressly
announced even the day of his death to Saint Lucillus the priest.
XLII. How he adjured
Ferderuchus, brother of King Feva; and advised his own followers.
XLIII. Of his death; or,
What advice he gave his followers in his long final exhortation.
XLIV. What Ferderuchus
wrought against the monastery after his decease; how Ferderuchus was punished;
how the saint's oracle was fulfilled by the |27 prosperous
migration of the people; how his body was disinterred and removed in a wagon.
XLV. Of the healing at
that time of many infirm persons. A recital of individual cases is omitted;
only the story of one dumb man is told, who was made whole by praying under the
wagon, while the body yet remained on it.
XLVI. Of the faith of
Barbaria, a lady of rank, who built a mausoleum for the body; and of the
reception by the people of Naples. Although many were then healed of divers
diseases, the particulars are related in three instances only. |28
THE LIFE OF SAINT
SEVERINUS
CHAPTER I.
At the time of the death of Attila, king of the Huns,12 confusion reigned in the two Pannonias and the other borderlands of the Danube. Then Severinus, most holy servant of God, came from the parts of the East to the marches of Riverside Noricum 13 and the Pannonias, and tarried in a little town which is called Asturis.14 There he lived in accordance with the evangelical and apostolic doctrine, in all piety and chastity, in the confession of the Catholic faith, and fulfilled his reverend purpose by holy works. By such exercises strengthened, he innocently sought the crown of the celestial calling; and one day, as was his wont, went forth to the church. Then the priests, the clergy, and the citizens were fetched, and he began in all humility of mind to prophesy, how they ought to |30 ward off the threatening snares of the enemy by prayers, and by fastings, and by the fruits of compassion. But their stubborn hearts, defiled by fleshly lusts, proved the oracles of the prophet by the decision of their unbelief. Yet the servant of God returned to the lodging where the sacristan 15 of the church had received him, and made known the day and hour of imminent destruction. "I go in haste," he said, "from a stubborn town that shall swiftly perish."
Then he went away to the
next town, which is called Comagenis.16 This
was very strictly guarded by the barbarians established within, who had entered
into a league 17 with
the Romans, and it was not easy for any one to secure permission to go in or to
leave. Yet, though they knew him not, they neither questioned the servant of
God, nor turned him back. So anon he went into the church; and when he found
all in despair |31 of
their safety, he exhorted them to be armed with fasting and prayers and
almsgivings, and set forth examples of salvation from of old, in which the
protection of God had freed his people in unforeseen and wondrous ways. And
when they hesitated to believe one who at the very crisis of peril promised the
safety of all, the old man came who at Asturis had long been the host of
Severinus (how great a guest!). When the guards at the gates anxiously
questioned the old man, his deportment and words revealed the destruction of
his town. He added that it was destroyed on the same day that a certain man of
God had foretold. When they heard this, they eagerly replied, "Thinkest
thou he is the same, who in our despair promises us the assistance of
God?" Then straightway the old man recognized the servant of God within
the church, and cast himself at his feet, saying that through his kindness he
had been spared the destruction which had overtaken his townsmen.
CHAPTER II.
When they had heard these
things, the inhabitants of Comagenis begged forgiveness for their unbelief, and
obeyed with holy works the admonitions of the man of God. They made a fast, and
assembled in the church for the space of three days, reproaching their past
sins with groans and lamentations. But on the third day, during the celebration
of the evening sacrifice, there |32 was
a sudden earthquake;18 and
the barbarians who dwelt within the city were so terrorsmitten that they
compelled the Romans to open the gates for them in haste. Then they rushed out
tumultuously, and scattered, supposing themselves besieged and surrounded by
near foes; and their terror was augmented by divine influence, so that, in the
wanderings and confusion of the night, they slew one another with the sword.
Thus utter destruction consumed the enemy; and the people, saved by the divine
aid, learned through the saint to fight with heavenly arms. |33
CHAPTER III.
At the same time a cruel
famine had prostrated a city named Favianis,19 and
the inhabitants believed that their only remedy would be by devout prayers to
invite the man of God from the town of Comagenis. He foreknew that they would
come to him, and was moved by the Lord to go with them. When he had come
thither, he began to exhort the people of the city, saying, "By the fruits
of repentance ye shall be able to be freed from so great a calamity of
hunger." While they were profiting by such instructions, most blessed Severinus
learned by divine revelation that a certain widow, Procula by name, had
concealed much produce of the fields. He called her before the people, and
vehemently rebuked her. "Daughter of most noble parents," he said,
"why dost thou make thyself the handmaid of avarice and stand forth the
slave of covetousness, which is, as the apostle teaches, idolatry?20 Lo,
the Lord in his compassion hath regard for his servants; and thou shalt not
have any use for thine ill-gotten wealth, except to cast into the stream of the
Danube the corn too long withheld, and so to exhibit to fishes the humanity
which thou hast |34 denied
to men! Wherefore aid thyself rather than the poor from those things which thou
yet thinkest to keep, while Christ hungers." 21 When
she heard these sayings, the woman was filled with great fear and trembling;
and began willingly to expend her hoards for the poor.
Not long after, there
unexpectedly appeared at the bank of the Danube a vast number of boats from the
Raetias, laden with great quantities of merchandise, which had been hindered
for many days by the thick ice of the river Aenus.22 When
at last God's command had loosed the ice, they brought down an abundance of
food to the famine-stricken. Then all began to praise God with uninterrupted
devotion, as the bestower of unhoped relief; for they had expected to perish,
wasted by the long famine, and they acknowledged that manifestly the boats had
come out of due season, loosed from the ice and frost by the prayers of the
servant of God.23 |35
CHAPTER IV.
At the same time
barbarian robbers made an unexpected plundering incursion, and led away captive
all the men and cattle they found without the walls. Then many of the citizens
flocked weeping to the man of God, recounted to him the destructive calamity
that had come upon them, and showed him evidences of the recent rapine.
But he straitly
questioned Mamertinus, then a tribune, who afterwards was ordained bishop,
whether he had with him any armed men with whom to institute an energetic
pursuit of the robbers. Mamertinus replied, "I have soldiers, a very few.
But I dare not contend with such a host of enemies. However, if thou commandest
it, venerable father, though we lack the aid of weapons yet we believe that
through thy prayers we shall be victorious." And the servant of God said,
" Even if thy soldiers are unarmed, they shall now be armed from the
enemy. For neither numbers nor fleshly courage is required, when everything
proves that God is our champion. Only in the name of the Lord advance swiftly,
advance confidently. For when God in his compassion goes before, the weakest
shall seem the bravest. The Lord shall fight for you,24 and
ye shall be silent. Then make haste; and this one thing observe above
everything, to conduct unharmed into my presence those of the barbarians whom
thou shalt take." |36
Then they went forth. At
the second milestone, by a brook which is called Tiguntia, they came upon the
foe. Some of the robbers escaped by hasty flight, abandoning their weapons. The
soldiers bound the rest and brought them captive to the servant of God, as he
had commanded. He freed them from chains, refreshed them with food and drink,
and briefly addressed them. "Go," he said, "and command your
confederates not to dare to approach this place again in their lust for booty.
For the judgment and retribution of heaven shall straightway punish them, since
God rights for his servants, whom his supernal power is wont so to protect that
hostile missiles do not inflict wounds upon them, but rather furnish them with
arms." Then the barbarians were sent away; and he rejoiced over the
miracles of Christ, and promised that through Christ's compassion Favianis
should have no further experience of hostile pillage; only let neither
prosperity nor adversity withdraw the citizens from the work of God.
Then Saint Severinus
withdrew into a more remote spot, which was called Ad Vineas, where a small
cell contented him.25 But
he was compelled by a divine revelation to return to Favianis;26 so
that, though the |37 quiet
of his cell was dear to him, he yet obeyed the commands of God and built a
monastery not far from the city.27 There
he began to instruct great numbers in the sacred way of life, training the
souls of his hearers rather by deeds than by words.28 He
often |38 withdrew,
indeed, to a solitary habitation, called by the neighbors Burgum, a mile from
Favianis, that he might avoid the throngs of men that kept coming to him, and
cleave to God in uninterrupted prayer. But the more he desired to inhabit
solitude, the more was he warned by frequent revelations not to deny his presence
to the afflicted peoples.
And so day by day his
merit grew, and the fame of his virtues increased, and this spread far and
wide, and was extended by the marks of celestial favor conferred upon him. For
good things cannot be concealed, since, according to the words of the Saviour,
neither can a candle be concealed under a bushel, nor a city that is set on a
hill be hid.29
Among the other great
gifts which the Saviour had bestowed upon him stood out the gift of abstinence.
He subdued his flesh by innumerable fasts, teaching that the body, if nourished
with too abundant food, will straightway bring destruction upon the soul. He
wore no shoes whatever. So at midwinter, which in those regions is a time of
cruel, numbing cold, he gave a remarkable proof of endurance by being always
willing to walk barefoot. A well-known proof of the terrible cold is afforded
by the Danube, which is often so solidly frozen by the fierce frost that it
affords a secure crossing even for carts.30 Yet
he whom the |39 grace
of God had elevated by such virtues was wont to make acknowledgment with utmost
humility, and to say, "Think not that what ye see is of my merit. It is
rather an example for your salvation. Let the foolhardiness of man cease. Let
the pride of exaltation be restrained. That we can do anything good, we are
chosen; as the apostle 31 saith,
'He hath chosen us before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy
and without blame before him.'32 Pray
rather in my behalf that the gifts of the Saviour to me may serve not for
greater condemnation, but for increase of |40 justification."
This and the like he was wont to declare, weeping. Thus he taught men humility
by his wondrous example. Standing on the secure foundation of this virtue, he
shone with so great a splendor of the divine gift that even the very enemies of
the church, the heretics, honored him with most reverent courtesy.
CHAPTER V.
The king of the Rugii,
Flaccitheus,33 began
to feel himself unsteady on the throne at the very commencement of his reign.
The Goths in Lower Pannonia were violently hostile to him, and he was alarmed
by their innumerable multitude. Therefore in his perils he asked counsel of
most blessed Severinus as of a heavenly oracle. Once he came to him in
exceeding confusion, and declared with tears that he had asked of the princes
of the Goths a passage to Italy, and |41 that,
as they had denied this request, he did not doubt that they would put him to
death. Then Flaccitheus received this reply from the man of God: "If the
one Catholic faith united us, thou oughtest rather to consult me concerning
eternal life;34 but
since thou art |42 anxious
only over present safety, which is of common concern to us both, hear my
instruction. Be not troubled by the multitude of the Goths or by their enmity.
They shall soon depart and leave thee secure, and thou shalt reign in the
prosperity which thou hast desired. Only do not neglect the warnings of my
humility. Let it not irk thee to seek peace even with the least; never lean
upon thine own strength. 'Cursed be the man,' saith the Scripture, 'that
trusteth in man, and maketh flesh his arm, and whose heart departeth from the
Lord.'35 Learn
therefore to beware of snares, not to lay them: and thou shalt die in thy
bed 36 with
a peaceful end." |43
As Flaccitheus,
encouraged by this oracle, was joyfully departing, a message was brought to him
that a band of plundering barbarians had taken captive some of the Rugii.
Straightway he sent to the man of God to ask his counsel. Severinus, by
revelation of the Lord, forewarned Flaccitheus with holy exhortations not to
follow the robbers. "If thou follow them," he said, "thou wilt
be slain. Take heed; cross not the stream; be not taken unawares and overcome
by the triple ambush which has been prepared for thee! For speedily a trusty
messenger will come, who shall inform thee concerning all these matters."
Then two of the captives, fleeing from the camp of the enemy, related in order
those things which the most blessed man had foretold by revelation of Christ.
So the hostile ambush came to naught, and Flaccitheus was prospered more and
more, and ended his days in peace and tranquillity.
CHAPTER VI.
Now after this one of the
Rugii suffered incredible pain from gout for twelve years, and lost all use of
his limbs. His intolerable torments were so long continued that they became
well known to the neighbors on every side. So at last, when divers remedies
availed nothing, his mother, a widow, put her son in a cart, and having brought
him to the saint, laid him down in his desperate sickness at the door of
the |44 monastery,
and prayed with many tears that her only son might be restored to her whole.
But the man of God,
perceiving that great things were demanded of him, and moved by her weeping,
said: "Why am I oppressed by a deceitful fancy? Why am I thought to be
able to do what I cannot? I have no power to accomplish such great things. Yet
I give my judgment as one that hath obtained mercy of God." 37 Then
he charged the woman that she should bestow something upon the poor, according
to her power. Without delay she quickly took off the clothing which she wore,
and was hastening to divide it among the needy. When the man of God heard this,
he marvelled at her ardor, and again charged her that she should clothe herself
with her garments. "When thy son," he said, "has been healed by
the Lord and goes with thee, then shalt thou fulfill thy vows."
So he set a fast of a few
days, as was his wont, and poured forth prayers to God; and straightway healed
the sick man, and sent him home whole, walking without aid.
Afterwards, when the man
was present at the crowded weekly market, he exhibited the miracle, and
astounded all who saw him. For some said, "Look, it is he, whose whole
body was dissolved in corruption"; while as others absolutely denied that
it was he, a friendly contention arose. |45
Now from that time when
health was restored to the man who had been thought incurable, the whole nation
of the Rugii resorted to the servant of God, and began to render grateful
obedience, and to ask help for their diseases. Likewise many of other races, to
which the fame of so great a miracle had come, desired to see the soldier of
Christ.38 With
the same reverence, even before this event, some barbarians, on their way to
Italy, turned aside with a view to gaining his benediction.
CHAPTER VII.
Among such visitants was
Odoacer, later king of Italy, then a tall youth, meanly clad. While he stood,
stooping that his head might not touch the roof of the lowly cell, he learned
from the man of God that he was to win renown. For as the young man bade him |46 farewell,
"Go forth!" said Severinus, "Go forth to Italy! Now clad in
wretched hides, thou shalt soon distribute rich gifts to many."
CHAPTER VIII.
King Feletheus, sometimes
called Feva, son of Flaccitheus, mentioned above, imitated his father's
diligence, and before the commencement of his reign began to make frequent
visits to the saint. His wife, Giso by name, a dangerous and wicked woman,39 always
drew him back from the healing works of mercy. Among the other pollutions of
her iniquity, she even attempted to rebaptize certain Catholics.40 But
when her husband, out of his reverence for Saint Severinus, did not consent,
she incontinently abandoned her sacrilegious purpose. Yet she oppressed the
Romans with a heavy hand, and even ordered some to be removed beyond the
Danube. For one day she came to a village near Favianis, and commanded that
certain ones should be brought to her across the Danube to be condemned to the
most degrading offices of slavery. The man of God sent to her and asked that
she let them go. But she, her woman's anger kindled to a white heat, replied
with a message of the greatest |47 rudeness.
"Pray for thyself," she said, "servant of God, lurking in thy
cell! Leave me to issue concerning my servants such orders as I please."
When the man of God
received this answer, he said, "I put my trust in the Lord Jesus Christ.
She shall be compelled by necessity to do that which her perverse inclination
has despised."
Even so the swift stroke
followed which cast down her haughty spirit. For there were certain goldsmiths,
barbarians, shut up and straitly guarded that they might fashion ornaments for
the king and queen. On the same day on which the queen had spurned the servant
of God, the little son of King Feletheus, Fredericus by name, moved by childish
curiosity, went in among them. Then the goldsmiths put a sword at the child's
breast, saying that if any one should attempt to approach them without the
safeguard of an oath, they would first run through the little prince, and
afterwards slay themselves; since, worn out by toil and confinement, they were
utterly desperate. When this came to the ears of the cruel and ungodly queen,
she rent her garments for grief, and cried aloud, "O Severinus, servant of
the Lord, thus are the insults I have offered avenged by thy God! With profuse
prayers thou hast called down vengeance upon my scorn, that thou might be
avenged in my offspring!" So, running to and fro, with manifold contrition
and pitiable lamentation, she acknowledged that she was smitten by this blow in
recompense for the crime of scorn which she had committed |48 against
the servant of God. And she instantly dispatched horsemen to seek his pardon;
and sent back the Romans whom that very day she had removed, and interceding
for whom Severinus had been visited with her scorn. The goldsmiths received the
surety of an oath, released the child, and were at the same time themselves
released.
When he heard these
things, the most reverent servant of Christ returned unbounded thanks to the
Creator: who doth sometimes postpone answering prayer, in order that with the
increase of faith, hope, and love he may grant greater blessings than are
asked. For the omnipotence of the Saviour brought it to pass that when the
cruel woman subjected the free to slavery, she was compelled to restore the
slaves to liberty.
When these wonders had
been accomplished, the queen forthwith hastened with her husband to the servant
of God, and showed him her son, who, she acknowledged, had been rescued by his
prayers from the brink of death. And she promised that she would never again
resist his commands.
CHAPTER IX.
Not only was the servant
of God endowed with the gift of prophecy, but also his diligence in redeeming
captives was great. For he applied himself with eagerness to the task of
restoring to their native liberty those oppressed by the sway of the
barbarians. |49
Meanwhile he instructed a
certain man, whom with wife and children he had redeemed, to cross the Danube,
and seek out an unknown man at the weekly market of the barbarians. Divine
revelation had shown him the man so clearly that he told even his stature and
the color of his hair, his features, and the fashion of his clothing, and
showed in what part of the market the messenger was to find him. He added that
whatever the person, when found, should say to the messenger, the latter,
returning in all haste, should report to him.
So the messenger
departed, and to his astonishment found everything even as the man of God had
foretold. He was amazed to find the man Severinus had described; who then
questioned him, saying, "Thinkest thou that I can find someone to conduct
me to the man of God, whose fame is everywhere spread abroad? I will pay what price
he wishes. For long have I importuned the holy martyrs, whose relics I bear,
that sometime my unworthiness may be freed from this service, which hitherto I
have maintained not out of rash presumption but by pious necessity." Then
the messenger of the man of God made himself known to him. Severinus received
with due honor the relics of Saint Gervasius and Saint Protasius the martyrs,41 placed
them in the church which he had built within the monastery, and committed them
to |50 the
care of the priests. In that place he assembled the relics of vast numbers of
martyrs; but he always acquired them on the strength of a previous revelation,
for he knew that the adversary often creeps in 42 under
the guise of sanctity.43
He was asked to accept
the honorable office of bishop. But he closed the matter with a determined
refusal. It was enough for him, he said, that, withdrawn from his beloved
solitude, he had come by divine direction to that province to live among the
pressing, crowding throngs. Nevertheless he wished to give a pattern to the
monks, and urged them to follow earnestly in the steps of the sainted fathers,
and thence to gain instruction in holy conduct. They must strive, he admonished
them, that he who hath forsaken parents and the world look not back and desire
the allurements of worldly display which he had sought to escape. On this point
he referred to the |51 terrible
example of Lot's wife.44 He
admonished likewise that the incentives to lusts must be mortified in the fear
of the Lord; and declared that the fires of sensual delights cannot be
conquered, except through the grace of God they be quenched in the fountain of
tears.
CHAPTER X.
There was a janitor45 at
the monastery church, Maurus by name, whom Saint Severinus had redeemed from
the hands of the barbarians. One day the man of God warned him, saying,
"Take heed to-day not to go away anywhere: otherwise thou shalt be in
imminent peril." But the janitor, contrary to the warning of the great
father, and persuaded by a |52 layman,
went out at midday to gather fruit 46 at
the second milestone from Favianis. Presently he and the layman were made
captives by barbarians and carried across the Danube. In that hour the man of
God, reading in his cell, suddenly closed the book, and said, "Seek Maurus
speedily!" When the janitor was nowhere found, Severinus crossed the
streams of the Danube in all haste, and hurried after the robbers, whom the
people called Scamarae.47 Stricken
with awe by his reverend presence, they humbly restored the captives whom they
had taken.
CHAPTER XI.
While the upper towns of Riverside Noricum yet stood, and hardly a castle48 escaped the attacks of the barbarians, the fame and reputation of Saint Severinus shone so brightly that the castles vied with each other |53 in inviting his company and protection; believing that no misfortune would happen to them in his presence. This came to pass not without the aid of divine grace, that all might stand in awe of his commands, as of heavenly oracles, and be armed for good works through his example.
Moreover the holy man,
summoned by the prayers of the vicinage, came to a castle named Cucullis,49 and
there a mighty miracle was wrought, which I cannot pass by in silence. We heard
the amazing story from Marcianus, a citizen of the same town, later our priest.
A part of the populace of Cucullis continued to practise abominable sacrifices
at a certain spot.50 When
he learned of this sacrilege, the |54 man
of God addressed the people in many discourses. He persuaded the priests of the
place to enjoin a three' days' fast; and he instructed that waxen tapers should
be brought from each house, and that everyone should fasten his taper with his
own hand to the wall of the church. Then, when the customary psalm-singing was
completed, and the hour of the sacrifice arrived, the man of God exhorted the
priests and deacons that with all alacrity of heart they should join him in
prayer to their common Lord; that the Lord might show the light of his
knowledge to distinguish those guilty of sacrilege. So while he was praying
with them at great length, weeping much, and on his knees, the greater part of
the tapers, those namely which the faithful had brought, were suddenly kindled
by divine agency. The rest remained unlighled, being the tapers of those who
had been polluted by the aforesaid sacrilege, but, wishing to remain hidden,
had denied it. Thus those who had placed them were revealed by the divine test;
and straightway they cried out, and by their behavior sufficiently betrayed the
secrets of their hearts. Convicted by the witness of their tapers, and by open
confession, they bore witness to their own sacrilegious acts.
O merciful power of the
Creator, enkindling tapers and souls! The fire was lighted in the tapers, and
shone with reflected light in the emotions! The visible light melted into
flames the substance of the wax, but the invisible light dissolved the hearts
of the |55 penitents
into tears! Who would believe, that afterward those whom the error of sacrilege
had ensnared were more distinguished for good works than those whose tapers had
been divinely lighted?
CHAPTER XII.
At another time, in the
territory of the same castle, swarms of locusts had settled, consuming the
crops, and destroying everything with their noxious bite.51 Therefore,
being smitten by this pest, the priests and the other inhabitants promptly
betook themselves with urgent prayers to Saint Severinus, saying: "That
this great and horrible plague may be removed, we ask the tried suffrage of thy
prayers, which by the recent great miracle of the tapers lighted from heaven we
have seen to avail much before the Lord." He answered them with great
piety. "Have ye not read," he said, "what the divine authority
commanded a sinful people through the prophet: 'Turn ye to me with all your
heart, and with fasting, and with weeping,' 52 and
a little after, 'sanctify a fast,' he saith, |56 'call
a solemn assembly, gather the congregation,' 53 and
the rest which follows? Therefore fulfill by meet works what ye teach, that ye
may readily escape the evil of the present time. Let no one go out to his
field, as if concerned to oppose the locusts by human effort; lest the divine
wrath be yet more provoked." Without delay all gathered together in the
church, and each in order sang psalms as was their custom. Every age and sex,
even such as could not form the words, offered prayer to God in tears, alms
were continually given, whatever good works the present necessity demanded were
fulfilled, as the servant of God had instructed.
While all were occupied
with exertions of this sort, a certain very poor man forsook the work of God
that was begun, to look after his own field of standing corn, a little plot
which stood among the sowings of the others. And having gone out, and all day
anxiously and diligently driven away, so far as he could, the threatening cloud
of locusts, he then went to the church to partake of the holy communion. But
his little patch of corn, surrounded by his neighbors' many crops, was devoured
by the dense swarm of locusts.
The locusts were that
night by divine command removed from those territories: a proof of the great
power of faithful prayer. So when at dawn the violator and scorner of the holy
work again went forth |57 anxiously
to his field, he found it swept perfectly bare by the baleful work of the
locusts, while all the sowings round about were untouched. Utterly amazed, he
returned with doleful outcries to the castle. When he had published what had
happened, all went out to see the miracle; where the ravages of the locusts had
marked out as if by a ruled line the corn plot of this contumacious fellow.
Then he cast himself at their feet and with lamentations begged for the pardon
of his sin by the aid of their intercession. Wherefore the man of God took
occasion to give a warning, and taught all that they should learn to obey the
Lord omnipotent, whose commands even the locusts observe.
But the poor man,
weeping, declared that, for the rest, he could obey the commands, if but a hope
of wherewithal he might live had been left him. Then the man of God addressed
the others. "It is just," he said, " that he who through his own
punishment hath given you an example of humility and obedience should of your
liberality receive sustenance for the present year." So the poor man, both
rebuked and enriched by a collection from the faithful, learned what loss
unbelief inflicts, and what benefit God's bounty bestows upon his
worshippers. |58
CHAPTER XIII.
Near a town called Juvao,54 they
went into the church one summer day to celebrate the evening service, but found
no fire for lighting the lamps. Unable to elicit a blaze in the usual way, by
striking stones together, they were so long delayed in striking iron and
stone 55 that
the time of the evening service was passing. But the man of God kneeled on the
ground and prayed earnestly; and soon, in full view of three clerics who were
present at the time, the taper which Saint Severinus held in his hand was
lighted.56 By
its light the sacrifice of eventide was completed in the customary manner, and
they returned thanks to God in all things. Although he wished those who were
present at this miracle to keep the fact secret, as in the case of |59 many
mighty works which were performed through him by God's doing, yet the splendor
of so great virtue could not be hid, but surpassingly kindled others to a great
faith.
CHAPTER XIV.
It happened that a
certain woman of Juvao was vexed by long continued sickness and lay half-dead,
and the burial was already prepared. Her relatives, in mournful silence,
repressed funereal lamentations at the voice of faith, and laid the sick
woman's now almost lifeless body at the door of the saint's cell. When the man
of God saw the entrance closed by the bed set against it, he said to them,
"Why have ye done this? " They answered, "That by thy prayer the
dead may be restored to life." Then he said, bursting into tears,
"Why do ye demand the great from the little? I know myself utterly
unworthy. O that I may deserve to find pardon for my sins! " They said,
"We believe that if thou pray, she will live again." Then Saint
Severinus straightway wept, and cast himself down in prayer; and when the woman
forthwith arose, he addressed them: "Do not attribute to my works any of
these things; for the vehemence of your faith hath merited this grace, and this
cometh to pass in many places and nations, that it may be known that there is
one God, who doeth wonders in heaven and on earth, calling forth the lost unto
salvation, and bringing back the dead to life.'' The woman, her |60 health
restored, on the third day began to labor with her own hands in the fields, after
the custom of the province.
CHAPTER XV.
Quintanis 57 was
a municipality of Raetia Secunda,58 situated
on the bank of the Danube. Near by on the other side ran a small river named
Businca. Often the Businca, when swollen in time of flood by the overflow of
the Danube, covered some spaces of the castle, because the latter stood on the
plain. Moreover the inhabitants of this place had built outside the walls a
wooden church which overhung the water, and was supported by posts driven into
the riverbed and by forked props. In place of a flooring it had a slippery
platform of boards, which were covered by the overflowing water whenever it
rose above the banks. |61 Now
through the faith of the people of Quintanis Saint Severinus had been invited
thither. Coming at a time of drought, he asked why the boards were seen bare
and uncovered. The neighbors answered that the frequent inundations of the
river always washed away anything that was spread on the boards. But he said,
"In Christ's name, let a pavement be now laid upon the boards; from
henceforth ye shall see the river restrained by the command of heaven." So
when the pavement was finished, he went down into a boat, took an axe, and,
after offering prayer, struck the posts; and, having cut the sign of the
venerable cross, said to the water of the river, "My Lord Jesus Christ
doth not permit thee to overpass this sign of the cross." From that time,
therefore, when the river after its wont rose mountain high in floods and
encompassed the neighboring country as of yore, it was lower than the site of
the church, in such wise that it never actually overpassed the sign of the holy
cross which the man of God had marked.
CHAPTER XVI.
Moreover it happened that
there died a highly venerable priest of Quintanis, Silvinus by name. The bier
was placed in the church, and, according to the custom, they passed the night
watching and singing psalms. When the dawn was already breaking, the man of God
asked all the weary priests and deacons |62 to
go away for a little while, that after the toil of watching they might refresh
themselves somewhat by sleep. When they had gone out, the man of God asked the
doorkeeper, Maternus by name, whether all had departed as he had bidden. When
Maternus answered that all had gone out, "Not so," he said, "but
there is a woman hiding here." Then the janitor of the church explored the
walls a second time, and assured him that no one remained within them. But the
soldier of Christ, the Lord revealing it to him, said, "Some one is
lurking here." So the doorkeeper searched more diligently for the third time,
and found that a certain consecrated virgin had concealed herself in a very
obscure place. Therefore the doorkeeper reproved her: "Why didst thou
think that thy presence could be hid when the servant of God was here?"
She answered, "Love of piety persuaded me to do it: for when I saw all
driven out, I thought within myself that the servant of Christ would invoke the
divine majesty, and raise up this dead man." Then the virgin departed, and
the man of God, bowing in prayer together with a priest, a deacon, and two
janitors, prayed with many tears that the supernal power might reveal a work of
its wonted majesty. Then, as the priest ended the prayer, the saint thus
addressed the corpse: "In the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, holy priest
Silvinus, speak with thy brothers!" But when the dead man opened his eyes,
the man of God with difficulty persuaded those present to restrain their joy
and keep silent. And again he |63 speaketh
unto him, "Shall we ask the Lord that he deign to grant thee still in this
life to us, his servants?" But he saith, "By the Lord I adjure thee,
let me not be held here longer, and cheated of the everlasting rest in the
possession of which I have seen myself." And immediately, when he had
spoken, the dead man was at rest.59
Now this event was so
concealed at the earnest request of Saint Severinus, that no one knew of it
until after his death. Yet I learned what I have reported from the account of
Marcus the subdeacon and Maternus the janitor. For the priest and the deacon,
witnesses of this great miracle, are known to have died before the saint, to whom
they had sworn to reveal to no one that which they had seen.
CHAPTER XVII.
Not only did the grace of
Christ make Saint Severinus rich in such gifts, but also from his innate
goodness he took so great care of captives and the needy that almost all the
poor through all the towns and castles |64 were
fed by his activity. To these he ministered with such cheerful concern, that he
believed himself to be filled or to abound in all good things only when he saw
that the needy had their bodily wants supplied.
Though he himself was not
in the least enfeebled by repeated week-long fasts, yet he felt himself
afflicted by the hunger of the unfortunate. When they saw his pious largess to
the poor, great numbers, although they were straitened with hunger under the
harsh sway of the barbarians, faithfully gave the poor the tithes of their
crops. Though this commandment is familiar to all from the law,60 yet
these observed it with |65 grateful
devotion, as though they were hearing it given by the lips of an angel present
among them. The cold, too, was felt by the man of God only in the nakedness of
the poor. Indeed, he had received from God the special gift of remaining
vigorous and active, hardened by his wonderful abstinence, in a land of bitter
cold.
We spoke of tithes for
the support of the poor. He was wont to send letters, urging the communities of
Noricum 61 also
to give them. This became their custom, and once, when they had sent to him a
quantity of clothing to be distributed, he asked the attendants whether the
town of Tiburnia62 was
sending a like contribution. They answered that men from that place also would
soon arrive. But the man of God signified that they should not come, and
foretold that the offering which they had delayed must be made to the
barbarians. Accordingly, not long after the citizens of Tiburnia were
beleaguered by the Goths, and fought them with varying fortune; and under
the |66 terms
of peace, which they obtained with difficulty, they presented to the enemy,
among other things, the largess, already collected, which they had delayed to
send to the servant of God.63
CHAPTER XVIII.
Likewise the citizens of
the town of Lauriacum,64 in
spite of many warning exhortations from Saint Severinus, had delayed offering
to the poor the tithes of their crops. They were pinched with hunger, and the
yellow of the ripening harvest showed that relief was at hand. But when a
destructive rust unexpectedly appeared, and was on the point of damaging the
crops, they immediately came and cast themselves down before Saint Severinus,
and acknowledged the punishment of their stubbornness. But the soldier of |67 Christ
comforted the feeble ones with spiritual words, saying, "Had ye offered
tithes for the poor, not only would ye enjoy an everlasting reward, but ye
would also be able to abound in present comforts. But since ye rebuke your sin
by your own confession, I promise you, by the goodness of the Lord, that this
mighty rust shall cause no damage whatever; only let not your faith waver any
more." This promise rendered the citizens from that time on more ready to
pay the tithes. Then, as was his wont, he urged that a fast be proclaimed. When
this had ended, a gentle rain relieved from danger the harvest of which they
had despaired.65
CHAPTER XIX.
Batavis 66 is
a town lying between two rivers, the Aenus and the Danube. There Saint
Severinus had established after his wonted fashion a cell for a few monks,
because he himself not infrequently came thither at the request of the
citizens; particularly on |68 account
of the constant incursions of the Alamanni, whose king, Gibuldus, greatly
honored and loved him.
Now on a certain occasion
Gibuldus came eagerly to see him. That the king might not encumber Ba-tavis by
his visit, the saint went out to meet him, and addressed the king with so great
firmness, that Gibuldus began to tremble violently before him, and declared to
his armies, as he withdrew, that never, in war or in any peril, had he been
smitten with such trembling. And when he gave to the servant of God his choice,
to give what command he would, the most pious teacher asked that the king
should pay attention rather to his own best interests, restrain his nation from
laying waste the Roman territory, and set free without ransom the captives his
followers had made.
Then the king appointed
that Severinus should direct some one from his own followers to bring this work
more speedily to completion. Forthwith Deacon Amantius was dispatched, and
followed in the king's path; but, though he watched before his gates many days,
he could not secure an audience. As he was turning back, very sorrowful because
his appointed task had not been accomplished, a man appeared in the form of
Saint Severinus, who accosted him menacingly, and, as he stood in utter terror,
bade him follow. As he followed in fear and excitement, he came to the king's
door; and immediately the guide that had gone before him vanished from his wondering
eyes. But the king's messenger asked the deacon whence he came and what he
wished. He told his |69 errand
briefly, gave letters to the king, and received others from him, and returned
home. He conveyed back about seventy captives, and moreover brought the
pleasing promise of the king, that when he had diligently searched through the
province, he would send back all the captives that were to be found there.
Later Saint Lucillus the priest was selected to attend to this matter, and
recovered from captivity a great number of unfortunates.
CHAPTER XX.
So long as the Roman
dominion lasted, soldiers were maintained in many towns at the public expense
to guard the boundary wall.67 When
this custom ceased, the squadrons of soldiers and the boundary wall were
blotted out together. The troop at Batavis, however, held out.68 Some
soldiers of this troop had gone to Italy to fetch the final pay to their
comrades, and no one knew that the barbarians had slain them on the way. One
day, as Saint Severinus was reading in his cell, he suddenly closed the book
and began to sigh greatly and to weep. He ordered the bystanders to |70 run
out with haste to the river, which he declared was in that hour besprinkled
with human blood; and straightway word was brought that the bodies of the
soldiers mentioned above had been brought to land by the current of the river.
CHAPTER XXI.
One Paulinus, a priest,
had come to Saint Severinus, whose fame was extending.69 He
tarried some days in the company of the saint. When he wished to return home,
Severinus said to him, "Hasten, venerable priest; for, beloved, the
episcopal dignity shall speedily adorn thee, even if, as we believe, thou
opposest the desire of the peoples." And presently, when he returned to
his own country, the word of the prophet was fulfilled unto him. For the
citizens of Tiburnia, which is the metropolis of Noricum, compelled him to
assume the preeminence of the highest priesthood. |71
CHAPTER XXII.
For a church beyond the
walls of Batavis, in a place named Bojotro,70 across
the Aenus, where Severinus had built a cell for a few monks, relics of martyrs
were sought. When the priests were accordingly pushing themselves forward that
they might be sent to fetch relics,71 Saint
Severinus uttered this warning: "Though all wrought by mortals' toil
passeth away, yet most swiftly must these buildings above others be
abandoned." And he said that they ought to make no effort for relics of
the saints, because the blessing of Saint John would be brought to them without
their asking.
Meantime the citizens of
Batavis approached the saint, and besought him to go to Feba, prince of the
Rugii, to ask permission for them to trade. He said to them, "The time of
this town is at hand, that it remain deserted like the rest of the upper castles
and uninhabited. Why, then, is it necessary to provide merchandise for places
where in future no merchant can appear?" They replied that he ought not
to |72 mock
them, but to aid them with his wonted direction. A certain priest, filled with
the spirit of Satan, added, "Go, saint, I beg, go quickly, that for a
little space thy departure may give us rest from fastings and vigils." At
this saying the man of God was oppressed with great weeping, because a priest,
in public, had burst forth in ridiculous gabbling. For open scurrility is a
witness of hidden sins. When the saint was asked by the brethren why he was
weeping thus, "I see," he said, "a heavy blow that in my absence
shall straightway befall this place; and, with groaning I must say it, the
shrine of Christ shall so overflow with human blood, that even this place must
be desecrated." For he was speaking in the baptistery. Therefore he went
down the Danube by ship a hundred miles and more to his old monastery, larger
than the others, near the walls of Favianis. As he was going down the river,
Hunimund,72 accompanied
by a |73 few
barbarians, attacked the town of Batavis, as the saint had foretold, and, while
almost all the inhabitants were occupied in the harvest, put to death forty men
of the town who had remained for a guard. The priest who had spoken
sacrilegious words in the baptistery against the servant of Christ fled for
refuge to the same place, and was slain by the pursuing barbarians. For in vain
did the offender against God and enemy of truth seek protection in the place
where he had so impudently transgressed.
CHAPTER XXIII.
Once while Saint
Severinus was reading the Gospel in the monastery at Favianis, after offering
prayer he arose, ordered a skiff to be instantly prepared for him, and said to
the astonished bystanders, "Blessed be the name of the Lord; we must go to
meet the relics of the sainted martyrs." They crossed the Danube without
delay, and found a man sitting on the farther bank of the river, who besought
them with many prayers to conduct him to the servant of God, whose fame was
widespread, and to whom he had long wished to come. The servant of Christ was
pointed out to |74 him;
and immediately and as a suppliant he offered him the relics of Saint John the
Baptist, which he had kept by him for a long time. The servant of God received
the relics with the veneration they deserved; and so the blessing of Saint John
was bestowed unasked upon the church, as he had foretold, and Severinus
consecrated the relics by the hands of the priests.
CHAPTER XXIV.
There was a town called
Joviaco,73 twenty
miles and more distant from Batavis. Thither the man of God, impressed as usual
by a revelation, sent a singer of the church, Moderatus by name; admonishing
that all the inhabitants should quit that place without delay. For imminent destruction
threatened them if they despised his commands.74 Some
were in doubt over so great a presage, while others did not believe it at all.
Therefore yet again he sent one unto them, a certain |75 man
of Quintanis, to whom he said, weeping, "Make haste! Declare unto them
that if they stay there this night, they shall without delay be made
captives!" He bade that Saint Maximianus too, a priest of spiritual life,
should be urgently warned; that he at least, leaving the scorners behind,
through the compassion of heaven might escape. The servant of God said that he
was in great sorrow over him, lest haply he might postpone obedience to the
saving command, and so be exposed to the threatening destruction. Accordingly
the messenger of the man of God went and fulfilled his orders; and when the
others in their unbelief hesitated, he did not tarry a moment, though the
priest strove to keep him and wished to extend to him the courtesy of his
hospitality. That night the Heruli made a sudden, unexpected onslaught, sacked
the town, and led most of the people into captivity. They hanged the priest
Maximianus on a cross. When the news came, the servant of God grieved sorely
that his warnings had been disregarded.
CHAPTER XXV.
Later a man from Noricum,
Maximus by name, came to visit the servant of God, as was his frequent custom.
Pursuant to their established friendship, he tarried some days in the monastery
of the saint. Then Severinus informed him by his oracles that his country was
about to experience a sudden and heavy disaster. Maximus took a letter
addressed to Saint |76 Paulinus
the bishop, and in all haste returned home. Accordingly Paulinus, prepared by
the contents of the letter, wrote to all the castles of his diocese, and
strongly admonished them to meet the coming mischief and disaster by a three
days' fast, as the letter of the man of God had indicated. They obeyed these
commands, and the fast was ended, when lo, a vast multitude of the Alamanni,
minions of Death, laid everything waste. But the castles felt no danger. The
trusty cuirass of fasting, and praiseworthy humility of heart, with the aid of
the prophet, had armed them boldly against the fierceness of the enemy.
CHAPTER XXVI.
Later, a leper from the
territory of Milan came to Saint Severinus, attracted by his fame. When he
prayed and begged to be made whole, Severinus decreed a fast, and commended the
leper to his monks; and through the work of God's grace he was forthwith
cleansed. When he had been made whole and was advised to return to his country,
he threw himself at the feet of the saint, imploring that he be not compelled
to go home again; desiring that he might escape from the leprosy of sin as he
had from that of the flesh, and might close his life in the same place with a
praiseworthy end. The man of God greatly admired his pious purpose, and with
fatherly command instructed a few monks to practise frequent |77 fasts
with him and to continue in uninterrupted prayer, in order that the Lord might
grant to him those things which were meet. Fortified by so great remedies,
within the space of two months the man was freed from the fetters of mortal
life.
CHAPTER XXVII.
At the same time the
inhabitants of the town of Quintanis, exhausted by the incessant incursions of
the Alamanni, left their own abodes and removed to the town of Batavis. But
their place of refuge did not remain hidden from the Alamanni: wherefore the
barbarians were the more inflamed, believing that they might pillage the
peoples of two towns in one attack. But Saint Severinus applied himself
vigorously to prayer, and encouraged the Romans in manifold ways by examples of
salvation. He foretold that the present foes should indeed by God's aid be
overcome; but that after the victory those who despised his admonitions should
perish. Therefore the Romans in a body, strengthened by the prediction of the
saint, and in the hope of the promised victory, drew up against the Alamanni in
order of battle, fortified less with material arms than by the prayers of the
saint. The Alamanni were overthrown in the conflict and fled. The man of God
addressed the victors as follows. "Children, do not attribute the glory of
the |78 present
conflict to your own strength.75 Know
that ye are now set free through the protection of God to the end that ye may
depart hence within a little space of time, granted you as a kind of armistice.
So gather together and go down with me to the town of Lauriacum." The man
of God impressed these things upon them from the fullness of his piety. But
when the people of Batavis hesitated to leave their native soil, he added,
"Although that town also, whither we go, must be abandoned as speedily as
possible before the inrushing barbarism, yet let us now in like manner depart
from this place."
As he impressed such
things upon their minds, most of the people followed him. A few indeed proved
stubborn, nor did the scorners escape the hostile sword. For that same week the
Thuringi stormed the town; and of those who notwithstanding the prohibition of
the man of God remained there, a part were butchered, the rest led off into
captivity and made to pay the penalty for their scorn.76 |79
CHAPTER XXVIII.
After the destruction of
the towns on the upper course of the Danube, all the people who had obeyed the
warnings of Saint Severinus removed into the town of Lauriacum. He warned them
with incessant exhortations not to put trust in their own strength, but to
apply themselves to prayers and fastings and almsgivings, and to be defended
rather by the weapons of the spirit.
Moreover one day the man of
God appointed that all the poor be gathered together in one church, that he
might, as custom demanded, dispense oil to them: a commodity which in those
places was brought to market only after a most difficult transport by traders.
Accordingly a great throng of the needy assembled, as if for the sake of
receiving the benediction. No doubt the presence of this fluid, a costly food,
swelled |80 the
throng and the number of applicants. When the saint had finished the prayer,
and made the sign of the cross, he uttered as usual, while all listened, the
word of Holy Writ, "Blessed be the name of the Lord." Then he began
with his own hand to fill the measures of oil for the attendants who conveyed
it, copying as a faithful servant his Lord, who came not to be ministered unto,
but to minister.77 And,
following in the way of the Saviour, he rejoiced that the substance was
increased, which he poured out with his right hand, his left hand knowing not.78 When
the oil-vessels of the poor were filled, the oil in the hands of the attendants
was not diminished. Now while the bystanders silently wondered at so great a
blessing of God, one of them, whose name was Pientissimus, in amazement and
great fear cried out, "My Lord! This pot of oil increases, and overflows
like a fountain!" So, its miraculous powers having been betrayed, the
welcome fluid was withdrawn. Straightway the servant of Christ cried out and
said, "Brother, what hast thou done? Thou hast hindered the advantage of
many: may the Lord Jesus Christ pardon thee!" So once the widow woman
burdened with debts was bidden by Elisha the prophet from the small quantity of
oil which she had to fill vessels not a few. After she had done this, and asked
for yet more vessels from her sons, when she heard that there was not a vessel
more, straightway the oil stayed.79 |81
CHAPTER XXIX.
At the same time Maximus
of Noricum, of whom we have made mention above, kindled by the warmth of his
faith, at midwinter, when the roads of that region are closed by the numbing
cold, hastened to come to Saint Severinus. It was an enterprise of rash
temerity, or rather, as was afterwards manifest, of fearless devotion. He had
hired many companions, to carry on their backs, for the benefit of the captives
and the poor, a collection of clothing which the people of Noricum had piously
given.80 So
they set out, and attained the highest peaks of the Alps, where all night long
the snow fell so thickly that it shut them in beneath the protecting shelter of
a great tree, as a huge pit would inclose those who had fallen into it. And
when they despaired utterly of their lives, since no aid (as they thought) was
at hand, the leader of the companions saw in his sleep a vision of the man of
God standing and saying unto him, "Fear not; complete your journey."
They were instantly heartened by this revelation, and resumed their course,
trusting in God rather than in the strength of their limbs; when suddenly by
divine command a bear of monstrous size appeared at their side to show the way:81 though
in |82 the
winter time he usually hid in caves. He immediately disclosed the desired road,
and for about two hundred miles, turning aside neither to the left nor to the
right, showed a passable way. For he went just far enough ahead of them so that
his fresh track broke out a path. So, leading through the desert wilderness,
the beast did not forsake the men who were bringing relief to the needy, but
with the utmost possible friendliness conducted them as far as human
habitations. Then, having fulfilled his duty, he turned aside and departed:
showing by the great service of his guidance what men ought to do for men, and
how much love they ought to display, since here a savage beast showed the road
to the despairing.
When the arrivals were
announced to the servant of God, he said, "Blessed be the name of the
Lord! Let them enter, to whom a bear hath opened a way for their coming."
When they heard this they marvelled with exceeding great amazement that the man
of God should tell that which had happened in his absence.
CHAPTER XXX.
The citizens of the town
of Lauriacum and the fugitives from the upper castles appointed scouts to
explore the suspected places, and guarded against the enemy, so far as by human
care they could. The servant of God, instructed by divine inspiration, arranged
beforehand with prophetic mind that they should bring inside the city wall all
their meagre property, in order |83 that
the foemen in their deadly foray, meeting with no human life, might be promptly
forced by hunger to abandon their frightful and cruel designs. This he
earnestly entreated for four days. When the fourth day already verged toward
evening, he sent a monk, Valens by name, to Saint Constantius, bishop of the
town,82 and
said to the others who remained, "Set the customary guards at the walls
tonight, and keep a stricter watch; and beware of a sudden and treacherous
assault by the foe." They declared to him that the scouts saw absolutely
nothing of the enemy. But the servant of Christ did not cease to forewarn the
hesitant, and cried out with a loud voice, affirming that they would be taken
captive that same night unless they faithfully obeyed his commands. He often
repeated the words, "If I shall be proved a liar, stone me." So at
last they were compelled to guard the walls.
At the beginning of the
night they sang psalms, as they were wont, and afterwards the men gathered in
great numbers and commenced their watch. Then a nearby haystack, accidentally
fired by a porter's torch, illuminated, but did not burn the city. When this
happened, every one howled and shouted, and the enemy concealed in the woods and
forests were |84 terrified
by the sudden brightness and the shouting, and, thinking themselves detected,
remained quiet. Next morning they surrounded the city, and ran to and fro
everywhere; but when they found no food, they seized the herd of cattle of a
certain man who in the face of the prophecies of the servant of God had
stubbornly scorned to secure his possessions, and withdrew.
Now when they were gone
the citizens sallied forth from the gates, and found ladders lying not far from
the walls. These the barbarians had made ready for the destruction of the city,
and had thrown away when they were disturbed in the night by the shouting.
Therefore the citizens of Lauriacum humbly besought pardon from the servant of
Christ, confessing that their hearts were harder than stones. They recognized
from these events that the loveliness of prophecy bloomed in the saint.
Assuredly the disobedient populace would all have gone into captivity, had not
the accustomed prayer of the man of God kept them free; for as James the
apostle bears witness, "The continual prayer of a righteous man availeth
much." 83
CHAPTER XXXI.
Feletheus, sometimes
called Feva, king of the Rugii, hearing that from all the towns by the advice
of the servant of God the remnants that had escaped the barbarian sword had
gathered at Lauriacum, took an |85 army
and came, purposing to bring them quickly into his own power and to lead them
away and settle them in the towns, of which Favianis was one, that were
tributary to him and near him, and were separated from the Rugii only by the
Danube. Wherefore all were deeply disturbed, and with prayers went to Saint
Severinus, that he might go forth to meet the king and moderate his purpose.
All night Severinus hastened, and in the morning met him at the twentieth
milestone from the city. The king, much alarmed by his arrival, averred that he
was vastly distressed by the saint's fatiguing journey, and inquired the causes
of his sudden visit. To whom thus answered the servant of God: "Peace be
unto thee, most excellent king. I come to thee as ambassador of Christ, to beg
compassion for the conquered. Reflect upon the grace, recall to mind the divine
favors, of whose repeated aid thy father was sensible. Throughout the whole time
of his reign he never ventured to take any step without my advice. He did not
withstand my salutary admonitions; and from frequent successes he learned to
recognize the great value of an obedient mind, and how greatly it profiteth
victors not to be puffed up by their triumphs." And the king saith,
"I will not suffer this people, for whom thou comest as a friendly
intercessor, to be ruined by the cruel plundering of the Alamanni and Thuringi,
or slaughtered by the sword, or reduced to slavery, when I have neighboring and
tributary towns in which they ought to be established." The servant of
Christ firmly answered him |86 as
follows: "Was it thy bow or sword that delivered these men from the
continual ravages of robbers? Were they not rather reserved by the favor of
God, that they might be able for a short while to obey thee? Therefore, most
excellent king, do not now reject my counsel. Commit these subjects to my guardian
care, lest by the constraint of so great an army they be ruined rather than
removed. For I trust in my Lord, that he, who hath made me a witness of their
calamities, shall make me a suitable leader to conduct them to safety."
The king was appeased by these
moderate representations, and forthwith went back with his army. Therefore the
Romans whom Saint Severinus had received in his guardian care left Lauriacum,
were amicably established in the towns, and lived in friendly alliance with the
Rugii.84 But
Severinus dwelt at Favianis in his old monastery, and ceased not to admonish
the peoples and to foretell the future, declaring that all were to remove into
a Roman province without any loss of liberty.
CHAPTER XXXII.
At about the same time
King Odoacer addressed a friendly letter to Saint Severinus, and, mindful of
that prophecy, by which of yore he had foretold that |87 he
should become king, entreated him to choose whatsoever gift he might desire. In
response to this august invitation, the saint asked that one Ambrose, who was
living in exile, be pardoned. Odoacer joyfully obeyed his command.
Also, once when in the
saint's presence many nobles were praising Odoacer with the adulation usual
among men, Severinus asked on what king they were conferring such great
commendations. They replied, "Odoacer." "Odoacer," he said,
"safe between thirteen and fourteen"; meaning of course the years of
his unchallenged sovereignty: and he added that they should live to see the
speedy fulfillment of his prophecy.
CHAPTER XXXIII.
At the entreaty of the
townspeople, among whom he had first won fame, Saint Severinus came to
Comagenis. One of the nobles of King Feletheus had a son, a youth, who was
wasted away by inveterate sickness and for whose burial preparations were
already in progress. When the nobleman learned that Severinus was at Comagenis,
he crossed the Danube and cast himself at his feet. Weeping, he said, "I
believe, man of God, that thy entreaty can procure from heaven a swift recovery
for my son." Then Severinus offered prayer. The boy, who had been brought
to him half-dead, straightway arose whole, to the amazement of his father, and
forthwith returned home in perfect health. |88
CHAPTER XXXIV.
Likewise a certain leper,
Tejo by name, attracted by the virtues of Saint Severinus, came from a far
country, asking to be cleansed through his prayer. So he was given the
customary command, and bidden ceaselessly and with tears to implore God, the
giver of all grace. Why say more? Through the prayers of the saint the leper
was cleansed by the divine aid; as he altered his character for the better, he
gained a change of color also; and he, and many others who knew of him,
proclaimed far and wide the mighty works of the Eternal King.
CHAPTER XXXV.
Bonosus, by birth a
barbarian, was a monk of Saint Severinus, and hung upon his words. He was much
afflicted by weakness of the eyes, and desired that cure be afforded him
through the prayers of the saint. He bore it ill that strangers and foreigners
experienced the aid of healing grace, while no cure or help was tendered to
him. The servant of God said unto him, "Son, it is not expedient for thee
to have clear sight in the bodily eyes, and to prefer distinct vision by the
eye of the flesh. Pray rather that thy inner sight may be quickened."
Bonosus was instructed by these admonitions, and was eager to see with the
heart rather than with the flesh. He gained a wonderful power of unwavering
continuance in prayer. After |89 he
had remained steadfastly for about forty years in the service of the monastery,
he passed away in the same ardent faith in which he was converted.
CHAPTER XXXVI. 85
In Bojotro, a place
mentioned above, the humble teacher perceived that three monks of his monastery
were stained with horrid pride. When he had ascertained that each of them upon
being visited with reproach was hardened in his sin, he prayed that the Lord
should receive them into the adoption of sons, and deign to reprove them with
the paternal lash. Before he had ended his tearful prayer, the three monks were
in one and the same instant seized violently by the devil and tormented, and
with cries confessed the stubbornness of their hearts.
Let it not seem to any
one cruel or wrong, that men of this sort are delivered "unto Satan for
the destruction of the flesh," as the blessed apostle teacheth, "that
the spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus." 86 For
Saint Ambrose, bishop of Milan, said that the slave of Stilicho, who was found
to be the |90 author
of forged letters, ought to be delivered unto Satan, that he might not dare to
commit such crimes in the future; and at the same moment, while the word was
yet in the bishop's mouth, the unclean spirit seized the slave and began to
rend him.87 Sulpicius
Severus, too, relates,88 on
the authority of Postumianus, that a certain man, admirable for his great
virtues and miracles, aiming to drive out from his heart the vanity of
ostentation into which he had fallen, procured by entreaty "that power
over him might be given the devil for five months, and he be made like those
whom he himself had healed." And Sulpicius says, a little further on, that
accordingly "he was seized by the devil, held in chains, and endured
everything which those possessed by devils are wont to suffer; until, finally,
in the fifth month he was cured, not merely from the devil, but (what he needed
and desired more) from the fault."
So the man of God turned
over the three monks to the brethren, and subjected them for forty days to the
bitter remedy of fasting. When the days were fulfilled, he spake a prayer over
them, and plucked them forth from the power of the devil, and bestowed upon
them soundness not only of body but of mind. As a result of this event, the
saint was held in enhanced awe and terror, and a greater fear of discipline
possessed the rest.89 |91
CHAPTER XXXVII.
Marcianus the monk, who
was afterward priest, and who preceded me in the headship of the monastery, was
sent by Severinus to Noricum in company with Brother Renatus. As the third day
was passing, the saint said to the brethren, "Pray, dearly beloved, for at
this hour grievous tribulation is upon Marcianus and Renatus, from which
nevertheless they shall be freed by Christ's aid." Then the monks
straightway wrote down what he had said; and when many months later Marcianus
and Renatus returned, and made known the day and hour of their peril, at which
they had escaped the barbarians, these were found to be just as had been
written down. |92
CHAPTER XXXVIII.
Also most blessed
Severinus suddenly commanded one of the brethren, by name Ursus, to meet in
advance a coming calamity by a strict fast of forty days, with abstinence from
food, and lamentations, saying, "A bodily peril threatens thee, which
through God's protection thou shalt avert by the remedy of a scanty diet of
bread and water." So on the fortieth day a deadly pustule appeared on the
arm of the fasting man, which he immediately showed to Severinus, approaching
him as a suppliant. The holy servant of God said unto him, "Do not fear
the crisis which was foretold thee forty days ago"; and straightway with
his own hand made the sign of the cross over it; whereupon the fatal pustule vanished,
to the amazement of the bystanders.
Let it suffice to have
told of this one of his cures in his own household, that Ï may avoid the
tediousness of a lengthy task. For often through the revelation of Christ he
foretold the illnesses of his monks, and healed them through the same gifts by
which he foresaw them.
CHAPTER XXXIX.
The spiritual teacher,
continuing instant in prayer and fasting, dwelt not far from the cell of his
disciples. With them he regularly completed the morning prayers, and the proper
psalm-singing in the evening. |93 The
remaining times of prayer he fulfilled in the little oratory in which he lived.
In his seasons of prayer he was often strengthened by celestial oracles, and
through the grace of God foretold many things that were to come. He knew the
secrets of many things, and, when there was need, made them known, and provided
remedies for each patient, according as the kind of sickness demanded. His bed
was a single mohair rug on the floor of the oratory.90 Always,
even while he slept, he wore the same garment.91 He
never broke his fast before sunset except on an appointed festival.92 In
Lent he was satisfied with one meal a |94 week,
yet his countenance shone with the same cheerfulness. He wept over the sins of
others as if they were his own, and helped to overcome them by such aid as he
could give.
CHAPTER XL.
At last, after many
struggles and long contests, Saint Severinus, through the revelation of God,
perceived that he was about to pass from this world. He bade Feva, king of the
Rugii, mentioned above, to come to him with his cruel wife Giso. He exhorted
Feva, with salutary words, that in dealing with his subjects he should
constantly bear in mind that he must render account to the Lord for the
condition of his kingdom; and fearlessly added other admonitions. Then he
stretched forth his hand, pointing to the king's breast, and reproachfully
asked the queen, "Giso, which lovest thou the more, this soul, or gold and
silver?" And when she answered that she prized her husband above all
riches, the man of God in his wisdom continued, "Therefore cease to
oppress the innocent, lest their affliction result in the |95 destruction
of your power. For thou often bringest to naught the clemency of the
king." But she answered, "Why dost thou receive us so, servant of
God?" He replied, "I adjure you, I the lowly, who shall shortly stand
in the presence of God, that ye restrain yourselves from unjust deeds, and apply
yourselves to works of piety. Hitherto by God's help your kingdom hath been
prospered. Henceforth look to it." The king and queen, much instructed by
these admonitions, bade him farewell, and went away.93
Then the saint ceased not
to address his people in the sweetness of love concerning the nearness of his
departure. Indeed, he had done so ceaselessly before. "Know ye,
brethren," he said, "that as the children of Israel were delivered
out of the land of Egypt, so all the peoples of this land are destined to be
freed from the unrighteous sway of the barbarians. For all shall depart from
these towns with their possessions, |96 and
shall reach the Roman province without any loss by capture. But remember the
command of the holy patriarch Joseph, in the words of whose testimony I, though
unworthy and most lowly, make my request to you: 'God will surely visit you;
and ye shall carry up my bones from hence.' 94 This
shall profit, not me, but you. For these places, now thronged with inhabitants,
shall be rendered a solitude so utterly waste that the enemy, thinking to find
gold, shall dig up even the graves of the dead." The present issue in fact
has proved the truth of his prophecy. But the most holy father, with pious
forethought, ordered his body to be removed as a token; in order that when the
general transmigration of the people should take place, the company of brethren
which he had gathered might depart undivided, and, held together by the common
bond of his memory, might endure as one holy society.
CHAPTER XLI.
Moreover most blessed
Severinus revealed two years or more in advance the day on which he was to pass
from the body.95 This
he did in the following manner. |97 On
the day of Epiphany, when Saint Lucillus the priest had announced in agitation
that on the morrow he was to perform the annual rites of commemoration for the
burial day of his abbot, Saint Valentine,96 formerly
bishop of the Raetias, the servant of God replied, "If Saint Valentine
hath committed these rites to thee to be performed, I too, being about to
depart from the body, bequeath to thee the care of my funeral festival, which
shall be observed upon the same day." Lucillus, an old and broken man, was
greatly shaken at this saying, and rather commended himself earnestly to the
protection of Severinus, on the ground that he was likely to pass away first.
But Severinus answered, "Holy priest, this thing which thou hast heard
shall come to pass, nor shall the Lord's ordinance be brought to naught by the
will of man." |98
CHAPTER XLII.
Feva, king of the Rugii,
had given Favianis, one of the few towns which remained on the bank of the
Danube, to his brother Ferderuchus. Near this town, as I have related, Saint
Severinus dwelt. When Ferderuchus came, as was his wont, to pay his respects to
Severinus, the soldier of Christ began to tell him eagerly of his approaching
journey, and adjured him, saying: "Know that I am to depart quickly to the
Lord. Therefore be warned, and beware of attempting, when I am gone, to lay
hands on any of these things which have been committed to me. Seize not the
substance of the poor and the captives. If thou art guilty of such foolhardiness,
which may Heaven forfend, thou shalt feel the wrath of God! "Ferderuchus,
perturbed by the unexpected admonition, said, "Why dost thou adjure me and
confound me? I do not wish to be deprived of thy mighty protection. Indeed, it
is seemly that I should add something to thy sacred bounty, which all men know,
not take away from it; that I may deserve to be protected by thy wonted prayer,
as was our father Flaccitheus. He learned by experience that he was ever aided
by the merits of thy holiness." And Severinus said, "On the very
first opportunity thou wilt wish to violate my cell. Then straightway thou
shalt learn the truth of my words, and be punished in a manner which I do not
desire." Then Ferderuchus promised that |99 he
would observe the admonitions of the servant of Christ, and returned to his
home.
But the kindly teacher
did not cease to speak continually to his disciples, saying, "I trust in
the grace of my Lord Jesus Christ that if ye persevere in his work, and in
memory of me remain united in friendly association, he will give you the riches
of eternal life, nor in this world will he deny you his consolation."
CHAPTER XLIII.
On the fifth of January he
began to be slightly disquieted by a pain in the side.97 When
this persisted for three days, at midnight he commanded the brethren to be with
him. He gave them instructions as to the disposal of his body, strengthened
them with fatherly counsel, and bestowed upon them the following earnest and
admirable discourse.
"Most beloved sons
in Christ," he said, "ye know that blessed Jacob, when he was about
to leave the world, and the time drew nigh that he must die, called unto his
sons, and said, 'Gather yourselves together'; that he might tell them that
which should befall them in the last days, and bless them every one according
to his blessing.98 But
I am lowly and of lukewarm faith. I am inferior to such piety. I dare not
assume the burden of this privilege. Yet there is one thing which is accordant
with my humility, and which |100 I
will say. I will refer you to the examples of the elders, whose faith follow,
considering the end of their conversation.99 For
Abraham, when called of the Lord, obeyed in faith. He went forth into a place
which he was to receive into his possession; and he went forth not knowing
whither he was to go. Therefore imitate the faith of this blessed patriarch,
copy after his holiness, despise the things of earth, seek ever the heavenly
home. Moreover I trust in the Lord, that eternal gain shall come to me from
you. For I perceive that ye have enlarged my joy by the fervor of your spirit,
that ye love justice, that ye cherish the bonds of brotherly love, that ye
neglect not chastity, that ye guard the rule of humility. These things, so far
as the eye of man hath power to see, I confidently praise and approve. But pray
that those things which to human view are worthy, may be confirmed by the test
of the eternal judgment; for God seeth not as man seeth. Indeed, as the divine
word declareth, he searcheth all hearts, and understandeth all the imaginations
of the thoughts.100 Therefore
constantly hope and pray for this, that God may enlighten the eyes of your
understanding,101 and
open them, as blessed Elisha prayed, that ye may see 102 what
hosts of saints surround and support you, what mighty aids are prepared for the
faithful. For our God draws nigh to them that are without guile. Let the
soldiers of God fail |101 not
to pray without ceasing. Let him not be reluctant to repent, who was not
ashamed to sin. Sinners, hesitate not to lament, if but by the overflowing of
your tears the wrath of God may be appeased; for he hath seen fit to call a
contrite spirit his sacrifice.103 Therefore
let us be humble in heart, tranquil in mind; guarding against all sins and ever
mindful of the divine commands; knowing that meanness of garb, the name monk,
the word religion, the outward form of piety, profiteth us not, if touching the
observance of God's commands we be found degenerate and false. Therefore let
your characters, my most beloved sons, accord with the vow which ye have
assumed. It is a great crime to lead a sinful life, even for a man of this
world;104 how
much more then for monks, who have fled from the enticements of the world as
from a hideous wild beast, and have preferred Christ to all desires; whose gait
and garb are held to be evidence of virtue? But why, dearest sons, delay you
further with a long address? It remains to bestow upon you the last prayer of
the blessed apostle, who saith, 'And now I commend you to God, and to the word
of his grace, who is able to preserve you, and to give you an |102 inheritance
among all them which are sanctified.' 105 To
him be the glory for ever and ever."
After this edifying
address, he bade all in succession approach for his kiss. He received the
sacrament of the communion; and altogether forbade that they should weep for
him. Having stretched out his hand, and made the sign of the cross over his
whole body, he commanded that they should sing a psalm. When the grief that
overspread them kept them silent, he himself started the psalm, "Praise ye
the Lord in his sanctuary; let everything that hath breath praise the
Lord."106 And
so, on the eighth of January, repeating this verse, while we could hardly make
the responses, he fell asleep in the Lord.
When he was buried, our
elders, implicitly believing that, like his many other prophecies, what he had
foretold in regard to our removal could not fail to come to pass, prepared a
wooden casket;107 that
when the predicted migration of the people should take place, the commands of
the prophet might be fulfilled. |103
CHAPTER XLIV.
Ferderuchus was poor and
ungodly, a greedy barbarian, and more greedy than the barbarians. When he
learned of the death of Saint Severinus, he determined to carry off the
clothing allotted to the poor, and some other things. Joining sacrilege to this
crime, he ordered that the silver goblet and the rest of the altar service be
carried off. Since the service was on the holy altars, the bailiff who was sent
dared not stretch out his hands to such a villainy, but compelled a certain
soldier, Avitianus by name, to commit the robbery. Although Avitianus executed
the order unwillingly, he was from that moment plagued by an incessant
trembling in all his limbs, and furthermore was possessed by a devil. Therefore
he quickly set right his sins by adopting a better purpose. For he assumed the
vow of the sacred profession, exchanged the weapons of earth for those of
heaven, and withdrew to a lonely isle.108 |104
Ferderuchus, unmindful of
the adjuration and prophecy of the holy man, seized all the possessions of the
monastery, and left only the walls, which he could not carry across the Danube.
But presently the threatened vengeance came upon him. For within the space of a
month he was slain by Fredericus, his brother's son, and lost booty and life
together.
Therefore King Odoacer
waged war upon the Rugii. They were defeated, Fredericus was compelled to flee.
His father Feva was taken prisoner, and removed to Italy with his wicked wife.109
Later, Odoacer heard that
Fredericus had returned to his home. At once he dispatched a great army, under
his brother Onoulfus; before whom Fredericus fled again, and went to King
Theodoric, who was then at Novae,110 a
city of the province of Moesia.
Onoulfus, however, at his
brother's command ordered all the Romans to migrate to Italy. Then all the
inhabitants, led forth from the daily depredations of |105 the
barbarians as from the house of Egyptian bondage, recognized the oracles of
Saint Severinus.111
When Count Pierius
compelled all to depart, the venerable Lucillus, then our priest, was not
unmindful of the command of Severinus. After he had ended singing with the
monks the vesper psalms, he bade the place of burial to be opened. When it was
uncovered, a fragrance of such sweetness surrounded us who stood by, that we
fell on the earth for joy and wonder. Then whereas we reckoned in all human
expectation to find the bones of his corpse disjoined, for the sixth year of
his burial had already passed, we found the bodily structure intact. For this
miracle we returned unmeasured thanks to the Author of all, because the corpse
of the saint, on which were no spices, which no embalmer's hand had touched,
had staid unharmed, with beard and hair, even to that time. Accordingly the
linen cloths were changed; the corpse was inclosed in the casket that had been
prepared for it long before, placed in a wagon drawn by horses, and presently
carried forth. All the provincials made the journey in our company. They
abandoned the towns on the banks of the Danube and were allotted the
various |106 abodes
of their exile through the different districts of Italy. So the body of the
saint passed through many lands and was borne to a castle named Mount Feleter.112
CHAPTER XLV.
During this time many
that were attacked by divers diseases, and some who were oppressed by unclean
spirits, experienced the instant healing of divine grace. A certain dumb man
also was brought to this castle through the compassion of his kinsmen. He
eagerly entered the oratory, where the body of the holy man still lay upon the
wagon, and when he offered supplication behind the closed door of his mouth, in
the chamber of his heart, immediately his tongue was loosed in prayer, and he
spoke praise unto the Most High. And when he returned to the inn where he was
wont to lodge, and was questioned as usual by nod and sign, he answered in a
clear voice, that he had prayed and had offered praise to God. When he spoke,
they who knew him were terrified and ran shouting to the oratory and told Saint
Lucillus the priest, and us, who were with him and knew nothing of the event.
Then we all rejoiced exceedingly, and returned thanks to the divine
mercy. |107
CHAPTER XLVI.
Barbaria, a lady of rank,113 venerated
Saint Severinus with pious devotion. She and her late husband had known him
well by reputation and through correspondence. When, after the death of the
saint, she heard that his body had with great labor been brought into Italy,
and up to that time had not been committed to earth, she invited by frequent
letters our venerable priest Marcianus, and also the whole brotherhood. Then
with the authorization of Saint Gelasius, pontiff of the Roman see, and
received by the people of Naples with reverent obsequies, the body was laid to
rest by the hands of Saint Victor the bishop in the Lucullan castle,114 in
a mausoleum which Barbaria had built.115 |108
At this solemnity many
afflicted by divers diseases, whom it would be tedious to enumerate, were
instantly healed. Among them was a venerable handmaid of |109 God,
Processa by name, a citizen of Naples, who suffered from a severe and
troublesome sickness. Invited by the virtues of the holy corpse, she hastened
to meet it on the way; and when she approached the vehicle in which the
venerable body was borne, immediately she was free from sickness in all her
members.
Also at that time a blind
man, Laudicius, was startled when he heard the unexpected clamor of the people
singing psalms, and anxiously asked his household what it was. When they
replied that the body of a certain Saint Severinus was passing, he was moved by
the spirit, and asked that he be led to the window; from which one possessed of
sight could behold afar |110 off
the multitude singing psalms and the carriage bearing the sacred body. And when
he leaned forth from the window and prayed, straightway he saw, and pointed out
his acquaintances and neighbors one by one. Thereupon all who heard him wept
for joy and returned thanks to God.
Marinus too, precentor of
the holy church at Naples, could not recover his health after a terrible
sickness, and suffered from a constant headache. In faith he leaned his head
against the carriage, and immediately lifted it up free from pain. In memory of
this benefit, he always came on the anniversary of the saint's burial and
rendered to God thanks and the sacrifice of a vow.
I have related three of
the numberless miracles which were wrought on the arrival of the saint through
his mediation and virtues. Let it suffice; though many know of more.
A monastery, built at the
same place to the memory of the blessed man, still endures. By his merits many
possessed with devils have received and do receive healing through the
effective grace of God; to whom is honor and glory for ever and ever. Amen.
Illustrious minister of
Christ, thou hast the memoir. From it make by thy editorial care a profitable
work. |111
LETTER
OF PASCHASIUS TO EUGIPPIUS
Paschasius the deacon to
the holy and ever most beloved priest Eugippius.
Dearest brother in
Christ, thou measurest me by the measure of thy skill, eloquence, and happy
leisure, and disdainest to consider my vexatious employments and manifold
imperfections. Yet through the contemplation of thy love I sustain the injury
to my modesty.116
Thou hast sent me a
memoir to which the eloquence of the trained writer can add nothing, and in a
short compendium hast produced a work which the whole church can read. The life
and character of Saint Severinus, who dwelt in the provinces bordering on the
Pannonias, thou hast portrayed with much faithfulness; and thou hast handed
down to the memory of future generations, to remain through long ages, the
miracles which divine virtue hath wrought through him. The deeds of the good
cannot perish with time. All persons to whom thy narrative shall bring Saint
Severinus shall have him before them, and shall perceive that in a certain
sense he dwells with them. And |112 so
as thou hast told very simply, and explained very clearly, these particulars
which thou didst ask me to narrate, I have thought it best not to try to make
any addition to thy work. Indeed, it is one thing to relate what we have been
told, quite another thing, to draw from the stores of our own experience. The
virtues of teachers are particularly visible in their daily life, and
consequently are more easily depicted by their pupils. By God's gift inspired,
thou understandest the value of the deeds of the saints for the improvement of
the minds of the good: their profitableness, the fervor they impart, their
cleansing power. On this point we have the authority of the well-known words of
the apostle, "being ensamples to the flock;" 117 and
Saint Paul commanded Timothy, "be thou an example of the
believers." 118 For
this reason Saint Paul compiles a concise catalogue of the just, and, beginning
from Abel, recounts the virtues of distinguished men.119 So
also that most faithful Mattathias, as the days drew near that he should die a
glorious death, distributed to his sons as an inheritance the examples of the
saints;120 that
fired with sacred zeal by the wonderful battles of the saints, they might hold
their lives as naught in the defense of the eternal laws. Nor did the sons find
the father's teaching false. For so greatly did the deeds of the elders profit
them, that with most manifest faith they terrified armed princes, overcame the
camps of the wicked, overthrew far and |113 wide
the worship and altars of demons,121 and
decorated with perennial garlands they provided a civic crown for their
glorious country.
For this reason also I
rejoice that through a brother's service something is provided for the
ornaments of the bride of Christ;122 not
that at any time, as I believe, have there been lacking illustrious examples of
the elders, but because it is fitting that the palace of the Great King should
have the standards of many victories. For true virtue is not obscured by the
multitude of virtues, but yearns for their increase, and is enlarged thereby.123 |114
[Footnotes moved to the
end and renumbered]
1. 1 A.D.
509.
2. 1 I
Corinthians, ii, 13.
3. 1 Orestes
was by birth a Roman provincial of Pannonia. Priscus (Bonnae, 1829), pp.
146, 185; Jordanes, De Rebus Geticis, 45; Anonymus Valesianus, 38.
4. 2 J. H. von
Falckenstein neatly expands the metaphor in his appreciation of
Severinus. Geschichten des grossen Herzogthums und ehemaligen Königreichs
Bayern (Munich, etc., 1763), i, p. 78.
5. 3 Fugitivus. For
the Roman law in regard to fugitive slaves and their recovery, one may consult
W. W. Buckland, The Roman Law of Slavery (Cambridge, England, 1908),
pp. 267-274, and the Codex Theodosianus, x, 12, Si vagum petatur
mancipium.
6. 1 "Quo
ipso non obscure indicabat, magno se ortu, et cujus indicium jactantiae
serviret." Marcus Mansitz, Germania Sacra (Augustae
Vindelicorum, etc., 1727-55), i, p. 80.
7. 2 Matthew,
vi, 3.
8. 3 Matthew,
xxv, 33.
9. 4 The
detailed account of the early life of Severinus, given in Theo
Sommerlad's Die Lebensbeschreibung Severins als kulturgeschichtliche
Quelle, pp. 62-68, needs mention only by way of caution. Sommerlad carries
ingenuity to a great excess.
10. 1 "It
is exceedingly doubtful whether the request was seriously meant. Similar
expressions are very common, which are no more than polite phrases."
Wilhelm Wattenbach, Deutschlands Geschichtsquellen im
Mittelalter (6th ed., Berlin, 1893-94), i, p. 49.
11. 1 The place
names in the ablative form, Asturis, Comagenis, Favianis, etc., mark the
tendency of the provincial Latin to develop into Romance dialects.
12. 1 In 453.
13. 2 Noricum
Ripense. Rodenberg renders by the German
equivalent, Ufernoricum. In the translation of Professor
Hayes, Ufernoricum, both here and in Chapter XI, becomes ' Upper
Noricum,' which is not a happy guess.
14. 3 Probably
on the site of the present Klosterneuburg, a little above Vienna.
15. 1 Custos. The
office is not to be confounded with that of janitor or doorkeeper (ostiarius)
mentioned in Chapters X and XVI, below. Isidorus Hispalensis, De
Ecclesiasticis Officiis, ii, 9, says: "Custodes sacrarii, Levitae
sunt. Ipsis enim jussum est custodire tabernaculum, et omnia vasa templi .
. . praeferentes speciem gravitatis." In his Regula
Monachorum, 20, he describes somewhat more fully the duties of the
position in a monastery church: " Ad custodem sacrarii pertinet cura vel
custodia templi, signum quoque dandi in vespertinis nocturnisque officiis;
vela, vestesque sacrae, ac vasa sacrorum, codices quoque instrumentaque cuncta,
oleum in usum sanctuarii, cera et luminaria."
16. 2 Near
Tulln.
17. 3 A
euphemism. Marcus Velserus justly remarks, " Quam misera et deplorata
illis temporibus harum provinciarum fuerit conditio, ex uno isto foedere satis
superque colligi poterat, nisi reliqua omnis in id argumentum
conspiraret." Opera (Norimbergae, 1682), p. 667.
18. 1 I think
it probable that this is the earthquake mentioned in Anonymus
Cuspiniani, Chronicon (in Thomas Roncallius, Vetustiora
Chronica, Patavii, 1787, ii, col. 124) under the year 455: "eversa
est Sabaria a Terraemotu VII. idus septemb. die Veneris "; and in the same
words, and under the same year, in the Excerptum Sangallense (in Karl
Frick, Chronka Minora, vol. 1, 1892, p. 422). Sabaria was in Upper Pannonia,
about seventy miles southeast of Comagenis in a straight line, or ninety-two
Roman miles by road. Antonini Augusti Itinerarium, pp. 233 f.
Wesseling.
The date of this
earthquake as given in the chronicles clearly cannot be correct. The Friday before
the Ides fell, in September 455, on the 9th, not on the 7th. I suggest
accordingly that, following C. F. Roesler (Chronica Medii Aevi, Tubingae,
1798, i, p. 341), we make the obvious emendation, and read "V. idus
Septembres die Veneris." Theodor Mommsen (Chronica Minora, Berlin,
1892-98, i, p. 304; in Monumenta Germaniae Historica) suggests the reading
"IV.," "nisi in anno erratum est"; but he cannot be right.
One might, it is true, reach his result by using inadvertently a table like
that in Sir Harris Nicolas's The, Chronology of History (London,
1835), p. 49, which contains the dominical letters for 4000 years after the
Christian era, according to the New Style. The New Style, however, does not
apply to the fifth century.
19. 1 On the
Danube between Tulln and Lorch; perhaps near the site of the present town of
Mautern.
20. 2
Colossians, iii, 5; Ephesians, v, 5. Of these passages the former is of course
the one to which direct reference is made. Bolland, Sauppe, Rodenberg, Knoell,
and Mommsen, all have followed Surius in giving only the reference to Ephesians,
which is purely secondary.
21. 1 Matthew,
xxv, 35-42; Salvian, Adversus Avaritiam, iv, 4: "Christus . . .
cum esurientibus esurit . . . quid ais, o homo, qui Christianum te esse dicis,
. . . Christus esurit, et tu delitias affluentibus paras? "
22. 2 The Inn.
23. 3
"Calidis Severini precibus solutae." Andreas
Erunner, Annalium Boicorum Partes III (ed. nova, Francofurti ad
Moenum, 1710), col. 118.
24. 1 Exodus,
xiv, 14.
25. 1 Georg
Kaufmann says, "Seine Wohnung war eine Zelle, oft auch eine
Höhle." Deutsche Geschichte bis auf Karl den Grossen (Leipsic,
1880-81), ii, p. 25. I find this cavern only in Kaufmann's work.
26. 2 Favianis
was long identified with Vienna by an erroneous tradition. Joannes Cuspinianus,
the great sixteenth century scholar, believed that his estate in the suburbs of
Vienna comprised Ad Vineas and the cell of Severinus. Austria (Francofurti,
1601), pp. 55, 69:
"Villam enim S.
Severini, ubi cellam habuit pius pater S. Severinus, jam ego possideo, ubi
nobilissima crescunt vineta, arboribus illic desectis ac purgatis. ... a sancto
Severino patria lingua Severin appellatur."
Cuspinianus calls
Severinus "second apostle of Austria" (secundarius Austriae
apostolus, alter Australium apostolus), the first being Quirinus, and reckons
him among the six patron saints of that country: the martyrs Quirinus,
Maximilian, Florian; Severinus; Colman the Irish pilgrim; Margrave Leopold III
the Pious. On p. 70 of his Austria is printed a poem by Joannes
Stabius, "In Sanctos Austriae Patronos Precatio," in forty-six
hexameter verses. The poem contains, however, nothing which seems to have
individual reference to Severinus, unless it be in vv. 32-38:
"Praesidio semper
secura sit Austria vestro.
Morborum omne genus, quae corpora nostra fatigant,
Infandumque malum, crudelem avertite pestem.
Sit flavae Cereris, laeti sit copia Bacchi:
Tartareo sonitu reboent nec classica Martern,
Sed Pax alma ferens ramum felicis olivae
Illustret terras, soror et Concordia mitis."
27. 1 It will
be noted that the monasteries founded by Saint Severinus were in the immediate
neighborhood of cities. F. W. Rettberg calls attention to this fact, and to its
accordance with the monastic rule of Saint Basil the Great: with which, he
suggests, Severinus may have become familiar during his wanderings in the
Orient. Kirchengeschichte Deutschlands (Göttingen, 1846-48), i, p.
231. Compare E. C. Butler's article "Basilian Monks," in
the Encyclopaedia Britannica (11th ed.).
28. 3 Wolfgang
Lazius, using a singular figure, says that "from this monastery, as if
from the Trojan horse, went forth almost all the bishops of
Noricum." Vienna Austriae. (Basileae, 1546), p. 54. Lazius gives
a list of these bishops, which Marcus Hansitz handles very
roughly. Germania Sacra, i, pp. 74, 85 ff. [Note to online
edition: there is no note 2 on the page in the printed text].
29. 1 Matthew,
v, 14, 15.
30. 2 Jordanes
(De Rebus Geticis, 55) says that the Danube " freezes so hard that it
will support like a solid rock an army of infantry, and carts and sleds, or whatsoever
vehicles there may be."
It is probable that
modern regulation of the current of the Danube by engineering works has had a
tendency to prevent the formation of extensive ice fields. Yet even now the
stream is frozen annually in Lower Hungary throughout several long stretches,
which at the height of the frost can occasionally be crossed with carts or
sleds. In Bavaria, Austria, and Rumania, field ice docs not form every winter.
Yet it sometimes happens even at Vienna ---- most recently in January, 1901
---- that the ice is strong enough to allow foot travellers a safe passage
across the river.
I am indebted to the
Imperial-Royal Central Bureau of Hydrography at Vienna for the information
contained in the above paragraph. One may consult also Anton Swarowsky's
essay Die Eisver-hältnisse der Donau in Bayern und Osterreich von
1850-90, in Geographische Abhandlungen, edited by Albrecht
Penck, Band v, Heft 1 (Vienna and Olmülz, 1801); and, for notices of the great
frosts of 821 and 1076-77, Fritz Curschmann's Hungersnöte im Mittelalter (Leipsic,
1900), pp. 94, 121.
31. 1 It may
be noted that in Eugippius the expression 'the apostle' always refers to Saint
Paul. Eugippius never bestows upon Severinus the appellation 'apostle of
Noricum' (apostolus Norici or apostolus Noricorum), later so common.
32. 2
Ephesians, i, 4.
33. 1 A
genealogical table of the Rugian royal house may be of service. Numerals in
parentheses refer to the chapters in which the individuals are mentioned.
Flaccitheus (5, 8, 42).
|
-------------------------------------
|
|
Feletheus, or Feva (8, 22?, 31, Ferderuchus
(42, 44)
33, 40, 42, 44)
married Giso (8, 40, 44)
|
Fredericus (8, 44)
Feba, named in Chapter
XXII, is probably the same as Feletheus, or Feva.
34. 1 A
comparison of this passage with the reference, in Chapter VIII, to Queen Giso's
attempt "to rebaptize certain Catholics," makes it evident that the
Rugii, or at least their sovereigns, were, like most of the converted Germans
of the fifth century and even later, Christians of the Arian sect. The fact
that the Rugii were Arians while the provincials were Catholics cooperated with
the difference of race to produce a lack of complete sympathy and understanding
between them. On the other hand, it was entirely natural that the Rugii, as
Christians, should assume the position towards the provincials that we find
them occupying more and more, of protectors against the depredations of the
German tribes that remained heathen: Alamanni and Thuringi (Chapter XXXI,
below, etc.); Heruli (Chapter XXIV); no doubt also the Franks and Saxons, whom
Ennodius (De Vita Beati Antoni, 12-14) names in connection with the Heruli
as devastators of the Pannonias during the ninth decade of the fifth century
---- cruel as wild beasts; turning a populous land into a desert; worshipping
gods who, they believed, could be propitiated only by human victims;
slaughtering clerics by preference, as the sacrifices most acceptable to their
divinities.
Dr. Julius von
Pflugk-Harttung's vividly worded description of life in Noricum in the time of
Severinus (Allgemeine Weltgeschickte, iv, p. 231) is somewhat confusing,
because of his failure to point out clearly this distinctive position of the
Rugii. He says, " They and their neighbor-tribes, Thuringi, Heruli,
Alamanni, and Goths, came from beyond the Danube in uninterrupted forays."
There is no mention in the Life of 'forays' on the part of the Rugii, except in
the strictly technical sectarian sense of the confiscation of the monastery
plate and furniture (Chapter XLIV); on the contrary, they themselves suffered
from plundering raids, as the next paragraph shows. Dr. Pflugk-Harttung's
reference to the Goths (Ostrogoths) is also not to the point. They lived, not
beyond the Danube but in Pannonia, on the Roman side of the river
(Jordanes, De Rebus Geticis, 50). Further, they were Christians,
partially civilized, and usually in alliance with the Romans against their
barbarian enemies. After the death of Attila there appears to have been only
one period, comprising a few months of the year 473, in which the Ostrogoths
were hostile to the Western Empire (ibid., 56). It is to that time that we
may very reasonably assign their attack upon Tiburnia in Noricum Mediterraneum
(Chapter XVII).
It is regrettable
that The Cambridge Medieval History, i (1911) repeats the false view
of the position of the Rugii. Mr. Ernest Barker, the writer of chapter xiv
therein, "Italy and the West, 410-476," says (p. 420) " The
Rugii . . . appear in the history of the time . . . as vexing with their
inroads the parts of Noricum which lay immediately south of the river. The Life
of Saint Severinus . . . describes their depredations "; and again (p.
425), " Parallel in some ways to the position of Marcellinus and Aegidius
is the beneficent theocracy which Saint Severinus established about the same
time in Noricum, a masterless province unprotected by Rome, and harassed by the
raids of the Rugii from the north of the river."
35. 1
Jeremiah, xvii, 5.
36. 2 In
lectulo tuo. Rodenberg renders auf deinem Lager: Professor Hayes
has "in thine own camp."
37. 1 I
Corinthians, vii, 25.
38. 1 Adolf
Harnack discusses the early conceptions of the Christian religion as a warfare,
and of the Church as a military organization, in the first part of his
essay Militia Christi (Tübingen, 1905). An illustration of the length
to which these conceptions might be carried is afforded by the biography of a
disciple of Severinus, Ennodius's De Vita Beati Antoni. Antonius,
'warrior of Christ,' decides to forsake his Alpine hermitage and to join the
'regiment of the isle Lerina' (see note to Chapter XLIV, below) of 'the army of
the saints.' "That veteran battle-line is ever watchful, and repulses the
enemy, after transfixing him with many blows. They number their triumphs by the
wars which the devil wages against them. They are not afraid, when the shrill
battle-trumpet announces Satan's onset, and urges to the fight. Daily combat
ever makes soldiers skilled and brave, while a long peace relaxes them."
39. 1 Max
Büdinger offers some excellent remarks on Giso's strongly marked
character. Oesterreichische Geschichte (Leipsic, 1858), i, p. 49.
40. 2
"Ausa etiam Catholico ritu ablutos, sacrilego Arianorum fonte denuo
lustrare." Johann Adlzreitter, Annalium Boicae Gentis Partes
III (ed. nova, Francofurti ad Moenum, 1710), col. 120.
41. 1 There is
an account of Gervasius and Protasius, the martyrs of Milan, in
Tillemont's Ecclesiastical Memoirs (English translation by Thomas
Deacon, London, 1731-35, ii, pp. 61-67).
42. 1 Adopting
Velserus's reading subrepere.
43. 2
Severinus was not the first to adopt this laudable attitude of caution in dealing
with supposed relics. Sulpicius Severus, De Beati Martini Vita, II,
tells that Saint Martin, finding no clear evidence as to the contents of a tomb
supposed to be hallowed by the remains of martyrs, prayed for a divine
revelation. " Then he turned to the left, and saw close at hand a foul and
savage ghost. He commanded the spectre to tell his name and desert. The spectre
made known his name, he confessed his crime; he had been a robber, put to death
for his wicked deeds, honored by the blunder of the mob; he had nothing in
common with martyrs; they were in glory, he was in torment. The bystanders
heard the spectre's voice, but did not see his form. Then Martin related what
he had seen, and ordered that the altar which was there should be removed from
the place. So he set free the people from the error of that superstition."
44. 1 Genesis,
xix, 26; Luke, xvii, 32.
45. 2 That
this is here the meaning of aedituus is shown by the Table of
Chapters, where it is represented by ostiarius. The office
of aedituus in the pagan temple, however, corresponds rather to that
of custos in the Christian church (see Chapter I, above), being a
position of some dignity. Ausonius, Commemoratio Professorum
Burdigalensium, x, 22-30, speaks of Phoebicius, a professor who had been Beleni
aedituus. DuCange gives the definition "Aedituus, Ostiarius, gradus
ecclesiasticus; cui aedis sacrae custodia incumbit, custos ": an
impossible one, since ostiarius and custos are quite different
officials. The word never really became naturalized in Christian literature.
Paulinus of Nola uses it, it is true (Epistolae, i, 10; in
Migne's Patrologia Latina, vol. lxi, col. 158); but he was a friend
and correspondent of Ausonius.
Theo Sommerlad, Die
Lebensbeschreibung Severins als kulturgeschichtliche Quelle (Leipsic,
1903), p. 33, fails to notice that Eugippius
uses aedituus and ostiarius interchangeably both at this
place and in Chapter XVI, below, and accordingly wrongly
considers aedituus equivalent to the ecclesiae custos of
Chapter I.
46. 1 The
country along the Danube was probably then, as now, rich in
orchards. Exposilio totius Mundi et Gentium, 57; A. A.
Muchar, Das römische Norikum (Grätz, 1825-26), ii, p. 186.
47. 2 These
organized bands of robbers appear again early in the sixth century, beyond the
Danube (Jordanes, De Rebus Geticis, 58; Amédée Thierry, Histoire
d'Attila et de ses Successeurs, Paris, 1856, i, pp. 288 f.); and, about
570, in Pannonia, under the name of Skama&reij (Menander Protector, Bonnae,
1829, p. 313).
48. 3 Castellum. Knoell
considers that the word is equivalent to 'town' (oppidum). But in
Chapter XVII Eugippius contrasts the terms, saying 'towns or castles'
(oppida vel castella).
Not forgetting that in
the Vulgate castellum is the regular rendering for the Greek
kw&mh, 'village', I am inclined to think that the proper meaning in the
Life is 'fortified town', or perhaps one might say 'fort' in the frontier sense
of a fortified settlement. See Du Cange, Glossarium Mediae el Infimae
Latinitatis, s. v.; and compare Salvian, De Gubernatione Dei, v,
44.
49. 1 Now
Kuchel.
50. 2 Amédée
Thierry interprets these as " sacrifices humains, pour apaiser la
destinée." Récits de l'Histoire Romaine au
Ve Siècle (Paris, i860), p. 148. It is doubtful if we are
justified in pushing specification so far. Any heathen rites would have
appeared 'abominable' both to Severinus and to Eugippius. A Christian writer
who wishes to accuse pagans of human sacrifices is likely to make the charge in
so many words. Ennodius does so (De Vita Beati Antoni, 13) in speaking of
the heathen barbarian tribes ---- Franks, Heruli, Saxons ---- who were ravaging
the Pannonias at this time or a little later.
Mention was made above
(Chapter V, note) of this passage in the Life of Antonius. Though Ennodius speaks
of 'the Pannonias,' the connection makes it clear that his account is intended
to apply also to Noricum, particularly the territory about Lauriacum. Antonius
was nephew of Constantius, bishop of Lauriacum, who is named below (Chapter
XXX), and after the death of Severinus remained at Lauriacum under the
protection of his uncle until the latter's decease.
51. 1
According to Marcellinus Comes, Chronicon, "numberless
battalions of locusts wasted the harvest of Phrygia " in 456. Accounts of
the devastations of these insects in 873 (throughout Europe) and in 1195 and
1242 (in the Austrian lands) may be found in Curschmann's Hungersnöte im
Mittelalter, pp. 100 f., 157, 175. In 1242, if we may believe the
chronicler, " Locusts of huge size invaded Austria in such numbers, that
they consumed most of the vineyards and orchards, and moreover gnawed to pieces
horses and cattle feeding in the fields."
52. 2 Joel,
ii, 12.
53. 1 Joel, ii,
15, 16.
54. 1 Juvao or
Juvavum, now Salzburg.
55. 2 "
Rarissimus praeter exspectationem hic usus erat, si scriptorum auctoritas in
hac re omnino quidquam valet." M. H. Morgan, "De Ignis eliciendi
Modi's apud Antiquos," in Harvard Studies in Classical
Philology, i (1890), p. 38.
56. 3 A
similar miracle is related of Alveus, or Alneus, a Gallic saint of the sixth
century. " One night he arose for the early morning vigils, and entered
the church with the rest of the brethren. They found that the lights which
usually burned there were out. Saint Alveus kneeled in prayer. The disciples
searched for a light; but they could find no fire. The hour was already late,
and the disciples reminded the saint of the lateness of the hour. Presently he
rose from prayer, and made the sign of the cross above the waxen taper. The
taper was kindled instantly through the excellence of God and the merits of the
saint, and gave a splendid light for all who were in the
building." Acta Sanctorum, September, iii (1750), p. 808.
57. 1 In
the Notitia Dignitatum Quintanis appears as a garrison town, commanded
by the praefectus alae primae Flavii Raetorum. It is now represented
by Osterhofen.
58. 2
Eugippius, whose earlier years were spent in the Danubian lands, tells of
conditions there as he remembers them many years before the close of the fifth
century. Raetia Secunda then included, nominally at least, the plain country
between the Alps, the Inn, and the Danube; Raetia Prima, the whole central
Alpine region. It seems clear that at the time of his writing (511) Raetia
Secunda lay entirely in the Alps, and comprised the eastern part of the old
Raetia Prima; while from the level country to the north, subject though it
might be to the more or less shadowy overlordship of Theodoric the Ostrogoth as
successor of Old Rome, all vestiges of the provincial name and administration
had vanished. E. A. Quitzmann. Die älteste Geschichte der Baiern (Brunswick,
1873), p.123.
59. 1 The
gratitude of the catechumen recalled to life by Saint Martin was greater in
proportion as his reception in the other world had been different. Sulpicius
Severus, De Beati Martini Vita, vii, 4-6.
An engraving which
represents this scene is mentioned in the Preface. There is another in J. H.
von Falckenstein's Antiquitates et Memorabilia Nordgaviae
Veteris (Schwabach, 1734-43), i, tab. vii, opposite p. 202. The latter is
of especial interest in that it portrays the two doorkeepers or janitors in
military costume one of them leaning upon a huge battle-axe.
60. 1 Paul
Viard, Histoire de la Dîme Ecclésiastique (Dijon, 1909), gives an
excellent account of the origin of tithing in the early church, and also (pp.
44 f., 49) discusses this passage at length. Some of his conclusions may be
briefly stated as follows. The only references to tithes in the Gospels
(Matthew, xxiii, 23; Luke, xi, 42; xviii, 12) are in rebuke of the hypocrisy of
the Pharisees. The Christians of the first four centuries did not recognize the
Jewish tithe. They did in some instances acknowledge the tax of the first
fruits. Insistence upon the tithe begins to appear about the end of the fourth
century. In the East, its champion was Saint John Chrysostom (In Matthaeum
Homilia lxiv (lxv), in Migne's Patrologia Graeca, lviii, col.
615). In the West, it was advocated in two forms. Jerome (Explanatio in Malackiam, iii,
7, in Migne's Patrologia Latina, xxv, coll. 1568-1571;
and Epistola ad Nepotianum de Vita Clericorum et Sacerdotum, in
Migne, xxii, col. 531) considers that the ancient law is still in force, and
that the proceeds of the tithe should be for the support of the clergy. Augustine
likewise (Sermones, lxxxv, 4, in Migne, xxxviii, col. 522) holds to
the obligation of the tithe, at least upon the conscience, using the text
Matthew, v, 20, " except your righteousness shall exceed the righteousness
of the scribes and Pharisees "; but he directs it to the support of the
poor. The later development of church polity, finally crystallized into
definite enactments at the second council of Mâcon in 585, was a compromise
between these two views. Severinus, on the other hand, follows Saint Augustine.
"Probably," says M. Viard, "he did not speak of the tithe in the
exact sense of the word; he wished merely to call forth the charitable gifts of
the communities that he evangelized. It is very probable that the saint thought,
in doing this, to revive the ancient tithe, modifying it, however, according to
the needs of the moment and his personal disinterestedness. The biographer has
exaggerated this thought of his hero in order to make it appear an
actuality."
61. 1 Here, as
elsewhere when he uses the word without a modifier, Eugippius means Noricum
Mediterraneum, the interior or southern province, of which Tiburnia was the
chief town.
62. 2 Teurnia
in inscriptions. Now Sanct Peter im Holz, near Spital.
63. 1 The
siege of Tiburnia may well be assigned to the year 473. See Chapter V, note. It
is then probable that the surrender of the collection of clothing was an
important, though hardly a decisive factor in restoring peace between the
citizens and the ragged Goths; who, according to Jordanes (De Rebus
Geticis, 56), entered upon the campaign because food and clothing were
beginning to fail them. "Minuentibus se deinde hinc inde vicinarum
gentium spoliis, coepit et Gothis victus vestitusque deesse: et hominibus,
quibus dudum bella alimoniam praestitissent, pax coepit esse contraria;
omnesque cum clamore magno ad regem Theodemir accedentes Gothi orant, quacumque
parte vellet ductaret exercitum."
64. 2 The
chief town of Riverside Noricum. Now Ens, or the small place Lorch, near Ens;
authorities differ. At the time of the Notitia Dignitatum Lauriacum
was defended by a strong garrison of soldiers, under the praefectus
legionis secundae, and by a squadron of the Danube flotilla.
65. 1 Caesar
Baronius supposes that this chapter and passages in Sidonius Apollinaris
(Epistolae, vi, 12) and Gregory of Tours (Historia
Francorum, ii, 24) relate to a general famine, which, he believes,
afflicted the northern provinces in 475. "Quae Gallias vexa vit dira
fames, aeque afflixit Raetios, Noricos, et alios Boreales populos his
finitimos." Annales Ecclesiastici, a. 475, sects. 30-35. There
seems, however, no sufficient reason for linking the dearth at Lauriacum with
that in Gaul, in the winter of 474-75, of which Sidonius and Gregory speak. The
latter was caused, not by the fault of the season, but by the depredations of
the Visigoths.
66. 2 Now
Passau.
67. 1 Saint
Augustine (De Civitate Dei, xviii, 18) tells of the corn,
called Retica annona, sent from Italy for the supply of the soldiers
in Raetia: "dicebat . . . narrasse quae passus est, caballum se scilicet
factum annonam inter alia jumenta bajulasse militibus, quae dicitur Retica,
quoniam ad Retias deportatur."
68. 2
The cohors nova Batavorum, according to the Notitia
Dignitatum. The town, that is, was a military station, and took its name
from the garrison.
69. 1 It would
indeed be an evidence of an extensive fame, were we able to accept Mr.
Hodgkin's ingenious conjecture as to the source of the penultimate name of the
celebrated philosopher and poet Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius, who was
born at Rome probably during the eighth decade of the fifth century. Italy
and her Invaders, iii (1885), p. 523 (or 2d ed., 1896, p. 471): "
Severinus was no doubt given to him in honour of one of the holiest names of
the fifth century, the saintly hermit of Noricum."
70. 1 Now
Innstadt.
71. 2 Sanctuaria.
Reliquiae is also used with the same meaning; as, for example, three lines
above. The relics need not be of any great extent. Gregory the Great gave
orders on at least three occasions
that sanctuaria or reliquiae of Severinus himself should be
furnished for the consecration of churches or
oratories. Epistolae, iii, 19; ix, 181; xi, 19. This was a hundred
years after the saint had been securely buried.
72. 1 Probably
Hunimund, king of the Suevi, whose raid into Dalmatia and hostilities with the
Ostrogoths are described by Jordanes, De Rebus Geticis, 53-55. Eduard
von Wietersheim, indeed, in his Geschichte der Völkerwanderung (2d
ed., Leipsic, 1880-81), ii, p. 324, expresses the belief that the coincidence
in name is purely accidental. But if the Hunimund of Eugippius was not Hunimund
the Suevian king, who was he? Eugippius through his whole work is perfectly
definite in his identification of persons. He names in all some fifty
characters, aside from those mentioned in the Bible or in the church fathers.
Each is carefully labelled with the appropriate word or phrase, except two,
Stilicho (Chapter XXXVI) and Hunimund. It is a fair inference that Eugippius
left these names unqualified ----just as, for example, one would now in similar
references that of Napoleon or of Blücher ---- because no label seemed needed,
either for Stilicho, the great general of the Western Empire, or for Hunimund,
king of the Suevi, a principal leader in a war, not yet remote in time, that
had devastated Central Europe for years.
We may infer from the
smallness of the force under the command of Hunimund that the attack on Bojotro
was made after the destructive overthrows of the Suevi by the Ostrogoths;
perhaps in 474 or 475. The sequence of Eugippius's narrative points to the same
date.
73. 1
Schlügen.
74. 2 F. W.
Rettberg believes that Severinus may have owed his foreknowledge of barbarian
raids to secret information received from his friends among the
Germans. Kirchengeschichte Deutschlands, i, pp. 232 f. This view is
held also by Felix Dahn. Gelehrte Anzeigen (Munich), 21 Sept. 1859,
coll. 270 f. Reinhold Pallmann declines to accept it. Die Geschichte der
Völkerwanderung (Gotha, etc., 1863-64), ii, p. 400, n. 1.
George Thomas Stokes
remarks that Severinus "seems to have been gifted with some kind of
second-sight, similar to that which Adamnan's Life of St. Columba claims for
the Celtic saint of the following century." Smith and Wace's Dictionary
of Christian Biography, iv (London, 1887), p. 627.
75. 1 With the
view of Severinus may be contrasted that of Saint
Ambrose, Epistolae, xviii, 30: " deam esse victoriam crediderunt
[pagani], quae utique munus est, non potestas: donatur, non dominatur, legionum
gratia, non religionum potentia "; "they have believed Victory to be
a goddess, which is in truth a gift, not a power; is bestowed, and does not
rule; comes by the aid of legions, not by the power of religion."
76. 2 There is
some measure of justice in the comment which Pallmann makes upon the conduct of
Severinus in this instance. "With his words of discouragement Severinus
divided the strength of the citizens. Through his disheartening view of things,
he brought a part of them to despair, without helping in the least the others
who did not join him; rather, weakening them. So was the strength of the brave
citizens of Passau paralyzed." Die Geschichte der
Völkerwanderung, ii, p. 307. It would not, however, be fair to make this
citation from Pallmann without quoting also the passage (ibid., pp.
400 f.) in which he sums up his opinion of the saint and his public activities.
"It is a strange, noble, powerful figure, this monk. ... A political head
would certainly have acted wholly otherwise than Severinus. We do not know
whether he would have had better success. Yet it was a piece of good fortune,
that in the disastrous time after the death of Aëtius, when on every side the
dissolution of the Empire, like the death of a human body, was beginning at the
extremities, and the provinces one by one were renouncing their connection with
Italy; when we see Gaul independent under Aegidius, Dalmatia under Marcellinus,
that in Noricum, if no general arose, yet at least a pure and lofty spirit
sought to do the works of righteousness."
77. 1 Mark, x,
45.
78. 2 Matthew,
vi, 5.
79. 3 II Kings,
iv, 2-7.
80. 1 At an
earlier date Noricum was celebrated for its export trade in
clothing. Expositio totius Mundi et Gentium, 57.
81. 2 The
friendliness to the righteous of beasts usually wild and savage is a common
feature in early Christian narratives. See the index to Heribert
Rosweyde's Vitae Patrum (2d ed., Antverpiae, 1628). There are
instances of lions serving as guides in Rosweyde, pp. 231 a, 816 a; and of a
wild ass in the same capacity, p. 229 a.
82. 1 The best
life of Constantius is by Marcus Hansitz (Germania Sacra, i, pp.
82-87). Hansitz believes that much of the success of Severinus in his work must
have been due to the cooperation of Constantius.
The 'archbishopric of
Lauriacum' is a mediaeval forgery, long since wholly discredited.
83. 1 James, v,
16.
84. 1 That this
exodus was a partial one only, is indicated both by the laws of probability and
by Ennodius's Life of Antonius, 10-14. Antonius remained under the protection
of his uncle, Constantius, bishop of Lauriacum, for some time after the death
of Severinus.
85. 1 This
chapter is apparently out of the regular chronological sequence. Chapter XXVIII
presupposes the abandonment or destruction of all the towns on the Danube above
Lauriacum, including Bojotro. It is, however, the opinion of Fallmann
(Geschichte der Völkerwanderung, ii, pp. 393 f.) and of Julius Jung (Römer
und Romanen in den Donauländern, Innsbruck, 1877, p. 214) that there
really was no break of the sort indicated by Eugippius in the continuity of
occupation.
86. 2 I
Corinthians, v, 5.
87. 1 Faulinus
Mediolanensis, Vita Ambrosii, 43.
88. 2 Dialogi, i,
20, 7.
89. 3 We shall
not be far astray if we suppose that the 'horrid pride' of which the three
monks were guilty was some form of insubordination. The relation between
humility and obedience in the monk is discussed by H. B. Workman in his
essay, The Evolution of the Monastic Ideal (London, 1913), pp. 68-74.
"The third fundamental idea of Monasticism," he says, "first
specifically introduced by Pachomius, was the renunciation of the will. This is
sometimes called obedience, sometimes humility; in reality, from the Monastic
standpoint the two tend to become one. The two are related as cause and effect;
they are different aspects of that complete self-renunciation which is higher
than any mere outer surrender. The man who has nailed his inner self to the
cross cannot be otherwise than humble; while the humble man will show his humility
by a perfect obedience."
90. 1 The
couch of Saint Anthony, the great Egyptian monk, was likewise a mohair rug; to
which, in his case, a rush mat was added. Athanasius, Vita Beati Antonii
Abbatis (Evagrius's translation), p. 38 a Rosweyde.
91. 2
Palladius (Heraclidis Paradisus, 35) tells a like story in praise of the
Egyptian monk Paphnutius Cephala: "De quo tale refertur praeconium, quod
per octoginta annos numquam habuerit duas simul tunicas."
92. 3 Eusebius
(Ecclesiastica Historia, ii, 17; Crusé's translation, London, 1851,
pp. 56 f., corrected) quotes Philo Judaeus, De Vita Contemplativa, in
regard to the asceticism of the Therapeutae of Egypt. " None of them
" (he says) " takes food or drink before the setting of the sun,
since they judge that the search for wisdom should be prosecuted in the light,
while it is appropriate that the necessities of the body should be attended to
in the dark. Whence they assign to the one the day, and to the other a small
portion of the night. But some of them do not remember their food for three
days, when influenced by an uncommon desire for knowledge. And some are so
delighted, and feast so luxuriously on the doctrines so richly and profusely
furnished by wisdom, that they forbear even twice this time, and are scarcely
induced to take necessary food even for six days." Eusebius considers that
under the name of Therapeutae Philo describes the early Christians. Valesius
(notes to Eusebii Ecclesiastica Historia, edition of 1672, p. 34)
believes the contrary. The matter is yet under discussion. H. B.
Workman, The Evolution of the Monastic Ideal, p. 90, especially note
1.
The association of eating
by night with asceticism appears to have survived, in a singularly altered
form, in the religious body organized by George Rapp in Wurtemberg on the model
of the primitive church, and later established at Harmony, Pennsylvania.
See The Atlantic Monthly, May, 1866, p. 535.
93. 1 The
learned Bavarian historian, Johann Adlzreitter, floridly enlarges this
conversation to three times its length in Eugippius, and makes it the most
prominent feature in his long and curious summary of the Life. Annalium
Boicae Gentis Partes III (1710), coll. 124 f.
The comment of A. F.
Ozanam upon this interview, though quoted with approval by Montalembert (Les
Moines d'Occident, i, p. 261) and Charles Kingsley (The Hermits, p.
238), is more rhetorically effective than just. "The history of invasions
has many a pathetic scene: but I know none more instructive than the dying
agony of that old Roman expiring between two barbarians, and less touched with
the ruin of the empire than with the peril of their souls." La
Civilisation Chrétienne chez les Francs (3d ed., Paris, 1861), pp. 41 f.
It requires a certain amount of naïveté not to see that the saint's prime
concern in his warnings is rather the tranquillity of the provincials than the
souls' welfare of the royal couple.
94. 1 Genesis,
1, 25.
95. 2
Instances where saints are said to have predicted the day or even the hour of
their decease are not rare in the mediaeval narratives; but, as compared with
the present account, they are usually vague and perfunctory. A casual
examination of a volume of the Acta Sanctorum taken at random ----
September, iii ---- reveals three cases, on pages 58, 293, and 806.
96. 1 There is
a life of Valentine in Matthaeus Rader's Bavaria Sancta (Monad,
1615-27), i, ff. 24b, 25, 26a, with a fine engraving representing the saint in
his arboreal retreat.
" Rura Valentinum
tutantur, et oppida pellunt.
Fas regnat ruri, regnat in urbe nefas."
Valentine is also
mentioned by Venantius Fortunatus (Vita Sancti Martini, iv, 644-648):
" Si vacat ire viam
neque te Bajovarius obstat,
Qua vicina sedent Breonum loca, perge per Alpem,
Ingrediens rapido qua gurgite volvitur Aenus.
Inde Valentini benedicti templa require,
Norica rura petens, ubi Byrrus vertitur undis."
97. 1 Pleurisy.
98. 2 Genesis,
xlix, 1-33.
99. 1 Hebrews,
xiii, 7.
100. 2 I
Chronicles, xxviii, 9; Romans, viii, 27.
101. 3 Ephesians,
i, 18.
102. 4 II Kings,
vi, 17.
103. 1 Psalms,
li, 17.
104. 2 Homo
saecularis. The same contrast
of saecularis and monachus is made by Saint
Jerome, Epistola ad Paulinum de Institutione
Monachi: "Saecularium, et maxime potentium consortia devita. Quid
tibi necesse est ea videre crebrius, quorum contemtu Monachus esse
coepisti? " Opera (Paris, 1693-1706), iv, 2, col.
566. Homo saecularis cannot here be rendered 'layman'; the monks
themselves were reckoned laymen (laici) until the seventh century.
105. 1 Acts,
xx, 32
106. 2 Psalms,
cl, 1, 6.
107. 3 Locellum: in
the next chapter, loculum. André Baudrillart, in his
biography, Saint Severin, Apôtre du Norique (Paris, 1908), p. 192,
speaks of this coffin as "une sorte de chapelle portative ou d'oratoire,"
and represents the monks, throughout the removal to Italy, as 'praying and
singing in it day and night.' This monstrous misconception may serve as a
sufficient sample of the insouciance with which M. Baudrillart has performed
his task.
108. 1 Islands
play an exceedingly large part in the history of monasticism in the Occident.
The islands of the Mediterranean, the isles of Dalmatia and of the Tyrrhenian
Sea, swarmed with monks: not to mention other well-known examples. Lucas
Holstenius, Codex Regularum Monasticarum (Augustae Vindelicorum,
1759), i, p. ix; Sulpicius Severus, De Beati Martini Vita, vi, 5;
Rutilius Namatianus, De Reditu suo, i, 439-452 (Capraria:
"Squalet lucifugis insula plena viris "); Hilarius Arelatensis, De
Vita Sancti Honorati, iii, 16, 17, in Migne's Patrologia
Latina, vol. 1, coll. 1257 f. (Lerina).
The encircling watery
barrier answered a threefold purpose. It served as protection alike against the
enticements of the world, the sword of the barbarian, and (according to the popular
belief) the assaults of demons.
109. 1 A long
and entertaining account of a triumph celebrated by Odoacer at Rome after his
victory, given by A. Thierry in his Récits de l'Histoire Romaine au V°
Siècle, iii (Paris, i860), pp. 352 ff., is purely a product of Thierry's
luxuriant imagination. His invention is, however, unsuspectingly accepted as
historical fact by Leopold von Ranke (Weltgeschichte, iv, 1, Leipsic,
1883, p. 377) and J. B. Bury (The Later Roman Empire from Arcadius to
Irene, London, 1889, i, p. 289).
Paulus Diaconus (De
Gestis Langobardorum, i, 19) says that Odoacer put Feletheus to death. As
to Giso's fate we know nothing beyond what is declared by Eugippius. Thierry's
statement (Récits, p. 352) followed by Bury (Later Roman Empire, i,
p. 289), that she was "thrown into a dungeon," rests on no authority.
110. 2 Perhaps
now Sistova, in Bulgaria.
111. 1 Julius
Jung (Römer und Romaner in den Donaidandern, p. 205) believes that the
exodus was less general than the words of Eugippius would seem to imply.
Whatever may have been the case with respect to the Roman population of
Riverside Noricum, it is obvious that there was no general withdrawal from
Noricum Mediterrancum, where the provincial organization was still in operation
in the time of Theodoric. Cassiodorus, Variae, iii, 50;
Quitzmann, Die älteste Geschichte der Baiern, p. 123.
112. 1 Probably
the present Macerata di Monte Feltre, south of San Marino.
113. 1 Thomas
Hodgkin (Italy and her Invaders, in, Oxford, 1885, pp. 190 f.; or 2d ed.,
1896, pp. 172 f.) seeks to identify Barbaria with the widow of Orestes and
mother of Romulus Augustulus. On this point see Jung's Römer und Romaner
in den Donauländer, p. 134; and Max Büdinger's Eugipius, eine
Untersuchung, in Sitzungsberichte der kaiserlichen Akademie der
Wissenschaften (Vienna), philosophisch-historische Classe, xci, 1 (1878),
pp. 802 f.
114. 2 Now
Pizzofalcone.
115. 3 Two
more translations still awaited the body. October 14, 903, the Lucullan castle
was abandoned through fear of the marauding Saracens. The remains of the saint
were borne in solemn procession to the great Benedictine monastery of Saint
Severinus, within the walls of Naples. Joannes Diaconus
Neapolitanus, Martyrium Sancti Procopii, in Octavius Cajetanus's Vitae
Sanctorum Siculorum (Panormi, 1657), ii, p. 62, reprinted in L. A.
Muratori's Rerum Italicarum Scriptores (Mediolani, 1723-51), i, 2,
pp. 271 f.; and the same, printed from another manuscript, under the title
of Translatio Sancti Severini or Historia Translationis, in Acta
Sanctorum, January, i (1643), pp. 1100-1103, and reprinted thence
in Monumenta Germaniae Historica: Scriptores Rerum Langobardicarum et
Italicarum Saec. VI-IX (Hannoverae, 1878), pp. 452-459. ----It should be
noted, however, that Luigi Parascandolo, in his Memorie
Storiche-Critiche-Diplomatiche della Chiesa di Napoli (Naples, 1847-51),
ii, pp. 253 f., doubts the authenticity of this narrative, which, he thinks,
owes at least its present form to the labor of some Benedictine monk living in
the monastery of Saint Severinus at the time of the revival of learning.----
Descriptions of the monastery, now for the most part secularized and occupied
by the Royal Neapolitan State Archives, and of the church of Saints Severinus
and Sosius connected with it, may be found in Napoli e i Luoghi Celebri
delle sue Vicinanze (Naples, 1845), i, pp. 233-243, and in the current
guidebooks.
Here the remains of
Severinus reposed for many centuries, not in the large church, but beneath the
great altar of the smaller primitive church, or chapel, connected with it. The
inscription on the great altar is given in Acta Sanctorum, January,
i, p. 499:
"Hic duo sancta
simul divinaque corpora Patres Sosius unanimes et Severinus habent."
According to Sebastian
Brunner (Leben des St. Severin, Vienna, 1879, p. 170), the following
inscription was found in the crypt when it was opened in 1807: "Divis
Severino Noricorum in Oriente Apostolo et Sosio Levitae B. Januarii Episcopi in
Passione socio Templum ubi eorum SS. Corpora sub Altare majori requiescunt et
Apostolico indultu cum oblatione sacra purgantes animae liberantur."
The fourth removal was on
May 30, 1807, after the dissolution of the monastery under the French
domination, to the town of Fratta Maggiore, a few miles north of Naples. Stanislao
d'Aloe, in Napoli e i Luoghi Celebri dette sue Vicinanze, i, p. 240
(d'Aloe errs as to the date); G. A. Galante, Memorie dell' Antico Cenobio
Lucullano di S. Severino Abate (Naples, 1869), p. 41; Brunner, St.
Severin, pp. 167-172. There was, it would appear from Brunner's account,
some ecclesiastical as well as civil authority for the removal of the remains.
Nevertheless Dr. Galante considers that they were " fraudolentemente
rapitoci " (p. 41), and in his dissertation (pp. 41 f.) strongly urges their
return to Naples. "Cives Fractenses," he writes me under date of
March 20, 1914, " non S. Severini, sed S. Sosii corpus repetebant, et
occasionem nacti expulsionis Monachorum e coenobio et templo Severinianio,
prope Archivium Magnum, corpora utriusque simul quiescentia rapuerunt, et ad
oppidum suum transtulerunt, ubi nunc in majori templo Fractensi quiescunt.
Quamvis Monachi postea redierint, haud curae fuit, sacra lipsana repetere.
Superioribus annis ego null uni non movi lapidem ut corpus S. Severini Neapoli
restitueretur, sed frustra; praecordia tantum sanguine intincta, et quatuor
ossa restituta sunt, quae nunc in templo S. Severini asservantur."
From 1807 to 1874 the
bodies of Severinus and Sosius lay in a small chapel near the parish church of
Fratta Maggiore. They were then removed into the church, to a new chapel, where
the coffins, placed on either side the altar, were covered with red velvet, and
distinguished by the gilt letters S. S. M. (Sanctus Sosius Martyr) and S. S. A.
(Sanctus Severinus Abbas). Brunner, St. Severin, pp. 179 f.
116. 1 Paschasius
here imitates Sulpicius Severus, De Beati Martini Vita, Praef., i:
"Quid enim esset, quod non amori tuo vel cum detrimento mei pudoris
inpenderem?"
117. 1 I
Peter, v, 3.
118. 2 I
Timothy, iv, 12.
119. 3 Hebrews,
xi.
120. 4 I
Maccabees, ii, 49 seq.
121. 1 I
Maccabees, iii, 8; v, 44, 68; x, 83 f.
122. 2
Revelation, xxi, 2, 9.
123. 3 "As
one lamp lights another nor grows less, So nobleness enkindles nobleness."
SOURCE : http://www.tertullian.org/fathers/severinus_02_text.htm
Bernardino di Mariotto (1478–1566). Madonna and Child with Sts Severino and Dominic, 1512, 50 x 34, Vatican Pinacoteca
San Severino Abate
410-482
Nato da nobile famiglia
romana, visse una vita austera e penitente ed ebbe fama di
taumaturgo. Tale era il suo carisma che, da regioni lontane, i potenti gli
chiedevano consigli. Egli aveva compreso che la società romana in decadenza
avrebbe beneficiato di questa linfa nuova quando fosse stata evangelizzata; in
questo senso è esempio, ancora oggi, di apertura e lungimiranza.
Etimologia: Severino
= austero, rigido, signif. chiaro
Emblema: Bastone
pastorale
Martirologio
Romano: Nel Norico lungo il Danubio, nell’odierna Austria, san Severino,
sacerdote e monaco: venuto in questo territorio dopo la morte di Attila, capo
degli Unni, difese le popolazioni inermi, ammansì i violenti, convertì gli
infedeli, fondò monasteri e si dedicò a quanti erano privi di istruzione
religiosa.
Incerto è il luogo e il
tempo della nascita di questo grande monaco, apostolo del Norico Ripense, della
regione cioè che si estende tra il Danubio e le Alpi Carniche. A chi gli
chiedeva notizie riguardo alla sua età e alla sua famiglia, Severino si
limitava a rispondere che un predicatore del Vangelo non ha altra età che
l'eternità, né altro paese che il cielo. Tuttavia, da come parlava e agiva, si
capiva facilmente che era romano di origine. Secondo Eugippio, suo discepolo e
biografo, sappiamo che egli, ancora giovane, attratto dal desiderio della
perfezione, si era recato in Oriente per vivere nella solitudine conforme alla
regola di S. Basilio. In seguito ad un avviso soprannaturale, si recò nel
Norico, verso il 455, cioè circa due anni dopo la morte di Attila, terribile re
degli Unni, tenuto lontano da Lutetia (Parigi) e dalle preghiere di S.
Genoveffa (+ 512) e sconfitto sui campi catalaunici, presso Chalons-sur-Marne,
dal generale Romano Ezio. Attila aveva lasciato parecchi figli che se ne
disputarono il regno con lotte sanguinose sulle sponde del Danubio.
Severino si era stabilito
nel villaggio di Astura (oggi Stocheraw), alle dipendenze del custode della
chiesa locale. Con la sua ardente pietà, purezza dei costumi, esercizio della
carità, si guadagnò subito la stima e l'affetto del suo ospite. Un giorno egli
uscì improvvisamente dal suo modesto ritiro, e percorse le vie del villaggio
per chiamare alla chiesa i chierici e i laici. Con accenti misti a umiltà e a
convinzione disse agli uditori che erano minacciati da un imminente pericolo:
"I barbari sono molto vicini; chiudete le porte della città; mettetevi in
stato di difesa e soprattutto pregate, fate penitenza". Il popolo non
prestò ascolto alle ispirate parole dell'eremita. I sacerdoti stessi non si
mostrarono disposti a prendere sul serio le proposte dello sconosciuto che si
atteggiava a profeta.
In preda ad una giusta
indignazione, Severino lasciò la chiesa, ritornò presso il suo ospite e gli
predisse il giorno e l'ora del disastro. Poi, allontanandosi, dichiarò:
"Per parte mia, abbandono questa città ostinata e votata ad una prossima
distruzione". Si rifugiò nel borgo fortificato di Comagena (oggi
Holembourg), non molto lontano da Astura, sul Danubio. La piccola guarnigione
era impotente a difendere gli abitanti dalle scorrerie dei barbari. Anche qui
Severino rinnovò a quanti trovò radunati in chiesa i suoi consigli e le sue
predizioni. In principio nessuno gli volle dare ascolto, ma quando un vecchio
di Astura, scampato all'eccidio, raccontò loro l'orribile disastro di cui era
stato spettatore, e che non era stato evitato perché l'invito alla penitenza
rivolto a tutti dal santo eremita era rimasto inascoltato, per tre giorni essi
implorarono l'aiuto del cielo con preghiere, digiuni ed elemosine. I barbari
posero t'assedio anche alla loro città, ma in capo al terzo giorno furono messi
in rotta da un terremoto che gettò il panico nelle loro fila.
Da quel giorno Severino
divenne l'apostolo del Norico, il benefattore dei poveri, il taumaturgo, il
consigliere non solo dei romani, ma anche dei barbari che, soggiogati dalla sua
santità, lo ascoltavano, ubbidivano e veneravano. Tuttavia, siccome non era
sacerdote, con la sua attività suscitò invidie e gelosie tra il clero
locale. Severino si recò allora a Favianis (oggi Mauer), sul Basso
Danubio, dove la sua predicazione ebbe migliore accoglienza. Per le sue
preghiere e penitenze la città fu liberata dalla fame e dalle minacce dei barbari.
Bande di predoni un giorno apparvero a razziare sotto le sue mura. Severino
andò dal capo della guarnigione, lo esortò alla fiducia in Dio e lo consigliò a
cacciare risolutamente quei predoni. Nello stesso tempo gli ordinò:
"Quando avrete sgominato i nemici, non uccideteli". I barbari,
all'improvvisa sortita dei soldati da Flavianis, furono presi da sgomento e
fuggirono alla rinfusa. Quelli che caddero prigionieri, furono condotti davanti
a Severino il quale, dopo averli rimproverati per il loro brigantaggio, li fece
rifocillare e rimandare ai loro paesi. Agli abitanti che avevano accolto i suoi
inviti alla preghiera, al digiuno ed alla elemosina, egli diede quest'ultimo
avviso: "La vostra città non soffrirà più razzie se, tanto nella buona
quanto nella cattiva fortuna, osserverete fedelmente la legge di Dio e la
pietà".
Dopo una breve parentesi
di vita eremitica, verso il 456 Severino fondò nei dintorni di Flavianis un
monastero, in cui ben presto fu raggiunto da numerosi discepoli desiderosi di
condividere il suo genere di vita e di aiutarlo nell'apostolato.
Un altro monastero egli
fondò a Boiotro, alla confluenza dell'Inn e del Danubio, di fronte a Passavia.
Se avesse dato ascolto alle proprie inclinazioni, il santo avrebbe trascorso la
vita in un deserto. Era invece volontà di Dio che non diventasse un puro
contemplativo, ma un uomo di una prodigiosa attività a vantaggio del prossimo.
Per umiltà e per conservare la sua libertà d'azione, non accettò mai l'ufficio
episcopale. Formò i suoi discepoli più con l'esempio che con le parole. È
appena concepibile l'austerità della vita che conduceva. Camminava scalzo anche
d'inverno, e non faceva uso che di una tunica; dormiva disteso sul pavimento
del suo oratorio; non rompeva mai il digiuno prima del tramonto del sole, se
non in qualche determinata solennità; in quaresima non mangiava che una volta
la settimana; per una speciale grazia talvolta prolungava il digiuno per
diverse settimane.
La forma di preghiera
allora più comune e più estesa presso gli asceti e i monaci era la salmodia.
Severino l'incremento e la compi sempre solennemente insieme con i suoi
discepoli e anche con il popolo che vi prendeva parte in chiesa in giorni ed
ore determinate. Dio palesò con un prodigio quanto gradisse questa forma di
preghiera. Eugippio testimonia che, essendosi il popolo di Iuvao (oggi
Salzburg), radunato in Chiesa per il vespro e mancando il fuoco per accendere i
lumi, Severino si mise in orazione e, miracolosamente, il lume che teneva in
mano si accese.
Il Santo volle avere
delle chiese ampie in cui celebrare con solennità i divini misteri. Per poterle
fare consacrare e renderle atte ad essere officiate dal clero, si procurò delle
reliquie in modi che hanno del prodigioso. Un giorno egli comandò ad uno
schiavo da lui liberato, di attraversare il Danubio per ricercare sui mercati
dei barbari un uomo ignoto, che lui, illuminato da grazia profetica, gli
descrisse minutamente. Il liberto andò, trovò quell'uomo, e si senti dire da
lui: "Credi che sia possibile trovare un uomo che mi conduca dall'uomo di
Dio? È già da molto tempo che supplichevole interpello questi santi martiri dei
quali porto le reliquie, affinchè una buona volta io indegno sia esonerato da
tale compito, che fino ad ora, non per temeraria presunzione, ma per religiosa
necessità ho sostenuto". Ciò udito, il liberto fece la sua presentazione,
e, ricevute le reliquie dei Santi Gervasio e Protasio, le portò a Severino.
Costui le ricevette con grande onore e le depose, con l'ufficio dei sacerdoti,
nella basilica che aveva ricostruito nel monastero.
Quando occorsero reliquie
di martiri per la nuova basilica di Boiotro, i sacerdoti si offrirono per
andarne in cerca. Severino predisse loro che non si doveva intraprendere
nessuna fatica perché sarebbero state portate spontaneamente al monastero le
reliquie di S. Giovanni Battista. Scrive Eugippio: "Mentre il Santo a
Flavianis leggeva il Vangelo, terminata la preghiera, si alzò e comandò che gli
venisse subito preparata una barca. Ai circostanti stupiti disse: "Sia
benedetto il nome del Signore; noi dobbiamo andare incontro alle reliquie dei
beati martiri". Senza indugio, traversato il Danubio, trovarono un uomo
seduto sulla riva opposta del fiume, che, con molte preghiere, li richiese di
condurlo dal servo di Dio, dal quale, per la fama che si era divulgata, da
lungo tempo già desiderava venire. Gli fu subito indicato Severino, a lui egli
offerse le reliquie di S. Giovanni Battista, che per molto tempo aveva
conservato presso di sé".
Per trent'anni il Santo
lavorò con i suoi discepoli all'evangelizzazione del Norico, alla conversione
dei barbari e al miglioramento dei costumi dei cristiani. Per scoprire quali
tra i cittadini di Cucullis (oggi Kuchel) avevano preso parte a nefandi
sacrifici, il Santo esortò i sacerdoti e i diaconi ad unirsi a lui per chiedere
a Dio che manifestasse i sacrileghi. Il Signore intervenne con un miracolo.
Difatti, la maggior parte dei ceri portati dai fedeli si accese repentinamente;
i ceri invece di coloro che avevano partecipato al predetto sacrilegio, e che tuttavia
negavano di avere fatto ciò, rimasero spenti. Il prodigio indusse coloro che
avevano peccato al ravvedimento.
I grandi mezzi di cui si
servi l'apostolo Severino nella sua opera missionaria, oltre alla preghiera,
furono il digiuno e l'elemosina. Egli scrisse a Paolino, vescovo di Tigurnia,
(oggi Peter in Holz), pregandolo di indire un digiuno di tre giorni per ovviare
alla rovina di una futura calamità. Paolino ubbidì. Terminato il digiuno, una
grande moltitudine di Alemanni seminò distruzione e morte ovunque, ma i
castelli che si erano armati con "lo scudo del perseverante digiuno"
non incorsero in nessun pericolo. Prima di sanare un infermo Severino indiceva,
secondo la consuetudine, un digiuno di alcuni giorni. Prima di ottenere la guarigione
di un lebbroso lo affidò, dopo aver indetto il digiuno di alcuni giorni, ai
suoi monaci. Quando il medesimo lebbroso chiese di rimanere presso di lui, il
Santo ricorse ancora al digiuno per sapere che cosa doveva fare. Per riscattare
tre monaci dal potere del demonio, egli ricorse a quaranta giorni di asperrime
penitenze. Ad uno dei confratelli di nome Orso, un giorno raccomandò
improvvisamente di sventare una calamità futura con l'astinenza dai cibi. Al
quarantesimo giorno di penitenza apparve sul braccio del digiunatore una
mortifera pustola. Orso si recò dal Santo abate a mostrargli il suo male, e
questi lo sanò con un segno di croce. Non si può dire però che a tutti
garbassero simili austerità.
Un sacerdote, ripieno di
spirito diabolico, un giorno gli gridò dietro: "Vattene, te ne prego, o
santo, vattene in fretta, affinchè con la tua partenza possiamo almeno
riposarci alquanto dai digiuni e dalla veglie".
Per i poveri Severino
ebbe un cuore di padre. Per soccorrerli raccomandava a tutti l'elemosina. Agli
abitanti di Lauriaco (oggi Lorch), e agli sfollati quivi convenuti dai castelli
circostanti, raccomandò di essere generosi con i bisognosi. Il popolo metteva
in pratica i suoi insegnamenti. Dei cittadini di Cucullis è detto che "non
cessavano di fare elemosine". Il Santo stesso un giorno, a tutti i poveri
della regione accorsi in una basilica, distribuì dell'olio dopo averli fatti
pregare e meditare la Sacra Scrittura. Un certo Massimo, noricense, nel cuore
dell'inverno partì per recarsi, in compagnia di altri, da Severino, con sulle
spalle fagotti d'indumenti, frutto di una colletta fatta per i poveri e i
prigionieri. L'elemosina era organizzata dal Santo nelle decime di cui
sollecitava la raccolta mediante l'invio di lettere. Tale uso veniva
scrupolosamente osservato. Ad una madre Severino restituì sano il figlio Rufo,
malato da dodici anni, perché si era dichiarata disposta a fare elemosine in
proporzione delle sue sostanze.
La fama dei prodigi,
della santità e delle profezie di Severino lo faceva ricercare non soltanto dai
cristiani, ma anche dai barbari residenti oltre il Danubio. I loro principi,
ariani o ancora pagani, non rifuggivano dall’andargli a chiedere consigli per
il governo dei loro sudditi. All’occorrenza, il Santo non temeva neppure di
affrontarli per indurii a mitigare la loro durezza verso le città sottomesse e
ottenere che rimettessero in libertà i prigionieri. Lo stesso Odoacre (+493),
re degli Eruli, andò a trovarlo. Non è improbabile che, quando s'impadronì di
Roma (476) e mandò l'imperatore Romolo Augustolo a morire in esilio, egli abbia
risparmiato le istituzioni romane ricordandosi di Severino che gli aveva
predetto la vittoria e aveva benedetto la sua giovinezza.
Fu quindi provvidenziale
la permanenza di lui alle frontiere dell'impero. Anche se non riuscì a
stabilire nel Nerico in forma durevole la vita monastica, ne la religione
cattolica, con le sue predicazioni e la sua opera di persuasione, egli riuscì a
rallentare le invasioni dei barbari sul suolo romano e ad addolcirne i costumi.
Dopo la caduta dall'impero occidentale molti italiani giunsero nel Norico, tra
cui un sacerdote chiamato Primenio che fu ospite di Severino. Ci fu allora chi
ricorse alla mediazione di costui per conoscere qualcosa della giovinezza del
Santo. Severino, però, si limitò a rispondergli: "Sappi solamente che
Colui che ti ha fatto la grazia di essere sacerdote, mi ha ordinato di venire
in soccorso di questi sventurati".
Il sacerdote Lucillo il
giorno dell'Epifania andò ad annunciare ai Santo che il giorno dopo avrebbe
celebrato l'anniversario del suo antico vescovo, S. Valentino, che aveva
esercitato il ministero episcopale nella Rezia, nella prima metà del secolo V.
Allora Severino gli disse: ''Se il Santo abate e vescovo Valentino ti ha
designato per questo anniversario, io ti delego a mia volta per rendermi gli
ultimi doveri. Questo avverrà nello stesso tempo. A partire da quel momento il
Santo non pensò ad altro che a prepararsi alla morte. Predisse ai suoi
discepoli che un giorno avrebbero dovuto abbandonare la regione e comandò loro
di portare con sé le sue ossa.
L'8-1-482 il Santo
raccomandò ai discepoli, che lo attorniavano per l'ultima volta, la penitenza e
la pietà, quindi li baciò ad uno ad uno e ricevette la comunione. Poiché tutti
piangevano, egli li riprese, li benedisse e ordinò loro di salmeggiare.
L'afflizione impediva ad essi di cantare, Allora il morente stesso intonò il
salmo: Laudate Dominum in sanctis eius, e spirò all'ultimo versetto che dice;
"che ogni anima lodi il Signore"
Per le incursioni dei
barbari, quando nel 488 Odoacre trasferì i popoli del Norico in Italia, i
monaci portarono con sé il corpo del loro padre e maestro con avevano trovato
incorrotto come il giorno della sepoltura. Al suo passaggio le popolazioni
accorsero a venerarlo, cantando salmi e portando i loro malati, diversi dei
quali guarirono. Con il permesso del Papa S. Gelasio ( + 496) il corpo di
Severino fu traslato da Monte Feltre al Castrum Lucullanum, presso Napoli, per
intervento di una nobile Signora, dove fu costruito in suo onore un monastero
di cui Eugippio fu secondo abate. Nel 909, per sottrarlo alle profanazioni dei
Saraceni che assalivano le coste dell'Italia meridionale, fu trasferito a
Napoli all'abbazia benedettina alla quale fu dato il nome di San Severino.
Autore: Guido
Pettinati
SOURCE : http://www.santiebeati.it/dettaglio/36600
Heiligenstatue
in der Severinkirche in Linz.
Ai Venerabili Fratelli
Franz Cardinale Konig, Arcivescovo di Vienna
Franz Zak, Vescovo di Sankt Polten
Anton Hofmann, Vescovo di Passau
Maximilian Aichern, Vescovo di Linz
Come “Lucerna Ardens” e
rilucente (Gv 5, 35), in quell’epoca oscura, durante la quale l’impero dei
Romani cominciava a vacillare per l’irruzione dei Germani e di altre
popolazioni nel suo territorio, ed avveniva il passaggio dalla antichità al
cosiddetto Medioevo, rifulse nel Norico San Severino, dalla cui morte sono
trascorsi quindici secoli. Con ragione dunque viene celebrato questo ricordo
nelle vostre diocesi, che furono come i teatri delle virtù e delle opere, per
le quali egli divenne famoso.
Severino, “uomo del tutto
latino”, come dice Eugippio, suo discepolo e seguace, il quale scrisse la vita
di così grande maestro (cf. Eugippii Das Leben des Heiligen Severin: “Ep.
Ad Paschasium”, ed. R. Noll, Passau, p. 44), dall’Oriente, dove si era
ritirato, per provvido disegno di Dio nel secolo V giunse, attraverso la
Pannonia, nel Norico Ripense (= vicino alle rive del Danubio), cioè in quella
regione che si estendeva pressappoco dal Danubio fino ai monti Taurisci, dalle
vicinanze della città di Vienna fino al fiume In questa parte dell’Impero
Romano non solo si erano affermati la lingua e i costumi latini, ma si era
abbastanza consolidata la religione cristiana.
“Vivendo secondo la
dottrina evangelica ed apostolica” (Eugippii Op. mem., 1, p. 58) fu
monaco, non sacerdote, a quanto pare, ed ebbe gran desiderio di vita
contemplativa, per attendere in essa soltanto a Dio. Vedendo però i bisogni
degli abitanti, coinvolti in tante calamità, spesso si allontanò dalla “quiete
della celletta” per non privare della sua presenza quelle popolazioni
tormentate a “stare tra le numerose moltitudini di oppressi” (Eugippii, 4 et 9,
pp. 64.72).
Quest’uomo, dunque,
unitissimo a Dio e assai noto per il servizio dei fratelli, visse circa
vent’anni in quella zona di confine, “fatto tutto a tutti” (1 Cor 9, 22):
i quali a Flaviano – località dell’Austria ora chiamata “Mautern” – lo piansero
morto nell’anno 482; ma con gli insegnamenti della sua vita egli parla pure
agli uomini che ora vivono tra incertezze ed avversità.
San Severino insegna
anzitutto l’importanza fondamentale della preghiera e dell’intimità spirituale,
poiché “con la orazione continua stette più vicino a Dio” (cf. Eugippii Op.
mem., 4, p. 64). Bisogna che questo “primato della preghiera” sia più
profondamente inculcato ai tempi nostri, nei quali gli animi, fra tante
tensioni a assalti delle cose materiali, sono distolti dalle cose principali e
durature. In realtà, se non si ricorre all’Assoluto, tutto il resto viene
privato di senso, forza, efficacia.
In modo particolare
questo seguace di Cristo nella via stretta, più vivamente ammonisce quelli che
si sono legati a Dio con la promessa solenne dei voti ed altri vincoli sacri,
perché “seguano le orme dei beati Padri, dalle quali si acquista la
disposizione alla santità della vita” (cf. Eugippii, 9, p. 72), cerchino cioè
lo spirito originario della propria famiglia religiosa e lo pratichino in
questa età; inoltre “fuggendo le attrattive del mondo preferiscano Cristo a
tutti gli affetti (cf. Eugippii, 43, p. 110) e accordino i costumi con il
proposito assunto” (cf. Eugippii, 43, p. 110): cose, queste, per le quali è
necessario quel modo di vivere ascetico, nel quale egli si esercitò
continuamente.
Oltre alla cura esplicata
assiduamente per le anime – per tale motivo era solito fondare in diversi
luoghi piccoli monasteri, come a Flaviano e a Batavi (ora chiamato Passau),
Boiotro (ora si chiama Innstadt), e spesso richiestone, visitò comunità di
fedeli e le confermò nella santa religione – Severino si dedicò tutto a
sollevare le miserie corporali, come quei tempi avversi esigevano. Con un aiuto
veramente cristiano, che abbracciava tutti, si diede cura degli infermi, alcuni
dei quali risanò miracolosamente, come si racconta. Essendo gli abitanti
oppressi dalla fame, egli provvide loro alimenti in abbondanza, fino al punto
che, come dice Eugippio, “quasi tutti i poveri, nelle città e nei villaggi,
erano nutriti dalla sua operosità” (Eugippii Op. mem., 17, p. 82);
provvide anche abbondanza di vestiti.
Severino attese a
quest’opera di soccorso non in maniera disordinata, ma metodica, distribuendo
le decime dei prodotti della terra, offerte da moltissimi “perché ne fossero
sostentati i poveri” (Eugippii Op. mem., 17, p. 82), e importando aiuti
dal Norico mediterraneo, dove lo stato delle cose era più prospero. Gli stette
anche sommamente a cuore la sorte dei prigionieri, che riscattò o con denaro o
trattando a voce.
San Severino sembra
esortare all’esercizio di queste opere di carità e misericordia, con le quali
si offre una “chiarissima testimonianza di vita cristiana” (Apostolicam
Actuositatem, 31). Si deve tuttavia considerare che il sentimento naturale
della compassione, anche se lodevole, non basta in questo campo
dell’apostolato, ma bisogna guardare più in alto e vedere Cristo stesso nei
fratelli sofferenti.
Un’altra cosa, infine,
dobbiamo ammirare in quest’uomo di Dio: egli fu infatti un autorevole assertore
e difensore dei diritti dell’uomo. È sufficiente addurre alcuni esempi: per
riguardo a lui avvenne che i cattolici non venissero ribattezzati secondo le
prescrizioni dell’eresia ariana; indusse il re degli Alamanni ad astenersi dal
devastare la regione soggetta ai Romani; si oppose al capo dei Rugi, che
avrebbe voluto condurre via “i superstiti di tutte le città” che erano scampati
dalle spade nemiche, dicendo: “Vengo come ambasciatore di Cristo a chiedere
misericordia per i sudditi” (Eugippii Op. mem., 31, p. 98).
Queste cose non
riguardano forse anche i tempi nostri, nei quali devono essere sostenuti e
difesi i medesimi diritti? Diciamo, la libertà di confessione religiosa, con
cui “non si chiede un privilegio, ma soltanto il rispetto di un diritto
primario” (Redemptoris
Hominis, 17); la dignità dei lavoratori, i quali sono soggetti del lavoro
(cf. Laborem
Exercens, 7), non oggetti; i diritti della famiglia, di cui poco tempo fa
abbiamo promulgato lo statuto (Familiaris
Consortio, 46), e cose simili a queste.
Perciò, venerabili fratelli nostri, noi godiamo con voi, perché – per usare di
nuovo le parole di Eugippio – “Dio si è degnato di donare una tale luce a
queste regioni” (Eugippii Op. mem.: “Ep. ad Paschasium”, p. 44), un uomo,
cioè, che con una vita consacrata a Dio e agli uomini ha raggiunto la gloria
vera. Fiduciosi che il suo ricordo, opportunamente rinnovato quest’anno, si
risolva in incremento della vita cristiana, con grande affetto impartiamo la
Benedizione Apostolica a voi, ai vostri Vescovi Ausiliari, ai sacerdoti, ai
religiosi e ai fedeli affidati alla vostra cura pastorale.
Dai Palazzi Vaticani, il 27 aprile, l’anno 1982, quarto del nostro pontificato.
GIOVANNI PAOLO II
© Copyright 1982 -
Libreria Editrice Vaticana
Copyright © Dicastero per
la Comunicazione - Libreria Editrice Vaticana
Die
Statue des Hl. Severin, die 1982 von Leopold Hafner zum 1500. Todestag des Hl.
Severins errichtet wurde. Sie befindet sich auf dem Gelände des Römermuseums
Kastell Boiotro in Passau.
Den hellige Severin
(~406-482)
Minnedag:
8. januar
Skytshelgen for Bayern;
for linvevere, vinbønder og fanger; for vinstokkene; mot hungersnød; annen
skytshelgen for bispedømmet Linz
Den hellige Severin ble
født ca år 406. Hans opprinnelse er ukjent. Han kan ha kommet fra en
fremtredende familie i Nord-Afrika eller Roma, noe som antydes av navnet og av
kvaliteten på latinen han skrev. Ingen samtidige var i tvil om hans lærdom og
høye byrd, og han kan ha vært romer fra Kartago og en landsmann av den
hellige Augustin
av Hippo. Men en annen versjon sier at han ble født i Favianis, det
nåværende Mautern ved Donau i provinsen Noricum Ripense, det nåværende
Østerrike. Da Vandalene invaderte landet like etter at Severin var født, ble
foreldrene tvunget til å utvandre helt til Spania eller Nord-Afrika.
Severin ga opp alt
verdslig eiendom for å bli eremittmunk et sted i øst, trolig i Egypt eller
Palestina, men Lilleasia blir også nevnt. Her ble han slitt mellom ønsket om å
leve i ensomhet og behovet for å omvende ikketroende til kristendommen. Etter
hvert seiret det sistnevnte behovet. I sin eneboerhytte hørte han om konsilet i
Kalkedon i 451, og senere hørte han om den fryktede hunerkongen Attilas død i
453. Da skjedde ett av to: Enten ble han grepet av hjemlengsel etter landet ved
Donau, eller, som hans biograf forteller, fikk han et overnaturlig syn som
kalte ham dit.
Etter Attilas død trakk
hunerne seg tilbake østover. Men folkevandringene som de hadde utløst, fikk det
en gang så mektige Romerriket til å vakle. Særlig de fjerne romerske provinsene
nord for Alpene, Noricum og Pannonia, det nåværende Østerrike og deler av Ungarn
og Kroatia, var i full oppløsning fordi det svekkede imperiet ikke lenger kunne
komme dem til hjelp. De germanske stammene som dro sørover, først og fremst
østgoterne og herulerne, passerte alle gjennom landet rundt Donau, hvor de
plyndret og beleiret byene. Det eneste faste punktet i det allmenne kaoset var
den kristne Kirken.
Noricum Ripense var
landet ved Donau mellom Passau og Wien med bispesete i Lorch. I 453/54 kom
Severin som munk til Favianis, uten at han noen gang antydet at han var vendt
tilbake til sitt hjemland. Spurte noen hvor han kom fra, svarte han: "Vårt
fedreland er Himmelen, og Himmelen vil vi strebe etter".
Severins arbeid var ikke
lett. Mange ignorerte hans forkynnelse, men han visste at Gud ikke ber om
suksess, men om lydighet, derfor fortsatte han å forkynne. Han evangeliserte
vidt omkring i det nåværende Østerrike og Bayern og grunnla flere kirker. Som
den munk og eremitt han var, grunnla han flere klostre langs Donau, og han så
på dem som oaser av kristendom i et ondt land og la med det et solid grunnlag
for landets kristning. I vestdelen av området, som da het Bojotro, grunnla han
et kloster i Passau (Batavis). Dets ruiner ble oppdaget i 1978. Han grunnla
også flere andre klostre; i Favianis, i Lorch (Laureacum) ved Enns og en større
grunnleggelse ved Donaus bredder nær Wien, men han ble ikke værende i noen av
dem. Selv foretrakk han et liv i ensomhet, og hans eremittcelle var trolig i
det nåværende Göttweig.
Severin forente det
kontemplative livet med gjerninger av kristen nestekjærlighet overfor den
plagede befolkningen i landet. Severins biograf Eugippius forteller om en serie
mirakler han skal ha utført. Han profeterte en katastrofe for innbyggerne i
Astura (nå Stockerau) utenfor Wien på grunn av deres onde oppførsel, og sa at
de ville bli invadert. Men hans ord forble upåaktet, og folket svarte med
forakt at den stolte byen Wien aldri ville overgi seg og at de ikke fryktet de
barbariske hordene. Men da hans profetier viste seg å være sørgelig sanne og
hunerne la byen øde, sendte befolkningen i sin hjelpeløshet bud på ham, og
stille og rolig kom han dem til unnsetning og organiserte hjelpearbeidet. Ofte
våget han seg modig og ubeskyttet inn i fiendens leir for å oppnå frigivelse av
fanger, og han bevarte mange steder fra plyndring og ødeleggelse. På samme vis
ble det aldri gjort noe skade på ham, så stor var makten i hans personlighet og
hans profetiske gaver.
Da vandalenes ville
horder dro gjennom Noricum og plyndret og myrdet, satte Severin nytt mot i
folket slik at de kunne møte de ville hordene, og han styrket forsvaret av
byen. Han gjentok Leo den Stores gest mot Attila og møtte deres høvding, og
hans inngripen gjorde at barbarene forlot landet. I hele denne tiden var
Severin en stor botsapostel. Han organiserte hjelpen for de mange krigsfangene
på en måte som fortsatt brukes, nemlig gjennom fangeutveksling.
Han reddet byen Favianis
fra en fryktelig hungersnød da han oppdaget at en rik kvinne hadde gjemt bort
enorme mengder mat. Han formante henne til bot, og hun fordelte forsyningene
blant de fattige, mens isen på elvene smeltet slik at lekterne kunne komme
gjennom med flere forsyninger. Et annet sted drev han vekk en sverm gresshopper
og reddet avlingen, og hindret dermed en ny hungersnød. Han fikk jordeierne til
å gi en tiende hvert år til veldedige formål. Sakte men sikkert mottok mange
østerrikere hans tro, og ryktet om hans hellighet spredte seg også blant de
barbariske krigerne som dro gjennom landet.
Tross denne store
aktiviteten lengtet Severin etter et liv i kontemplasjon og ensomhet, og da den
verste terroren la seg, trakk han seg tilbake i lange perioder til sin
eremittcelle. Han insisterte på å eie bare en tunika og han bar aldri sko,
heller ikke om vinteren når Donau frøs til. Han spiste ikke før solen hadde
gått ned, og i fasten tillot han seg bare ett måltid i uken. Men han hadde ikke
suksess i alt han forsøkte på. Han var svært trist over at han aldri klarte å
helbrede en av sine nærmeste venners blindhet. Men Severin fortsatte å stole på
Gud.
Han fortsatte sin
karitative virksomhet, og vanskeligheten var å kombinere dette med et
kontemplativt liv. Jo mer han lengtet etter å leve sitt enkle liv i ensomhet,
jo større ble de kravene som ble stilt til ham. Byene konkurrerte med hverandre
om å beholde ham lengst mulig innenfor sine murer, for de stolte på at mens han
var til stede, ville ingen fiende trenge inn. Slik ble den hellige til en sann
hyrde og beskytter. Mange byer prøvde å gjøre ham til sin biskop, selv om det
er tvilsomt om han engang var presteviet. Men han nektet å bli bundet til ett
sted på den måten, og foretrakk et liv i ensomhet, askese og omvandrende
forkynnelse.
Herrene i landet var
rugierne, som var germanske kristne av ariansk konfesjon. Overfor dem forsvarte
Severin rettene til den katolske minoritetsbefolkningen av romersk kultur.
Severin var høyt ansett både av romerne og germanerne, så han sluttet en avtale
rugiernes konge om at katolikker og arianere skulle bo i adskilte bosetninger,
uten å drive gjensidig proselyttvirksomhet. Snart lyktes det ham å skape slik
fred mellom folkegruppene at de levde sammen og til og med brukte de samme
kirkene.
Severin nøt en høy
aktelse hos de hedenske og arianske stammenes høvdinger. Hans politiske
høydepunkt kom da herulernes konge Odovaker oppsøkte ham i hans eremittcelle.
Den stolte og desperate Odovaker var den dristigste av barbarene. Da han kom
til Severins enkle bolig, ble han forbauset over at den var så lav at en voksen
mann ikke kunne stå oppreist der. Bøy deg ned, sa Severin, og den ambisiøse
germaneren gjorde det og gikk inn for å motta eremittens velsignelse. Odovaker
skulle snart invadere Italia, og Severin forutsa hans seier over Roma, men han
ba ham skåne den kristne sivilisasjonen og det av den romerske kulturen som var
verdt å bevare. Severin var fortsatt i live i 476, da Odovaker avsatte den
siste romerske keiser Romulus Augustulus.
I 30 år fortsatte Severin
sitt arbeid. På slutten av sitt liv trakk han seg tilbake til sin celle i
Göttweig, og det er sagt at han forutså sin egen død. Mens han lå døende av
pleuritt (brysthinnebetennelse), kunne de som var omkring høre ham synge
salmistens ord: "Alt som har ånde, lovpris Herren!" (Salme 150)
Deretter døde han i fred og ro. Det skjedde en gang mellom 476 og 482, etter
tradisjonen den 8. januar 482.
Severin døde midt blant
vingårdene og ble gravlagt i en grav han selv hadde gravd. For noen år siden
ble denne graven gjenfunnet i den eldste kirken i Wiens omgivelser i forstaden
Heiligenstadt, men graven var tom. Men den var ikke plyndret. Severin hadde
forstått at romerne for alltid kom til å forlate Noricum. Derfor hadde han før
sin død bedt om at de siste som forlot landet, skulle ta med seg hans
levninger.
Etter at Odovaker hadde
knust Roma, utviste han den romerske befolkningen fra Noricum. Seks år etter
Severins død tok de siste av hans munker med seg grunnleggerens levninger og
dro først til Montefeltre, så til Luculanum (Castel Lucullano) ved Napoli, hvor
det ble bygd et kloster. Severins disippel, munken Eugippius, ble kort etter
valgt til abbed i klosteret. Fra 910 hvilte hans relikvier i det store
benediktinerklosteret San Severino i Napoli, og siden 1807 har de vært i
sognekirken Fratta Maggiore ved Aversa utenfor Napoli. Eugippius skrev ca 511
Severins biografi, Vita Severini.
Selv om Severin sannsynligvis
aldri besøkte de sørlige Alpe-områdene, strakte hans innflytelse helt til
Salzburg, Tirol, Steiermark og Kärnten, så han kan betegnes som apostel for det
nåværende Østerrike. I St. Severin-kirken i Passau blir det fortsatt vist frem
en celle hvor Severin skal ha levd.
Severin har minnedag 8.
januar, og hans navn står i Martyrologium Romanum. Han blir fremstilt som
pilegrim med bok eller abbedstav, med krusifiks i høyre hånd mens han preker
for folket, eller i bønn ved et gravmæle.
Han har blitt blandet
sammen med en annen Severin (av Napoli),
som også tidligere ble minnet i Napoli, hvor han skal ha dødd som byens biskop.
Men denne Severin er en fiktiv helgen, oppstått av en sammenblanding mellom to
hellige som kom i stand gjennom forvirringen som ble brakt i stand da Severin
av Noricums levninger ble brakt til Napoli.. Den andre Severin (av
Septempeda) kom fra Marche di Ancona og hadde ingenting med Napoli å
gjøre. Han var på 500-tallet biskop i byen Septempeda, som senere skiftet navn
til San Severino
Kilder:
Attwater/John, Attwater/Cumming, Bentley, Butler (I), Benedictines, Engelhart,
Schnitzler, Schauber/Schindler, Melchers, KIR - Kompilasjon og
oversettelse: p. Per
Einar Odden - Sist oppdatert: 1999-03-11 13:36
SOURCE : https://www.katolsk.no/biografier/historisk/severin
Stifts-
und Pfarrkirche Zwettl, Niederösterreich - Glasfenster im Kapellenkranz
(nördlicher Teil), hll. Severin, Leopold und Koloman (bez. 1889) (Foto
aufgenommen am 15.9.2013, Tag der Wiederöffnung nach vierjähriger
Restaurierung)
Severinus van Noricum,
Favianis (= Mautern), Oostenrijk; abt; † 482.
Feest 8 januari
Severinus was van Germaanse afkomst en moet rond 400 ergens in Oost-Europa geboren zijn. Hij kwam naar de Romeinse provincie Noricum (= nagenoeg het huidige Oostenrijk zonder Tirol) tijdens de volksverhuizingen na de dood van Attila de Hun in 453. In die tijd stond het gebied volkomen onder invloed van de Arianen.
Severinus verkondigde het evangelie, stond de geteisterde en opgejaagde
bevolking bij en stichtte kloosters in Favianis, Lorch aan de Enns (later
St-Florian) en in Passau. Hij stierf te Favianis op 8 januari 482.
Verering & Cultuur
Enkele jaren na zijn dood, in 488, moesten zijn monniken vluchten voor de
oprukkende Germaanse vechtersbaas Odoaker; hij wilde de ariaanse ketterij terug
invoeren. De monniken brachten Severinus' relieken eerst naar Montefeltre,
later naar Castellum Lucullanum bij Napels. In 910 werd in Napels het grote
benedictijner klooster San Severino gebouwd om zijn relieken in een schrijn te
bewaren. In 1807 werden ze overgebracht naar Frattamaggiore bij Aversa (ten
noorden van Napels). In Passau wordt bij de St-Severinkerk nog steeds de plek
aangewezen waar hij enige tijd een kluis bewoond zou hebben.
Hij is patroon van Beieren, van Wenen en van het bisdom Linz; daarnaast van
linnenwevers, wijnbouwers en gevangenen. Zijn voorspraak wordt ingeroepen om
veel vrucht aan de wijnranken en tegen hongersnood.
Afgebeeld
Hij wordt afgebeeld als pelgrim met een boek; als abt met staf van een abt bij
een grafmonument, met kruisbeeld; heidenen onderrichtend; met Odoaker (volgens
de legende had hij de inval van Odoaker na zijn dood voorspeld).
[101a; 102; 111a; 500; Dries van den Akker s.j./2010.02.21]
© A. van den Akker
s.j. / A.W. Gerritsen
SOURCE : https://heiligen-3s.nl/heiligen/01/08/01-08-0482-severinus.php
Lorch
( Enns/Upper Austria ). Basilica of Saint Lawrence: Saint Severin gate ( 1971 )
by Peter Dimmel showing scenes of the life of Saint Severin.
Lorch ( Enns/Oberösterreich ). St.Laurenz-Basilika: Severinstor ( 1971 ) von Peter Dimmel mit Szenen aus dem Leben des heiligen Severin.
Lorch
( Enns/Upper Austria ). Basilica of Saint Lawrence: Saint Severin gate ( 1971 )
by Peter Dimmel showing scenes of the life of Saint Severin ( detail ).
Lorch
( Enns/Oberösterreich ). St.Laurenz-Basilika: Severinstor ( 1971 ) von Peter
Dimmel mit Szenen aus dem Leben des heiligen Severin ( Detail ).
Severin von Norikum
Gedenktag katholisch: 8. Januar
nicht gebotener Gedenktag im deutschen Sprachgebiet
gebotener Gedenktag im Bistum Passau, im Erzbistum Wien und im Bistum Sankt Pölten
Diözesankalender Graz-Seckau, Linz, Salzburg und Eichstätt
Übertragung der Gebeine nach Neapel: 20 Oktober
Name bedeutet: der
Strenge (latein.)
Mönch, Glaubensbote in Noricum
* um 410 in Nordafrika (?)
† 482 in Favianis, heute Mautern bei
Krems in Österreich
Severin - möglicherweise
der von Bischof Ennodius
von Pavia erwähnte, aus höchsten italienischen Kreisen stammende
Severinus, nach mancher Überlieferung ursprünglich aus Nordafrika stammend -
begann nach dem Tode des Hunnenkönigs Attila 453 und dem Zusammenbruch seines
Reiches ab etwa 460 in das von den Rugiern - die Anhänger des Arianismus waren
- bedrängte Gebiet von Noricum zu
gehen, um der dort noch ansässigen christlich-römischen Bevölkerung gegen die
aus dem Osten und Norden andrängenden Germanenvölker zu helfen.
Severin wirkte der Donau
entlang bis nach Quintanis - das heutige Künzing in
Niederbayern, wo er der Überlieferung zufolge den toten Priester Silvinus,
wieder zum Leben erweckte, und die Salzach hinauf
bis zum Römerkastell Cucullis - dem heutigen Kuchl bei Salzburg -, wo er die
bereits bestehende Christengemeinde in deren Kirche auf
dem Georgenberg besuchte, weil ein Ältester der Gemeinde ihn bat, die noch
heidnischen Bräuchen Anhängenden zu bekehren; dabei wirkte Severin auch
aufgrund von Wundern überzeugend.
Rom hatte
dieses Gebiet aufgegeben. Severin aber wirkte staatsmännisch zum Wohl der
Bevölkerung. Zudem rief er die Menschen in den Kirchen zu Buße, Gebet und
Almosengeben zusammen. In einigen Fällen drängte er die Vertreter der römischen
Administration zu militärischer Verteidigung, was aber nur mäßig erfolgreich
war; deshalb betrieb er nach 453 die Rückführung der Römer aus der von
Alemannen und Thüringern bedrängten Zone in das Gebiet um Lauriacum - dem
heutigen Lorch an
der Enns in Österreich.
Severin wirkte, aber er
hatte offenbar keine weltliche oder kirchliche Ämter inne, berichtet wird von
seiner Ablehnung des Bischofsamtes. Deshalb konnte er mahnen und drängen, aber
nichts erzwingen. Dennoch war er zusammen mit Bischof Canstantius, der in Lauriacum residierte 1,
die beherrschende Person in den verbliebenen Resten der kirchlichen
Organisation.
Severin selbst war weder
römischer Beamter noch geweihter Priester noch Mönch; er lebte als - möglicherweise
im Osten geschulter - Einsiedler in einem ehemaligen Wachturm nahe der
Weinberge unweit der Stelle, an der er später das Kloster Favianis - im
heutigen Mautern bei
Krems 2 -
gegründete. Er handelte also nicht aufgrund eines Amtes, sondern aus innerem
Bedürfnis. Durch die Einrichtung von Klöstern hoffte er, dem verwüsteten Land
und den Menschen Halt zu verleihen und gründete außer Favianis auch das Kloster
Batavis / Boiotro an der Stelle des heutigen Domes in
Passau; beiden stand er als Laie vor. Hinzu kamen wohl weitere Klöster in Noricum. Die
später von Severins Gefährten Eugyppius verfasste
Regel geht aber wohl kaum auf Severin zurück, weil seine Ferne zu dem Konvent
aufgrund seiner umfassenden öffentlichen Wirksamkeit die Funktion eines echten
Abtes und Durchsetzung einer Regel nicht zuließen.
Severin sah den Verlust
von Noricum kommen
und kündigte die Übersiedlung der christlich-römischen Bevölkerung in römische
Provinzen an, Hunulf führte dann im Auftrag seines Bruders, des germanischen Söldnerführers
Odoaker, 488 - nach Severins Tod - Teile der Bevölkerung nach Italien, um sie
vor den eindringenden, mit den Hunnen verbündeten Rugiern, in Sicherheit zu
bringen. Auch Severins Konvent folgte diesem Zug, so kamen die Gebeine Severins,
die zuvor von Lucillus erhoben
worden waren, zunächst auf die heute San Leo genannte Burg im
gleichnamigen Ort im Montefeltro bei Rimini - dann auf das kaiserliche
Privatgut Castrum Lucullanum - dessen Reste noch an der westlichen Meerseite
des Castel
dell' Ovo auf der Insel Megaride vor Neapel zu sehen sind - und in dem
sich bereits Ende des 5. Jahrhunderts Basilianermönche
ansiedelten, die von einer frommen Frau Barbara berufen wurden, um die
Reliquien zu bewachen.
Severins Leben ist
beschrieben in der auch als Quelle für die Geschichte der Donauländer bedeutsamen Vita
Sancti Severini seines Begleiters Eugyppius aus
dem Jahr 511. Eugyppius war Abt im Kloster des ins Castel Lucullano / Castel
dell'Ovo in Neapel übergesiedelten Severinkonvents, wohin die Gebeine Severins
übertragen worden waren. Als die Mönche des inwischen zum Benediktinerorden gehörenden
Klosters um 900 aus Furcht vor den Überfällen der Sarazenen ins Landesinnere
zogen und das Kloster Santi
Severino e Sossio errichteten, kamen die Reliquien in dessen Kirche,
die - neben Socius -
auch Severin geweiht wurde. Nach der Auflösung des Klosters kamen die Reliquien
1808 in die Basilika
di San Sossio in Frattamaggiore bei Neapel.
In Passau ist die
ehemalige Pfarrkirche - heute Friedhofskirche -
im Stadtteil Innstadt Severin geweiht; Ausgrabungen haben hier 1980 die
Fundamente einer römischen Kirche zutage gebracht.
Zusammen mit Severin
werden an seinem Gedenktag Gefährten verehrt: Paulinus
von Teurnia, Lucillus und Marcianus, Maximus sowie Silvinus.
Als 1783/85 das
Bistum Linz durch
Abtrennung vom Bistum Passau gegründet
wurde, wurde Maximilian
vom Pongau Patron des neuen Bistums; da dieser historisch wenig
belegbar war, wurde 1935 Severin
von Norikum zweiter Diözesanpatron.
Das Kloster Santi
Severino e Sossio in Neapel wurde 1799 von den durch die französische
Revolution inspirierten aufständischen Sanfedisti besetzt, war dann
Bildungseinrichtung und ist heute Staatsarchiv. Die Kirche wurde beim Erdbeben
1980 schwer beschädigt, nach der Renovierung ist sie seit 2014 wieder
benutzbar.
Attribute: Hund, als Pilger
Patron von Bayern; der Gefangenen: der Winzer und Leineweber; für Fruchtbarkeit der Weinstöcke; 2. Patron des Bistums Linz seit 1935
Bauernregel: Wenn es dem Severin gefällt, / dann bringt er mit die große
Kält'.
1 Die
frühchristliche Bischofskirche von Lauriacum stand wohl an der Stelle der
späteren Kirche
Maria Anger, die auf Mauern des Zentralgebäudes des Legionslagers errichtet
worden war und 1792 abgebrochen wurde.
2 Anstatt von Mautern wird
verschiedentlich als Ort seines Klosters auch die Jakobskirche in
Wien-Heiligenstadt genannt - dies ist nicht haltbar, was Prof. Helmut Bouzek im
Artikel Favianis
- das heutige Mautern erläutert.
Worte des Heiligen
Als Severin seinen Tod nahen fühlte, rief er noch einmal seine Mitbrüder zusammen und hielt folgende Abschiedsrede:
Geliebte Söhne in Christus, ihr wisst, dass der heilige Jakob, als er dem Tode nahe war, seine Söhne zu sich berief, jeden einzeln mit prophetischen Worten segnete und ihnen die Geheimnisse der Zukunft enthüllte.
Ich bin schwach, matt, mir fehlt die innere Glut jenes Großen; daher darf ich es nicht wagen, meinen schwachen Kräften solches zuzutrauen. Eines aber, was der Demut nicht widerspricht, kann ich tun: euch auf die Beispiele der Vorfahren verweisen; betrachtet ihren Tod, betrachtet die Kraft ihres Glaubens. Abraham, der vom Herrn berufen war, gehorchte im Glauben und zog so in ein Land, welches er zu Eigen erhalten sollte; und er zog aus, ohne zu wissen, wohin. Folget also diesem seligen Patriarchen nach, in seinem Glauben, in seiner Heiligkeit, suchet nicht das Irdische, sondern nur euer himmlisches Vaterland.
Unser Gott ist denen nahe, die aufrichtigen Herzens sind. Die für Gott kämpfen, sollen nie ablassen von beharrlichem Gebet. Die Buße soll nicht scheuen, wer die Tat nicht scheute. Wenn ihr gesündigt habt, haltet nicht mit der Reue zurück, da der Zorn Gottes durch Tränen besänftigt wird und das Opfer, das ihm gefällt, ein zerknirschter Geist ist. Lasset uns also von Herzen still und demütig sein; lasset uns jede Sünde vermeiden und die Gebote Gottes stets beobachten.
Wisst, unser schlichtes Kleid, die Tatsache, dass wir Mönche sind, fromme Reden
und frommes Gehaben sind uns alles nichts nütze, wenn wir in der Beobachtung
der Gebote Gottes nachlässig und untreu befunden werden. Unsere Lebensweise vor
allem, meine lieben Söhne, muss also mit unseren Vorsätzen in Einklang stehen.
Es ist traurig, wenn ein Laie in Sünden fällt; wie viel trauriger ist dies aber
bei Mönchen, welche die Lockungen der Welt wie eine wilde Bestie fliehen und
Christus allein im Herzen tragen sollen; wo Haltung und Kleid allein schon
Reinheit der Sitten zu verbürgen scheinen. Aber was halte ich euch auf, liebe
Söhne, mit meiner langen Rede!
Dann rief er alle der
Reihe nach zu sich und nahm von jedem mit einem Kuss Abschied. Er empfing das
Sakrament der Kommunion, bat alle, nicht um ihn zu weinen, bezeichnete mit
erhobener Hand seinen ganzen Leib mit dem Zeichen des Kreuzes und forderte sie
schließlich auf, den Psalm zu singen. Da sie es, von Schmerz überwältigt, aber
nicht vermochten, intonierte er selbst den Gesang: Lobt den Herrn in
seinem Heiligtum, alles, was atmet, lobe den Herrn. [Psalm 150] Wir hatten
diesen Vers kaum beantwortet, als er ruhig im Herrn verschied.
Quelle: Eugyppius:
Vita Sancti Severini. Zitiert nach Monastisches Lektionar zum 8. Januar
zusammengestellt von Abt em. Dr. Emmeram Kränkl OSB,
Benediktinerabtei Schäftlarn,
für die Katholische
SonntagsZeitung
Stadlers
Vollständiges Heiligenlexikon
Eugyppius'
Lebensgeschichte des Severin gibt es im lateinischen
Original bei den Documenta Catholica Omnia und in englischer
Übersetzung beim Tertullian Project von Roger Pearse.
Das Römermuseum in Mautern ist zwischen Ende März und Ende Oktober freitags von 12 Uhr bis 16 Uhr sowie samstags und sonntags von 10 Uhr bis 16 Uhr geöffnet, der Eintritt beträgt 4 €. (2019)
Das Castel
dell' Ovo mit der Kirche San Salvatore ist täglich von 9 Uhr bis 18.30
Uhr - sonntags nur bis 13 Uhr - zur Besichtigung geöffnet, der Eintritt ist
frei. (2022)
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Autor: Joachim
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Quellen:
• Vera Schauber, Hanns Michael Schindler: Heilige und Patrone im Jahreslauf. Pattloch, München 2001
• Hiltgard L. Keller: Reclams Lexikon der Heiligen und der biblischen Gestalten. Reclam, Ditzingen 1984
• http://www.bauernregeln.net/januar.html nicht mehr erreichbar
• Charlotte Bretscher-Gisinger, Thomas Meier (Hg.): Lexikon des Mittelalters. CD-ROM-Ausgabe. J.B. Metzler, Stuttgart / Weimar 2000
• Lexikon für Theologie und Kirche, begr. von Michael Buchberger. Hrsg. von Walter Kasper, 3., völlig neu bearb. Aufl., Bd. 9. Herder, Freiburg im Breisgau 2000
• http://www.bistum-passau.de/aktuelle-meldungen/24/1/2017/ein-heiliger-aus-dem-bistum-passau-hl-severin-auch-der-patron-von-kuenz nicht mehr erreichbar
• Infotafeln an der Kirche auf dem Georgenberg bei Kuchl
• https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chiesa_dei_Santi_Severino_e_Sossio - abgerufen
am 12.05.2022
korrekt zitieren: Joachim Schäfer: Artikel Severin von Norikum, aus dem Ökumenischen Heiligenlexikon - https://www.heiligenlexikon.de/BiographienS/Severin_von_Norikum.htm, abgerufen am 18. 6. 2025
Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek verzeichnet das Ökumenische
Heiligenlexikon in der Deutschen Nationalbibliografie; detaillierte
bibliografische Daten sind im Internet über https://d-nb.info/1175439177 und https://d-nb.info/969828497 abrufbar.
SOURCE : https://www.heiligenlexikon.de/BiographienS/Severin_von_Norikum.htm
Hans Gustav Dittenberger von Dittenberg (–1879). Der
heilige Severin segnet das Land Österreich , 1849, 494 x 634, Kunsthistorisches Museum , Belvedere
Aos Veneráveis Irmãos
Francisco Cardeal Konig, Arcebispo de Viena
Francisco Zak, Bispo de Santo Hipólito
António Hofmann, Bispo de Passau
Maximiliano Aichern, Bispo de Linz
Naquele tenebroso
período, em que desabava o Império romano, os germanos e outros povos lhe
atacavam as fronteiras, e se realizava a passagem da antiguidade para a Idade
Média — como "lâmpada que arde e brilha" (Jo 5, 35) —
notabilizou-se no Nórico São Severino, desde cujo falecimento passaram já
quinze séculos. Com razão portanto é celebrada esta memória nas vossas
dioceses, que foram, por assim dizer, teatros das virtudes e das obras que o
notabilizaram.
"Homem plenamente
Latino", como diz Eugípio, seu discípulo e sequaz, que descreveu a vida de
tão grande mestre (cf. Ep. ad Paschasium: "Eugippius, Das Leben des
Heiligen Severin", ed. R. Noli, Passau, p. 44) — do oriente, para onde se
recolhera, chegou no século V por desígnio providencial de Deus ao Nórico, quer
dizer, à região que se estendia de perto do Danúbio até aos montes de Tauem,
das vizinhanças da cidade de Viena até ao rio Inn. Nesta parte do Império
romano não só tinham dominado a língua e os costumes latinos, mas também se
consolidara bastante a religião cristã.
"Vivendo segundo a
doutrina evangélica e apostólica" (Op. cit., 1, pág. 58), foi monge, mas
não sacerdote ao que parece, desejando sobretudo a vida contemplativa por meio
da qual se entregasse unicamente a Deus na solidão. Mas, vendo as necessidades
da gente, que se encontrava em grandes aflições, muitas vezes se apartou do
"sossego da cela", "para não negar ao povo aflito a sua
presença" e "nas frequentes perturbações valer aos atribulados"
(Ibid. 4 e 9, pp. 64, 72).
Assim este homem,
unidíssimo a Deus e notabilíssimo pelos serviços prestados aos seus irmãos,
passou quase vinte anos naquela região limítrofe, "feito tudo para
todos" (1 Cor 9, 22), que o choraram ao falecer no ano de 482, na
Áustria, em Mautern; mas ele fala ainda com o magistério da sua vida aos
homens, que passam igualmente a existência no meio de incertezas e
adversidades.
São Severino ensina em
primeiro lugar o principal valor da prece e da conversação espiritual, porque
"se aproximava o mais perto de Deus com a oração continua" (cf.
Eugipp., Op. cit., 4, p. 64). Este, por assim dizer, "primado da oração"
é necessário que seja inculcado mais eficazmente nos nossos tempos em que as
almas, entre tantos esforços e tantos embates das coisas materiais, são
afastadas das que são principais e permanentes. Na verdade, não recorrendo ao
Absoluto, tudo o mais perde o sentido, a energia e a eficácia.
Em particular àqueles,
que se consagraram a Deus com emissão de votos ou com outros vínculos sagrados,
este seguidor de Cristo na via estreita recomenda-lhes ainda instantemente que
"sigam as pegadas dos bem-aventurados predecessores, a fim de aprenderem a
maneira santa de viver" (cf. ibid., 9, p. 72), quer dizer para
investigarem qual o primitivo espírito da própria família religiosa e nestes
tempos o levarem à prática; e além disso para que, "fugindo às carícias do
mundo, prefiram Cristo a todos os afectos" (cf. ibid., 43, p.
110), e "os costumes se ajustem ao propósito feito" (cf. ibid.) para
o que é necessário o modo ascético de viver, no qual ele continuamente se
exercitou.
Além do cuidado dirigido
às almas com diligência, por causa dela esforçava-se por fundar pequenos
mosteiros em lugares diferentes, como em Mautern, Passau e Innstadt, e
comunidades de fiéis. Solicitado com frequentes pedidos, uns e outras visitou e
fortaleceu na santa religião. E Severino todo se aplicou a aliviar as misérias
corporais, segundo requeriam aqueles tempos hostis. Com ajuda verdadeiramente
cristã que todos abrangia, dispensou cuidados aos doentes, alguns dos quais,
segundo se diz, reconduziu à saúde. Estando os habitantes oprimidos pela fome,
conseguiu-lhes abundantes géneros alimentícios, de maneira que, segundo afirma
Eugípio, "quase todos os pobres dispersos por todas as cidades ou
povoações eram alimentados graças a ele" (op. cit., 17, p. 82); e proveu
também a que não faltasse o vestuário. Severino não praticou todavia de maneira
precipitada esta. actividade auxiliadora; fê-lo com método, repartindo as
décimas dos frutos, que muitos ofereciam "para alimentar os pobres" (ibid.),
e trazendo auxílios do Nórico Mediterrâneo onde as condições eram mais
prósperas. Teve ainda muitíssimo a peito a sorte dos cativos, que ou remiu com
dinheiro ou libertou recorrendo à persuasão.
Dir-se-á que São Severino
nos exorta a que exerçamos estas obras de caridade e misericórdia, pelas quais
se dá "notabilíssimo testemunho de vida cristã" (Apostolicam
Actuositatem, 31). Há-de porém notar-se que o natural sentimento de
compaixão, embora louvável, não basta neste campo do apostolado, mas se deve
olhar para mais alto e se há-de descobrir o próprio Cristo nos irmãos que
sofrem.
Outra coisa finalmente é
necessário que admiremos neste homem de Deus: foi, com a sua autoridade, grande
promotor e defensor dos direitos do homem. Basta acrescentar alguns exemplos:
por reverência para com o Santo chegou-se a que não fossem constrangidos a ser
rebaptizados os católicos segundo a regra da heresia ariana; levou o rei dos
Alamanos a coibir-se de devastar a região sujeita aos Romanos; ao príncipe dos
Rúgios, que desejou tirar "as relíquias de todas as cidades",
relíquias que se tinham tornado espadas hostis, resistiu dizendo: "Venho
como embaixador de Cristo, a fim de pedir misericórdia para os seus
súbditos", (op. cit., 31, p. 98). . -I"
Não são aplicáveis também
estas medidas aos nossos tempos, nos quais os mesmos direitos devem manter-se e
propugnar-se? Referimo-nos à liberdade de professar a religião, coisa "em
que não se pede algum privilégio, mas só o respeito de um direito
primário" (Carta Enc. Redemptor Hominis, 17);
à dignidade dos operários, que são sujeitos, não objectos, do trabalho (cf.
Carta Enc. Laborem
Exercens, 7); aos direitos da família, cujo catálogo recentemente
publicámos (Exort. Ap. Familiaris
Consortio, 4-6); e a coisas semelhantes.
Assim convosco nos
alegramos, Veneráveis Irmãos, porque — usando de novo palavras de Eugípio —
"Deus se dignou dar a essas regiões tal luzeiro" (Ep.a Pascásio, op.
cit., p. 44), isto é, um varão que, entregando a vida a Deus e ao serviço
dos irmãos, conseguiu a verdadeira glória. Confiando que a sua recordação, este
ano oportunamente renovada, se transforme num aumento da vida cristã — a vós
mesmos, aos vossos Bispos auxiliares, aos sacerdotes, aos religiosos e aos
rebanhos, confiados à vossa diligência pastoral, concedemos de todo o coração a
Bênção Apostólica.
Do Palácio do Vaticano,
27 de Abril do ano de 1982, quarto do Nosso Pontificado
JOÃO PAULO PP. II
© Copyright 1982 -
Libreria Editrice Vaticana
Copyright © Dicastero per
la Comunicazione - Libreria Editrice Vaticana
Vie de Saint Séverin du Norique : http://orthodoxievco.net/ecrits/vies/severin.pdf
Philippe Régerat, « L’itinéraire
d’un saint au ve siècle : Séverin de Norique du désert d’Orient
aux rives du Danube », in Les formes du voyage. Approches interdisciplinaires. Sous
la direction de Dominique
Dinet et Jean-Noël
Grandhomme, Strasbourg, Presses universitaires de Strasbourg, 2019, p.
365-376
Marianne Saghy, « Le saint de la frontière barbare : Séverin de Norique », in Les saints face aux barbares au haut Moyen Âge. Réalités et légendes. Sous la direction de Edina Bozoky, Rennes, Presses universitaires de Rennes, 2017, p. 17-27 : https://books.openedition.org/pur/153045?lang=fr
Lidya Colangelo. « San Severino del Norico : i piedi del messaggero della pace ». Religions. Université de Strasbourg, 2021. Italian. ⟨NNT : 2021STRAK010⟩. ⟨tel-03976063⟩. Résumé : L'hagiographie de saint Severin a été écrite en 511 par son disciple Eugippius qui, devint abbé du monastère construit au Castellum Lucullanum, à Naples, où les reliques de Severin avaient été transférées de Noricum. Le culte du saint a eu beaucoup de succès en Italie et surtout dans la ville appelée San Severo qui a pris son nom par le Saint au 11ème siècle et dont les éléments hagiographiques et iconographiques ont été adaptés au nouveau contexte culturel et cultuel. De l'analyse de la Vie, nombreux éléments intéressants ont émergé et, en particulier, la relation du Saint avec l'arianisme et avec la politique. L’analyse des animaux insérés par Eugippius dans son travail a montré une subtile pédagogie symbolique. Severin n'a jamais écrit une règle pour ses moines mais sa conduite de vie, ses enseignements, représentent un modèle pour tous ceux qui voulaient s’approcher de son modèle de monachisme. Le choix, par Eugippius, des miracles à raconter n'est pas accidentel mais est certainement lié à une intention claire d'associer la figure du Saint à des précédents bibliques et hagiographiques : https://shs.hal.science/tel-03976063v1
Saint Severinus of Noricum: The Iconography : https://www.christianiconography.info/severinus.html