S. SEVERINUS, P. AP. OF NORICUM.
(a.d. 482.)
[Roman Martyrology and those of Germany. The life of S. 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,"[34] 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 defence; 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 S. 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 S. 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.