Life of Saint Severinus
A memoir of the monk Severinus, who worked in the Roman frontier province of Noricum on the Danube in the years around 476, written by a member of his community. It shows from close at hand what the end of Roman government looked like in one province.
Read the text at tertullian.org ↗Translator’s introduction ↗
Eugippius belonged to the community that Severinus had gathered in Noricum, on the upper Danube, and went with it to Italy, where the saint’s body was finally laid to rest in the Lucullan castle near Naples. He dates his work himself: he sent it to the deacon Paschasius about two years after the consulship of Importunus (509), which gives 511.
The work is a saint’s life, built around miracles and prophecies, but its setting is precise: towns along the Danube whose garrisons were no longer paid, raids by neighbouring peoples, and the eventual removal of the Roman population to Italy on the orders of Odoacer. Eugippius speaks of the time when Roman rule still stood as something already past. He also tells how the young Odoacer visited Severinus on his way to Italy.
Cited in
- AD 476, firm date