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. St. 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 among
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 fervor. 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.
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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 a hermitage
four leagues from his community, where be wholly devoted himself to
contemplation. He never ate till after sunset, unless on great
festivals. In Lent he ate 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 honored 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 a quite 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.
Footnotes:
1. Ps. 150.
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