Venantius Fortunatus writes the Life of *Severinus (bishop of Bordeaux, early 5th c., S01273), presenting him as a healer in life and a defender of the city after his death. Written in Latin, probably in Poitiers (western Gaul), 580/588. From the 9th c. onwards, this Life becomes confused with that of *Severinus (bishop of Cologne, early 5th c., S02870).
Evidence ID
E07358
Type of Evidence
Literary - Hagiographical - Lives
Major author/Major anonymous work
Venantius Fortunatus
Venantius Fortunatus, Life of Severinus (Vita Severini, BHL 7652)
Summary:
(1.) Severinus is bishop of Trier [in some manuscripts, of Cologne] and is distinguished by his charity, abstinence and vigils.
(2.) One night Severinus is visited by an angel, who tells him to go to the city of Bordeaux.
(3.) Amandus, the bishop of Bordeaux, is told in a vision of Severinus’ impending arrival; Amandus tells the people about the revelation, and they proclaim Severinus the new bishop of Bordeaux.
(4.) As bishop, Severinus gains a reputation for healing fevers, paralysis, and possession by demons.
(5.) Severinus predicts the time of his own death, which occurs on 21 October (XII Kl. Novembrium). Amandus, fearing that the citizens of Trier would steal the saint (metuens cives Trevericus ne sibi sanctum furarent), buries him in a secret tomb in a hidden crypt (ocultae cripta condeta gloriose tradedit sepulture), where God now carries out miracles.
(6.) On Severinus’ feast day, the Goths attempt to seize Bordeaux; the people of the city pray at Severinus’ tomb, begging 'that the saint should wage war on the heretics from his tomb' (ut contra heredicus procederet belligeratur Severinus de tumulo). Severinus responds by summoning up a protective fog. 'Powerful, he guarded them in battle, making darkness from the clouds and drawing night from them, the city was hidden from their eyes, and the enemy was blinded in the camps' (Evegelat fortis in praeliis, fit caligo de nymbis, tendetur nox de nebolis, subducetur civitas oculis, hostis excecatur in castris). Sensing the arrival of a relieving army, the Goths flee in disarray.
(7.) The people praise the saint and give gifts at his tomb for saving the city.
(8.) Later, during a period of heavy rain and flooding in the region, solemnities and vigils are enacted at Severinus’ tomb, and the saint drives away the storm.
(9.) During a period of drought causing damage to crops, the people of Bordeaux hold vigils and sing psalms at Severinus’ tomb, and Severinus sends a heavy rain that replenishes the fields.
Text: Levison 1920.
Summary: Kent Navalesi.
Liturgical ActivitiesLiturgical invocation
Cult PlacesBurial site of a saint - crypt/ crypt with relics
Non Liturgical ActivitySaint as patron - of a community
MiraclesMiracle during lifetime
RelicsBodily relic - entire body
Protagonists in Cult and NarrativesEcclesiastics - bishops
Liturgical invocation
Chant and religious singing
Cult PlacesBurial site of a saint - crypt/ crypt with relics
Burial site of a saint - tomb/grave
Non Liturgical ActivitySaint as patron - of a community
Visiting graves and shrines
Vigils
Composing and translating saint-related texts
MiraclesMiracle during lifetime
Power over elements (fire, earthquakes, floods, weather)
Healing diseases and disabilities
Apparition, vision, dream, revelation
Exorcism
Miraculous interventions in war
Miracle after death
Unspecified miracle
RelicsBodily relic - entire body
Theft/appropriation of relics
Protagonists in Cult and NarrativesEcclesiastics - bishops
Heretics
Foreigners (including Barbarians)
Angels
Source
Venantius Fortunatus was born in northern Italy, near Treviso, and educated at Ravenna. In the early 560s he crossed the Alps into Merovingian Gaul, where he spent the rest of his life, making his living primarily through writing Latin poetry for the aristocracy of northern Gaul, both secular and ecclesiastical. His first datable commission in Gaul is a poem to celebrate the wedding in 566 of the Austrasian royal couple, Sigibert and Brunhild. His principal patrons were Radegund, the subject of this Life, and Agnes, the first abbess of Radegund's monastery of the Holy Cross at Poitiers, as well as Gregory, the historian and bishop of Tours, Leontius, bishop of Bordeaux, and Felix, bishop of Nantes, but he also wrote poems for several kings and for many other members of the aristocracy. In addition to occasional poems for his patrons, Fortunatus wrote a four-book epic poem about Martin of Tours, and several works of prose and verse hagiography. The latter part of his life was spent in Poitiers, and in the 590s he became bishop of the city; he is presumed to have died early in the 7th century. For Fortunatus' life, see Brennan 1985; George 1992, 18-34; Reydellet 1994-2004, vol. 1, vii-xxviii; Pietri and Heijmans 2013, 801-822, 'Fortunatus'.Gregory of Tours states, at the end of his entry on Severinus of Bordeaux in Glory of the Confessors (E02612), that after composing this he learned of a Life of Severinus, written by 'the priest Fortunatus'. This means that Fortunatus' Life had been written by the time Gregory composed the Glory of the Confessors, most of which seems to have been written in 587/588; but Fortunatus' Life is unlikely to have been written much before, given that Gregory had been unaware of its existence (Gregory knew Fortunatus and his works well). Nothing is known about the circumstances of its composition, but it is plausible that it was written at the request of the church of Bordeaux or its bishop: two successive bishops of Bordeaux, Leontius (ob. c. 576/7) and Bertram (ob. 585), are known to have been friends and patrons of Fortunatus.
The Life of Severinus survives only in an 8th/9th century recension, and as a result was long taken to be a work from that period, while the Life by Fortunatus mentioned by Gregory was assumed to be lost. In the first edition of BHL (1901), the text was included (BHL 7652), but was identified as an epitome of the 9th/10th century Life of Severinus of Cologne (BHL 7647), whose cult had become intertwined with that of Severinus of Bordeaux (see below). This is why the Life of Severinus does not appear in the original MGH edition of Venantius Fortunatus' prose works (Auctores antiquissimi 4.2, published in 1885). It was only in 1902 that Henri Quentin identified the supposedly later Life as the one composed by Fortunatus. Quentin argued for Fortunatus' authorship on a number of stylistic grounds: the same use of prose rhythm as in Fortunatus' undoubted works, similar use of literary effects such as assonance, alliteration, and wordplay, and shared characteristic vocabulary (Quentin 1902, 32-36). Quentin's conclusions were endorsed by Wilhelm Levison (Levison 1948 [1909], 34-36), whose edition of the text attributes it to Fortunatus without reservation (MGH, Scriptores rerum Merovingicarum 7, published 1920). There has not subsequently been any serious attempt to question the attribution to Fortunatus.
Discussion
Severinus of Bordeaux (Pietri and Heijmans 2013, 1742, 'Severinus 3'), who seemingly lived in the early 5th century, is not attested by any surviving evidence until the late 6th, when his Life by Venantius Fortunatus and his entry in Gregory of Tours' Glory of the Confessors (E02612) appeared more or less contemporaneously, probably in the 580s. These seem to have been written independently: Gregory states that he only became aware of Fortunatus' Life after writing his own, and his words do not imply that he had read it. But this does not mean that their sources of information were independent: Gregory states that he did not know of any previous written account of Severinus, and that he relied upon 'the trustworthy account of the clergy at Bordeaux themselves' (ipsorum Burdegalensium clericorum fidelis relatio). While Fortunatus says nothing about his sources, his work can hardly be based on anything other than the same oral tradition, mediated by the clergy of Bordeaux; this is consistent with Fortunatus' attested links with the church of Bordeaux (see Source section above).Venantius Fortunatus and Gregory of Tours
The two narratives match in most, though not all, of their key points. In both, Severinus comes to Bordeaux as a stranger during the episcopate of Amandus, who cedes his office to him, resuming it only after his death; Severinus is buried at Bordeaux, and becomes the patron and protector of the city. Because Fortunatus' Life is longer than Gregory's account, he has scope to describe in detail things that Gregory merely alludes to, devoting a significant part of his Life (§§ 6-9) to accounts of how Severinus posthumously protected Bordeaux against floods, drought, and an attack by the Goths. Neither Gregory nor Fortunatus says much about Severinus' activities when he was actually bishop: Gregory effectively says nothing at all, Fortunatus (§§ 4-5) makes only some generalised and formulaic claims about Severinus' virtues and healing miracles.
There are also inconsistencies between the two accounts, however. Both prominently feature visions: in Gregory's account, God appears to Amandus in a dream and tells him to welcome Severinus. Fortunatus (§§ 2-3) describes both how Severinus, also in a dream, was ordered by an angel to leave his home and travel to Bordeaux, and how Amandus was told 'by a revelation' (per revelationem) to receive him. Here there is an interesting difference: according to Gregory, Amandus' dream admonished him merely to make Severinus welcome in his city. It is Amandus himself who subsequently decides to resign his office as bishop and bestow it on Severinus. In Fortunatus' version, Amandus is ordered in his vision to give up the bishopric to Severinus, which he does, ceremonially accompanied by the entire people and clergy, as soon as Severinus arrives in the city. There is no doubt as to the historicity of Amandus (Pietri and Heijmans 2013, 'Amandus 2'): he was bishop of Bordeaux at the beginning of the 5th century, and was one of the correspondents of Paulinus of Nola. On the basis of references in Paulinus' letters his accession can be dated to 401/404. Paulinus mentions nothing that corresponds to the events depicted by Gregory and Venantius Fortunatus, however.
The most problematic difference between Fortunatus' account and Gregory’s comes in their account of Severinus' place of origin. Gregory says only that Severinus came 'from eastern parts' (de partibus orientis), a phrase that normally denoted the East Roman empire. Fortunatus, on the other hand, opens his Life with the statement that Severinus was bishop of Trier (Igitur beatissimus Severinus Treverorum episcopus ...) until he was commanded to leave and go to Bordeaux. When he describes Severinus' death and burial (§ 5), he claims that Amandus buried him in a hidden crypt because he was afraid that the citizens of Trier would steal his body (for the archaeology of Severinus' tomb, see Février 1998, 32; Barraud and Maurin 2014, 67).
Fortunatus' references to Trier are puzzling for a number of reasons, aside from their conflict with Gregory. First of all, there is no evidence that there ever was a bishop of Trier named Severinus. No one of that name appears in the episcopal list, and there is no record of such a bishop in any other source (see e.g. Duchesne 1915, 30-44). Even if this were not the case, it is difficult to see how the bishop of one of the major cities of the empire could leave his see and migrate somewhere else, in defiance of canon law, without even a hint of the event appearing in contemporary sources. Yet Fortunatus' claim is so specific that it seems very odd as simply a casual invention. One possibility is that it originated in the Bordeaux tradition, and that Gregory rejected this element in his account. But given the state of the evidence, the issue remains insoluble.
It should be emphasised, in view of the later tradition associating Severinus with Cologne, that there is no doubt that the city given by Fortunatus was Trier. Though some manuscripts have Cologne, the manuscript tradition as a whole shows unambiguously that Trier was the city mentioned in Fortunatus' original (Levison 1948 [1909], 39-40). It was changed to Cologne by some later medieval scribes who worked after the belief had become established that Severinus of Bordeaux and Severinus of Cologne were the same person.
Severinus of Bordeaux and Severinus of Cologne
Chronic confusion arose in later centuries between the cult of Severinus of Bordeaux and that of a contemporaneous bishop of the same name, Severinus of Cologne (PCBE 4, 'Severinus 2'). Like his namesake, Severinus of Cologne apparently lived around the year 400, but is not attested in any surviving source until the time of Gregory of Tours. In Miracles of Martin 1.4 (E02803), Gregory states that 'the blessed Severinus, bishop of the city of Cologne' (beatus autem Severinus Colonensis civitatis episcopus) heard angelic singing at the moment of the death of Martin of Tours and his ascent to heaven (thus in 397); Gregory's words do not suggest that he saw Severinus himself as a saint (on Gregory's possible source, see Päffgen 2011b, 467-73). Severinus of Cologne is not mentioned again in any surviving written source until the 9th century, but archaeological evidence suggests that there was some cult at his shrine in Cologne from the mid 6th century onwards (Gauthier and Hellenkemper 2002, 64; Päffgen 2011a, 409-416). At some point after 881 his Life was composed (BHL 7647, edition and German translation in Oepen et al. 2011, 543-581; the date is established by the fact that the Life mentions an attack on Cologne by the Vikings which took place in that year). The author evidently had almost no information about Severinus' life, indeed nothing except the same source that is still extant: Gregory’s account of Severinus’ vision. To this he added Fortunatus’ Life of Severinus of Bordeaux, incorporating it wholesale into his own Life. Since Fortunatus’ narrative left Severinus buried at Bordeaux, the Cologne author added a story of how a later bishop of Cologne, Ebergisel (late 6th c.), led a delegation to Bordeaux which persuaded its citizens to divide Severinus’ body, and brought relics back to establish the shrine.
It seems evident that the author of the Cologne Life composed it in the context of a cult which was centred on a saint's tomb, but possessed nothing that documented his life (and that could provide material for the hagiography that was demanded as the cult grew in popularity). It is in this context that he recycled the Life of Severinus of Bordeaux (this need not have been done cynically – it is possible that the author thought it was a genuine document about the Cologne saint and that its references to Trier were a mistake). As time went on, the cult of Severinus of Cologne became widespread and popular. The Cologne Life was widely copied (23 manuscripts are listed in BHLms), and its appropriation of Fortunatus' material led to the Bordeaux and Cologne saints being confounded both in tradition and in scholarly work until as late as the beginning of the 20th century. One facet of this is that some scribes who copied Fortunatus' Life of Severinus of Bordeaux replaced its references to Trier with Cologne, no doubt believing they were correcting an error. Another is that even in the first edition of BHL, published in 1901, most texts relating to Severinus of Bordeaux appear under Severinus of Cologne; the Life by Fortunatus is listed as an epitome of the Cologne Life. Only subsequently was the confusion largely dispelled by scholars such as Quentin and Levison (see Source section above). The relationship between the two cults, and the question of what, if any, actual connection there may have been between the two saints, remains a subject of discussion (see a number of chapters in Oepen et al. 2011).
Bibliography
Edition:Levison, W., Vita Severini episcopi Burdegalensis auctore Fortunato, in: Passiones vitaeque sanctorum aevi Merovingici (V) (Monumenta Germaniae Historica, SS Rer. Merov. 7; Hannover and Leipzig, 1920), 219-224.
Further reading:
Barraud, D., and Maurin, L., "Bordeaux," in: F. Prévot, M. Gaillard, and N. Gauthier (eds.), Topographie chrétienne des cités de la Gaule des origines au milieu du VIIIe siècle, vol. 16: Quarante ans d'enquête (1972-2012): 1. Images nouvelles des villes de la Gaule (Paris, 2014).
Cartron, I., et al. (eds.), Autour de Saint-Seurin: lieu, mémoire, pouvoir des premiers temps chrétiens à la fin du moyen âge. Actes du colloque de Bordeaux, 12-14 octobre 2006 (Bordeaux, 2009). [Not seen]
Duchesne, L, Fastes épiscopaux de l'ancienne Gaule. Tome troisième: Les provinces du Nord et de l'Est (Paris, 1915).
Février, P.-A., "Bordeaux," in: N. Gauthier (ed.), Topographie chrétienne des cités de la Gaule des origines au milieu du VIIIe siècle, vol. 10: Province ecclésiastique de Bordeaux (Aquitania Secunda) (Paris, 1998), 19-33.
Gauthier, N., and Hellenkemper, H., "Cologne," in: N. Gauthier, B. Beaujard, and F. Prévot (eds.), Topographie chrétienne des cités de la Gaule des origines au milieu du VIIIe siècle, vol. 12: Province ecclésiastique de Cologne (Germania Secunda) (Paris, 2002), 25-69.
Levison, W., "Die Entwicklung der Legende Severins von Köln," in: Idem, Aus Rheinischer und Fränkischer Frühzeit (Düsseldorf, 1948), 28-48; originally published, Bonner Jahrbücher 118 (1909), 34-53.
Oepen, J., et al. (eds.), Der hl. Severin von Köln: Verehrung und Legende. Befunde und Forschungen zur Schreinsöffnung von 1999 (Siegburg, 2011).
Quentin, H., "La plus ancienne vie de saint Seurin de Bordeaux," in: Mélanges Léonce Couture (Toulouse, 1902), 23-63.
Päffgen, B, "Grab und Schrein des hl. Severin in ihrem architektonischen Kontext vom. 5. bis 13. Jahrhundert," in: J. Oepen et al. (eds.), Der hl. Severin von Köln: Verehrung und Legende. Befunde und Forschungen zur Schreinsöffnung von 1999 (Siegburg, 2011), 373-440. [= Päffgen 2011a]
Päffgen, B., "Der hl. Severin im Spiegel der frühen historischen Überlieferung," in: J. Oepen et al. (eds.), Der hl. Severin von Köln: Verehrung und Legende. Befunde und Forschungen zur Schreinsöffnung von 1999 (Siegburg, 2011), 441-534. [= Päffgen 2011b]
Pietri, L. and Heijmans, M., Prosopographie chrétienne du Bas-Empire, 4 Prosopographie de la Gaule chrétienne (314-614), 2 vols. (Paris 2013).
Record Created By
David Lambert
Date of Entry
13/12/2020
| ID | Name | Name in Source | Identity | S01273 | Severinus, bishop of Bordeaux, early 5th c. | Severinus | Certain | S02870 | Severinus, bishop of Cologne, early 5th c. | Severinus | Certain |
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