Does that sound a bit like King Arthur? Quite a bit, I’d
say. But this was not post-Roman Britain, but almost-post-Roman Austria. This
border was not Hadrian’s Wall, but the river Danube. And the hero was not
Arthur, but Severinus, a mysterious holy man, later regarded as a saint.
We have a detailed biography of him by Eugippius, a monk who
knew him well, the Vita Sancti Severini
(henceforth just Vita), together with a letter from Eugippius to a deacon
called Paschasius in AD511, and Paschasius’ reply. There is also a reference to
Severinus and some of the events of that time in the work now known as the Anonymous Valesianus and the Vita Sancti Antonii Eremitici, a Life of
St Antony the Hermit, who had lived and worked alongside Severinus. Severinus
also features in the History of the
Lombards by Paul the Deacon, a Lombard contemporary of Charlemagne. There
is also a modern discussion in Bryan Ward-Perkins’ The Fall of Rome and the End of Civilisation (OUP, 2005).
Saints’ Lives were the principal form of literature in
Europe and the Near East in late Antiquity. They were written for a growing
monastic readership. The Rule of St Benedict requires a young monk with a good
voice to read improving literature to the monks at dinner time (Rule, Ch.38)
Benedict’s Rule was written at Monte Cassino between 528 and 543. Saints’ Lives
that already existed were ready made for Chapter 38.
Severinus appeared, as if from nowhere in the 450s, to
minister and run the towns along the south bank of the Danube in the Roman
province of Noricum Ripense in what is now the panhandle of western Austria.
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| Austrian schilling coin of 1982 depicting St Severinus |
What we witness through the Vita is the disintegration of a
province in the middle of the fifth century. And Noricum Ripense was part of
the prefecture of Italy, close enough to make the Italians notice. Yet it turns
on many dubious points.
The appearance of Severinus at just the right time reminds
me of nothing more that the role of The Stranger played by Clint Eastwood in my
favourite western High Plains Drifter
(1973); if Eugippius had not known him personally (a standard trope of vitae is
personal attestation that however clichéd the miracles are, they really
happened), you would consider it more like a classical myth.
The Noricans played little part in defending their own
province. Local place names reflect this: Batavis (modern Passau), Asturis,
Commagenis. These reflect the places established alongside the Danube by and
for soldiers recruited from the Batavi (in the Netherlands), the Asturians (in
north west Spain) and the men of Commagene (possibly Isaurians) in Asia Minor.
These were clearly military forts.
It is hard to know where the ‘barbarians’ were located. At
Commagenis they were within the walled town as protectors, and rushed out when
an earthquake struck (Vita 2); in other locations they were invaders.
And who exactly were the locals? When Noricum asked to join
the Roman Empire, what is now southern Germany was part of the Celtic
world. We can tell by the detailed place
names given by Ptolemy’s Tetrabiblios
map data, which are full of names ending in the classic Gaulish –acum and
-dunum (Lacus Curtius has modern renditions of these maps). So the area north
of the Danube was not yet Germanic in c.150. The names of Batavis and other
places suggests that auxiliaries were settled upon discharge near where they
had served. Only Lauriacum, with its Gaulish name (modern Lorch) seems to have been a metropolis for the
remaining Noricans.
Noricum was well known for its iron mines, which are
mentioned in Rutilius Namantianus De
Reditu Suo, book 1, where they are compared with those of Elba and
Sardinia. Perhaps that was what made the area desirable for the Germanic
peoples (had they worked as guards there?) and worth the Romans defending.
Legion II Italica Pia was established in Lauriacum by Marcus Aurelius in c.180,
and these may be the few who remained to defend Noricum in the fifth century.
The Vita contains this moving account of the last soldiers:
So long as the Roman dominion lasted, soldiers were maintained in many
towns at the public expense to guard the boundary wall. When this custom
ceased, the squadrons of soldiers and the boundary wall were blotted out
together. The troop at Batavis, however, held out. 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 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. (Vita Ch.20)
The border
wall was the Roman limites, which ran
from the North Sea to the Black Sea. Around Lauricum, the system switches from
the Upper Germanic limes to the
Raetian limes. Was there a weakness
either in physical structure or in the chain of command, as might have been
known by some Germanic peoples who had served with the Roman army?
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| Reconstruction of the Danubian limes, 19th century |
Eugippius
tells us about the frozen Danube affording movement of people: ‘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’
(Vita 4). This matches the comment of Jordanes that the Danube ‘freezes so hard
that it will support like a solid rock an army of infantry, and carts and sleds’
(Getica 55). I suspect that this is the origin of the story often told as if
fact about the barbarian invasion of New Year’s Eve 406 crossing the frozen
Rhine near Strasbourg. The Danube froze at Vienna in January 1901 according to
Eugippius’s translator in 1914. Our source for the crossing of the Rhine on
that date is Prosper Tiro of Aquitaine, whose detailed Chronicle does not mention it being frozen then. It may be as late
as Gibbon, but what Gibbon took as a surmise (‘On the last day of the year, in
a season when the waters of the Rhine were most probably frozen, they entered
without opposition the defenceless provinces of Gaul.’ Ch.30) has been
relayed as a fact by later historians.
A comment is also made by Herodian that ‘The Rhine in Germany and the Danube in Pannonia
are the largest of the northern rivers. In summer their depth and width make
them easily navigable, but in the cold winters they freeze over and appear like
a level plain which can be crossed on horseback. The river becomes so firm and
solid in that season that it supports horses and men’ (Herodian Roman History 6.7); this is a
description of a battle by Maximinus Thrax at Sirmium in AD236.
An icebound
Danube also features in references to a famine at the town of Favianis. However
it seems that the cause of the famine was a local magnate ‘a certain widow,
Procula by name, had concealed much produce of the fields’ (Vita 3). Severinus
is said to have publicly berated her for hoarding the corn, presumably for
power and profit. By forcing her to release her store, Severinus ended the
famine.
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. 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 (Vita 3).
This was coming from Raetia (Switzerland) and had floated
downstream, but been blocked off by ice floes from the river Aenus (the Inn, as
in Innsbruck). This does show that the movement of food and supplies continued.
How this had happened is hard to tell, but it looks more like commerce than the
prayers of the stricken. Later we read of oil reaching Noricum Ripense ‘a commodity which in those places
was brought to market only after a most difficult transport by traders’ (Vita
28). One of his acolytes, Maximus, arranged for a collection of donated clothes
to be transported 200 miles across the Alps in winter to the Danube, having
hired local men to fetch it on their backs (Vita 29), allegedly guided by a
non-hibernating bear. Timing is all; the icebound river presumably prevented
fishing, which would normally have prevented famine.
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| The frozen Danube in a recent picture |
The Vita contains several elements found elsewhere in later
hagiography. The enemy are always furious, always angry with the Romans and always
keen on killing them. The enemy are implicated here in the death of the two
soldiers mentioned above. Likewise two men are captured by the enemy less than
two miles from the city walls of Favianis, having been warned off from going to
collect fruit from the orchards (Vita 20). Similarly, we are told that ‘Hunimund, accompanied by a 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’ (Vita 22).
Later we
are told that the Heruli attacked Ioviaco (Salzburg) ‘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’ (Vita 24).
The ‘enemy’ also sought to scale the walls of Lauriacum, but because nearly all
livestock had been herded within the walls seized cattle left outside and went
away, abandoning their scaling ladders (Vita 30).
There seems
to be a considerable confusion just who the inhabitants of Noricum Ripense were
facing. They seem to have the Heruli, the Alamanni, the Rugii and the Thuringi
attacking them at different times. The saint’s response seems to have been to
abandon the towns after a little resistance. It is worth quoting in full
Chapter 27:
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
present conflict to your own strength. 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.
In short,
the people of Quintanis moved to Batavis, and when that was sacked, they went
to Lauriacum, with a view to a withdrawal to Italy. Both the Alamanni and
Thuringi were involved at different times.
Noricum
Ripense was, as mentioned above part of the Prefecture of Italy. The Prefect at
that time seems to have been Caecina Decius Basilius, a high born Italian
noble, who later was made Consul and who had three sons who also made both
Prefect and Consul under Odoacer. His sole objective seems to have been to suck
up to whoever was ruler at the time. He clearly failed to maintain adequate communication
with the Danube. The last Prefect before Odoacer was Felix Himelco, a man one
assumes of Punic ancestry.
Relations
with Germanic neighbours was not always bad, as Chapter 14 tells us how
Gibuldus the local king of the Alamanni came secretly to Batavis and negotiated
with Severinus and arranged for many prisoners to be freed and returned home.
Interestingly, Amantius, a local priest, sent letters to Gibuldus and received
several from him, suggesting either the king was literate or had staff who
were. Perhaps the king was a former Roman soldier.
One of the
groups most closely involved with Noricum were the Rugii. They had once lived
on the Baltic island of Rugen, but had morphed into a warband, which means they
were probably around 150 strong. Now 150 armed men can do a lot of damage, but
they are not the overwhelming numbers people often talk about. This is Dunbar’s
Number, the maximum number of people one individualcan know properly, and thus
command. The Roman First Century of the primus
pilus had a full strength of 160. As mentioned above, in Commagenis, the
Germans were local defenders, while at Batavis, they were few enough in numbers
to catch local men in orchards Sometimes, even in winter, it was safe enough to
transport supplies down the Danube despite ice. The toughest of all warriors
was General Winter.
In some
instances the Rugii were voluntarily protecting the Romans against fellow
Germans. Feba, the Rugian leader, probably a kinsman of King Odoacer, offered
to protect the locals and this was accepted (Vita 31).
We have
some clue to who Severinus was. When he died in AD482, he was conveyed to
Naples, where a rich woman called Barbaria built a mausoleum for him in a
castle. She had corresponded with Severinus, which suggests a postal service of
some sort still existed. This suggests that Barbaria was some form of kinswoman
(Vita 46).
Severinus
is credited both in the Vita and the Anonymous Valesianus with having met
Odoacer long before he became king of Italy and, like all good saints to have
predicted Odoacer’s rule. After Severinus’ death, the Rugii seem to have fallen
into a disputed succession between Feba’s brother and his son and for attacks
on the Roman towns, which required Odoacer to send in a full army, and then,
via his brother Onoulph, also a Roman general, and a comes called Pierus, to order the evacuation of all remaining
Romans to Italy (Vita 44).
Those who
would prefer to see the end of the Roman empire as the peaceful accommodation
of a handful of almost-Roman soldiers will be disappointed. The terminology in
French and German is educational: Les
invasions barbares versus die Völkerwanderungen
(wanderings of the people). Germans might easily be on all sides of what clearly
could be a major struggle and people who considered themselves Roman could
either settle down under new masters or be evacuated to Italy. Either way,
nothing remained quite the same.
