The Last Roman - Romulus Augustulus by Adrian Murdoch

Author:Adrian Murdoch [Adrian Murdoch]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2017-12-04T05:00:00+00:00

One day, as Saint Severinus was reading in his cell, he suddenly closed the book and began to sigh deeply and to weep. He ordered those around him to run quickly to the River Inn, which he stated was then and there crimson with human blood. At that moment, word was brought that the bodies of the soldiers mentioned above had been washed ashore by the river’s current.²⁰

In Severinus’ latter years, Noricum was faced with more and more disasters. From the 470s onwards there seemed to be little good news as town after town fell. When Joviacum, either present-day Schlögen or Aschach, was destroyed, Eugippius adds only the gory detail that the priest Maximianus was hanged on a cross.²¹ In a last-ditch attempt at protecting his flock, Severinus evacuated the settlements upstream from Lorch into the town. This move seems to have given the region a brief respite. When Lorch was besieged, the barbarians were repulsed – all they got away with was a herd of cattle. But it proved to be all-too brief a victory: soon Lorch was lost as well.

Severinus himself died in Mautern on 8 January 482. A sign of how temporary his protection had been is that not even his remains were able to rest in peace. As the Rugians continued their sorties across the Danube into Noricum they even sacked the monastery where he was buried. They took everything, only leaving the walls, Eugippius writes sardonically, because they could not be carried across the Danube.²² By 488 the inevitable had to be faced. Noricum had to be abandoned.

Even though Severinus had proved ultimately unsuccessful, trying to halt the barbarian torrent with an umbrella, the Norican survivors were unwilling to leave their mentor and protector in the hands of the sacrilegious barbarians. As they left their homeland, their province, they took Severinus’ remains with them. His body, which, as in the stories of all saints, was found to be incorrupt, was brought from Noricum to Italy in a horse-drawn wagon, ending its journey at a castle in Macerata di Montefeltre, near Urbino.

This is where Romulus’ mother Barbaria re-enters the story. Evidently a bright, literate, wealthy, strong-willed and devout woman, she was now in her mid-40s. Her and her husband’s connection with Noricum have been mentioned in the previous chapter, and are circumstantially confirmed by their relationship with St Severinus. Eugippius comments that both of them ‘had a great devotion’ for Severinus, and corresponded with him.²³

Barbaria was clearly a feisty woman. She had already had to cope with the death of her husband and brother-in-law; several moves around Italy; the uncertainty of her own fate; as well as concern over her surviving son. The sources are too limited to flesh out the impression in any great detail, but she seems to have thrown herself into the Church. With the abandonment of Noricum and the transfer of Severinus’ remains to Italy, she clearly wanted to devote her energies to building his memorial. At the end of the 480s

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