SEVERUS, SULPICIUS (c.
363–c• 425), Christian writer, was a native of Aquitania. He was imbued with the culture of his time and of his country, which was then the only true home of Latin letters and learning. Almost all that we know of Severus' life comes from a few allusions in his own writings, and some passages in the letters of his friend Paulinus, bishop of Nola. In his early days he was famous as a pleader, and his knowledge of Roman law is reflected in parts of his writings. He married a wealthy lady belonging to a consular family, who died young, leaving him no children. At this time Severus came under the powerful influence of St. Martin, bishop of Tours, by whom he was led to devote his wealth to the Christian poor, and his own powers to a life of good works and meditation.
The chief work of Severus is the Chronica (c. 403), a summary of sacred history from the beginning of the world to his own times, with the omission of the events recorded in the Gospels and the Acts, "lest the form of his brief work should detract from the honour due to those events." The book was a text-book, and was used as such in the schools of Europe for about a century and a half after the editio princeps was published by Flacius Illyricus in 1556. As a historian of the past Severus has little value. The real interest of his work lies, first, in the incidental glimpses it affords all through of the history of his own time; and in the information he has preserved concerning the struggle over the Priscillianist heresy, which disorganized and degraded the churches of Spain and Gaul, and particularly affected Aquitaine.
The sympathies here betrayed by Severus are wholly those of St. Martin. Severus loses no opportunity for laying stress on the crimes and follies of rulers, and on their cruelty, though he once declares that, cruel as rulers could be, priests could be crueller still. This last statement has reference to the bishops who had left Maximus no peace till he had stained his hands with the blood of Priscillian and his followers. Martin, too, had denounced the worldliness and greed of the Gaulish bishops and clergy. Severus also fully sympathized with the action of St. Martin touching Priscillianism.
After the Chronica the chief work of Severus is his Life of Martin, a catalogue of miracles, told in all the simplicity of absolute belief. Two Dialogues and the Epistles on the death of Martin complete the list of Severus' genuine works.