Flavius ​​Severinus

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Flavius ​​Severinus was a Roman politician in the second half of the 5th century AD.

Little is known about his life, but it is possible that he came from a noble urban Roman family with close ties to the senatorial elite. According to the statement of Sidonius Apollinaris , he had in any case mastered the previous political turmoil in the West and served several emperors. In 461 he held the consulate for the western part of the empire and probably died between 482 and 490.

Friedrich Lotter has tried in several works to equate Severin von Noricum with the said consul. According to Lotter, after the overthrow of the emperor Majorian he supported, the consul had to emigrate to the eastern empire in 461 before returning to the west in 467. Now, however, he no longer acted as the official official of West Rome and, after 476, even leaned entirely on the Germanic successor rulers in the west. Lotter emphasizes that the consul is the only known bearer of the name Severinus who can be identified with Saint Severin and that there are no valid arguments against it, although it must remain a hypothesis.

While some researchers agreed with Lotter, the majority of research still rejects the thesis to this day. Speaking against, among other things, that the consul Flavius Severinus still in the time of Odoacer is indirectly proved in Rome (476/83), where a permanent seat in the Colosseum was reserved to that name. However, there is a possibility that the corresponding inscription refers to Severinus iunior (probably the son of Flavius ​​Severinus), the consul of the year 482.

literature

Remarks

  1. See Dirk Henning: Periclitans res Publica. Empire and Elites in the Crisis of the Western Roman Empire, 454 / 5–493. Stuttgart 1999, pp. 78 and 104.
  2. Sidonius Apollinaris, Ep. I 11.10.
  3. See André Chastagnol: Le sénat romain sous le règne d'Odoacre. Bonn 1966, p. 81.
  4. Cf. inter alia Friedrich Lotter: Severinus von Noricum, Legende und historicalreality. Stuttgart 1976, p. 246ff .; Friedrich Lotter: Severinus and the end of Roman rule on the upper Danube. In: Deutsches Archiv für Erforschung des Mittelalters 24, 1968, pp. 309–338, here pp. 336–338.
  5. So finally Friedrich Lotter: The historical data on the final phase of the Roman presence in Ufernorikum . In: Joachim Werner and Eugen Ewig (eds.): From late antiquity to the early Middle Ages. Sigmaringen 1979, pp. 27-90, here p. 86.
  6. See the documents in Max Spindler (Hrsg.): Handbuch der Bayerischen Geschichte Volume I: Das Alte Bayern. 2nd edition, Munich 1981, p. 180, note 15. Differentiated in the assessment and by no means completely negative, however, is Herwig Wolfram : Borders and Spaces. History of Austria before its creation. Vienna 1995, p. 46f .; Theodor Nüsslein also agrees (afterword in: Eugippius. Vita Sancti Severini. Latin / German. Translated and edited by Theodor Nüsslein. Stuttgart 1999, pp. 147f.).
  7. Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum VI 32206. See on this John Robert Martindale, John Morris: The Prosopography of the Later Roman Empire . Volume 2, Cambridge 1980, p. 1001 (Severinus 5); Hartmut Wolff : Critical remarks on the secular Severin. In: Ostbairische Grenzmarken 24, 1982, pp. 24–51, here p. 45, note 55.
  8. ^ John Robert Martindale, John Morris: The Prosopography of the Later Roman Empire . Volume 2, Cambridge 1980, p. 1001 (Severinus 3).
  9. See Dirk Henning: Periclitans res Publica. Empire and Elites in the Crisis of the Western Roman Empire, 454 / 5–493. Stuttgart 1999, p. 104.
  10. See Alan Cameron and Diane Schauer: The last Consul. Basil and his diptych. In: The Journal of Roman Studies 72, 1982, pp. 126–145, here p. 128, note 13.