are a fair sample of St. Severinus's times, and of the circumstances
into which he voluntarily threw himself. About the middle of the
fifth century there appears in the dying Roman province of Noricum
(Austria we now call it) a strange gentleman, eloquent and learned
beyond all, and with the strangest power of melting and ruling the
hearts of men. Who he is he will not tell, save that his name is
Severinus, a right noble name without doubt. Gradually it oozes out
that he has been in the far East, through long travels and strange
dangers, through many cities and many lands; but he will tell
nothing. He is the servant of God, come hither to try to be of use.
He certainly could have come for no other reason, unless to buy
slaves; for Austria was at that time the very highway of the nations,
the centre of the human Mahlstrom, in which Huns, Gepiden, Allmannen,
Rugen, and a dozen wild tribes more, wrestled up and down round the
starving and beleaguered Roman towns of that once fertile and happy
province. A man who went there for his own pleasure, or even
devotion, would have been as wise as one who had built himself last
summer a villa on the Rappahannock, or retired for private meditation
to the orchard of Hougoumont during the battle of Waterloo.

Nevertheless, there Severinus stayed till men began to appreciate
him; and called him, and not unjustly, Saint. Why not? He preached,
he taught, he succoured, he advised, he fed, he governed; he turned
aside the raids of the wild German kings; he gained a divine power
over their hearts; he taught them something of God and of Christ,
something of justice and mercy; something of peace and unity among
themselves; till the fame ran through all the Alps, and far away into
the Hungarian marches, that there was a prophet of God arisen in the
land; and before the unarmed man, fasting and praying in his solitary
cell on the mountain above Vienna, ten thousand knights and champions