ITALY AND HER INVADERS
BOOK IV.
CHAPTER V.
THE RUGIAN WAR
“The Emperor stirred up against Odoacer the nation of the Rugians”. To
understand the meaning of this statement, and to complete our knowledge, scanty
at the best, concerning this war, which occupied the attention of Odovacar
during three years of his short reign, 486-488, we must turn back to the life
of the saintly hermit of Noricum, Severinus.
The picture of the long-continued and hopeless misery of a people which
the biographer of the Saint draws for us is very depressing. Those lands
between the Danube and the Noric Alps which now form
one of the most thoroughly enjoyable portions of ‘the playground of Europe',
the valleys round the Gross Glockner, the Salzkammergut,
Salzburg with its castle rock and its noble amphitheatre of hills, Lorch with
its stately monastery, Linz with its busy industries, all the fair domains of
the old Archduchy of Austria down even to Vienna itself, were then in that most
cruel of all positions, neither definitely subjected by the barbarian nor
efficaciously protected against him, but wasted by his plundering bands at
their will, though still calling themselves Roman, and possibly maintaining
some faint show of official connection with Italy and the Empire. The
Thuringians 011 the north-west and the Alamanni on the west appeared
alternately under the walls of Passau, and seldom departed without carrying
some of its wretched inhabitants into captivity. The latter nation of marauders
pushed their ravages sometimes as far inland as to Noreia, in the very heart of
Noricum. The Ostrogoths from Pannonia levied contributions in the valley of the
Drave; and the Suevic Hunimund, the enemy of the Ostrogoths, marching across
the unhappy province to meet his foe, sacked the city of Boiotrum,
which he surprised while the inhabitants were busy over their harvest, and shed
the blood of the priests in the baptistery of the basilica.
In the midst of this anarchy, the only semblance of firm and settled
government seems to have been offered by the powerful monarchy of the Rugians,
who occupied a compact territory north of the Danube corresponding to the
eastern half of Bohemia, the west of Moravia, and a part of Lower Austria. And
such order as they did preserve was probably but the reservation to themselves
of an exclusive right to levy contributions on the Roman provincials. “I cannot
bear”, said the Rugian king Feletheus to Severinus, “that
this people, for whom thou art interceding, should be laid waste by the cruel
depredations of the Alamanni and the Thuringians, or slain by the sword or
carried into slavery, when there are near to us tributary towns in which they
ought to be settled”. And this was the motive for bringing a great army of
Rugians against the city of Lauriacum, in which were
assembled the trembling fugitives who had escaped from the other barbaric
invasions. Nor could all the exhortations of the Saint, though they seem to
have prevented actual bloodshed, change the barbarian's purpose of removing the
Provincials (who are always spoken of by the once mighty name of Romans) out of
their city of refuge and dispersing them among various towns in his own
dominions, where “they lived in benevolent companionship with the Rugians”, the
benevolent companionship, doubtless, of the lamb with the wolf.
So long as he lived, no doubt Saint Severinus did much to soften, in
individual cases, the hardships of this harassed and weary existence. In his
monastery at Faviana he collected great magazines of food and stores of
clothing, from which he used to relieve the hunger and nakedness of the
captives or refugees who travelled along the great Danubian road. But though his heart was full of pity for his brethren, his presence was
not always welcomed by them. The stormy petrel of Noricum, he was constantly
appearing at some still undemolished Roman settlement and prophesying to the
inhabitants, “The time of this castellum is come. In two days, or in three
days, the barbarians who have devastated so many cities will appear before your
walls”. The practical counsel of the Saint was generally contained in one of
two words. It was either ‘Fast' or ‘Fly'. Himself an anchorite who practised
the austerest forms of self-discipline, never eating
before sunset except on feast-days, and allowing himself only one meal a week
in Lent, yet ever preserving, even under the stress of this abstinence, a
cheerful and unruffled countenance, he loved to accompany his message of coming
woe by an exhortation to the provincials to disarm the anger of the Lord by
fasting and prayer. This counsel was not always acceptable. At Innstadt, for example, when the priests asked for relics
for their church, and the merchants that leave might be obtained for them to
trade with the Rugians, and when the Saint replied, “It is of no use; the time
is come for this town, like so many other castella, to be desolated”, a certain
presbyter, filled with the spirit of the devil, cried out, “Oh, go away, holy
man! and that speedily, that we may have a little rest from fastings and watchings”. The Saint wept, for he knew that open
scurrility is the evidence of secret sins; and then he prophesied of the woe
that should come upon them, and how that human blood should be shed in that
very baptistery in which they were standing. All which came true almost
immediately after he had departed. Hunimund drew near to the city and took it,
and the scurrilous priest was slain in that very basilica, to which he had fled
for refuge”.
Once or twice the Saint lifted up his voice for war, and promised
victory; but as a rule, if he did not recommend the spiritual weapons of
fasting and prayer, he counselled the inhabitants to withdraw before the
barbarian forces. Thus he vainly urged the people of Joviacum (a town about twenty miles below Passau) to escape before the Herulian invasion, which he foreboded, should come upon
them. The citizens of Quintana, who had already fled
once, to Passau, were exhorted to flee again, to Lauriacum;
and the few disobedient ones were massacred by the Thuringians. But always,
during the last and dreariest years of his life, when the barbarian darkness
seemed gathering most hopelessly over the doomed provincials the Saint foretold
that the Romans should be delivered from their enemies, and led up out of
Noricum, as Moses led the Israelites out of Egypt. “And then”, said he, “as
Joseph asked his brethren, so do I beg of you, that ye carry my bones up hence.
For these places, now so crowded with cultivators, shall be reduced into so
mighty a solitude that the enemy, hunting for gold, shall break open even the
sepulchres of the dead”.
Severinus preserved the mystery as to his origin and parentage till the
end, unimparted even to his nearest friends. His pure Latin speech showed that
there was no admixture of the barbarian in his. blood, and it was generally
believed that he had spent some time as a hermit in the East before he suddenly
appeared in the towns of the Danubian Noricum. He
would sometimes casually allude to the cities of the East, and to immense
journeyings which he had in past times performed there. But he did not permit
himself to be questioned as to his past history. Near the close of his life, an
Italian priest of noble birth and weighty character, Primenius by name, fled to Noricum, fearing to be involved in the fate of Orestes, of
whom he had been the confidential adviser and friend. After many days bad
passed in friendly intercourse between them, Primenius one day hazarded the enquiry, “Holy master, from what province first sprang
that light which God has deigned to bestow on us in thee?”. The man of God
turned aside the question with a joke: “If you think I am a runaway slave, get
ready the ransom, that you may offer it on my behalf when I am claimed”. Then,
more seriously, he discoursed on the unimportance of race or birthplace in
comparison with that Divine call which, he earnestly asserted, had led him to
those regions to succour his perishing brethren.
The young recruit whom Severinus had blessed him and on his journey to
Italy, and to whom he had prophesied the splendid future which lay before him,
beyond the Alpine horizon, was not unmindful of that early augury. King
Odovacar sent to the Saint a friendly letter, promising him the fulfillment of any petition which he might choose to make.
On this invitation Severinus asked for the forgiveness of a certain exile named
Ambrose, and the King joyfully acceded to the request. On another occasion
several noble persons were speaking about the King in the Saint's presence, and
“according to custom”, says the biographer, “were praising him with man's
flattery”. We note the presence of these ‘many noble persons' of Noricum, Roman
citizens no doubt, in the Saint's cell, and their high praises of the barbarian
ruler of Italy, as interesting signs of the times, even if their panegyrics
were, as the biographer hints, somewhat conventional and insincere. The Saint
enquired, “Who was the king thus greatly lauded?”. They replied, “Odovacar”. He
answered, “Odovacar who shall be safe between thirteen and fourteen years”,
predicting thus with accuracy the duration of the new king's unquestioned
supremacy in Italy.
But the chief relations of the hermit of Noricum were naturally with the
Rugian kings, and through his biography we gain an insight into the inner life
of one of these new barbaric royalties, of which we should otherwise know
nothing. Flaccitheus, king of the Rugians (perhaps
from about 430 to 460), was greatly alarmed at the vast multitude of Goths,
apparently full of enmity against him, who were settled on his border in Lower
Pannonia. Asking the advice of the holy man, whom he consulted like a heavenly
oracle, he told him in much perturbation that he had requested from the Gothic
princes a safe-conduct into Italy, and that the refusal of this request filled
him with alarm as to their intentions. Severinus replied, “If we were united by
the bond of the One Catholic Faith I would gladly give thee advice concerning
the life to come. But since thy enquiry relates only to the present life, I
will tell thee that thou needest not be disquieted by
the multitude of these Goths, since they will shortly depart and leave thee in
safety. Live a peaceful life; do not undergo the curse laid upon him “who
maketh flesh his arm”, lay no snares for others, while taking heed of those
laid for thyself: so shalt thou meet thine end peacefully in thy bed”.
The divine oracle soothed the anxious King, who went away greatly
comforted. Soon afterwards, however, a crowd of barbarian, probably Gothic,
marauders carried off a number of the Rugians, whose King again came to the
Saint for counsel. By divine revelation Severinus warned him not to follow the
robbers, to beware of crossing the river, and to avoid the snares which in
three several places his enemies had laid for him. “Soon shall a faithful
messenger arrive who shall assure thee of the truth of all these sayings”. And
in fact, very shortly afterwards, two Rugian captives, who had escaped from the
dwellings of the enemy, arrived at the King's court and confirmed the Saint's
predictions in every particular. The devices of the enemies of the Rugian king
being thus frustrated, his affairs went on prospering, and in due time Flaccitheus died in rest and tranquillity.
To him succeeded his son Feletheus or Feva, who at first followed his father's example, and was
guided in all things by the counsels of the holy hermit. But before long the
influence of his wife, the cruel and guilty Giso, began to assert itself,
always in opposition to the healthful spirit of divine grace. This woman
(evidently an Arian), among her other infamous actions, even sought to
rebaptize certain Catholics, but was obliged to desist when her husband, out
of reverence for Saint Severinus, forbade the sacrilegious deed. This queen was
wont to cause certain of the ‘Romans' (that is, provincials) to be carried
across the Danube and there kept in bitter bondage. This had she once done with
some of the inhabitants of Faviana, whom, when carried captive, she condemned
to slavery of the most degrading kind. Severinus, grieving for his neighbours,
sent messengers entreating her to restore them to their homes. But she, flaming
out in violent wrath, returned a message of angry contempt to the hermit: “Go,
oh slave of God! skulk into your cell to pray, and let me issue such orders
concerning my slaves as I think fit”. The Saint, when he received this answer,
said, “I trust in our Lord Jesus Christ, who will make her do of necessity that
which her evil will refuses to do at my request”.
That very day the judgment of God came upon the arrogant queen. There
were certain barbarian goldsmiths who were kept close prisoners in the palace
and obliged to work all day at ornaments for the royal family. The little
prince Frederic, son of Feletheus and Giso, out of
childish curiosity (and perhaps attracted by the glitter of the gold) ventured
in amongst these men. The workmen at once caught up a sword, and held it to the
child's throat. “No one”, said they, “shall now enter this room unless our lives
and our liberty are assured to us by oath. If this be refused we will first
kill the child and then ourselves, for we are made desperate by the misery of
this dungeon”. The cruel and wicked queen at once perceived that the vengeance
of God had come upon her for her insults to the holy man. She sent horsemen to
implore his pardon, and restored to their homes the Roman captives for whom he
had that day interceded. The goldsmiths received a sworn assurance of safety,
upon which they let the child go, and were themselves dismissed in peace. The
revered servant of Christ recognized the good hand of his God in this
interposition, which had actually accomplished more than he asked for, since
not only the Roman captives but the oppressed barbarian gold-workers had
obtained their freedom. The queen and her husband hastened to his cell,
exhibited the son whom they acknowledged themselves to have received back from
the very gates of death through his intercession, and promised obedience to all
his commands in future.
One instance of the prescience of the Saint may be noticed here, because
it incidentally throws some light on the condition of the soldiers who guarded
the boundaries of the Empire. What happened to the legions on the Danubian limes may easily have occurred also to those
stationed per lineam valli in our own island (England). “At the time”, says Eugippius,
“when the Roman Empire still held together, the soldiers of many towns were
supported by public pay for the better guardianship of the limes”. This obscure
sentence perhaps means that local troops were drafted off to the limes, and
there received, as was natural, imperial pay and equipments.
“When this custom ceased, the squadrons (turmae) of
cavalry were obliterated; but the Batavian legion (stationed at Passau) lasted
as long as the limes itself stood. From this legion certain soldiers had gone
forth to Italy to bear to their comrades their last pay, and these men had been
slain on the march by the barbarians, no one knowing thereof. On a certain day,
while Severinus was reading in his cell, suddenly he closed the codex and began
to weep and sigh. Then he told the by-standers to run quickly to the river's
brink, which, as he affirmed, was in that very hour stained with human gore.
And immediately word was brought that the bodies of the aforesaid soldiers had
just been swept on shore by the force of the stream”.
At length the time (482) drew near for the saint to die. Of the very day
of his death, as of so many of the events which had made his life memorable, it
was believed that he had an intimation from Heaven. Not long before it arrived
he sent for the king and queen of the Rugians. “Giso”, said he to the queen,
“dost thou love this man” (pointing to the king) “or silver and gold best?”.
“My husband better than all wealth”, said she. “Then”, he said, “cease to
oppress the innocent, lest their affliction be the cause of the scattering of
your power: for thou dost often pervert the mildness of the king. Hitherto God
has prospered your kingdom. Henceforward you will see....” The royal couple
took leave of him and departed.
Next stood Ferderuchus by his bed-side—Ferderuchus the king’s brother, who had received from Feletheus a present of the few Roman towns remaining on the
Danube, Faviana among them. Severinus spoke of his own imminent departure, and
besought the prince not to draw down upon himself the Divine wrath, by touching
the stores collected during the saint’s lifetime for the poor and the captives. Ferderuchus eagerly disclaimed the intention imputed
to him, and professed a desire to follow the pious footsteps of his father Flaccitheus. But Severinus replied, “On the very first
opportunity thou wilt violate this my cell and wilt be punished for it in a
manner which I do not desire”. Ferderuchus repeated
his protestations of obedience and departed. The Saint knew his covetous nature
better, perchance, than he did himself. The end followed speedily. At midnight
Severinus called his monks to him, exhorted them to persevere according to
their vocation, kissed each one of them, made the sign of the cross, and died,
while they were reciting around him the 150th Psalm. Scarcely was his worn body
laid in the slight shell which the brethren had prepared for it, mindful of his
prophecy concerning their speedy migration southwards, when Ferderuchus,
poor and impious, and made ever more ruthless by his barbarous avarice, bore
down upon the monastery, determined to carry off the stores of raiment
collected there for the use of the poor. When these were swept away he
proceeded to take the sacred vessels from the altar. His steward did not dare
to execute this part of his master's commands himself, but deputed the work to
a soldier named Avitianus, whose unwilling sacrilege
was punished by an immediate attack of St. Vitus's dance. Alarmed and penitent,
the soldier turned monk, and ended his days in solitude on a distant island.
Meanwhile the covetous Ferderuchus, unmindful of the
dying saint's exhortations and of his own promises, continued to ransack the
monastery, and finally carried off everything except the bare walls, which he
could not convey across the Danube to his own land. But vengeance soon overtook
him; for before a month had elapsed, being slain by Frederic his brother's son
(the boy who once wandered into the workshop of the goldsmiths, now grown up to
manhood), he lost both booty and life.
These events occurred in the early part of 482, and they are
connected—but precisely how connected it is impossible to say—with the war
which Odovacar, five years later, waged against the Rugians. The biographer of
Severinus, after describing the defeat of Ferderuchus by his nephew and the death of the former, says, “For which cause king Odovacar
made war upon the Rugians”. But as the sacrilegious inroad of Ferderuchus seems to have followed close upon the death of
the Saint, which certainly happened in 482, and is expressly stated to have
been followed in its turn by the expedition of Frederic, and as Odovacar's
Rugian war did not break out before the end of 486 (being in fact assigned by
two chroniclers to the year 487), it is clear that the death of Ferderuchus was not immediately avenged by the Italian
king. Possibly (but this is a mere conjecture) some brotherhood in arms may
have connected Odovacar and Ferderuchus in old days,
when the former was still an adventurer in Noricum, and he may have been bound
by Teutonic notions of honour to avenge, sooner or later, the death of his
comrade. Possibly the increased sufferings of the provincials at the hands of
the Rugians, after the death of Saint Severinus, may have called upon a king,
who now in some sort represented the majesty of Rome, to redress their wrongs.
At any rate, in these elements of strife, and in the fact that between the Alps
and the Danube no other barbarian power existed which could vie with the
monarchy of Feletheus, we find some explanation of
the sentence in which John of Antioch informed us that “the Emperor Zeno
stirred up against Odoacer the nation of the Rugians”.
The events of the war are soon told. Possibly the Rugians made some
movement against Odovacar in 486. It is certain that in 487 he returned the
blow, invaded their territory, put the young general Frederic to flight, and
carried Feletheus (or Feva)
and his wicked wife prisoners to Ravenna.
Afterwards, probably in the following year, Odovacar was informed that
Frederic had returned to his own land, upon which he sent his brother Onoulf with a large army against him. Frederic was again
forced to flee, and betook himself to Theodoric the Amal, who was then dwelling
at Novae (probably the place which is now the Bulgarian town of Sistova), on the Lower Danube.
After this conquest of Rugiland (so Paulus Diaconus informs us that the country of the Rugians was
called) the emigration of Roman provincials into Italy took place, as foretold
by Severinus. Onoulf ordered it; Pierius,
Count of the Domestics (who received from Odovacar the deed of gift mentioned
in the last chapter), superintended the taking the doing of it. A certain aged
priest named Lucillus, to whom Severinus had predicted his decease, and who had
then replied, “Surely I shall go before thee”, was still living, and directed
the removal of his remains, which, mindful of the Saint's injunction, the
emigrants were set upon carrying up out of the land of bondage. They went at
evening, chanting psalms, to the Saint's resting-place. The usual mediaeval
marvels of the charnel-house followed,—the body found undecaying,
though unembalmed, after six years' entombment, even
the hair and the beard still untouched, a sweet odour filling all the
neighbourhood of the tomb. The body, with its cerements unchanged, was placed
in a chest, which had been prepared some time before in anticipation of the
removal, set upon a waggon (carpentam), and drawn by
horses over the mountainous passes which separate Noricum from Italy. In the
sad procession which followed the relics of the saint walked all the Roman
inhabitants of Noricum, leaving the ruined towns by the Danube for the new
homes allotted to each of them in Italy.
After long journeyings, the body of the Saint reached a village
(castellum) called Mons Feletis (possibly Felitto in Campania, about fifteen miles east of Paestum),
and there it abode during at least four of the troublous years that followed, healing the sick, giving speech to the dumb, and working
the usual wonders that attested the genuineness of a Saint's relics in the
fifth century. But, after a time, a devout and illustrious widow named
Barbaria, who had known the Saint by report during his life, whose husband had
often corresponded with him, and who now greatly venerated his memory, finding
that his body, though brought with all honour to Italy, yet lacked a permanent
resting-place, sent to Marcian the presbyter and the congregation of monks
which had gathered round the sacred relics, inviting them to lay their precious
deposit within her domain. The Pope, Gelasius, gave his consent. All the
dwellers in Naples poured forth to receive in reverence the body of the Saint,
and it was duly laid, according to her invitation, ‘in the Lucullan Castle',
where a monastery was founded, presided over, first by Marcian and then by Eugippius, the biographer to whom we owe these details. The
usual miracles were wrought by the sacred bones. A blind man was restored to
sight. The chief of the Neapolitan choir was cured of a most stubborn headache
by leaning his forehead against the dead man's bier. Demons were cast out, and
innumerable other miracles of bodily and mental healing perpetuated the fame of
Saint Severinus of Noricum till the fear of the Saracen marauders caused tomb
and monastery to be transported to the safer asylum of Naples.
But who was the illustrious lady who invited the monks to settle on her
land? and what is the Lucullan Castle where Severinus was laid? It is
impossible to prove, but we may venture a conjecture that this widow Barbaria,
evidently a lady of high rank, is none other than the mother of Romulus
Augustulus. She too sprang from Noricum, her husband Orestes had doubtless
often corresponded with Severinus concerning the affairs of the provincials in
that country. Yet they might well have known the Saint by fame only, not by
personal intercourse, since, about the same time that Severinus suddenly
appeared by the banks of the Danube (shortly after the death of Attila),
Orestes, accompanied doubtless by his wife, must have left his native country,
Pannonia, and come to seek his fortune in Italy. These, however, are but slight
coincidences; but when it is remembered that it was to ‘the Lucullan Castle'
that Augustulus was consigned by the barbarian conqueror, our conjecture rises
many degrees in probability. It is true that nothing is said as to his being
accompanied by his mother, but this companionship, in itself probable, is
rendered yet more so by a letter written by command of Theodoric to Romulus and
his mother, which we find in the official correspondence of Cassiodorus.
As for the Lucullanum (whose site was left
somewhat doubtful when it was previously mentioned in this history), it seems
to be agreed by the best antiquaries of Naples that it corresponds, as nearly
as the alteration of the coast-line will permit, with the Castel dell' Ovo, that
remarkable island or peninsula which juts out from the shore of modem Naples
between the Chiaja and the Military Harbour. Perhaps
some of the mainland in the modern quarter of Santa Lucia, lying westward of
the present Royal Palace, went to make up the pleasuregrounds and to form the fishponds of the luxurious conqueror of Mithridates, that Lucullanum which was the gilded prison of the last Roman
Emperor of Rome.
