Cambridge Ancient Hi.. - Index of

the north-western provinces 513
suit in Clermont, though he seems to have been thinking more about barbarians
than natural disasters. 133
The Vita Severini provides yet more examples of religious actions performed
to avert crisis. Asturis was destroyed because its people would not
fast when the saint told them to; news of its destruction made the people
of Comagenis more inclined to obey him: their fasting was also rewarded
with the destruction of the federate troops who were bothering rather than
defending them. 134 In Favianis, Severinus urged penance to avert a
famine. 135 Fasting ended a plague of grasshoppers at Cucullae (Kuchl). 136
Later, prayer protected the burgi of Noricum from the Heruls. 137 At
Lauriacum, prayer, fasting and alms-giving preceded Severinus’ miraculous
provision of oil to the poor. 138
On many of these occasions, Eugippius points the moral by introducing
a dissident into the story: the people of Asturis who would not fast and
were destroyed; Procula, whose greed kept her from providing corn for the
people of Favianis; those inhabitants of Quintanis who were killed when
they refused to evacuate their town, despite Severinus’ advice – for one of
the saint’s skills was that he knew when to give up; 139 and the man of
Cucullae who went to inspect his fields rather than pray – naturally, it was
his crops that were eaten by the grasshoppers. In his case, Severinus seized
on the man’s misfortunes to point the need for prayer. The anecdote, as
recounted by Eugippius, may well reflect a genuine tendency on the part of
the charismatics of the period to exploit whatever incidents supported
their call to repentance.
In all this we are not far from Salvian, on the one hand, or Gildas, on the
other. Even more than Severinus, Salvian and Gildas preached repentance
– and although the ultimate fate of Britain, and indeed Gildas’ own probable
departure for Brittany, may imply that his message fell on deaf ears, 140
the narrative of the De Excidio Britanniae does suggest that twice in the fifth
century some sort of moral crusade did have an impact on British morale. 141
In the ninth century, if not earlier, Germanus, possibly a British saint
Garmon rather than the bishop of Auxerre, was remembered as having reprimanded
Vortigern. 142 That the British church was powerful is also apparent
from Patrick’s Confessio, 143 although both Patrick and Gildas suggest that
the majority of churchmen were lacking in moral stature. 144 To emphasize
the moral crusaders may indeed be to fall for the religious propaganda
133 Sid. Ap. Ep. 7.1; Harries (1994) 227–8. 134 Eugippius, Vita Severini 2.
135 Eugippius, Vita Severini 3. 136 Eugippius, Vita Severini 12. 137 Eugippius, Vita Severini 24.
138 Eugippius, Vita Severini 28. 139 Eugippius, Vita Severini 27; compare 22.
140 Cf. the reading of Bede, HE i.22, ed. B. Colgrave and R. A. B. Mynors, Bede’s Ecclesiastical History
of the English (Oxford 1969). 141 Gildas, De Excidio Britanniae 20, 25.
142 Historia Brittonum 24, ed. D. N. Dumville, The Historia Brittonum, The Vatican Recension (Cambridge
1985). 143 Patrick, Confessio 10, 13, 26, 27, 37, ed. Hanson SChrét. 249.
144 Gildas, De Excidio Britanniae 66–91.
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008