Severus Sanctus

Severus (12) Sanctus (Endelechius). Perhaps identical with the rhetorician mentioned in the subscription of the Cod. Flor. of Apuleius, as teaching at Rome in 395. He is the author of a Christian idyll, in Asclepiad metre, upon the subject of a great cattle-plague; possibly that mentioned by St. Ambrose (Comm. in Luc. x. 10). This plague occurred c. 376, which fact, together with the date assigned for Endelechius's teaching, and the possibility that he was the correspondent of St. Paulinus of Nola (Ep. xxviii. 6), would fix the date of the poem at the end of the 4th or beginning of the 5th cent. The poem is entitled "de Mortibus Boum," and written with some taste and a good deal of vigour. It represents certain herdsmen—apparently Aquitanians—discussing their fortunes in the general affliction. One of them asserts that his herds have been protected by the sign of the Cross and by his own belief in Christ. The others resolve to adopt a religion which, according to his account, is at once profitable and easy. The poem has been often edited: first by Pithoeus (Paris, 1586). It is in Wernsdorf, Poetae Lat. Min. ii.; Migne, xix. Cave, Hist. Litt. i. 290; Ebert, Gesch. der Chr.-Lat. Lit.; Fabric. Bibl. Graeca, x. 626, 2nd ed.; Teuffel, vol. ii.

[H.A.W.]