d perspicuity
with which this work is compiled, have procured the author the name of
the Christian Sallust; some even prefer it to the histories of the Roman
Sallust, and look upon it as the most finished model extant of
abridgments.[14] His style is the most pure of any of the Latin fathers,
though also Lactantius, Minutius Felix, we may almost add St. Jerom, and
Salvian of Marseilles, deserve to be read among the Latin classics. The
heroic sanctity of Sulpicius Severus is highly extolled by St. Paulinus
of Nola, Paulinus of Perigueux, about the year 460.[15] Venantius
Fortunatus, and many others, down to the present {306} age. Gennadius
tells us, that he was particularly remarkable for his extraordinary love
of poverty and humility. After the death of St. Martin, in 400, St.
Sulpicius Severus passed five years in that illustrious saint's cell at
Marmoutier. F. Jerom de Prato thinks that he at length retired to a
monastery at Marseilles, or in that neighborhood; because in a very
ancient manuscript copy of his works, transcribed in the seventh
century, kept in the library of the chapter of Verona, he is twice
called a monk of Marseilles. From the testimony of this manuscript, the
Benedictin authors of the new treatise On the Diplomatique,[16] and the
continuators of the Literary History of France,[17] regard it as
undoubted that Sulpicius Severus was a monk at Marseilles before his
death. While the Alans, Sueves, and Vandals from Germany and other
barbarous nations, laid waste most provinces in Gaul in 406, Marseilles
enjoyed a secure peace under the government of Constantine, who, having
assumed the purple, fixed the seat of his empire at Arles from the year
407 to 410. After the death of St. Chrysostom in 407, Cassian came from
Constantinople to Marseilles, and founded there two monasteries, one for
men, the other for women. Most place the death of St. Sulpicius Severus
about the year 420, Baronius after the year 432; but F. Jerom de Prato
about 410, when he supposes him to have been near fifty years old,
saying that Gennadius, who tells us that he lived to a very great age,
is inconsistent with himself. Neither St. Paulinus nor any other writer
mentions him as living later than the year 407, which seems to prove
that he did not survive that epoch very many years. Guibert, abbot of
Gemblours, who died in 1208, in his Apology for Sulpicius Severus,[18]
testifies that his festival was kept at Marmoutier with great solemn