erinus preached
penance among them with great fruit; and he so effectually threatened
with the divine vengeance a certain rich woman, who had hoarded up a
great quantity of provisions, that she distributed all her stores among
the poor. Soon after his arrival, the ice of the Danube and the Ins
breaking, the country was abundantly supplied by barges up the rivers.
Another time by his prayers he chased away the locusts, which by their
swarms had threatened with devastation the whole produce of the year. He
wrought many miracles; yet never healed the sore eyes of Bonosus, the
dearest to him of his disciples, who spent forty years in almost
continual prayer, without any abatement of his fervor. The holy man
never ceased to exhort all to repentance and piety: he redeemed
captives, relieved the oppressed, was a father to the poor, cured the
sick, mitigated or averted public calamities, and brought a blessing
wherever he came. Many cities desired him for their bishop; but he
withstood their importunities by urging, that it was sufficient he had
relinquished his dear solitude for their instruction and comfort.

{111}

He established many monasteries, of which the most considerable was one
on the banks of the Danube, near Vienna; but he made none of them the
place of his constant abode, often shutting himself up in a hermitage
four leagues from his community, where be wholly devoted himself to
contemplation. He never ate till after sunset, unless on great
festivals. In Lent he ate only once a week. His bed was sackcloth spread
on the floor in his oratory. He always walked barefoot, even when the
Danube was frozen. Many kings and princes of the Barbarians came to
visit him, and among them Odoacer, king of the Heruli, then on his march
for Italy. The saint's cell was so low that Odoacer could not stand
upright in it. St. Severinus told him that the kingdom he was going to
conquer would shortly be his; and Odoacer seeing himself, soon after,
master of Italy, sent honorable letters to the saint, promising him all
he was pleased to ask; but Severinus only desired of him the restoration
of a certain banished man. Having foretold his death long before it
happened, he fell ill of a pleurisy on the 5th of January, and on the
fourth day of his illness, having received the viaticum, and arming his
whole body with the sign of the cross, and repeating that verse of the
psalmist, _Let every spirit praise the Lord_,[1] he closed his eyes, and