Eugippius

Venerable Eugippius was the disciple and biographer of Saint Severinus of Noricum and abbot of the monastery at Castellum Lucullanum near Naples. He passed away about the year 535, leaving behind a life of his spiritual father that remains precious for the history of Europe at the end of antiquity.

Little is known of his life. He was probably born in North Africa about the year 460. Scholars have long asked whether he knew Saint Severinus, the evangelizer of Noricum, in today's Austria, in the saint's lifetime. Some think so, but most believe he entered the community only after Severinus died, at the beginning of 482.

After the Romans were withdrawn from the province in 488, the monks carried the saint's remains to Italy, first to Montefeltro and then, in the time of Pope Gelasius I (492-496), to the neighbourhood of Naples. There, in the Castellum Lucullanum (where Castel dell'Ovo stands today), Eugippius built a mausoleum and then a monastery. He was its abbot until his death, for over a quarter of a century, and was an influential figure in the Church, in correspondence with Dionysius Exiguus, Fulgentius of Ruspe, Cassiodorus and others.

In 511 he completed the Life of Saint Severinus, written from accounts he had gathered in simple form. He sent it to the Roman deacon Paschasius, asking him, as a man of great literary skill, to rewrite it, but Paschasius replied that the acts and miracles of the saint could not be better described than Eugippius had done. The work was widely read in the Middle Ages and remains a valuable source for Noricum at the time of the barbarian invasions.

At Naples he also compiled an anthology of about a thousand pages from the writings of Blessed Augustine, dedicated to a relative of Cassiodorus, and probably took part in revising the Latin text of the Gospels. A hymn to Saint Severinus and a monastic rule are also ascribed to him; the rule was soon superseded by that of Saint Benedict. His writings contain the earliest record of a monastic community in San Marino. In the Western Church he is remembered on 15 January.