ALEXANDER SEVERUS, Roman Emperor (M. Aurelius Severus Alexander). - He was the son of Gessius Marcianus and Julia Mamaea; before his adoption by his cousin Elagabalus (221) he was called Bassianus or Alexianus. He succeeded Elagabalus in 222 and sought to govern with honesty and wisdom, relying on the senate, rejecting military absolutism and issuing many legislative provisions, for which he availed himself of the work of the famous Ulpian. Of a gentle disposition, he allowed himself to be guided too much by his mother; little capable in arms, he preferred to pay large sums to the barbarians who threatened the frontiers rather than fight them. This made the military element hostile to him, which set Maximinus against him; he was killed in 235 together with his mother.
Like his predecessors, members of his family, he was in religion a follower of a conciliatory eclecticism, but more than they he showed himself well disposed toward the Christians, going so far as to place the effigy of Christ among those of other illustrious figures in his private shrine and adorning his palace with sentences drawn from the Sacred Books. Christians were numerous at court in those years. Moreover, a dispute having arisen between them and the tavern-keepers of Rome over the occupation of an area, the emperor decided in favor of the former because, he replied, it was better that the divinity be worshiped in that place in any manner whatsoever than that it be handed over to the tavern-keepers. The episode indicates that the Church already enjoyed the right of property and that the Christian religion was already beginning to be no longer regarded as a religio illicita.
Bibliography2 works
1874; I. I. Görres, Kaiser Alex. Severus und das Christenthum in Zeitschrift für wissensch. Theologie, 20 (1877), pp. 48-89; J. Réville, La religion à Rome sous les Sévères, Rome 1886; D. Vaglieri, s. v. in Diz. epigr. di E. De Ruggiero, I (1894), pp. 396-398; P. Batifol, La Paix constantinienne et le catholicisme, 4th ed., Paris 1929, pp. 35-40; A. Jardé, Etude sur la vie et le règne de Sévère Alexandre, Paris 1925. See also MAMEA.