SEVERO, VESCOVO DI NAPOLI, SANTO

St. Ambrose addressed a letter to him in April 393 (Ep., 59 [85]; PL 16, 1232-33) and it seems that St. Ambrose alludes to him in a letter by the rhetorician Symmachus (Ep. lib., VII, 51; ed. O. Seeck, in MGH, Auct. antiquiss., VI, 1 [1883], p. 191). The Gesta episcoporum Neapolitanorum (ed. G. Waitz, in MGH, Scriptores rerum Langobard. et Ital. [1878], pp. 404-405) assign to St. Severus the foundation of four churches and a monastery, later called of the martyrs SS. Martin and Potitus. St. Severus was buried in a crypt of the cemetery called of St. S., from where he was later transferred to the Basilica Severiana or of St. George Major, which he had built and which was adorned with splendid mosaics. He is commemorated on 29 April in the Marble Calendar and on 30 April in the Roman Martyrology. As for his Life (BHL 7676), it is nothing more than a vulgar amalgamation of hagiographical compositions that do not concern St. Severus, along with the brief notice from the Gesta. The opuscule of the Miracles of St. Severus (ibid. 7677) was written around 1046.