Sulpicius Severus

363 CE–425 CE · Burdigala (Bordeaux)

Sulpicius Severus (c. 363–c. 425 CE) was a Latin Christian writer of aristocratic Gallic birth who trained as a lawyer before converting to asceticism after his wife's early death. He is best known for the Vita Martini, a biography of Martin of Tours based on personal acquaintance, as well as his Dialogues and a Chronicle of sacred history. Withdrawing to his estate Primuliacum in Aquitaine, he formed a small monastic community and became one of the most polished Latin stylists of late antiquity. Gennadius of Massilia records that in old age he was drawn into Pelagian opinions and thereafter imposed on himself a penitential silence that lasted until his death.

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Stop 1 of 3375–390Rhetorical And Legal Education

Burdigala (Bordeaux)France

What they did here

Sulpicius received his legal and rhetorical training at Bordeaux, the pre-eminent intellectual centre of late Roman Gaul; the inference rests on the broad consensus of modern reference sources and the Sallustian polish of his Latin, not on any surviving explicit statement in Paulinus of Nola's letters or other primary texts.

About Burdigala (Bordeaux)

Burdigala (modern Bordeaux, southwestern France), a Roman city of Aquitaine. Sulpicius Severus, biographer of Martin of Tours, came from its aristocratic milieu and was educated there.

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The world in their lifetime

Thinkers and teachers of other traditions whose lives overlapped with Sulpicius Severus’s — a glimpse of the wider world they lived in. Drawn purely from recorded birth and death years.