[2] Severinus himself refused to discuss his personal history before his appearance along the Danube in Noricum, after the death of Attila in 453.

[2] However, he did mention experiences with eastern desert monasticism, and his vita draws connections between Severinus and Saint Anthony of Lerins.

He is first recorded as traveling along the Danube in Noricum and Bavaria, preaching Christianity, procuring supplies for the starving, redeeming captives and establishing monasteries at Passau and Favianae,[5] At the age of eight, the orphaned Anthony of Lerins was entrusted to the care of Severinus and brought up at the monastery.

He established refugee centers for people displaced by the invasion, and founded monasteries to re-establish spirituality and preserve learning in the stricken region.

Beyond Eugippius' work, the only other contemporary source that mentions Saint Severinus is the Vita beati Antonii by Magnus Felix Ennodius, bishop of Pavia.

In the History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Edward Gibbon notes that the disciples of Saint Severinus were invited by a Neapolitan lady to bring his body to the villa in 488, "in the place of Augustulus, who was probably no more".