Severianus, count of Cartagena - Ancestry unknown

Started by Justin Durand on Thursday, December 29, 2016
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12/29/2016 at 9:12 PM

The ancestry of Severianus is unknown from contemporary sources. He is not known to have been count or duke of Cartagena. He is only said to have been a citizen. He might not even have lived in Cartagena. His wife's name is variously reported as Theodora, Theodosia, and Tutura. She is not documented as a daughter of Theodoric "the Great," king of the Ostrogoths.

Roger Collins, Visigothic Spain 409 - 711 (2008), p. 154 says: "All he [Isidore, Severianus' son] is saying is that Leander [another son] had been a monk in the province of Carthaginiensis not that he had been born there, let alone had to flee from it. So it is not necessary to believe that the family originated in Spain at all and as both Leander and Isidore had Greek names, it could be that their lost homeland lay outside the Iberian peninsula, possibly in Africa. The third of the brothers, Fulgentius, who became bishop of Ecija, has a name most of whose other associations are African."

https://books.google.com/books?id=WlSu_iWzA9AC&pg=PA154&dq=...

Sir William Smith, Henry Wace & J. Murray, A Dictionary of Christian Biography, Literature, Sects and Doctrines (1882), p. 637 says: "All that is historically known of the origin of the famous family to which the three brothers Leander, Isidore, and Fulgentius, and their only sister Florentina belonged, is derived from the opening sentence in Isidore's life of Leander (De Vir. Ill. Cap. 41; Esp. Sagr. v. 463), and from the concluding chapter of Leander's Regula, or Libellus ad Florentinum (Esp. Sagr. ix. 355). The father of the three sons and Florentina was one Severianus".

Later on the same page: "The traditions which connect Severianus with the great Theodoric, though quite worthless as to details, may [emphasis] preserve the memory of a possible Gothic origin of the family".

Then at p. 305: "We know that his [Isidore of Seville's] father was Severianus, who has frequently been called prefect of Cartagena. Isidore's own words, however (De Vir. ill. 41), are "genitus patre Severiano Carthaginensis provinciae;" where he is speaking of his brother Leander."

Later at p. 305: "Much greater uncertainty attaches to Isidore's mother. She has even been called the daughter of Theodoric, and her name is given as Theodora by the bishop of Palencia Don Rodgrigo Sanchez (Florez, ix. 192); but by others as Theodosia, and the addition is made of Cervella or Cervilia. But others again, resting on a metaphorical passage from a letter of Leander to his sister, have called her Turtura."

https://books.google.com/books?id=xt0UAAAAQAAJ&pg=PA637&dq=...

12/29/2016 at 9:40 PM

Based on this information I cut the ancestry of Severianus of Cartagena and Theodora.

Private User
12/30/2016 at 6:22 AM

Thank You (again) for your arboreal inclinations. ;)

12/30/2016 at 3:37 PM

Justin I think that we can wait to cut that ancestry we can search more with no rush.

12/30/2016 at 4:11 PM

Felipe, this is the opinion of modern scholars. You're citing a 1698 book that is generally now discredited. It does no good to hang onto old myths. Certainly, if you find a contemporary source from the time of Severianus -- a deed, a chronicle, a letter -- that proves the line, we can put it back.

1/2/2017 at 9:34 PM

If Theodora/Theodosia/Turtura was a daughter of Theodoric "the Great" of the Ostrogoths, I'd expect to see her mentioned at http://www.stirnet.com/genie/data/ancient/fh/goths1.php#link1 (membership required to view without interruption), but she isn't mentioned there.

Private User
1/4/2017 at 12:57 PM

Any luck with the Other Theodoric (Theo. I, d. 451 AD)?

This one: Theodoric I, king of the Visigoths

He got around a bit....

1/4/2017 at 3:39 PM

The fact that her parents aren't mentioned in any contemporary source essentially means that we don't really need to check all possible parents ;)

Private User
1/5/2017 at 12:49 AM

Not likely he'd be her *father*, true. But a more distant ancestor? He does seem to have been a more successful progenitor than Theo. "the Great".

On the other hand we'll probably never know.

1/5/2017 at 12:28 PM

Maven, I thought you might like this one because he's a breath of fresh air in the muddy field of medieval genealogy. His children were famous saints. He's known from what one of them wrote about him. There are no other sources, except a steadily expanding and easily traceable mythology in later saints' lives. Flash forward 1200 years and he's acquired a title of nobility and royal connections.

I'm particularly fond of him because we very definitely will never know more unless some new manuscript is discovered. And we know we'll never know more because people have been looking for a thousand years without finding anything. And we get to see the growth of the legend almost in real time. He's proof that our ancestors liked a good story more than facts, and that people really are willing to lie if it gets them a more glamorous ancestry.

Everything we could want in one package, that's our Severianus.

Private User
1/5/2017 at 8:01 PM

Yeah - perfect example of how different ingredients get "added to the stew" (I think that was a JRR Tolkien metaphor about the accretion of folk and mythological elements to a story).

4/18/2017 at 12:54 PM

Hispania Carthaginensis is the Latin name for Cartagena. It's capital was Carthago Nova, now Cartagena. Confusing, I know.

4/18/2017 at 2:47 PM

Please read the above as a refresher. We don't know where the family came from. We have only a brief reference to the fall of their unnamed city.

4/19/2017 at 1:02 PM

>> Her Roman full name would have been Theodosia Theodora turtura.

Not exactly. Women didn't use the tria nomina. Under the Republic they had only the feminine form of the nomen. Confusing for us today. Later, they came to use the nomen plus their father's cognomen (what you call a "nickname"). Under the Empire, the nomen was increasingly dropped for women in favor of just a cognomen, which was often drawn from the nomina or cognomina of their ancestors.

This is an amazingly complex subject. I urge you to do some academic reading. You'll be surprised and delighted at how complicated it became over time, and how simple at the end.

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