Confessor Paulinus

Pontius Meropius Anicius Paulinus, commonly venerated as Saint Paulinus of Nola and often styled a confessor-bishop, was born at Bordeaux in Roman Aquitaine in the middle of the fourth century, into a wealthy senatorial family with estates in Gaul and Italy. He received a classical education in rhetoric and letters; the poet Ausonius was among his teachers and later correspondents. Following the public career expected of his rank, he held high office, including a suffect consulship, and about 379 he served as consular governor of Campania. During that posting he visited the shrine of the martyr Felix at Nola and formed a devotion that would dominate his later life. After his term he returned to Gaul.

He married Therasia, a Christian woman of Spanish origin and substantial means. They had a son, Celsus, who died in infancy. Grief over the child, together with his wife’s influence and that of Christian friends, turned Paulinus toward a more radical form of discipleship. He was baptized by Bishop Delphinus of Bordeaux around 389. In the years that followed, he and Therasia disposed of much of their property for the poor, withdrew from secular ambition, and settled at Nola beside the tomb of Saint Felix. There they established a church, lodging for pilgrims and the needy, and a small ascetic household, living thereafter in continence.

Paulinus was ordained priest at Barcelona in 394, reportedly under some popular pressure. After the death of the local bishop he was chosen bishop of Nola, most probably in the first decade of the fifth century, and he remained in that office until his death. His episcopate combined care for the poor, building at the pilgrimage complex of Cimitile, and an extensive correspondence with leading Latin churchmen, including Augustine of Hippo, Jerome, and Sulpicius Severus. He was also a Latin poet of note; his surviving verse, especially the annual natalicia in honor of Saint Felix, is an important witness to the cult of the saints and to Christian culture in late antiquity. He is remembered as a confessor, not a martyr: he underwent no bloody persecution, but he abandoned rank and fortune for an ascetic Christian life and long episcopal service.

Paulinus died at Nola on 22 June 431 and was buried near Saint Felix. His cult is ancient; contemporaries already praised his charity and learning. The Roman calendar keeps his feast on 22 June. A later medieval tradition, not found in fourth- or fifth-century sources, credited him with introducing church bells (campanae, associated with Campania), and on that legendary basis he has been invoked as patron of bell-founders and bell-ringers. He is the patron saint of Nola. He should not be confused with other holy men of the same name, notably Paulinus of York, the seventh-century Roman missionary and first bishop of York, or Paulinus of Trier, the fourth-century bishop who died in exile for opposing Arianism.