Felix of Nola

Saint Felix of Nola was a Christian priest of the third century associated with the town of Nola in Campania, in southern Italy. The principal ancient witness to his life is Paulinus of Nola, who settled at Nola in the late fourth century and devoted a long series of poems (the Natalicia) and other writings to Felix’s memory. According to that tradition, Felix was born at Nola. His father, Hermias, was a Syrian who had served in the Roman army and then made his home in the district; his mother was a woman of Nola. After his father’s death Felix used the family property to relieve the poor and was ordained priest by Maximus, bishop of Nola. Precise years of birth and death are not preserved in contemporary records; the episodes of his public life are placed in the setting of the Decian persecution of Christians around the middle of the third century.

When that persecution broke out, Bishop Maximus withdrew into the mountains. Felix was arrested in his place, tortured, and imprisoned. Hagiographical accounts state that an angel freed him from prison by night and guided him to Maximus, whom he found near death from hunger and exposure. Felix revived the bishop and carried him to safety. Felix then remained in hiding. One widely repeated legend tells that he took refuge in a ruined building or cistern; a spider at once spun a web across the opening, so that searching soldiers passed by, convinced that the place had not been recently entered. After the danger receded he returned to Nola. On the death of Maximus the local church wished to make Felix bishop, but he refused the see and continued to serve as a simple priest.

The remainder of his life was spent in voluntary poverty. He is described as cultivating a small rented plot of land and sharing its produce with those in need, living alone and without household ostentation. He died a natural death at an advanced age and was buried in the extra-urban cemetery of Nola, at the site later known as Cimitile. Because he survived imprisonment and torture and died in peace, later liturgical calendars commemorate him as a confessor rather than as a martyr in the strict sense, although some earlier notices had called him a martyr. The exact year of his death is unknown.

The tomb at Cimitile became a major pilgrimage shrine already in late antiquity. Paulinus of Nola enlarged the basilica complex over and around the grave and made the annual feast of Felix the centre of a well-documented cult. Veneration spread in the Latin West. Felix is kept in the Roman Martyrology on 14 January and is regarded as the patron saint of Nola. Later writers sometimes confused him with other saints named Felix, including episcopal figures associated with the same town; the Felix celebrated by Paulinus is consistently presented as a priest who declined the episcopate.