PAULINUS, SAINT, of NOLA Pontius Mero pius Anicius Paulinus, who was successively a consul, a monk and a bishop, was born at Bordeaux in A.D. 353. His father, praefectus praetorio in Gaul, was a man of great wealth, who entrusted his son's education, with the best of results, to Ausonius. In 378 Paulinus was raised to the rank of consul suffectus, and in the following year he appears to have been sent as consularis into Campania. It was at this period, while present at a festival of St. Felix of Nola, that he entered upon his lifelong devotion to the cult of that saint. He had married a wealthy Spanish lady named Therasia ; this happy union was clouded by the death in infancy of their only child. From Campania Paulinus returned to his native place and came into correspondence or personal intimacy with Martin of Tours and Ambrose of Milan, and ultimately (about 389) he was formally received into the church by bishop Delphinus of Bordeaux, whence shortly afterwards he withdrew with his wife beyond the Pyrenees. The asceticism of Paulinus and his liberality towards the poor soon brought him into great repute; and while he was spending Christmas at Barcelona the people insisted on his being forthwith ordained to the priest hood. In the following year he went into Italy, and after visiting Ambrose at Milan and Siricius at Rome, he settled at Nola among the rude structures which he had caused to be built around the tomb and relics of his patron saint. With Therasia (now a sister,
not a wife), while leading a life of rigid asceticism, he devoted the whole of his vast wealth to charity and to public works of utility or ornament ; besides building basilicas at Fondi and Nola, he provided the latter place with a much-needed aqueduct. Not later than 409, he became bishop of Nola, an office he held until his death in 431. His feast-day is June 22.
The extant writings of Paulinus consist of some fifty Epistolae, addressed to Sulpicius Severus, Delphinus, Augustine, Jerome and others; thirty-two Carntina in a great variety of metre, including a series of hexameter "natales," begun about 393 and continued annually in honour of the festival of St. Felix, metrical epistles to Ausonius and Gestidius, and paraphrases of three psalms; and a Passio S. Genesii.