St. Paulinus of Nola

St. Paulinus of Nola was born about 354 at Bordeaux in Gaul, of a wealthy and noble Roman family, and rose in the world as a cultivated aristocrat, a pupil of the poet Ausonius, and a Roman official who governed a province. Yet with his Spanish wife Therasia he underwent a profound conversion, and after the death of their only child the couple resolved to renounce the world, selling their vast estates and giving the proceeds to the poor and the Church, a renunciation that astonished and troubled their peers.

Settling at Nola in Campania, near the tomb of the martyr St. Felix, to whom he was devoted, Paulinus led a life of ascetic simplicity and charity, and was eventually made bishop of the city. A gifted Christian poet whose verses on the martyr and on the faith are among the finest of the age, he kept up a warm correspondence with the greatest figures of his day, including St. Augustine, St. Jerome, St. Ambrose, and St. Martin of Tours. He died in 431, and is venerated as a saint, his memory kept on 22 June.