Late antiquity (4th–5th century)
Feast: June 22
The Roman senator who lost his only son, gave away his estates, became a monk, and wrote some of the best Christian poetry of the ancient world.
Paulinus had everything the Roman world valued: wealth, education, political office, and the friendship of the poet Ausonius, who was his teacher and mentor. He served as governor of Campania and lived the life of a cultivated aristocrat. Then his infant son Celsus died. Something broke open. Paulinus and his wife Therasia began giving away their enormous estates — land in Gaul, Spain, and Italy — and moved to Nola in southern Italy, where he was ordained a priest and eventually made bishop. Ausonius wrote him frantic letters begging him to come back to civilized life. Paulinus wrote back in exquisite verse, explaining that he had found something better. His poems are among the finest Christian Latin of the period — warm, direct, full of grief and faith tangled together. He corresponded with Augustine, Jerome, and Ambrose, and they all respected him. He is credited with popularizing the use of bells in churches — the word 'campana' (bell) may derive from Campania, his diocese. Every year on the feast of St. Felix, he wrote a new poem for the celebrations at Nola, and those poems survive. He died in 431 AD, in his late seventies, surrounded by his community. He had turned the worst thing that ever happened to him into the occasion for a life of startling generosity.