Paulinus of Nola
Saint Paulinus of Nola | |
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Catholicism: 22 June |
Paulinus of Nola (
His renunciation of his wealth and station in favor of an
Life
Pontius Meropius Paulinus was born c. 352 at
His normal career as a young member of the senatorial class did not last long. In 375, the Emperor
In 383 Gratian was assassinated at
In 393 or 394, after some resistance from Paulinus, he was ordained a
Paulinus refused to remain in Barcelona, and in late spring of 395 he and his wife moved from Iberia to Nola in Campania where he remained until his death. Paulinus credited his conversion to Saint Felix, who was buried in Nola, and each year would write a poem in honor of him.
The great building works undertaken by Paulinus in 402-403 were the crowning glory and ornament of the renovated Nola. He restored and improved the ancient basilica erected in the martyr's honour. He and Therasia also rebuilt a church commemorating Saint Felix, of great size and richly decorated, a monument of Christian art, with magnificent porticoes and fountains, for which a copious supply of water was brought from nearby Avella. Great crowds of pilgrims flocked to the martyr's tomb.[10]
In January 406 following the peace after the defeat of Radagaisus, Paulinus invited a circle of guests including Melania the Younger and her husband and mother (Albina) and many other christians such as the Bishop of Beneventum, and where Melania wished to stay with all her household, though she left before 408.[11]
During these years Paulinus engaged in considerable epistolary dialogue with Jerome among others about monastic topics. "Paulinus decided to invest his money for the poor and the church rather than rejecting it completely, which stands in contrast to other more severe contemporary views such as Jerome's".[12]
Therasia died some time between 408 and 410, and shortly afterwards Paulinus received episcopal ordination.[4] Around 410, Paulinus was chosen Bishop of Nola, where he served for twenty years. Like a growing number of aristocrats in the late 4th and early 5th centuries who were entering the clergy rather than taking up the more usual administrative careers in the imperial service, Paulinus spent a great deal of his money on his chosen church, city and ritual.[13]
Paulinus died at Nola on 22 June 431.[4] The following year the presbyter Uranus wrote his "On the Death of Paulinus" (De Obitu Paulini), an account of the death and character of Paulinus.
Influence
As
Already during his governorship Paulinus had developed a fondness for the 3rd-century martyr, Felix of Nola.[9] Felix was a minor saint of local importance and patronage whose tomb had been built within the local necropolis at Cimitile, just outside the town of Nola. As governor, Paulinus had widened the road to Cimitile and built a residence for travelers; it was at this site that Paulinus and Therasia took up residence. Nearby were a number of small chapels and at least one old basilica. Paulinus rebuilt the complex, constructing a brand new basilica to Felix and gathering to him a small monastic community. Paulinus wrote an annual hymn (natalicium) in honor of Saint Felix for the feast day when processions of pilgrims were at their peak. In these hymns we can understand the personal relationship Paulinus felt between himself and Felix, his advocate in heaven. His poetry shares with much of the work of the early 5th century an ornateness of style that classicists of the 18th and 19th centuries found cloying and dismissed as decadent, though Paulinus' poems were highly regarded at the time and used as educational models.
Many of Paulinus's letters to his contemporaries, including Ausonius and
"Paulinus' surviving letters and poems, many devoted to the feast day of Felix, reveal his attitudes and values, illuminate his social and spiritual relationships, preserve vivid traces of the literary and aesthetic evolution of Latin literature under the influence of Christian ideas, and document the emergence of the late antique cult of the saints."[16]
We know about his buildings in honor of Saint Felix from literary and archaeological evidence, especially from his long letter to Sulpicius Severus describing the arrangement of the building and its decoration. He includes a detailed description of the apse mosaic over the main altar and gives the text for a long inscription he had written to be put on the wall under the image. By explaining how he intended the visitors to understand the image over the altar, Paulinus provided rare insight into the intentions of a patron of art in the later Empire. He explained his project in a Poem dedicated to another great catechist, St Nicetas of Remesiana, as he accompanied him on a visit to his basilicas: "I now want you to contemplate the paintings that unfold in a long series on the walls of the painted porticos. ... It seemed to us useful to portray sacred themes in painting throughout the house of Felix, in the hope that when the peasants see the painted figure, these images will awaken interest in their astonished minds."[17]
In later life Paulinus, by then a highly respected church authority, participated in multiple church synods investigating various ecclesiastical controversies of the time, including Pelagianism.
Legend
Relics
About 800 Prince
From the 11th century they rested at the church of Saint Adalbert, now Saint Bartholomew, on the
The bones are now found in the small Sicilian city of Sutera, where they dedicate a feast day, and conduct a procession for the saint at Easter each year.[20]
Modern devotion to Saint Paulinus
The people of modern-day Nola and the surrounding regions remain devoted to Saint Paulinus. His feast day is celebrated annually in Nola during "La Festa dei Gigli" (the Feast of the Lilies), in which Gigli and several large statues in honor of the saint, placed on towers, are carried upon the shoulders of the faithful around the city. In the United States the descendants of Italian immigrants from Nola and Brusciano continue the tradition in Brooklyn. This proud tradition is also kept alive in East Harlem, held on Giglio Way by the Giglio Society of East Harlem and on Long Island in West Hempstead with the Sons of San Paulino di Nola.[21]
Paulinus is also venerated in the Eastern Orthodox Church, where his feast day commemorated on 23 January.[22]
References
- ^ Schäfer, Joachim (25 May 2022). "Paulinus von Nola". Ökumenisches Heiligenlexikon (in Dutch).
- ^ Frank Leslie's Sunday Magazine. Frank Leslie. 1888.
- ^ a b c d e Löffler, Klemens "St. Paulinus, Bishop of Nola". The Catholic Encyclopedia Vol. 11. New York: Robert Appleton Company, 1911.
- ^ a b c "St. Paulinus of Nola". Catholic News Agency
- ^ a b Pope Benedict XVI (December 19, 2007). "St. Paulinus of Nola", L'Osservatore Romano, p. 15]
- ^ "Foley, Leonard. Saint of the Day, Lives, Lessons, and Feast, Franciscan Media".
- ISBN 9780809100880
- JSTOR 23957336.
- ^ a b Bardenhewer, Otto. Translated by Thomas J. Shahan (2006). Patrology: The Lives and Works of the Fathers of the Church. Kessinger Publishing. p.447.
- ^ The Life of St. Melania, Cardinal Rampolla, https://archive.org/stream/MN5140ucmf_10/MN5140ucmf_10_djvu.txt
- ^ Natalicia, S. Paulinus of Nola
- ^ Kirstein, Robert (2001). Review of Trout's "Paulinus of Nola: life, letters, and poems. The transformation of the classical heritage", Bryn Mawr Classical Review
- ^ a b . Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. III (9th ed.). New York: Charles Scribner's Sons. 1878. pp. 536–37.
- ^ One or more of the preceding sentences incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Phillott, H. W. (1911). "Paulinus, bishop of Nola". In Wace, Henry; Piercy, William C. (eds.). Dictionary of Christian Biography and Literature to the End of the Sixth Century (3rd ed.). London: John Murray.
- ^ "Paulinus of Nola", Augnet
- ^ Trout, Dennis E. "Paulinus of Nola, c. 352/3–c. 431 CE". Oxford Classical Dictionary
- ^ Carm. XXVII, vv. 511, 580–583)
- ^ Butler, Alban (1894). "St. Paulinus of Nola". Benziger Bros. (ed.). Lives of the Saints.
- ^ Trout, Dennis E. (1999). Paulinus of Nola: Life, Letters, and Poems. Berkeley: University of California Press. p.267.
- ^ "Readings & Reflections: Tuesday of the Eleventh Week in Ordinary Time & St. Paulinus of Nola, June 20,2017". www.pagadiandiocese.org. Retrieved 17 June 2019.
- OCLC 22905350.
- ^ "St. Paulinus the Merciful the Bishop of Nola". oca.org. Retrieved 18 November 2017.
Bibliography
- Ausonius, & Paulinus of Nola, Ausone et Paulin de Nole : Correspondance, tr. D. Amherdt (2004) [Latin text ; French translation]. Introduction, Latin text, French translation & notes. Bern: Peter Lang Publ., 2004 (Sapheneia, Beiträge zur Klassischen Philologie ; 9) VII, 247 p. ISBN 3-03910-247-8
- Paulinus Nolanus, Carmina, ed. F. Dolveck (2015) (Corpus Christianorum. Series Latina, 21), Turnhout: Brepols Publishers (ISBN 978-2-503-55807-3)
- Paulinus of Nola, Sancti Pontii Meropii Paulini Nolani Opera, ed. G. de Hartel (2nd. ed. cur. M. Kamptner, 2 vols., 1999) [v.1. Epistulae; v.2. Carmina. Latin texts]
- Paulinus of Nola, Paolino di Nola I Carmi ..., ed. A. Ruggiero (1996)
- Paulinus of Nola, Paolino di Nola Le Lettere. Testo latino con introduzione, traduzione italiana ..., ed. G. Santaniello (2 vols., 1992)
- Paulinus of Nola, The Poems of Paulinus of Nola translated ... by ISBN 9780809101979
- Paulinus of Nola, Letters of St Paulinus of Nola translated ... by P. G. Walsh, 2 vols., 1966–7 (Ancient Christian Writers, 35—36). ISBN 9780809100880, 9780809100897
- Catherine Conybeare, Paulinus Noster Self and Symbols in the Letters of Paulinus of Nola (2000)
- Trout, Dennis E (1999). Paulinus of Nola – Life, Letters, and Poems. Berkeley: University of California Press. ISBN 978-0-520-21709-6.
- Gardner, Edmund G., ed. (1911). The Dialogues of Saint Gregory the Great. Merchantville, NJ: Evolution Publishing. ISBN 978-1-889758-94-7.—Chapter III of the Dialogues contains a long anecdote about Paulinus.
- J. Morelli, De S. Paulini Nolani Doctrina Christologica (Theology Doctorate dissertation, Pontificia Facultas Theologica Neapolitana apud Majus Seminarium, ex Typographica Officina Forense, Neapoli, MCMXLV)
- J. T. Lienhard, "Paulinus of Nola and Early Western Monasticism, with a study of the Chronology of His Work and an Annotated Bibliography," 1879–1976 (Theophaneia 28) (Köln-Bonn 1977), pp. 192–204;
- C. Magazzù, 'Dieci anni di studi su Paolino di Nola' (1977–1987), in Bollettino di studi latini 18 (1988), pp. 84–103;
- C. Iannicelli, 'Rassegna di studi paoliniani' (1980–1997), in Impegno e Dialogo 11 (1994–1996) [publish.1997], pp. 279–321 Rassegna Iannicelli
External links
- Brooklyn Giglio "In honor of Our Lady of Mt Carmel and San Paulino di Nola"
- Sons of San Paolino
- Catechesis of Pope Benedict XVI about Paulinus
- Giglio USA
- (in Italian) San Paolino de Nola
- Works in Latin at Musisque Deoque
- Works in Latin at The Latin Library
- Works in Latin in the Scaife Viewer
- Digitized codex (1471–1484) that contains: Epistula de obitu Paulini by Uranius, Vita sancti Paulini by Pope Gregory I, Epistolae by Paulinus of Nola and fragments about the life of Paulinus of Nola, at Somni.