Paulinus of Nola

A pupil of Ausonius and governor of Campania in his youth, Paulinus held lands in Gaul, Spain and Italy. The death of his newborn son decided everything: he sold his goods, gave away the price and settled at Nola beside the tomb of Saint Felix, whose feast he sang each year for some fifteen years — fourteen poems that make him one of the great Latin Christian poets. Made bishop of the city, he corresponded with Augustine, Jerome and Ambrose. Tradition credits him with introducing bells into the liturgy, the word campana coming from his Campania: scholarship has set it aside, those words taking that sense only several centuries later.