Narrating the Saints: Paulinus of Nola and the Beginning of Verse Hagiography

Abstract:Paulinus of Nola's Natalicia represent a poetic cycle unparalleled in Latin literature: thirteen complete poems (and a fourteenth fragmentary one) composed every year for the annual festival of Saint Felix of Nola. This article considers the poems as a group, analyzing the sources of Paulinus's poetic invention and identifying significant features that run through the corpus. In particular, the concept of varietas serves as an aesthetic principle at various levels of integration and in various situations, while Paulinus's role as impresario of the cult of Saint Felix and master of ceremonies at the saint's festival finds expression in the metatextual directions he introduces into the text, the guided tour he gives to the shrine through the person of Nicetas of Remesiana in poem 27, and the mental peregrination he invites his reader/listener to take. Ultimately in Late Antiquity verse hagiography was to take a different course, but Paulinus's achievement remains substantial, and his poems illuminate an important stage in the history of the cult of the saints.