4

Making Martyrs in the Nolan Countryside

As we saw in the previous chapter, Paulinus reconfigured martyrdom to include those who, like Felix, Maximus, and Victricius, did not die in persecution. Martyrdom became, rather, an embodied re-orientation toward God. In this chapter I will show that, with this paradigm in place, Paulinus made martyrs out of more people than just these three men; he created the conditions under which other Christians could become martyrs too. In fact, we can see from the Natalicia that Paulinus actively sought to inculcate this re-envisioned martyrdom, this embodied orientation, in his audiences; he wanted to make them martyrs too—or at least to give them the opportunity to become martyrs.

Paulinus extended the possibility of martyrdom to his listeners in three primary ways. First, he cultivated an ethic of imitation that emphasized the importance of modeling oneself after holy figures and martyrs (including and especially Felix, whose example demonstrated the breadth of martyrial behavior). Second, in defending Felix’s martyr status, Paulinus asserted universal principles through which others could become martyrs. Third, Paulinus used poetic and rhetorical techniques to meld audience and text and to elicit emotional (and therefore physical and pointedly embodied) responses that would complement his listeners’ orientation toward martyrdom.

The title of this chapter recalls the title of Dennis Trout’s essay “Christianizing the Nolan Countryside: Animal Sacrifice at the Tomb of St. Felix.”¹ In that article, Trout explores the ways that Paulinus reframed animal sacrifice at Nola as Christian devotio, miracle, and alms, helping to cultivate spirituality and practice that built on what was already familiar to Nolans and to “Christianize” it, using this “transforming dynamic” to bring Christianity to the widest possible audience. Similarly, I argue, Paulinus transformed a well-known sacred practice, martyrdom, into something accessible to and appealing to more people. Just as Paulinus redefined sacrifice as Christian by taking what would be familiar to his audience and tweaking it, he sought with his treatment of “living martyrs” to redefine the familiar concept of martyrdom in such a way that those around him could participate in it, making martyrdom a matter of embodied reorientation of the will to God, rather than a matter of death.

Since the aim of this chapter is to show how Paulinus sought to extend the possibility of martyrdom to a wider range of people, including his contemporaries, we need to be clear about who his audiences were and which members of those audiences would have been the intended targets of his message. Paulinus talks about the festal crowds as being mainly composed of “ordinary” people: lay, rural, illiterate, and local, hailing primarily from Campania but with others coming from all over Italy: Paulinus seems to take great delight in listing their provenances.² Elite visitors were frequent, but seem to have been in the minority, in Paulinus’s rendering of these events: Paulinus tells his elite visitors in the Natalicium of 403 that the majority of the people who frequent Felix’s shrine are “rustic, not without faith but not trained in reading,”³ and that they mostly include former “pagans” whose habitual inebriation at the shrine is misguided but well-intentioned. Dennis Trout largely affirms Paulinus’s picture in his analysis of the poems, noting that while the form of the poems was classicizing, his “language, his themes, and his messages reveal that he intended these poems to win the allegiance of his more humble listeners, particularly those from the countryside, as well as his more cultivated ones.”⁴ We know that Paulinus sent some of the Natalicia to friends—at least, he sent a copy of the Natalicium of 398 to Severus in Gaul,⁵ which lets us know that he himself either produced or secured written, transmissible copies of his Natalicia for distribution. This seems to indicate that Paulinus intended the poems, at least eventually, to reach a wide audience of educated readers. Indeed, it appears that Paulinus may have effected this expanded reach, as Franz Dolveck notes, by himself preparing the Natalicia for distribution as a complete collection.⁶ Nonetheless, the original and primary audiences of the Natalicia appear to have been ordinary Campanians whom Paulinus sought both to entertain⁷ and to “Christianize.”⁸

THE MARTYR AS MODEL AND THE ETHIC OF IMITATION

We have already seen how extensively Paulinus used typology to link his living martyrs to Christ and to other holy men: he depicted Maximus as an Isaac-figure, Victricius as a type of Christ, and Felix as refiguring Christ, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Daniel, and Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego as well as the apostle Peter. In this last instance, Paulinus explicitly described Felix as re-enacting Peter’s escape from prison. Commenting on Felix’s experience of angelically enabled escape, Paulinus writes: “I see that the ancient type returns / in recent history.”⁹ P. G. Walsh notes: “This is a statement of the greatest interest, justifying the reenactment of biblical miracles in the lives of later saints by this thesis of the harmony of grace.”¹⁰ But Paulinus was not only defending contemporary saints. With this explicit reminder that types persist into the present, Paulinus signaled that neither the fodder for imitation nor the ability to succeed in it was a relic of the past. Imitation was possible, Paulinus asserted, even for his contemporaries. More than this, imitation was an ethical imperative, in Paulinus’s view: it was the way to make oneself worthy of God’s help.

In the service of this imperative, Paulinus often emphasized typology and repetition with a hortatory aim, cultivating and modeling imitative thinking. In addition, he urged his audience explicitly and implicitly to mimic the saints. Finally, Paulinus presented Felix as a particularly imitable model of sanctity—one after whom, indeed, Paulinus and his community at Cimitile had modeled themselves. Through this ethic of imitation, Paulinus asserted that present-day Christians could access timeless holiness and its rewards. By refiguring God’s holy people, Christians—no matter their era—could achieve similar honors.

The Natalicium of 402

Paulinus’s sense of the power of imitation is nowhere more forcefully or extensively articulated than in the eighth Natalicium, given in 402 as Campania prepared for the impending Gothic assault. Paulinus begins by asking the crowd to disregard their fear and gloom and, instead, to rejoice. After all, he argues, even if one were a captive of the Goths or the Alans, it would still be possible to celebrate Felix’s feast day: “Even if multi-yoked chains were oppressing my neck, / the enemy would not harness the mind along with captive limbs— / with heart unchained, proud piety would trample / sad servitude.”¹¹ Paulinus continues, however, reassuring the assembled crowd that such an event will not come to pass, reminding them, via imagery of God brightening a cloudy day, that God can intervene in earthly affairs.¹² Paulinus then proceeds to offer his listeners an edifying example of God doing just that—on behalf of those who have faith. God intervened to help the Jews escape Egypt, and we listeners should therefore (Paulinus asserts) take the ancient Jews as our model. Although they were fearful on the eve of their terrifying journey, they celebrated at Moses’s instruction and “despite their roiling dread, did not abandon the solemn command.”¹³ “Thus, therefore,” Paulinus urges, “let us now, happy in a turbulent time, / with pious mind all celebrate the feast of the beloved martyr / with united devotions of cheerful piety.”¹⁴ Celebrating on the eve of battle is a sign of the sure faith that led the Jews to a positive earthly outcome, so Paulinus asks his audience to follow their lead.

This exhortation to imitate the ancient Jews signals the project of this poem: Paulinus wants his audience to keep these biblical examples in mind and mimic them so as to achieve the same rewards, that is to say, rescue:

Let us retrace the ancient examples of our saintly parents,

who, enduring the deserved lashes from wars unleashed,

did not think to wrangle protection from arms or walls.

to hope for salvation by human means is no safety.

For mortal things cannot repel death.

Therefore, because it is a time of care, let our care be for praying to

the heavenly Lord, by whom sorrows and joys are prepared,

who alone is able to ensure with celestial authority

that joyful things again be brought back with concern expelled.¹⁵

Paulinus calls upon his listeners to “re-trace” or “re-undertake” the example of people in similar circumstances to them, who responded to physical threats by trusting in God. He then establishes why his listeners should imitate that trust by asserting the axiom that “mortal things cannot repel death.” Then he moves into exhortation, encouraging his listeners—who are now lumped together with the Jews by the general, universalizing quibus (“for those in anxiety,” line 85)—to pray to heavenly powers and receive the laeta and gaudia that only God can ensure. The poem then adduces example after example of “saintly forebears” triumphing with God’s help: Nineveh is redeemed by its “grief” at its error (luctu); Moses conquers Amalek’s forces through “excessive prayer” (inpensa . . . prece); Esther overcomes Haman with a prayer (prece).¹⁶ We should consider (recolamus) that Joshua used not force but divine favor to conquer Jericho, that Rahab survived “not relying on her walls to escape, / but she obtained the reward of piety by piety to God,” that Hezekiah’s prayerful visit to the temple prompted the angel of God to slaughter Sennacherib’s forces while they slept, and that similarly devoted prayers from Moses, Lot, and Elias saved entire populations from destruction. Daniel and the three boys in the furnace of Babylon round out the biblical examples, and then Paulinus connects all these miraculous survivals to more recent events where faith overcame obstacles: a recent exorcism, a fire averted, a river rerouted.¹⁷

In this litany of exempla, all of the instances of salvation that Paulinus points to involve physical salvation as well as spiritual salvation for the faithful. Paulinus could have looked to the Maccabees, facing as they did a military threat, or to any of the martyrs whose bravery in the face of attack showed that they placed no faith in earthly resistance. But he does not. Though Paulinus is telling his audience to fear not earthly armies but rather God’s correction, he is encouraging them with examples that suggest God will defeat the threatening forces on their behalf—if, that is, they imitate these earlier figures by having faith in God’s intervention. The poem ends with Paulinus pleading with Felix to avert the impending battles and to save the shrine from bloodshed. Paulinus is asking his listeners to share in the faith that saved these prior figures, to imitate them in their faith, and by so doing to (aim to) imitate them in their physical salvation. It is important to note here that another beneficiary of God’s earthly intervention is Felix himself—in addition to the saint’s history of miraculous escapes and divinely aided triumphs, it is Felix’s feast day from which God chases the clouds we saw above.¹⁸ Thus, while the crowds gathered at Felix’s shrine are looking to the saint to petition for God’s salvific intervention, Paulinus is also subtly encouraging them to strive to imitate that same martyr in his relationship to God.

Not only could Christians “save themselves” both physically and spiritually by imitating holy figures, but also, in Paulinus’s reckoning, they could actually attain a higher reward: similarity to the source of their holiness, Christ. Likeness to Christ is, for Paulinus, the ultimate aim of imitating the saints: as Paulinus asserted in a letter to Severus, “by imitating the imitator of Christ we shall attain the imitation of God.”¹⁹ Indeed, this is why Felix is so successful as an intercessor, as Paulinus argued on the eve of the Gothic assault:

Thus the more powerful limbs in his venerable body

are the martyrs (out of whom Felix is distinguished in strength,

shining among the sacred eyes of the divine head),

justly influential with God, because they suffered very much like Christ.²⁰

As a martyr, Felix has so much sway with God because of his similarity to Christ. And given the way that Paulinus describes Felix’s intercession throughout the rest of the poem, recounting Felix’s beneficence and salutary interventions, it seems as if this affinity with Christ is more of a unity with Christ—at the very least, it appears to be a unity of will.²¹

This ethic of imitation and ultimately identification is similar to the martyrial worldview we saw in Prudentius in that it operates in and through typological thinking to translate observing witness into enacting witness. It differs from Prudentius’s martyrial worldview in that it actually enjoins its adherents to imitate the martyrs in order to achieve martyrdom while simultaneously (and seemingly contradictorily) placing less emphasis on all forms of witness: Paulinus does not seem to share Prudentius’s confidence that witness can unproblematically inspire martyrdom, and so does not as fervently emphasize the visual and communicative aspects of martyrdom, even as he stresses the importance of imitation and enactment.²² The imitation of the martyrs, Paulinus argued, could lead to a martyrdom of one’s own. In the Natalicium of 407, Paulinus makes this explicit, offering instruction to his audience: “if we walk in the martyr’s footsteps, / we can enjoy rewards equal to [our] forbears.”²³

Walking in the martyr’s footsteps could take a variety of forms. Just as Felix’s similarity to Christ gave him privileged access to God despite the actual differences between his experience and Christ’s, so too could many experiences “round up” to a full Christ imitation: the fact that Felix’s suffering did not precisely mirror Christ’s does not stand in the way of his status as imitator. In the Natalicium of 402, Paulinus clarifies that a variety of practices could lead to martyrdom and sainthood: it all depends on what God asks of a person:

the gift differs for you (vobis),

[but] the glory is equal, since God is the one font for all saints

and the shared ruling power; there is not one task for the holy

prophets and martyrs, since their times were different,

and their exploits, differing in causes, did not share signs.

The heavenly ones stand apart through the gifts of God,

equals in merit. If Felix did not bear or endure all the same things

as Daniel and did not have that very pit

nor did the terrible lions encircle [him],

neither did Daniel suffer the same dreadful things for the name of the lord—

floggings, chains, fears, and the night of a black prison—

which Felix bore.²⁴

The differences in their lives and experiences did not make Daniel and Felix unequal to one another, for each accomplished the tasks that God had set for him. Daniel and Felix, according to Paulinus, are equals in merit and share in the same glory. Later in the poem, Paulinus returns to this theme, making the same claim for a wider variety of saints:

Each and every saint will shine with his own light

equal in dissimilar brightness, and with Christ as judge

there will emerge no loss of merit one to the other;

Christ will be for all of them kingdom, light, life, crown.

See, distinct in deed but yoked in honor,

the teachers of the testaments both old and new,

in which one wisdom gave twin laws.

And indeed equal glory balances varied virtues.

Peter did not intrude upon the sea with a rod, but neither did Moses

advance upon the liquid of the sea surface; nonetheless one honor

shines on both, since there was one author for both

dividing the waters with a rod and treading on the flowing waters with feet,

who is God of the saints of old, the very same God of the new;

by which lord the law is given, out of whom comes grace;

that is the God of Daniel and that [is the God] of the three boys,

that very God of Felix not himself less in himself

god in holy Felix, through whom he administers good gifts

and healing works on land and on the sea.²⁵

These passages make clear Paulinus’s understanding of the equivalence of saints and the continued truth of this paradigm, widening the variety of possible saintly activities that might merit divine reward and affirming that those saintly behavioral options are no less available in the fifth century CE than in the first CE or the sixth BCE.

Neither of the passages quoted above explicitly calls upon the audience to imitate the saints, however. They may simply be a defense of Felix’s sainthood rather than an invitation for all and sundry to join him in it. After all, the command to do what God asks of you, the believer, specifically, seems to stand in tension with the command to imitate others. The latter is far too directive, too specifically prescriptive, contradicting the receptivity required for the former. Nonetheless, I would argue that these passages were intended to promote imitation. First, by discounting the differences between various saints on the grounds that their glories were one and the same, Paulinus privileges interior status over external appearances. What makes them the same is the saints’ receptivity to God’s command, their internal orientation toward whatever God had asked of them, and their faith in God. Those are the qualities that Paulinus encourages his audience members to imitate. The diverse exempla of saintliness, meanwhile, provides an indication of the diverse ways in which sanctity might manifest itself. Those differing proofs of martyrdom and sanctity are worth preserving because they are instructive, illustrating the varied channels through which the grace of God could flow. After all, Paulinus does not suggest that his contemporaries mimic Rahab in her harlotry—rather, he suggests that they imitate her faith in God, her willingness to align with the side of right over her own city, and her status as model for the penitent.²⁶ Even so, it is possible for a lie (whether Rahab’s or Felix’s) to be in the service of God²⁷ if, in imitation of Rahab and Felix, the will to do God’s will is driving the lie. Thus, interiority emerges as the key to both imitation and saintliness. Second, we need to look at the context of these passages within the poem as a whole. The entire poem offers assurance to the assembled crowds; why on earth would digressions on the degrees of sanctity be appropriate amid a litany of soothing stories and calls to “re-cultivate” (recolo) their protagonists?²⁸ Such a preoccupation makes complete sense if we read them as Paulinus reminding his audience that sanctity, like salvation, is more broadly available than we might think in bleak times.²⁹

The Natalicium of 402 stands as a signal example of Paulinus’s project of imitation. In a time of crisis, he not only provided biblical and contemporary parallels to comfort his listeners but also enjoined them to imitate the subjects of those parallels and explained the mechanisms by which such continuity would be possible. What seems like a digression on the equality of the saints is really a central component of how his listeners are to be saved—an unfolding of the ethic of imitation he wanted them to cultivate. The effect of the poem is to cultivate an imitative ethic that will lead to these listeners adopting the embodied reorientation to God that, for Paulinus, comprises martyrdom.

Interiority, Imitation, and Identification

To highlight the imitative significance of interior equality among the saints, we have the example of Nicetas of Remesiana, who was visiting Nola in January 403, when Paulinus gave his annual Natalicium. Paulinus asks him to “act the part of Felix” by praying for him. Such action would be fitting for a man like Nicetas because, as Paulinus tells him, “you match that same one in pious mind / and you re-present the appearance of his mind and you follow his soul / in love for me.”³⁰ Similarity of interior state, then, was a precursor to both imitation and identification.

Paulinus’s mental paradigm of searching out things to imitate even extended to the world of the inanimate. One of Paulinus’s most explicit calls to imitation occurred during his description of his glorious new basilica in Natalicium 10, delivered in 404. Celebrating the new construction, he urges those in attendance to take these buildings as their guide: “If the teaching of God from the light of the word / does not unfold understanding for us, at least let us seize / an example from these shrines.”³¹ Just as the old edifices took on new facades, so too should Christians renew themselves:

They are both old and at the same time new, equally neither new nor old,

not the same and at the same time the same, corresponding to the form

of future and present good; for even now it is useful for us

to be made new in pious mind, with the filth of our old life wiped away,

to follow Christ and be prepared for his kingdom.³²

The goal of this modeling, ultimately, is to attain an imitation of Christ. It is the Christians who have been “overspread with a shining cloak above servile / flesh” who “will be numbered more powerful among those rising” and will “change forms to the image of the lord / and, about to reign with God, similar to Christ but by the gift of Christ, / will receive conforming honor.”³³ In form, image, and function, these renovated humans will achieve likeness to Christ.

And Paulinus made clear that this honor was not reserved for the rarified few whose honors had already been established and enumerated; he wanted these buildings to bring the possibility of imitation to everyone at the shrine. The “type” (species) of the buildings, Paulinus explains, warns Christians “to put down the old form / And to put on the new, and to efface former deeds” with a new façade, “[extending] fitting forgetfulness over former concerns / and [inviting] concern for heavenly kingdoms into the spirit.”³⁴ This is a lesson for all present:

Therefore let us be made new

in feelings, and let us hasten to shake off the worthless deeds of

[our] earthly image from our body with garments cast off afar,

so that we might return/give back pure cloaks, with the dust shaken off them,

of body and shining soul.³⁵

Paulinus’s continued use of the garment metaphor highlights the continuity of these consequences of imitation: when Paulinus’s audience assumes the puros . . . corpore atque animae nitidi . . . amictus, they are being covered with the same inlustri . . . amictu of those who will be honored with co-reign alongside Christ. The rest of the poem, some 100 lines, details the parallels to be drawn between constructing the church buildings and re-forming the soul to suit Christ. Just as the builders had had to root out thorns and prior ventures (the land had once been partly covered by a vegetable garden) to prepare the soil for building anew in skyward-reaching marble, so too must Christians extirpate sin from heart and soul in preparation for bodily ascent into heaven. The “construction offers a form to me / by which I can cultivate, build, renew myself / in feelings and make foundations for myself as a suitable abode for Christ.”³⁶ Paulinus concludes with entreaties for his audience to join him in modeling themselves after these buildings:

Let us not, therefore, be old buildings among the new . . . ³⁷

Let us relinquish the world willingly . . . ³⁸

Let us die lest we die . . . ³⁹

Let us cover deadly life with life-bringing death . . . ⁴⁰

Let us be changed here / so that we may be changed there.⁴¹

Layering exhortation upon exhortation, Paulinus drives home the point that this imitation is incumbent upon every Christian who hopes to be worthy of salvation. The poem’s final lines reiterate the ethical imperative to imitation in axiomatic form: “He who now remains in himself / the same, will not be changed from himself eternally.”⁴² Transformation is the consequence and goal of imitation, which is why the imitation is so crucial.

To see more clearly what sort of imitation Paulinus is aiming for here, it is instructive to juxtapose him with his Egyptian monastic contemporary, Shenoute of Atripe, who also used his church-building project instructively “to define and defend his ideology of the ascetic life.”⁴³ For Shenoute,

The building embodies a theology of the ascetic life in which the monument is the material testimony to the purity of the monks’ bodies and souls. Yet, it is the very materiality of the church that also poses its greatest hermeneutical difficulties. Although the church’s beauty stands as a testament to the greatness of the God who resides in it, the monks must take heed not to admire its physical attributes too much, for fear that they might be drawn too deeply into the desires and concerns of the flesh, and away from the desires and concerns of God. . . . The church, like the body of the monk, becomes the space in which the ascetic struggle between the spirit and the flesh is undertaken.⁴⁴

While Shenoute used his monumental program to exhort his audience to keep themselves pure and holy through “staples of monastic life (celibacy, fasting, and obedience),”⁴⁵ Paulinus—strikingly, to Carrie Schroeder—“rarely mentions the standard practices of renunciation, such as celibacy, fasting, and poverty in these [architectural] texts.”⁴⁶ Whereas Shenoute saw his buildings as promoting ideals of humility and discipline, Paulinus saw his buildings as inspiring others to a more broadly conceived mimesis:

Paulinus hoped that those who entered his basilicas would become like the saints depicted on their walls and like the basilicas themselves—suitable abodes for Christ. The biggest obstacle Paulinus found was neither pride nor the glorification of material objects. Rather, he feared that people would not understand the pictures, and thus provided captions to guide the viewer in interpreting them.⁴⁷

The problem Paulinus anticipated was conceptual, not behavioral. He strove to inculcate the right mindset, rather than the right behavior, in his listeners. The contrast with Shenoute highlights that Paulinus’s idea of imitation was more about an embodied reorientation toward God than about any specific action taken to imitate holiness. As Catherine Conybeare summarizes Paulinus’s architectural ekphraseis, which are generally lacking in detail and re-creatable specifics but rich in spiritual interpretations, “It is the faith, not the form, that is of paramount importance.”⁴⁸ Paulinus’s concern with physical space was one that privileged the non-physical aspects of the spaces he described.

Amid these calls to imitation, Paulinus presents Felix as a particularly imitable model of sanctity. Felix was willing to die for God, but God had other plans, rescuing him from prison so that he, in turn, could rescue Maximus. God later again helped Felix elude persecutors so that he could survive to model proper humility and Christian voluntary poverty. By imitating the defining aspects of Felix’s life—that is, his willingness to do what God asks of him, his humility, and especially his attitude toward wealth—Paulinus and his contemporaries could become martyrs too.

Paulinus found Felix’s poverty especially imitable. After lauding the poverty of Christ in the Natalicium of 407, praising the exchange of earthly abjection for heavenly treasures, Paulinus points to Felix’s own poverty (which he had described in detail in a Natalicium eight years before) and enjoins that poverty on any who would seek to follow Felix:

For who remains ignorant of your poverty, which for the sake

of the holy name, with your wealth having been proscribed, you undertook,

O rejoicing confessor, and in which you until old age

always cultivated a rented garden, blessed Felix?

Therefore you will strive to make similar to you

in pious poverty all those whom you receive under your hosting roof;

for a dissimilar form cannot unite with you.

. . .

But that path, which is of Christ, which lies open to the nurturing

confessors and martyrs, is a hard road, laid out for the few.

This way does not, therefore, permit the overfed, it excludes those burdened with riches.

Therefore it is fitting that the servant and follower of the blessed

martyr be constrained, stripped of troublesome shackles,

and to become feeble and lightweight from healthy poverty

so that he is able to penetrate the narrow gate

and ascend the highest mountain of the Lord.⁴⁹

With Felix serving as model, Paulinus advises those who want to become martyrs to follow the path of the martyrs and pursue poverty. Once again, following in the footsteps of the martyrs earns Christians similar rewards. Christians who, in imitation of Felix’s holy poverty, make themselves light and feeble will be allowed to pass through the same narrow gate that Felix did and will be able to ascend the Lord’s mountain alongside Felix because they share the similarity of poverty. It was not Felix’s persecution that made this imitation possible but his post-persecution life of poverty, which, unlike Felix’s imprisonment, Paulinus’s contemporaries could attempt to imitate.

This breadth of imitability helps to explain why, despite so adamantly making the case that Felix is a legitimate martyr, Paulinus nonetheless frequently and persistently also called him “confessor.” Whereas Prudentius did not see confessors as occupying a separate category from martyrs, Paulinus did. As we saw in the previous chapter, Paulinus was aware that he was going against the grain of contemporary thinking by claiming that Felix was a martyr. So it might seem strange, given the lengths to which Paulinus went to establish that Felix was a martyr, that Paulinus nonetheless continued to refer to him by this other title as well. Why did he persist in using a title that would undercut Felix’s status as a martyr? It must be that the title “confessor” did not, to Paulinus’s mind, undercut Felix’s martyr status; instead, the separate but glorious confessor’s crown to which Felix was entitled increased his honor and complemented his martyrdom. Surviving his martyrdom made possible his other praiseworthy feats, including the voluntary poverty that Paulinus so emphasized. Felix had earned both crowns,⁵⁰ and so both were relevant; both were fodder for imitation.

Moreover, in some cases, Paulinus labeled Felix’s two crowns not as those of the martyr and the confessor but as those of the martyr and the priest or of the confessor and the priest: it was important to Paulinus that all of Felix’s roles—as martyr, as confessor, as priest—be honored and held up for imitation. This was certainly how Paulinus employed the distinctions: when he drew attention to his own priesthood, as in the Natalicium of 407, he chose to point to Felix’s priestly crown.⁵¹

While advocating this ethic of imitation, Paulinus made clear that it was a transformative ethic. As Paulinus describes in the fourth Natalicium, given in 398, simply being a follower of Felix came with transformative possibilities:

[Your birthday]

is something special for yours (tuis) because Christ allowed

us to be yours . . .

Because the good father wished to enrich us,

needful of level footing and unworthy of salvation, so that we,

wickedly wealthy in sins, by an exchange of wealth turned toward better things,

instead of all wealth and all affects and instead of

noble titles and vain honors in all respects,

might grasp Felix as our wealth, fatherland, and home.

You⁵² are father and fatherland and home and resources,

into your womb our cradle is transferred,

and your lap is for us a nest, there we, kept warm,

grow well, and, changing bodies into another form,

are stripped of earthly lineage and with wings sprouting

we are turned into birds by the seed of the divine word.⁵³

We know that the yoke of Christ is light, with you lifting it, in you

Christ is flattering to the unworthy and sweet to the bitter.

This very day, therefore, must be solemn for us,

Which is a birthday for you, because, with you destroying our evil,

We die to the world, so that we are born to Christ in the good.⁵⁴

Closeness to Felix, being “his,” being a follower, has the power to cleanse and ennoble the living, to the point that his followers are not only given the wings of heavenly creatures but also come to share Felix’s birthday—it is the day that these followers of Felix die to the world and are born in Christ, as Felix was. Imitation, we see again, ultimately leads to identification, in Paulinus’s view.

This identification appears throughout the Natalicia, as Paulinus repeatedly refers to Felix’s followers as “Felixes” themselves. While relating Felix’s role in establishing a water source for Cimitile (a feat that involved motivating the citizens of Abella to repair an aqueduct and teaching the Nolans a lesson about their stinginess) during the Natalicium of 407, Paulinus designates the residents of Cimitile as “Felixes,” writing that Nola “had before been arrogant toward felicibus, but afterwards were servant [to them] with better zeal.”⁵⁵ In this case, the adjective felix is being used substantively but stripped of its original meaning as a shorthand to refer to Felix’s followers. There is an element of wordplay here, as the monks were certainly happy to have the matter resolved, but the primary effect of the shorthand is to conjure up an image of Felix’s shrine as populated by a crowd of Felix clones. At other times, the designation was more deliberately crafted as simultaneous identification and wordplay. In that same Natalicium, for instance, Paulinus closes with an imprecation to Christ that emphasized the merging of divine and human through Felix:

Flow, Christ, into the hearts dedicated to you

and to Felix, and bestow upon the sinners

committed to him that your piety never

carry off the font of this power from our marrow and that he himself,

bountiful Felix, the font from your font, might flood us,

so that your font, King Christ, might always spring up within us,

and that, after wretchedness and lack Felix might hold us fast

to live felices after the manner of his name.⁵⁶

By explicitly mentioning that living as fortunate ones or “Felixes” is in imitation of the saint’s name, Paulinus is calling attention to the wordplay. But in the context of the passage, in which Felix “floods” his followers while the font of Christ “springs up within” them, the message of identification is clear: we can become Felixes, too; and like Felix, we can merge with the divine. Similarly, we see the appellation doing double duty as a name and an adjective in the Natalicium of 406. Paulinus here recounts the repentance of a visitor to the shrine, who had absconded with the meat from the pig he had sacrificed to Felix only to be struck down on his homeward journey by a Felix-sent fall from his horse. Acknowledging his own former failures, the once-greedy man admits: “For myself, I, wretched, deserve such punishment / here in this hall where, if anyone wretched should come into it, / he is made felix!”⁵⁷ The rest of the repentant man’s speech is about transformation from being a sinful man with a sound body to a cleansed man with a broken body and about how that healing happens through Felix and at his shrine: the transition from miser to felix is a transformation both of mental state and of identity.⁵⁸

With all of these exhortations to and encouragements toward imitation, Paulinus creates and cultivates an ethic of imitation that he intends to govern the spiritual worldview of contemporary Christians. This is the same sort of mentality that we saw with Prudentius’s martyrial worldview and in Georgia Frank’s notion of biblical realism. But in this instance, the “opportunity to participate in the biblical past”⁵⁹ is afforded not by a re-interpretation of the self but by a commitment to imitating what is imitable in the saints. For Paulinus, that category included, above all else, an interior reorientation to govern behavior in the here and now, an interior imitation capable of manifesting itself in multiple earthly forms. Paulinus was expanding the range of patterns that constitute martyrdom. This mirrors the multiplication of mimesis that Candida Moss identifies in earlier Christian material.⁶⁰ According to Moss, this means that “additional layers to the mimetic economy are added so that each successive generation of martyrs models their conduct on that of their predecessors.”⁶¹ What I have shown, by contrast, is that the multiplication Paulinus sought was not one delimited by enumerated varieties of conduct but one centered on orientation with limitless possible manifestations.⁶²

UNIVERSAL PRINCIPLES

Paulinus’s second mode of extending martyrdom to his contemporaries was to assert universal principles through which anyone could become a martyr. In defending Felix’s martyr status, Paulinus frequently offered arguments based on general maxims rather than explanations that would have been specific to Felix alone.

For instance, in the Natalicium of 397, as he is explaining how Felix has died a confessor but is counted a martyr in God’s eyes, Paulinus asserts that God, “who is the examiner of the silent heart, holds those prepared to suffer / on par with those who have.”⁶³ This is not just a description of how Felix was judged a martyr but is also a truism about how God operates vis à vis all humans. This general axiom, that God holds those prepared to suffer on par with those who have actually suffered, is based on another universal principle: that God knows what lies within every human heart. This truism both explains the regard in which God holds Felix and inspires in the hearer a pang of vulnerability: it implies that God knows what is in a person’s heart, and so each person must do his or her best to make the heart worthy of God. This explanation simultaneously furthers Paulinus’s narrative about Felix and helps him fulfill his pastoral duties as priest to the congregants at Nola, correcting them and steering them away from error while expanding their ability to compare themselves with Felix. Paulinus was not merely speaking about Felix; he was using calculated universalism to induce his listeners to apply God’s standards for Felix to themselves.

As the poem continues, Paulinus asserts again and again the principles by which Felix is to be counted a martyr, and each of them is couched in terms applicable to all humans: God “remits punishment of the flesh on account of proper piety”; “the will for suffering suffices”; “giving testimony of devotion is the height of service.”⁶⁴ In each of these axioms, we see exemplary behavior and orientation delineated and extolled. Maintaining proper piety, having a will for suffering, and giving testimony of devotion are all couched as things that inherently merit the crown of martyrdom, regardless of who meets those goals.

In other words, while these axioms establish that Felix himself counts as a martyr, they also stand on their own as statements that could, and should, apply to anyone. The audience at Nola and those reading the Natalicia after the feast day would (or could easily) have understood themselves to be referents in these maxims; at the very least, they would have recognized that these principles did not solely apply to Felix, a recognition that would pave the way for the assertions to guide their own journeys to martyrdom. This is an especially momentous realization when we remember that Paulinus’s primary festal audiences were rustics—peasants of limited education and means. And just as Paulinus seems genuinely invested in their Christianization,⁶⁵ he seems, especially with the imposition of these universal principles, to want them to strive for martyrdom. Or, at least, to be shaped by (and further Christianized by) the process of seeking martyrdom from a God who can surveil one’s heart. Even if Paulinus’s listeners did not understand these axioms to be calls to martyrdom, the jarring recognition that God sees into and judges as paramount one’s innermost desires and secreted wills would have had a profound and potentially transformational impact on a receptive listener.

RHETORIC, RATHER THAN PERSECUTION

The third method that Paulinus used to extend martyrdom to his contemporaries was using a poetic and rhetorical toolkit through which he cultivated in his audience the embodied reorientation that mimicked Felix’s martyrdom. Through these techniques, which include extensive use of ekphrasis, paradox, direct speech from his characters, and personal appeals to his audience, he both merged the world of the listener with the world of the martyr (or, indeed, with the world of Christ and his biblical types) and induced the listeners to feel viscerally connected to the experience of martyrdom.

Paulinus’s rhetorical efforts to merge the world of the listener and the martyr (or martyr types) were sometimes subtle, but they were pervasive. Take, for example, his use of echoing language to facilitate desired imaginative connections in his readers. In the Natalicium of 402, Paulinus uses the same language to describe the mental state both of the Jews who were nervous on the eve of their exodus from Egypt and of the crowd at Nola anxious about impending Gothic attacks. The Jews, Paulinus claims, “despite their roiling (turbante) dread, did not abandon the solemn command.”⁶⁶ “Thus, therefore,” he urges, “let us now, happy in a turbulent (turbato) time, / with pious mind all celebrate the feast of the beloved martyr / with united devotions of cheerful piety.”⁶⁷ Fifteen lines separate the first use from the second, but the parallel wording highlights the parallel situation, as well as the emotional intensity of recognizing that both groups of people are on the eve of something momentous, something that can only be endured by placing trust in God, as the martyrs do. Paulinus advised his audience to imitate the Jews and reinforced that ethic of imitation by describing them in identical terms—in other words, the commanded imitation was already underway. The wordplays on Felix’s name, which I highlighted above as indicating the way that imitation can lead to identification, served a similar function, linking the emotional state of the reader with the object of imitation. Thus, when Paulinus exclaimed nos quoque felices in the Natalicium of 397 while describing the festive atmosphere at Nola, he was connecting his audience both with the name of Felix and with the feeling that the adjective denotes: “We, too, are felices, to whom it is given to observe him in person / and to celebrate his day and to see the gifts / of our excellent patron and to give thanks to Christ for the so great things [he gives] to his own / and to rejoice among the happy crowds.”⁶⁸ The felix does double duty here, and neither meaning—neither the man nor the sense of good fortune—removes the other.

Another subtle and pervasive technique Paulinus uses is enjambment. By reserving an essential word or idea for a subsequent line, Paulinus simultaneously created suspense in his readers and emphasized the reserved word or concepts. In the Natalicium of 402, as he is linking the Nolans’ current anxieties to the anxieties of earlier role models, Paulinus includes two successive enjambments to heighten his audience’s tension:

prisca retractemus sanctorum exempla parentum,

qui merita inmissis tolerantes uerbera bellis,

non armis sibi nec muris capienda putabant

praesidia. humanis opibus sperare salutem

nulla salus. nec enim mortem mortalia pellent.⁶⁹

By keeping the object sought (that is, “safety” or “protection”) away from the listener for that much longer, Paulinus keeps the safety and protection of narrative closure away from his audience. It would only have been for the length of a pause, if even that, but the delayed arrival at a syntactic and narrative safe haven nonetheless would have had the effect of adding to the audience’s suspense. And then, in good rhetorical form, Paulinus offers a potentially reassuring alternative—to hope for safety in human might—which he then crushes by inserting the subject, “no salvation.” This enjambment is further amplified by the polyptoton of salutem and salus in successive lines, which helps Paulinus achieve “both pointedness and closure.”⁷⁰ Paulinus was here toying with his audience’s emotions, priming his listeners for the imitative ethic he intended to instill in them.⁷¹ We also see Paulinus concatenating enjambments, piling up idea after idea and then resolving them. Later in the Natalicium of 402, he lists the differences among the saints—their times (enjambed into line 291) and their deeds (enjambed into line 292)—and then the ultimate truth that among them there is equal merit (enjambed into line 293).⁷² In each case, the enjambed word modifies the prior line and the progression of reserved words gathers momentum, snowballing, creating suspense, and culminating in the final idea that equal merit accompanies diverse instantiations of holiness. As a final example, we see enjambment at work in the words of the repenting greedy man, who exclaims: o mihi, qui talem merui desumere poenam / hac in sede miser, qua, si miser adueniat quis, / efficitur felix! The final, emphatic phrase here, the longed-for resolution, is the supplicant’s ultimate goal. In all of these instances of enjambment, the effect on the reader is not simply logical but is also emotional and experiential, and therefore embodied, with the embodiment facilitating the audience member’s reception of the crucial idea.

We see a similar effect occurring with the asyndeton in the Natalicium of 402. As Paulinus stresses that the saints, though different, are equal, he concludes that Christus erit cunctis regnum lux uita corona (Christ will be for all of them kingdom, light, life, crown).⁷³ The absence of connecting conjunctions renders these appositions to Christ increasingly intense. The rush and the rushing-together of the terms within this heavily spondaic line not only helps to make the claim that Christ will be all of these things for each of his saints but also inspires an affective reaction in the reader, who is driven by the rush, the rhythm, and the concatenation to get caught up as well in the elision.

Paulinus employed further and more substantial rhetorical maneuvers to encourage his audience’s imitation of the saints, most notably paradox, apostrophe, and direct appeals to his audience. In each of these cases, Paulinus’s words impel the reader or hearer to engage more deeply with what he is saying than simple narration or exposition would allow.

Paradox was one of Paulinus’s more frequent rhetorical tactics. Often it appears as situational and fairly subtle, with two concepts juxtaposed that, if worked out logically, lie in tension with one another. For instance, Paulinus on multiple occasions announces that he is discharging his vows by offering his poetic talent to Felix and then undercuts his own ability to discharge those vows by asking God, Felix, or Christ essentially to be his muse and to give him the words with which to fulfill his vow. In the Natalicium of 400, Paulinus opens by emphasizing the fact that he was making an offering of words: “By solemn oath law demands of me . . . a gift from my mouth, that I speak Felix in verse and set to music my joy.”⁷⁴ Then, however, twenty lines later, Paulinus prays, “Christ, God of Felix, be present! Give me now the word, / speech-God, give me a clear mind, Wisdom! / It is not possible to speak your praises with eloquence of / human power.”⁷⁵ This sort of contradiction—of offering a vow that one could not possibly fulfill without the gift of the one to whom the offering has been vowed—tended to serve, as in this example, as Paulinus’s captatio benevolentiae and worked to help ensnare his hearers and bring them to the realization of divine embodiment: the audience was present at Nola both to hear the great man speak and to experience the words of God, for human being and God merged in the speaking, with imitation becoming identification, as we saw above.

At other times, Paulinus’s paradoxes were both more direct and more directly addressed. Paulinus will state a contradiction and then explain it himself, as when, in a later Natalicium, he points to God’s immensity and asserts that the saints can contain him: “For the originator of the world is greater than the world, God the King himself, / who fills the earth and heavens; whom the world itself does not contain, / but the saints contain.”⁷⁶ Paulinus does not let this contradiction stand for long, immediately offering the solution: the saints contain God “not because they are enormous of body, / but [because they are] humble in piety and capacious in pure heart.”⁷⁷ In these cases, the poet uses the paradoxes to captivate the audience, but by providing the resolution himself, Paulinus controls both the audience’s reaction and the lessons it takes away.

Finally, Paulinus will directly juxtapose dissonant terms without further comment, trusting his readers to make the right reconciliation for themselves, as when he exclaims of the monk Theridius’s run-in with a lamp (discussed below): “O fortunate calamity, good wound, sweet danger, / through which I have learned the martyr’s care for me!”⁷⁸

In the case of apostrophe, Paulinus invites his reader to become a “judge” of the matters he is discussing with Felix and God, “avert[ing] his speech. . . and address[ing] individuals in the audience” with the intent “to interest and persuade whoever is sitting in judgment.”⁷⁹ Thus, when Paulinus spoke to Felix in the short (and entirely apostrophic) Natalicium of 395, he invited the reader into his personal relationship with the saint, conjuring not only the reality of both speaker (the newly ordained priest not yet in residence at Nola) and addressee (the intangible and mutely responsive Felix), but also the fact of their intimacy. Paulinus opens with a paean to Felix (as we saw in the previous chapter) that includes direct speech to the saint (inclite confessor), a playful comment on his name (meritis et nomine Felix), a litany of paradoxical statements (Felix’s mind is in heaven, but his power is felt equally throughout the earth; he deserved to escape punishment by scorning it; he offered his limbs to the persecutors but went to heaven as a martyr without blood), and privileged access to both Felix’s story and the divine mind. He then addresses Felix in prayer, beginning with supplications, nods to human frailty, and allusions to a variety of obstacles, and ending with confident assurance of being accepted into a life of service to the saint.⁸⁰ Paulinus characterizes himself as a man to whom Felix speaks, who has access to privileged information and privileged assurance, who himself has the power to speak both with and for his heavenly interlocutor—and who can recognize and decipher the paradoxes presented by Felix’s story. By inviting his audience to observe this conversation, Paulinus was attempting, in Smith’s words, to “interest and persuade”⁸¹ those in attendance about the reality and character of Felix, about the character of Paulinus, about the intimacy between the two, and, most importantly, about the audience members’ own ability to experience that same intimacy with the martyr. By including in the conversation sympathy-generating elements such as wordplay, uncertainty, and resolution, Paulinus sought to elicit a particular, imitative, embodied response from his audience to aid them in attaining that intimacy.

We see a similar dynamic in the following year’s Natalicium, which is entirely apostrophic except for one section, in which Paulinus speaks for the whole assembled crowd as it observes itself. In this case, however, Paulinus wanted his audience to be persuaded both to feel felix and to become Felix. The progression has the following structure:

1. Paean to Felix (including wordplay and authorial omniscience);

2. A prayer thanking him for a lifetime of care and particular help in travel;

3. A non-apostrophic observation on the assembled crowds;

4. An apostrophe to Nola itself.

In this case, the apostrophe engages and directs the audience toward imitation of Felix: Paulinus opens with a play on Felix’s name (Felix, hoc merito quod nomine, nomine et idem / qui merito), continues by linking that name to the name and serenity of Christ (hunc, precor, aeterna pietate et pace serenum / posce tuis, cuius magno stas nomine, Felix), moves on to assert (in the non-apostrophic section) that the congregated masses are, in fact, joyful (nunc iuuat effusas in gaudia soluere mentes) because they are assembled in such great numbers for Felix’s sake, and then claims, once again in an apostrophe, that Nola is, in fact, felix Felice.⁸² The final encouragement is a direct one: “May you (i.e., Nola) be good and fortunate (felix) as you persuade the powerful lord on our behalf!”⁸³ Speaking to Nola as to Felix, essentially eliding the two in the act of intercession, Paulinus seals his apostrophic pleas with an appeal to both embodiment (being felix) and imitation (being Felix).

In the case of direct speech, Paulinus requires his reader to engage with him one-on-one (or, face-to-face, community with leader), demanding his hearers’ attention and obedience. By speaking directly to the members of his audience, Paulinus recalls them to themselves, to the fact that they are, indeed, supposed to be turning his words into livable practices. Because all of the Natalicia were addresses, delivered usually in public and therefore structured as speeches to a crowd, there are moments where Paulinus uses the imperative to make clear that the object of his address is the audience in front of him, not some abstract, hypothetical, rhetorically constructed audience. When Paulinus used the imperative to speak directly to them, the listeners knew that they themselves were responsible for heeding Paulinus’s words. By calling upon them to “bring praise to God, discharge a pious vow,” “scatter the ground with flower[s]” and “cover the threshold with garlands,”⁸⁴ Paulinus was at once highlighting the listeners’ own actions, noting the range of possibility of their actions, and reminding them to act. By calling them to “open your hearts” and forgive his inability to do justice in verse to Felix’s majesty, Paulinus was underlining the hearers’ role as responsible for vetting and assenting to Paulinus’s speech—he was reminding them that their approval is essential to the success of the poem.

Occasionally Paulinus directly addressed his audience to instruct them on the meaning of what he had just said or to offer “signposts” to make his narrative progressions and arguments clear. During the hagiographical Natalicium of 399, Paulinus changed topics in Felix’s narrative by noting: “We have spoken about how he trod upon death and ambition; now learn about the other palm of confessor.”⁸⁵ In all these instances where he directly addresses his audience, Paulinus recalls his readers or listeners to themselves, to the fact that they are reading or hearing: if they had thus far lost themselves in words, in the effervescence of the crowd, or, perhaps, in drunkenness, Paulinus’s words to them would jolt them to a certain amount of self-possession, which they could then use to cultivate the intention to imitate. In the Natalicium of 400, after announcing that he intended to fulfill his own vow with his verses, Paulinus implores: “Harmonize with my verses, I pray, and applaud with me, brothers / and pour out your minds with chaste abandon.”⁸⁶ Through the imperative claim, Paulinus told his audience directly what their actions should be, and those actions were imitative.

These techniques, in aggregate, work together to support a worldview in which the people listening to or reading the poetry are engaged, body and mind, in the performance and are consequently both persuaded to seek transformation and encouraged as they pursue that path. These are rhetorically driven embodiments, leading to enacting an ethic of imitation.

In addition (and again like Prudentius), Paulinus used ekphrasis as a means of further engaging his readers and instructing them. Much has been written on Paulinus’s architectural ekphraseis, in large part because he went into great detail about his building program and the artwork supposedly within eyeshot of the people he was addressing.⁸⁷ He also formulated a clear theory about how images should be used for instruction. In contrast to the eventually dominant theory of Gregory the Great, who saw images as texts for the illiterate, Paulinus’s theory requires that the stories depicted be accompanied by text to explain what is going on and how the images must be interpreted: “Even when the depictions are expressly directed at the unlettered, Paulinus cannot envisage material images without an explanatory or illustrative text.”⁸⁸ Indeed, this concern with unmediated visual experience is at the heart of Paulinus’s Ep. 32 to Severus, in which Paulinus offers epigram after epigram, poem after poem, to guide Severus’s visitors through the church at Primuliacum—in particular, Paulinus is concerned that viewers will get the impression from the juxtaposition of their images that Martin and Paulinus are spiritual equals. Paulinus offers several poems for Severus to inscribe near the paired portraits to make clear that this is not the case.⁸⁹ For Paulinus, images can incite interest and excitement (and draw festal attendees’ attention momentarily away from the food that awaits them),⁹⁰ but they cannot be interpreted or understood without text. Thus, when he describes his building projects in the Natalicium of 404, he makes explicit the lessons that should be drawn from them, namely, that (as we have seen) those in attendance at Nola should imitate the buildings in order to imitate Christ and his martyr.⁹¹ But Paulinus also employs narrative ekphraseis, where rather than describing inanimate objects of the present, he instead describes events of the past in the hopes of bringing them before the eyes of the crowd. Just as with the architectural and artistic visuals he describes in vivid rhetoric, these mental and narrative images, too, require verbal explanations. Included in these ekphraseis are the interpretations that Paulinus deemed necessary: in each of these examples, the ekphrasis concludes with a form of expository instruction.

In the Natalicium of 401, Paulinus used an extended ekphrasis to compel his readers to sympathize and identify with the monk Theridius, who, in his moment of need, relies on and is saved by his ability to imitate Felix. Though the episode is mundane in the extreme—Theridius walks unsuspectingly into a dangling lamp and is in danger of being blinded—Paulinus renders it (as I discuss elsewhere⁹²) positively cinematic. With storytelling reminiscent of a Hollywood horror film, complete with strategic cutaways and unwitting protagonists,⁹³ Paulinus incites his audiences to feel, to feel alongside the hapless monk, and to identify with his relief when, at the end of the story, his eye is saved. And this rescue is, likewise, seemingly mundane: Theridius pulls the spike out of his own eye without injuring himself further or losing his sight. But this resolution is only possible because Theridius is acting not as himself but as Felix, whom Theridius depicts as an imitator and agent of Christ. Theridius—standing with his head upturned, clutching the lamp to his face so as not to do more damage, and actively despairing of a human solution—turns to Felix. He begs Felix to come to his aid and save his eye, to:

Place your holy hands on the eye that is threatening

to fall out, and pluck out the iron which you see affixed to it,

which I do not dare to take out by my own hand, lest I

ruin my sight, while I try to loosen the spike.⁹⁴

We see here Theridius’ reliance on Felix’s power and Theridius’ own reluctance to act. After more reflection on his own sin, Theridius enumerates what he has done to overcome that sin and make himself worthy of Felix’s intercession. He describes his own journey to Nola and the monastic life, making it clear that he sought to imitate Felix,⁹⁵ who had also left his family and scorned his patrimony, in order to live alongside the saint and his felices. With one final cry for Felix’s miraculous intervention, Theridius concludes his speech and, without further ado, removes the spike from his eye.⁹⁶

Rather than being anticlimactic, this conclusion represents a triumph for Paulinus. Theridius has established that no human hand could possibly have saved his eye, has begged for Felix’s intervention, and has asserted his own imitation of Felix. By removing the spike from his own eye, Theridius is acting as Felix, showing that an imitation-based embodied reorientation to God can become identification, such that Felix’s miracle is enacted by Theridius’s hand. Paulinus does not call Theridius a martyr (though he does treat the rescued eye as a relic!⁹⁷), but he is clearly, within the story, acting as one—specifically, acting as Felix.

If Theridius can become Felix through imitation and fellow-feeling, Paulinus’s audience can become Theridius (and thus Felix, and by extension Christ). Not only does Paulinus use his narrative to induce empathy between the audience and Theridius, he speaks, as I noted above, directly to his listeners, recalling them to themselves and reminding them of their distance from Theridius, which they can bridge through faith and contemplation of his example: “Therefore, faithful ones, / see now in your souls the image of such a great crisis, / and equally weigh the act of such a great gift.”⁹⁸ The ekphrasis thus calls for and inculcates the embodied reorientation toward God that Paulinus was advocating.

Paulinus used a similar tactic to cultivate embodied reorientation in his listeners by having them identify with Felix himself in the Natalicium of 398, which describes Felix’s escape from prison. Paulinus describes Felix’s divine deliverance in a way that compels the listener to feel that same experience of release, and then concludes with instruction that reinforces the ethic of imitation and its efficacy. Paulinus begins his description of events using the perfect tense (tulit, elegit, uenit),⁹⁹ which is fitting because he is describing what he claims is a historical occurrence. But after God sends an angel to lead Felix to freedom, the narrative jumps into the present tense, bringing the historical past into the here and now.¹⁰⁰ As an angel appears to lead Felix to freedom, Paulinus emphasizes Felix’s mental and physical experience of imprisonment, inviting the readers to feel as Felix does, to include them in his suffering. He describes Felix as trembling (excussus tremit, 4.243) and as astonished and anxious (stupet anxius, 4.245), and he even has his hero enumerate for the angel all of the impediments to escape: the chains, the door bolts, the guard.¹⁰¹ The angel nonetheless orders Felix to rise, and no sooner does he speak than the chains are loosed. And subito!,¹⁰² sponte!,¹⁰³ all barriers fall away. These two adverbs, delivered in quick succession at the start of two consecutive lines, drive home the immediacy of Felix’s freedom, an immediacy that Paulinus confirms for his audience by interjecting his own voice, exclaiming: “mira fides!”¹⁰⁴ This authorial interruption both signifies a collapse between the world of the narrative and the world of the author and provides a guideline for how the world of the narrative is supposed to affect the listener. Following this exclamation, Felix leaves the prison, now fearless, and Paulinus abandons his narrative for several lines to point out how Felix’s story parallels Peter’s, asserting that, even in Felix’s day, such refigurations can occur; he implies by extension that these same refigurations can occur in the present.¹⁰⁵ The audience, who has accompanied Felix in prison and experienced the excitement and joy of his release, is itself again released, this time from the world of the narrative and into the notion that refiguration is still a reality, that imitation is still effective.

By such rhetorical tactics and poetic parallels, Paulinus helped his audience to imitate Felix, the martyr, and thus to embark on their own martyr journeys. He not only enjoined his listeners and readers to martyrdom through interior imitation of the martyrs, he also helped to enact that imitation through the literary and rhetorical devices he employed.

WITNESS IN PAULINUS

Given the centrality of imitation (enacting witness), axiomatic statements of truth (testifying witness), and visually and viscerally engaging rhetoric (indicating an emphasis on observing witness) to Paulinus’s construction of martyrdom, it would seem logical for witness to play as large a role in Paulinus’s embodied orientation as it does in Prudentius’s worldview construction. But it does not. In fact, Paulinus used the language and trope of witness much less frequently than Prudentius and even portrayed it in an ambiguous light at key moments in his poems. Ultimately, however, the ambivalence makes sense: in a martyrological system where orientation is key, external manifestations of martyrdom cannot be relied upon or fixated upon for imitation. The martyr is deemed worthy of martyrdom by God’s witness, God’s observation, in Paulinus’s calculation, and the ultimate verdict relies on divine evaluation; the martyr is still essentially a witness, but his witness is potentially illegible to outsiders.

Like Prudentius, Paulinus understood testis and martyr to be interchangeable, as we can see from his use of testis to mean martyr in the Natalicium of 397:

There is, ultimately, nothing [in Felix] unequal to these witnesses

who poured forth blood, with both title and virtue received at once.

He demonstrated the merit of a martyr, when with a powerful oath

he exorcised demons, and released chained bodies.¹⁰⁶

Additionally, Paulinus used the phrase testes fidei as shorthand for the martyrs in his Letter 18 to Victricius, while in the Natalicium of 407, he refers to martyrs as consecratis passione testibus to distinguish them from confessors.¹⁰⁷ Notably, however, and in contrast to Prudentius, the most frequent entities Paulinus described as testes were God and Scripture—witnesses with inherent authority.

Despite its similarity to what is occurring in Prudentius’s work, the connection between martyrdom and witness is problematic in Paulinus. To highlight the issue here, I want to lay out, as clearly as possible, the ways that observing witness, testifying witness, and enacting witness manifest in Paulinus’s martyrs. Each of these three forms of witness was crucial to the way that Prudentius configured witness to be the central, essential component of martyrdom. This is not the case for Paulinus. Observing witness is central only for Paulinus’s audience; testifying witness is inconsistently advocated; and enacting witness is not only dependent on the addition of an authoritative authorial voice but also includes within it the seeds of its own undoing: the enactment of witness that Paulinus presents for Maximus and Felix in particular preserves their own rejection of proclaiming their witness. Table 4.1 should help illustrate this uneven valuation of the various forms of witness in Paulinus:

Table 4.1 Valuation of the various forms of witness in Paulinus
	Observing witness	Testifying witness	Enacting witness
Felix	· F’s own seeing, hearing, and observing are not emphasized—light/dark imagery and sight language appear in his prison and rescue tale (Natalicium 4.177–186), but not nearly to the extent that they do in Prudentius’s comparable treatment of Vincent. · After death, F. sees and hears the goings-on at his shrine, however, and responds with intercession (e.g., Natalicium 6.313–318).	· F’s own speech is largely absent (Paulinus only gives him direct speech three times—once to present Maximus to his servant-woman, once to deflect his persecutors, and once to reject the idea of reclaiming his wealth to distribute it to the poor. Each speech is brief, and the latter two play a role in obscuring Felix’s witness, representing moments where he places his personal salvation above his performance for others). · Conceptually, F’s communicative efforts are not emphasized, except in Natalicium 1.4: qui dominum Christum non uincta uoce professus.	· Paulinus configures him as a model for imitation. · This model includes F’s abnegation of communicative witness: the Jedi mind-trick, the woman who unwittingly feeds him, his hiding in a cistern, and his unostentatious poverty are all moments of hiddenness that Paulinus recovers and publishes.
Maximus	· M’s own seeing, hearing, observing are not emphasized—mentioned only once (when he wakes up from his “coma” to see Felix’s face in Natalicium 4.308.)	· Hides himself from the prying eyes of persecutors and supporters alike, gives himself over to be witnessed by God alone. · Speaks to and about Felix to bless him, acting as Abraham, God, and interceding martyr (Natalicium 4.351–361).	· Paulinus is adamant that M’s witness not be overlooked (asserts that God wanted to prevent him from dying hidden: non tulit obscuro consumi funere corpus (Natalicium 4.221). · However, Paulinus holds M up as a martyr even though he fled to the wilderness precisely so that no one could witness his end but God (Natalicium 4.307–328).
Victricius	· V’s own seeing, hearing, observing are not noted at all.	· V’s teaching and proselytizing are highlighted (e.g., Epistula 18.4). · V’s martyrdom was based on a very public example (proclaiming himself a Christian very visibly at a military parade, Epistula 18.7).	· Paulinus configures him as a light and a beacon. · V’s role as an object of witness in a judicial context is central to his depiction as a martyr (Epistula 18.7). · Despite V’s status as beacon, Paulinus (through his sinful ignorance) did not recognize him as a martyr when they met (Epistula 18.9).
Theridius	· T’s sight is emphasized by the possible loss of his eye (Natalicium 7.160–264).	· T’s speech is emphasized through his lengthy address to Felix, which announces his own situation as well as Felix’s power to remedy it (Natalicium 7.201–254).	· The audience sees him (through ekphrasis) acting as Felix and Christ (Natalicium 7.255–261).
Felices	· Seeing the miracles of Felix at the shrine (e.g., cernere and spectare at the shrine are intimately connected to audience members becoming felices in Natalicium 3.104–107).108	·   · Acting as community (e.g., in relation to water dispute in Natalicium 13). · Showing through imitation/identification (e.g., hoping to live felices after the manner of Felix’s name in Natalicium 13.858).	· The audience hears them referred to as new Felixes: their imitations are observed and reported as identifications.
Audience	· Seeing at the shrine (e.g., Natalicium 8.384: Omni namque die testes sumus). · Seeing through ekphrasis (e.g., Natalicium 7.160: uidete manum Christi). · Hearing Paulinus recounting Felix’s life and miracles. · Hearing the testimony of the cured at the shrine (e.g., the live-chicken-eating demoniac in Natalicium 8.307–323). · Hearing the testimony of tortured demons (Natalicium 3.21–35). · Feeling through engagement with poetry.	· Enjoined by the axiom “Giving testimony of devotion is the height of service” (Natalicium 3.12).	· These martyrs will be recognized by God (based on Paulinus’s axiomatic statements). · They will not necessarily be recognized as martyrs by others (based on Paulinus’s lack of pronouncements on this as well as his other exempla).

For his three primary martyrs (Felix, Maximus, and Victricius), Paulinus placed no emphasis at all on their own observations; for Felix and Maximus, their testimony is negligible (and problematic), and their enacting witness contains a paradoxical rejection of witness; while Victricius’s testimony is strong, his enacting witness is undermined by Paulinus’s own former inability to see it correctly. Paulinus uses all aspects of witness more evenly in his treatments of Theridius and the felices, but when it comes to the audience (which occasionally intersects with the felices), Paulinus emphasizes the observational component of witness while largely neglecting both communicative components.

This complexity may have been born of ambivalence—Paulinus may have wanted to use the concept of witness but was wary of its power and potential outside of a controlled ecclesiastical context: perhaps he wanted to encourage his listeners to aspire to holiness but was wary of offering easily imitable examples for fear that his audience might attempt to imitate the saints in a simplistic, superficial way. The complexity could, alternately (or additionally), be attributed to Paulinus’s rhetorical aims. Paulinus may have been embracing a complex valuation of witness with his audience’s affective experience in mind, positing as the object of imitation a figure who resists imitation in order to communicate uncertainty and to cultivate humility. Both of these options dovetail with Simon Goldhill’s observations about ekphrasis in Paulinus—that Paulinus feels that visual representations must be mediated by didactic ekphraseis if those representations are ever to create a proper Christian viewing subject.¹⁰⁹ Whatever his motivations, it is nonetheless the case that Paulinus, representing the ecclesiastical community, stands as the authority asserting, interpreting, and controlling the witness, just as his text would have circumscribed and directed the interpretation of the images on the walls at Cimitile: observing witness requires mediation.¹¹⁰

CONCLUSION

Paulinus encouraged his audience and his readers to imitate Felix and the biblical types he connected to Felix, with the express goal of granting his audiences identification with the martyr and earning them the same rewards. He illuminated the principles by which martyrdom is defined in such a way that they became axiomatic for his audiences. And finally, he used a wide range of rhetorical, literary, and poetic techniques to achieve the embodied and sympathetic response his audience needed to complete their imitation of the martyrs and thus to achieve martyrdom themselves.

The question remains, however: Given the special status and high regard he conferred upon Felix as savior of Nola, the pedestal on which he placed his most beloved martyr and special friend, is it really plausible to say that Paulinus wanted to dilute that privilege and generate countless hordes of martyrs? Would they not diminish the glory due to Felix or, at the very least, run counter to Paulinus’s own sense of vocation and the lingering exceptionalism he evinces so clearly when his aristocratic friends come to call? Did he really think martyrdom was possible for all who listened to his poems?

My answer is yes: Paulinus understood martyrdom to be a possibility for many, if not all, of his audience members. And yet, he did not think that this would pose a threat to Felix’s primacy. First, we have already seen that Paulinus regarded Maximus and Victricius as martyrs: he was not stingy with the title and did not set himself up as gatekeeper to protect Felix’s exclusive right to the title among those who did not die in persecution. Second, while Paulinus was certainly invested in promoting Felix’s cult at Nola over and above that of competing saints and cities, he also seems firmly convinced that that status is warranted: as we have seen, he depicts Felix as “distinguished in strength” even among the martyrs.¹¹¹ He is Nola’s special cure, assigned to the town because of its former sinfulness, its unparalleled need for cleansing.¹¹² Even if every person who listened to Paulinus’s orations became a martyr, they would not necessarily challenge Felix’s dominance; indeed, they might have bolstered it, as more aspiring martyrs looked to him as a role model. Third, if we consider Prudentius to have been a reader of Paulinus, or even to be participating in the same conversation about living martyrdom, this would bolster the idea that Paulinus could be speaking to all—that is, after all, what Prudentius offers with the model of the child martyr’s mother in Peristephanon 10. Though our two authors offer different paths to living martyrdom, there is no reason to think that they are not offering those paths to the same group of people: all Christians.

More basically, however, martyrdom may have been accessible to all, but that did not mean that everyone would achieve martyrdom. Paulinus offered his listeners a path to martyrdom where there was none before, but following that path was treacherous and difficult, requiring the correct orientation and a spotless will. Because God knows the interior parts of people and judges them based on that, actions become subordinated to interiority, and no slip-ups are ever invisible. Paulinus himself, in a letter to Delphinus in 401, lamented the thorns and thistles in his own heart, denying Delphinus’s praise of his actions because of them; he did not always feel the grace he knew he should have as one of Delphinus’s spiritual offspring.¹¹³ Thus, opening this line of access to martyrdom was not about making everyone martyrs; it was about encouraging more people to try to become martyrs. It was about giving everyone something to strive for, footsteps to follow, and rewards to hope for. And if they failed to achieve martyrdom, they would nonetheless have made progress toward the Christianization of the countryside for which Paulinus aimed.

Notes

1. Dennis Trout, “Christianizing the Nolan Countryside: Animal Sacrifice at the Tomb of St. Felix,” Journal of Early Christian Studies 3, no. 3 (1995): 281–298.

2. Natalicium 3.55–79.

3. Natalicium 9.548 (CCSL 21, 403): Rusticitas non cassa fide neque docta legendi.

4. Trout, Paulinus of Nola, 181–182.

5. Paulinus, Epistula 28.6.

6. CCSL 21, 74.

7. Ian Fielding, “Performing Miracles: The Natalicia of Paulinus of Nola as Popular Entertainment,” Ramus 47, no. 1 (2018): 108–122.

8. Trout, Paulinus of Nola, 173–186. See also Trout, “Christianizing the Nolan Countryside.”

9. Paulinus, Natalicium 15.257–258 (CCSL 21, 314): ueterem remeare recenti / historia uideo speciem qua iussus abire. See also Natalicium 12.306–311.

10. P. G. Walsh, The Poems of St. Paulinus of Nola (New York: Paulist Press, 1975), 371.

11. Natalicium 8.24–27 (CCSL 21, 366): et si multiiugae premerent mea colla catenae, / captiuis animum membris non iungeret hostis, / pectore non uincto calcaret triste superba / seruitium pietas. Note the enjambment of seruitium pietas: the anticipated foe of proud piety is not the Alans but the servitude they impose.

12. Natalicium 8.31–34 (CSEL 30, 247): nos tamen in domino stabilis fiducia Christo / roboret et recto fixis pede mentibus armet / nec pauor ater in hanc obducat nubila lucem, / quam deus aetherio Felicis honore serenat.

13. Natalicium 8.40 (CCSL 21, 366): nec turbante metu iussum sollemne reliquit.

14. Natalicium 8.55–57 (CCSL 21, 367): sic igitur modo nos turbato in tempore laeti, / mente pia festum dilecti martyris omnes / collatis hilarae studiis pietatis agamus.

15. Natalicium 8.80–88 (CCSL 21, 368): prisca retractemus sanctorum exempla parentum / qui, merita immissis tolerantes uerbera bellis, / non armis sibi nec muris capienda putabant / praesidia; humanis opibus sperare salutem / nulla salus: nec enim mortem mortalia pellent! / ergo quia curae tempus, sit cura precandi / caelestem dominum quo maesta aut laeta parantur, / qui solus praestare potest dicione superna / rursus ut exactis renouentur gaudia curis.

16. In Natalicium: luctu: 8.93; inpensa . . . prece: 8.94; prece: 8.95.

17. In Natalicium: recolamus, 8.114; Joshua conquering Jericho: 8.114–131; Rahab surviving: 8.133–134 (CCSL 21, 369): non freta suis euadere muris, / sed pietate dei meritum pietatis adepta est; Hezekiah: 8.166–194; Moses: 8.219–220; Lot: 8.221–224; Elias: 8.227–229; Daniel: 8.255–256; the three boys in the furnace: 8.264; recent exorcism: 8.307–323; fire averted: 8.396–412; river rerouted 8.425–426.

18. Natalicium 8.31–34 (CCSL 21, 366): nos tamen in domino stabilis fiducia Christo / roboret et recto fixis pede mentibus armet; / nec pauor ater in hanc obducat nubila lucem, / quam deus aetherio Felicis honore serenat.

19. Paulinus, Epistula 11.7 (CSEL 29, 66): imitando enim imitatorem Christi perueniemus ad imitationem dei. Paulinus here is answering Paul’s plea in 1 Corinthians 11:1: imitatores mei estote, sicut et ego Christi.

20. Natalicium 8.207–210 (CCSL 21, 372): sic potiora eius uenerando in corpore membra / martyres—e quibus est insigni robore Felix / inter diuini capitis sacra lumina fulgens— / iure deo ualidi, quia Christo proxima passi.

21. For the martyr’s identification with Christ, see also Paulinus, Natalicium 10.223–228.

22. See discussion below [149–153]; see also the discussion on [153] about Paulinus thinking that images require mediation to be understood.

23. Natalicium 13.136–137 (CCSL 21, 467): si ambulemus martyrum vestigiis / paribus parentum perfruamur praemiis.

24. Natalicium 8.288–299 (CCSL 21, 375): diuersa est gratia uobis, / gloria par, quoniam sanctis fons omnibus unus / et regnum commune deus; non una prophetis / martyribusque sacris opera, ut diuersa fuerunt / tempora, nec coeunt signis distantia causis / gesta; dei per dona sibi caelestia distant / aequales meritis. si non eadem omnia Felix / quae Daniel gessit uel pertulit et lacus istum / non habuit nec terribiles cinxere leones: / nec Daniel eadem pro nomine passus / erili est, / uerbera uincla metus et noctem carceris atri, / quae Felix horrenda tulit.

25. Natalicium 8.366–383 (CCSL 21, 378–379): omnes quisque suo radiabunt lumine sancti / dissimili fulgore pares nec iudice Christo / alter in alterius meriti dispendia crescent: / Christus erit cunctis regnum, lux, uita, corona. / cernite distinctos actu sed honore iugatos / testamentorum ueterisque nouique magistros, / in quibus una dedit geminas sapientia leges; / atque ita uirtutes uarias par gloria pensat: / non Petrus irrupit uirga mare, sed neque Moyses / aequoris incessit liquido; tamen unus utrique / fulget honos, unus quoniam fuit auctor utrique / scindere aquas uirga, pedibus calcare fluenta, / qui deus est ueterum in sanctis, deus ipse nouorum; / quo data lex domino est, ex ipso gratia uenit; / ille deus Danielis et ille trium puerorum, / Felicis deus ipse, deus nec se minor ipse est / in sancto Felice, deus per quem bona dona / et medicas exercet opes terraque marique.

26. Natalicium 8.132–149.

27. Natalicia 8.137 and 5.70–72.

28. This word, recolo, appears three times in the poem, and that it means more than simply “consider,” “think about,” or “remember” is indicated by the fact that, when it is used in line 397, it is explicitly in the context of feeling residual terror: “panic from a recent terror / still rocks the remembering hearts” (8.396–397 [CCSL 21, 379]: pauor e terrore recenti / uibrat adhuc memores animos).

29. See also Paulinus’s configuration of himself according to Hebrew Bible types in Natalicium 9.607–635.

30. Natalicium 9.599–601 (CCSL 21, 405): ut, quem mente pia comitaris, eumdem / et mentis facie referas animoque sequaris / par in amore mei.

31. Natalicium 10.258–260 (CCSL 21, 418): si nobis doctrina dei de lumine uerbi / non aperit sensum, saltem capiamus ab ipsis / aedibus exempla.

32. Natalicium 10.218–222 (CCSL 21, 416): suntque simul uetera et noua, nec noua nec uetera aeque, / non eadem simul atque eadem, quae forma futuri / praesentisque boni est; namque et nunc utile nobis / deterso ueteris uitae squalore nouari / mente pia Christumque sequi regnisque parari.

33. Natalicium 10.223–228 (CCSL 21, 417): tunc quoque cum dabitur redeunte resurgere uita, / ille resurgentum potior numerabitur ordo / qui, super illustri carnem perfusus amictu / seruilem domini mutarit imagine formam / conformemque deo conregnaturus honorem / accipiet Christo similis, sed munere Christi.

34. Natalicium 10.229–233 (CCSL 21, 417): haec eadem species ueterem deponere formam / et gestare nouam monet et retroacta abolere / inque futura dei conuersam intendere mentem, / congrua praeteritis obliuia ducere curis / caelestumque animo regnorum inducere curam.

35. Natalicium 10.236–240 (CCSL 21, 417): ergo nouemur / sensibus et luteos terrestris imaginis actus / discutere a nostro properemus corpore, longe / uestibus excussis, puros ut sorde recussa / corporis atque animae nitidi reddamus amictus.

36. Natalicium 10.279–281 (CCSL 21, 419): quonam igitur nunc ista modo mihi fabrica formam / praebebit, qua me colere, aedificare, nouare / sensibus et Christo metandum condere possim?

37. Natalicium 10.314 (CCSL 21, 421): non igitur simus ueteres inter noua tecta.

38. Natalicium 10.319 (CCSL 21, 421): sponte relinquamus mundum.

39. Natalicium 10.320 (CCSL 21, 421): moriamur, ne moriamur.

40. Natalicium 10.321 (CCSL 21, 421): letalem uitam uitali morte tegamus.

41. Natalicium 10.324–325 (CCSL 21, 421): mutemur et istic, / ut mutemur ibi.

42. Natalicium 10.325–326 (CCSL 21, 421): qui nunc permanserit in se / idem, et in aeternum non immutabitur a se.

43. Caroline T. Schroeder, “‘A Suitable Abode for Christ’: The Church Building as Symbol of Ascetic Renunciation in Early Monasticism,” Church History 73, no. 3 (2004): 472–521, here 513.

44. Schroeder, “Suitable Abode,” 477.

45. Schroeder, “Suitable Abode,” 506.

46. Schroeder, “Suitable Abode,” 515. Obedience is also missing.

47. Schroeder, “Suitable Abode,” 520.

48. Conybeare, Paulinus Noster, 93.

49. Natalicium 13.531–550 (CCSL 21, 480–481): nam cui paupertas tua, quam pro nomine sancto / proscriptis opibus gaudens confessor adisti, / ignorata iacet, qua praeditus usque senectam / conducto felix coluisti semper in horto? / propterea similes tibi niteris efficere omnes / paupertate pia, quos suscipis hospite tecto: / dissimilis nec enim tibi posset forma coire. / . . . / at uia, quae Christi est, quae confessoribus almis / martyribusque patet, paucis iter ardua pandit. / non capit ergo uia haec farsos, excludit onustos. / propterea famulum sectatoremque beati / martyris astringi decet exutumque molestis / compedibus tenuem de paupertate salubri /atque leuem fieri, ut portam penetrare per artam / possit et excelsum domini conscendere montem.

50. Natalicia 6.138–153, 13.138–164, 8.26.354.

51. Natalicia 13.138–164, 4.114, 5.254.

52. That is, Felix.

53. divini could refer either to birds or to words.

54. Natalicium 4.1–25 (CCSL 21, 304): [natalis tuus] . . . / est aliquid speciale tuis, quod nos tibi Christus / esse dedit, . . . / quia nos inopes aequi indiguosque salutis / sic uoluit ditare pater bonus, ut male dites / criminibus, uersa in melius uice diuitiarum / pro cunctis opibus cunctisque affectibus et pro / nobilibus titulis et honoribus omnia uanis / Felicem caperemus opes patriamque domumque. / tu pater et patria et domus et substantia nobis, / in gremium translata tuum cunabula nostra, / et tuus est nobis nido sinus, hoc bene foti / crescimus inque aliam mutantes corpora formam / terrena exuimur stirpe et subeuntibus alis / uertimur in uolucres diuini semine uerbi; / te releuante iugum Christi leue noscimus, in te / blandus et indignis et dulcis Christus amaris. / ista dies ergo et nobis sollemnis habenda / quae tibi natalis, quia te mala nostra abolente / occidimus mundo, nascamur ut in bona Christo.

55. Natalicium 13.820–821 (CCSL 21, 490): qua fueras felicibus ante superba / et qua post studio meliore ministra fuisti.

56. Natalicium 13.851–858 (CCSL 21, 491): influe pectoribus semper tibi, Christe, dicatis, / Felicique tuo de peccatoribus ipsi / mandatis tribue ut numquam pietas tua nostris / uisceribus fontem huius opis subducat et ipse / fons a fonte tuo Felix nos largus inundet, / semper ut in nobis saliat, rex Christe, tuus fons, / et nos, de miseris et egenis sorte sui iam / nominis obtineat felices uiuere Felix.

57. Natalicium 12.144–146 (CCSL 21, 452): o mihi qui talem merui desumere poenam / hac in sede, miser, qua si miser adueniat quis, / efficitur felix!

58. For additional examples of transformational identification with Felix, see Natalicia 3.104–107 and 13.225. In Natalicium 13.754, Paulinus impersonates Felix in order to scold Nola, while in Natalicium 9.596, Paulinus asks Nicetas to play the role of Felix and bless him.

59. Frank, Memory of the Eyes, 33.

60. See Moss, The Other Christs, 102–109.

61. Moss, The Other Christs, 103.

62. As a comparison, see David Brakke, Athanasius and the Politics of Asceticism (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995), 161–171. Paulinus’s ethic of imitation is primarily interior, as I discussed in the last chapter: it is not completely absent a physical/behavioral manifestation, but the interior is primary. Athanasius, like Shenoute, is more concerned with practices of asceticism on a community level than with the orientation of asceticism on an individual level.

63. Natalicium 3.5–9 (CCSL 21, 298): Nam confessor obit, poenas non sponte lucratus, / acceptante Deo fidam pro sanguine mentem, / qui, cordis taciti scrutator, ferre paratos / aequiparat passis.

64. Natalicium 3.9–12 (CCSL 21, 298): supplicium carnis justa pietate remittit. /martyrium sine caede placet, si prompta ferendi / mensque fidesque Deo caleat, passura voluntas / sufficit, et summa est meriti testatio voti.

65. See discussion of audience above [128–129].

66. Natalicium 8.40 (CCSL 21, 366): nec turbante metu iussum sollemne reliquit.

67. Natalicium 8.55–57 (CCSL 21, 367): sic igitur modo nos turbato in tempore laeti, / mente pia festum dilecti martyris omnes / collatis hilarae studiis pietatis agamus.

68. Natalicium 3.104–107 (CCSL 21, 302): nos quoque felices, quibus istum cernere coram / et celebrare diem datur, et spectare patroni / praemia, praestantique suis tam grandia Christo / gratari et laetos inter gaudere tumultus!

69. Natalicium 8.80–88.

70. Jeffrey Wills, Repetition in Latin Poetry: Figures of Allusion (Oxford: Clarendon, 1996), 190. Thanks to Routledge’s anonymous reviewer for pointing this out.

71. See also the repetitive enjambment of renewed senses in Natalicium 10.236–237 and 280–281.

72. Natalicium 8.290–293 (CCSL 21, 375): et regnum commune deus; non una prophetis / martyribusque sacris opera, ut diuersa fuerunt / tempora, nec coeunt signis distantia causis / gesta; dei per dona sibi caelestia distant / aequales meritis. si non eadem omnia Felix!

73. Natalicium 8.369 (CCSL 21, 378): Christus erit cunctis regnum lux uita corona.

74. Natalicium 6.1–5 (CCSL 21, 332): Lex mihi iure pio posita hunc celebrare quotannis / eloquio famulante diem, sollemne reposcit / munus ab ore meo, Felicem dicere uersu / laetitiamque meam modulari carmine uoto / et magnum cari meritum cantare patroni. See also Natalicium 7.

75. Natalicium 6.25–28 (CCSL 21, 333): Christe deus Felicis, ades: da nunc mihi uerbum, / sermo deus, da perspicuam, sapientia, mentem! / non opis humanae facundia dicere laudes / posse tuas.

76. Natalicium 14.19–21 (CCSL 492): maior enim mundi sator ipse, deus rex, / qui terram caelumque implet; quem non capit iste / mundus, eum capiunt sancti.

77. Natalicium 14.21–22 (CCSL 21, 492): non corporis amplo, / sed pietate humiles et mundo corde capaces.

78. Natalicium 7.322–323 (CCSL 21, 364): o felix casus, bona uulnera, dulce periclum, / per quod cognoui me curam martyris esse!

79. J. Mark Smith, “Apostrophe, or the Lyric Art of Turning Away,” Texas Studies in Literature and Language 49, no. 4 (2007): 411–437, here 412.

80. Natalicium 1.1–39: inclyte confessor and meritis et nomine Felix: 1.1; paradoxical statements: 1.2–9; prayer: 1.10–31; confident assurance: 1.32–39.

81. Smith, “Apostrophe,” 412.

82. Natalicium 2.1–26: paean to Felix: 2.1–4; prayer of thanks: 2.5–19; on the crowds: 2.20–25; apostrophe to Nola: 2.26–36; play on the name of Felix: 2.1–2; links to Christ: 2.18–19; assertion of joyful crowds: 2.20; felix Felice: 2.26.

83. Natalicium 2.31 (CCSL 21, 297): sis bonus o felixque tuis, dominumque potentem / exores.

84. Natalicium 3.108–110 (CCSL 21, 302): ferte deo, pueri, laudem, pia soluite vota / et pariter castis date carmina festa choreis, / spargite flore solum, praetexite limina sertis.

85. Natalicium 5.254–255 (CCSL 21, 330): diximus ut mortem calcarit et ambitionem; / nunc aliam confessoris cognoscite palmam. See also Natalicium 13.107 (CCSL 21, 466): quod “laude” dixi, “morte” dictum discite.

86. Natalicium 6.8–9 (CCSL 21, 332): concordate meis, precor, et complaudite, fratres, / carminibus castoque animos effundite luxu.

87. See Rudolf Carel Goldschmidt, Paulinus’s Churches at Nola: Texts, Translations, and Commentary (Amsterdam: N.V. Noord-Hollandische Uitgevers Maatschappij, 1940), 19–20. See also Tomas Lehmann, Paulinus Nolanus und die Basilica Nova in Cimitile/Nola: Studien zu einem zentralen Denkmal der spätantik-frühchristlichen Architektur (Weisbaden: Reichert, 2004). The best treatment, to my mind, is Gaëlle Herbert de la Portbarré-Viard, Descriptions Monumentales et Discours Sur l’édification Chez Paulin de Nole: Le Regard et La Lumière (Epist. 32 et Carm. 27 et 28) (Leiden: Brill, 2006), which astutely addresses the disparity between Paulinus’s descriptions and the actual visuals his guests would have seen and argues persuasively that the disconnect was an intended one, whereby Paulinus’s listeners would know that their own spiritual edifices were similarly “under construction.” See also Maria M. Kiely, “The Interior Courtyard: The Heart of Cimitile/Nola,” Journal of Early Christian Studies 12, no. 4 (2004): 443–479, who outlines the three-step process by which the viewer/reader sees the image, understands its spiritual value and then uses it to feed their soul (474–477).

88. Conybeare, Paulinus Noster, 96, discussing Carmen 27.584–585. For Gregory the Great’s view, see Registrum Epistularum IX.209 and XI.10; and Lawrence G. Duggan, “Was Art Really the ‘Book of the Illiterate’?” in Reading Images and Texts: Medieval Images and Texts as Forms of Communication, eds. Mariëlle Hageman and Marco Mostert (Turnhout: Brepols, 2005), 63–107.

89. See the brilliant exposition of Paulinus’s use of ekphrasis in Simon Goldhill, Preposterous Poetics: The Politics and Aesthetics of Form in Late Antiquity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020), 9–13.

90. Natalicium 9.585–589.

91. Recall the renovated humans who, in form, image, and function, achieve likeness to Christ (Natalicium 10.218–222—see above, 134). Remember, too, the garment imagery, whereby the successfully imitative audience adopts the mantle of the confessor, the same inlustri . . . amictu of those who will be honored with co-reign with Christ (Natalicium 10.223–228—see above, 135).

92. In the forthcoming Vivid Rhetoric in the New Testament: Visual Persuasion and Ekphrasis in Early Christian Literature, eds. Meghan Henning and Nils Neumann (SBL Press).

93. P. G. Walsh was particularly unsettled by one cutaway—he comments, rather indignantly, that Paulinus’s strategically timed digression on the immiscibility of oil and water was “a long-winded irrelevance unfortunately inserted at the dramatic moment of the story” (Walsh, Poems of St. Paulinus of Nola, 363–364). Pace Walsh, the digression’s presence increases the suspense that the audience would feel, highlighting the “dramatic moment.” Topically it may be “an irrelevance,” but narratively and stylistically it is crucial to what Paulinus was trying to accomplish.

94. Natalicium 7.216–219 (CCSL 21, 360): sanctasque manus oppone minanti / lapsum oculo, et fixum quod conspicis erue ferrum, / quod propria reuocare manu non audeo, ne me / lumine despoliem dum conor soluere telo.

95. Natalicium 7.241–247.

96. Natalicium 7.255–264.

97. Natalicium 7.265–266.

98. Natalicium 7.266–268 (CCSL 21, 362): ergo, fideles, / cernite nunc animis tanti discriminis instar / et pariter tanti perpendite muneris actum.

99. In Natalicia: tulit in 4.232, elegit in 4.234 (in MSS BDGR, eligit in others—though Hartel saw eligit as the better reading and Dolveck does not even include elegit in his apparatus, I think the perfect tense makes more sense in context, especially given the ensuing uênit in 4.238).

100. See the abrupt switch at 4.241.

101. Natalicium 4.245–247 (CCSL 21, 314): se / causatur non posse sequi prohibente catena, / insuper et claustro simul et custode teneri / carceris obsessi.

102. Natalicium 4.250.

103. Natalicium 4.251.

104. Natalicium 4.253.

105. Natalicium 4.257–270 (CCSL 21, 314–315): nonne unus in omni / Christus adest sancto? sicut uiget omnibus idem / spiritus in Christo genitis, sic ipsa piorum / gratia concordat: ueterem remeare recenti / historia uideo speciem qua iussus abire, / bisseno sublimis in agmine discipulorum, / Petrus sponte sua uinclis labentibus aeque / carcere processit clauso qua praeuius illum / angelus, Herodi praedam furatus agebat. / sic meus educente deo geminata per atra / carceris et noctis reliquis obscura sed uni / illustrata sibi, Felix impune per ipsos / custodes, constante premens uestigia passu / callibus ignotis directus iussa petebat.

106. Natalicium 3.21–24 (CCSL 21, 299): denique nil inpar his qui fudere cruorem / testibus, et titulo simul et uirtute recepti / martyris ostendit meritum, cum iure potenti / daemonas exercet deuinctaque corpora soluit.

107. Epistula 18.7; Natalicium 13.138–139.

108. Natalicium 3.104–107 (CCSL 21, 302): nos quoque felices, quibus istum cernere coram / et celebrare diem datur et spectare patroni / praemia praestantique suis tam grandia Christo / gratari, et laetos inter gaudere tumultus!

109. Goldhill, Preposterous Poetics, 12.

110. For a sustained discussion of Paulinus’s ambiguous advocacy for witness, see Diane Fruchtman, “Witness and Imitation in the Writings of Paulinus of Nola,” in Studia Patristica XCVII: Papers presented at the Seventeenth International Conference on Patristic Studies held in Oxford 2015, Volume 23: From the Fourth Century Onwards (Latin Writers); Nachleben, ed. Marcus Vinzent (Leuven: Peeters, 2017).

111. Natalicium 8.207–210 (CCSL 21, 372): sic potiora eius uenerando in corpore membra / martyres—e quibus est insigni robore Felix / inter diuini capitis sacra lumina fulgens— / iure deo ualidi, quia Christo proxima passi.

112. Natalicium 11.164–236.

113. Epistula 19.4.