Green R.P.H. The poetry of Paulinus of Nola: A study of his Latinity

Bruxelles: Latomus. Revue d'études latines, 1971. — 146 p. — (Collection Latomus 120).The enthusiastic tributes which Paulinus received during his lifetime have not, it must be admitted, been echoed by succeeding generations. In the Middle Ages it was mainly grammarians, controversialists and hagiographers who made use of him ; and in curricula and in library catalogues he was overshadowed by several of his contemporaries. A few editions appeared in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, but since the one printed in Migne the only complete one is Hartel’s, to be found in Volumes 29 and 30 of the Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum. Yet Paulinus deserves attention, not only as an episode in the creation of Christian or the decline of classical literature, but also as an individual of boldness and originality who lived in a period of great change. Having left the dignified retirement of a literary circle for the life of a distant monastery — deserting the camp of Athens for that of Jerusalem when an armistice hardly existed — he made the surprising decision to remain a poet in his new milieu. This work sets out to examine in detail his reaction to the problems and tensions of his new calling.