Page:The Folk-Lore Journal Volume 5 1887.djvu/315

Rh treasury daring the confusion; the building was destroyed, but they did not succeed in carrying off any of the rare and valuable articles which it contained. Since that time these have been deposited with two different religious communities for safe keeping. Amongst other valuable objects is a jewelled mitre, said to have been brought from Constantinople by St. Paulinus. The people on the spot affirm that every one of these mauvais sujets has since either died a violent death or come to extreme poverty. Nola was probably a magnificent city in ancient times, for here and there are the bases of marble columns, and much defaced portions of Roman statues.

Saint Paulinus, whose history we are about to relate, was at one time Bishop of Nola; he was a poet as well as a learned father of the Church. Nola is still proud of him. It is said that he was the inventor of church bells, their Italian name campana being taken from Campania, the then name of that province. The praises of St. Paulinus have been sung in a Latin epic poem by Severius di Rinaldis, but it does not concern us to know more than that Paulinus was born in the year 351, in the part of France afterwards known as Gascony, and that his father, a prefect of Gaul, was a heathen, and that he was brought up in his father's faith. Paulinus was instructed in Christianity and baptized by Delphinus, Bishop of Bordeaux. In his letters to his spiritual father he plays upon this name as the Ichthys or fish, the emblem of Christ. After he came to Italy, Paulinus still turned to his teacher, calling himself the son of the great fish, and his true dolphin; it is thus that Paulinus hides his language under the veil of mystery.

The Greek and Roman predilection for the dolphin comes, as the Chevalier de Rossi (a well known antiquary) observes, from the qualities attributed to that fish as a lover of music and of men, which is poetically expressed in the myth of Arion with his lyre, saved and borne on shore on the back of one of these graceful animals. Arion was the special patron of sea-ports: the Greeks styled him "the most beloved of men"; the dolphin was the symbol of the succouring friend, and of safety at sea to the storm-tossed mariner.

Whilst still at Bordeaux, Paulinus embraced Christianity, and became one of its most ardent supporters. He was made Consul,