His renunciation of his wealth and station in favor of an ascetic and philanthropic life was held up as an example by many of his contemporaries—including Augustine, Jerome, Martin, and Ambrose—and he was subsequently venerated as a saint.

Gratian made Paulinus suffect consul at Rome c. 377, and appointed him governor of the southern Italian province of Campania c. 380.

Paulinus noted the Campanians' devotion to Saint Felix of Nola and built a road for pilgrims, as well as a hospice for the poor near the local shrine.

Paulinus credited his conversion to Saint Felix, who was buried in Nola, and each year would write a poem in honor of him.

He and Therasia also rebuilt a church commemorating Saint Felix, of great size and richly decorated, a monument of Christian art, with magnificent porticoes and fountains, for which a copious supply of water was brought from nearby Avella.

"Paulinus decided to invest his money for the poor and the church rather than rejecting it completely, which stands in contrast to other more severe contemporary views such as Jerome's".

Like a growing number of aristocrats in the late 4th and early 5th centuries who were entering the clergy rather than taking up the more usual administrative careers in the imperial service, Paulinus spent a great deal of his money on his chosen church, city and ritual.

[14] However, Dr. Adolf Buse, professor at the Seminary of Cologne, showed that the use of bells in churches, an invention credited to Paulinus by tradition, is not due to him, nor even to the town of Nola.

Paulinus rebuilt the complex, constructing a brand new basilica to Felix and gathering to him a small monastic community.

Paulinus wrote an annual hymn (natalicium) in honor of Saint Felix for the feast day when processions of pilgrims were at their peak.

"Paulinus' surviving letters and poems, many devoted to the feast day of Felix, reveal his attitudes and values, illuminate his social and spiritual relationships, preserve vivid traces of the literary and aesthetic evolution of Latin literature under the influence of Christian ideas, and document the emergence of the late antique cult of the saints.

He includes a detailed description of the apse mosaic over the main altar and gives the text for a long inscription he had written to be put on the wall under the image.

By explaining how he intended the visitors to understand the image over the altar, Paulinus provided rare insight into the intentions of a patron of art in the later Empire.

Having exhausted his resources in ransoming other captives, Paulinus said, "Such as I have I give thee", and went to Africa to exchange places with the widow's son.

[19] According to Pope Benedict XVI, "the historical truth of this episode is disputed, but the figure of a Bishop with a great heart who knew how to make himself close to his people in the sorrowful trials of the barbarian invasions lives on.

[20] The bones are now found in the small Sicilian city of Sutera, where they dedicate a feast day, and conduct a procession for the saint at Easter each year.