PAULINUS, Patriarch of Aquileia. - Born in the Lombard Duchy of Friuli in the first half of the 8th century, died at Cividale on 11 January 802. As an artis grammaticae magister, a connoisseur of Virgil and Ovid, of Sedulius and Boethius, he was summoned by Charlemagne, after 774, to the palace school in France and formed a friendship with Alcuin and the others of that group. From Ivrea, Charles on 17 June 776 made him a grant of goods confiscated from rebellious Lombards, and in 787 appointed him patriarch of Aquileia; P. played a great part in the events of those years, above all in the struggle against the Adoptionist errors of Elipandus of Toledo and Felix of Urgel.
He took part in fact in the Council of Regensburg (792) and in the more solemn one of Frankfurt in 794, for which he wrote the Libellus sacrosyllabus contra Elipandum; at Charles's invitation he wrote in 799-800 the Libri III contra Felicem (of these dom A. Wilmart presented a new arrangement in his L'ordre des parties dans le traité de Paulin d'Aquilee contre Felix d'Urgel, in The Journal of theological studies, 39 [1938], no. 153, pp. 22-37). A Liber exhortatorius of ascetic character he addressed to his friend Erico, duke of Friuli. As the conclusion of Charles's wars against the Avars of the years 791-96, P. took part together with Arno (v.), archbishop of Salzburg, in the Conference on the Danube to provide for the conversion of those peoples. Then in the autumn of 796 he held at Cividale a provincial council in which he proposed an explanation of the Creed, treated the question of the Filioque and issued 14 important canons of reform. P. readily displayed the rhetorical artifices of the schools of that time with affected language, magniloquent images and phrases; he knew classical metrics and used it, albeit with frequent licenses. Around 798 he compiled a Regula fidei in 151 hexameters, and Alcuin makes mention of poetic works sent to him by him; known are the two rhythms on the ruins of Aquileia and on the death of Erico. Walafrid Strabo (d. in 849) reports that P. "often and especially in private Masses, at the moment of the immolation of the Sacraments had hymns composed by himself or by others sung" (PL 114, 954), and P. himself makes mention of this in can. VI of the Council of Friuli; but how much is attributed to him in this field is still disputed; more certain are the hymn on Christmas and the verses on Lazarus; of high poetic value is the hymn on the Resurrection, praised by Carducci.
Works: PL 114, 100. For the verses cf. E. Dummler, in MGH, Poëtae lat. aevi Carol., I, pp. 123 ff.; K. Strecker, ibid., IV, p. 462; A. Wilmart, L'hymne de Paulin sur Lazare dans un manuscrit d'Autun, in Rev. bénédictine, 34 (1922), pp. 27-45, who also attributes to him the versus de Jacob et Joseph; K. Strecker, Der Lazarus rythmus des P. v. A., in Neues Archiv etc., 47 (1927), pp. 143-58.
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