In textbooks on the history of early Christianity Marcellus of Ancyra usually merits one footnote, as the fourth-century oddity refuted by the Creed of Constantinople in the clause “and his kingdom will have no end,” since Marcellus taught that Christ's kingdom would end. But his significance is greater than that. Marcellus enjoyed notoriety in the 330s. Four decades later, in the 370s, opposition to Marcellus had all but ceased. But Basil of Caesarea, the first of the three Cappadocian fathers, campaigned relentlessly against Marcellus and his followers. Basil's virulent opposition to Marcellus still needs interpretation.

Paulinus of Nola (ca. 355–431)—the wealthy aristocrat from Aquitaine and once governor of Campania who converted to asceticism, sold his and his wife's property, went to Nola to live as a monk at St. Felix's shrine, and was eventually elected bishop of Nola—is remembered not so much for any single great achievement as for a number of smaller ones. His contemporaries admired his asceticism, and he is counted among the earliest Christian Latin poets. His descriptions of the buildings at Nola are important to Christian archaeology, and he was known to many Latin fathers, including Ambrose, Augustine, and Jerome. Of his works, about fifty letters and thirty poems are extant. Paulinus is also known through other writers, both contemporary and later; and what follows is an attempt to trace him in the literary tradition from his own day through to the Carolingian age.