To his contemporaries Paulinus was renowned for his renunciation of his great wealth in favour of a life of poverty and dedication to Christ, as we see from the writings of Ambrose, Augustine and Jerome, while to later generations and the Middle Ages the works of Gregory of Tours and Gregory of the Great made him familiar as a man of great holiness and even as a worker of miracles. But if this man made a dramatic break around the year 390, when he was about thirty-five, rejecting the life of the wealthy landowner in France and Spain and high government official in Italy which he had hitherto led, in order to adopt the ascetic life at Nola in Campania, there was one aspect of his life which continued to be important to Paulinus both before and after his ‘conversion’ to a strictly Christian life and which indeed he regarded as only reaching its fulfilment with his dedication to Christ: this was his unusually strong devotion to friendship. Even in his life of retirement Paulinus managed to maintain a number of his old friendships by means of letters – visits from friends were very rare – and to develop a network of other relationships, mostly among the leading Christians of his day who were pleased to be canvassed for their friendship by someone whom they admired so much but who always treated them with great respect and humility.