Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Paulinus (fl.500)
PAULINUS (fl. 500?), British ecclesiastic, is first mentioned in the ‘Life of St. David,’ by Rhygyfarch (d. 1099), as that saint's early teacher. He is described as a bishop, a ‘scriba,’ and a pupil of Germanus, living as an anchorite upon an island. He was cured of blindness by St. David, and at the synod of Brefi was the person who suggested the summoning thither of his distinguished pupil (Cambro-British Saints, 1853, pp. 122–3, 137). The life of Teilo in the ‘Liber Landavensis,’ written probably about 1130, sends Teilo also to ‘Paulinus’ for instruction and makes David one of his fellow-pupils. Pughe (Cambrian Biography) and others identify Paulinus with the Pawl Hên of Manaw in the north, who was the father of the Anglesey saints Peulan, Gwyngenau, and Gwenfaen (Myvyrian Archaiology, 2nd edit., pp. 426, 429); they also locate him at Ty Gwyn ar Daf or Whitland, Carmarthenshire, on the authority of notices in the Glamorgan copies of the ‘Genealogies of the Saints’ (Iolo MSS. 112, 114, 139). With much more probability he is identified with the Paulinus of an early inscribed stone found at Pantypolion in the parish of Caio, Carmarthenshire, and now kept at Dolau Cothi in the same neighbourhood. The inscription read in the time of Bishop Gibson—‘Servatur fidæi patrieq semper amator hic paulinus iacit cultor pientisimus æqvi’ (Westwood, Lapidarium Walliæ, 1876–9, p. 79). Paulinus is the patron saint of Llangors, Brecknockshire, and of Capel Peulin (or Capel Ystradffin), a chapel of Llandingad, Carmarthenshire; the latter is possibly meant by the ‘Capella Sancti Paulini’ of an agreement as to tithes drawn up in 1339 between the abbey of Strata Florida and the clergy of the diocese of St. David's (Williams, Strata Florida, 1889, p. li). According to Rees (Welsh Saints, p. 188), Paulinus was commemorated under the title ‘Polin Esgob’ on 22 Nov.
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