November. To make his apologies for this irregularity he sent Deacon Gregory, who afterwards became Pope Gregory the Great, as his apocrisiarius to Constantinople. In 585 he sought to heal the schism which had subsisted since the time of Pelagius I. in connexion with the Three Chapters, but his efforts were without success. In 588 John, patriarch of Constantinople, by reviving the old and disputed claim to the title of oecumenic patriarch, elicited a vigorous protest from Pelagius; but the decretal which professes to convey the exact words of the document is now known to be false. He died in January 590, and was succeeded by Gregory I.
PELAGIUS (c. 360– c. 420), early British theologian. Of the origin of Pelagius almost nothing is known. The name is
supposed to be a graecized form of the Cymric Morgan (sea-begotten).
His contemporaries understood that he was of
British (probably of Irish) birth, and gave him the appellation
Brito. He was a large ponderous person, heavy both in body
and mind (Jerome, “stolidissimus et Scotorum pultibus praegravatus”).
He was influenced by the monastic enthusiasm
which had been kindled in Gaul by Athanasius (336), and which,
through the energy of Martin of Tours (361), rapidly communicated
itself to the Britons and Scots. For, though Pelagius
remained a layman throughout his life, and though he never
appears in any strict connexion with a coenobite fraternity,
he yet adhered to monastic discipline (“veluti monachus”),
and distinguished himself by his purity of life and exceptional
sanctity (“egregie Christianus”). He seems to have been one
of the earliest, if not the very earliest, of that remarkable series
of men who issued from the monasteries of Scotland and Ireland,
and carried back to the Continent in a purified form the religion
they had received from it. Coming to Rome in the beginning of
the 5th century (his earnest known writing is of date 405), he
found a scandalously low tone of morality prevalent. But his
remonstrances were met by the plea of human weakness. To
remove this plea by exhibiting the actual powers of human
nature became his first object. It seemed to him that the
Augustinian doctrine of total depravity and of the consequent
bondage of the will both cut the sinew of all human effort and
threw upon God the blame which really belonged to man. His
favourite maxim was, “If I ought, I can.”
The views of Pelagius did not originate in a conscious reaction against the influence of the Augustinian theology, although each of these systems was developed into its ultimate form by the opposition of the other. Neither must too much weight be allowed to the circumstance that Pelagius was a monk, for he was unquestionably alive to the delusive character of much that passed for monkish sanctity. Yet possibly his monastic training may have led him to look more at conduct than at character, and to believe that holiness could be arrived at by rigour of discipline. This view of things suited his matter-of-fact temperament. judging from the general style of his writings, his religious development had been equable and peaceful, not marked by the prolonged mental conflict, or the abrupt transitions, which characterized the experience of his great opponent. With no great penetration he saw very clearly the thing before him, and many of his practical counsels are marked by sagacity, and are expressed with the succinctness of a proverb (“corpus non frangendum, sed regendum est”). His interests were primarily ethical, hence his insistence on the freedom of the will and his limitation of the action of divine grace.
The peculiar tenets of Pelagius, though indicated in the commentaries which he published at Rome previous to 409, might not so speedily have attracted attention had they not been adopted by Coelestius, a much younger and bolder man than his teacher. Coelestius, probably an Italian, had been trained as a lawyer, but abandoned his profession for an ascetic life. When Rome was sacked by the Goths (410) the two friends crossed to Africa. There Pelagius once or twice met with Augustine, but very shortly sailed for Palestine, where he justly expected that his opinions would be more cordially received. Coelestius remained in Carthage with the view of receiving ordination But Aurelius, bishop of Carthage, being warned against him, summoned a synod, at which Paulinus, a deacon of Milan, charged Coelestius with holding the following six errors: (1) that Adam would have died even if he had not sinned; (2) that the sin of Adam injured himself alone, not the human race; (3) that new-born children are in the same condition in which Adam was before the fall, (4) that the whole human race does not die because of Adam's death or sin, nor will the race rise again because of the resurrection of Christ; (5) that the law gives entrance to heaven as well as the gospel, (6) that even before the coming of Christ there were men who were entirely without sin. To these propositions a seventh is sometimes added, “that infants, though unbaptized, have eternal life,” a corollary from the third. Coelestius did not deny that he held these opinions, but he maintained that they were open questions, on which the Church had never pronounced. The synod, notwithstanding, condemned and excommunicated him. Coelestius, after a futile appeal to Rome, went to Ephesus, and there received ordination.
In Palestine Pelagius lived unmolested and revered, until in 415 Orosius, a Spanish priest, came from Augustine, who in the meantime had written his De peccatorum meritis, to warn Jerome against him. The result was that in June of that year Pelagius was cited by Jerome before John, bishop of Jerusalem, and charged with holding that man may be without sin, if only he desires it. This prosecution broke down and in December of the same year Pelagius was summoned before a synod of fourteen bishops at Diospolis (Lydda). The prosecutors on this occasion were two deposed Gallican bishops, Heros of Arles and Lazarus of Aix, but on account of the illness of one of them neither could appear. The proceedings, being conducted in various languages and by means of interpreters, lacked certainty, and justified Jerome's application to the synod of the epithet “miserable.” But there is no doubt that Pelagius repudiated the assertion of Coelestius, that “the divine grace and help is not granted to individual acts, but consists in free will, and in the giving of the law and instruction.” At the same time he affirmed that a man is able, if he likes, to live without sin and keep the commandments of God, inasmuch as God gives him this ability. The synod was satisfied with these statements, and pronounced Pelagius to be in agreement with Catholic teaching. Pelagius naturally plumed himself on his acquittal, and provoked Augustine to give a detailed account of the synod, in which he shows that the language used by Pelagius was ambiguous, but that, being interpreted by his previous written statements, it involved a denial of what the Church understood by grace and by man’s dependence on it. The North African Church as a whole resented the decisions of Diospolis, and in 416 sent up from their synods of Carthage and Mileve (in Numidia) an appeal to Innocent, bishop of Rome, who, flattered by the tribute thus paid to the see of Rome, decided the question in favour of the African synods. And, though his successor Zosimus wavered for some time, he at length fell in with what he saw to be the general mind of both the ecclesiastical and the civil powers. For, simultaneously with the largely attended African synod which finally condemned Pelagiainsm in the West, an imperial edict was issued at Ravenna by Honorius on the 30th of April 418, peremptorily determining the theological question and enacting that not only Pelagius and Coelestius but all who accepted their opinions should suffer confiscation of goods and irrevocable banishment. Thus prompted, Zosimus drew up a circular inviting all the bishops of Christendom to subscribe a condemnation of Pelagian opinions. Nineteen Italian bishops refused, among them Julian of Eclanum in Apulia, a man of good birth, approved sanctity and great capacity, who now became the recognized leader of the movement. But not even his acuteness and zeal could redeem a cause which was rendered hopeless when the Eastern Church (Ephesus, 431) confirmed the decision of the West. Pelagius himself disappears after 420; Coelestius was at Constantinople seeking the aid of Nestorius in 428.
Pelagianism.—The system of Pelagius is a consistent whole, each (part involving the existence of every other Starting from the idea that “ability limits obligation," and resolved that men
