Morgan. About the year 400 he is found at Rome, not disseminating novelties, but busy in the austerest practice of monkery, and stirring up by his example and counsels the indolent and profligate members of the religious fraternities. He could not rest in the mere routine of a dead ecclesiasticism, but longed to see the practical fruits of faith and consecration. This longing seems to have grown at length so intense, and even morbid, that he looked for works without inculcating a true and living faith—expected the harvest without the previous cultivation of the soil. The ordinary doctrines of Christianity were set at nought as being matter of speculation, and spiritual activities were sought to be stimulated without the creation of spiritual life. He beheld a dead orthodoxy round about him, and in his haste he would rather dispense with its characteristic tenets than quicken it into vigour and fruitfulness. Probably he surmised, too, that the absorption of the mind in high mysteries called it off from the duties of life, and unfitted it for the discharge of them. Such convictions seem to have led him into his devious course. About the year 410, when Alaric was menacing Rome, he retired with Cœlestius his pupil, a man whom Jerome calls a Scot, that is, probably, in the diction of those times, an Irishman. They first went to Sicily and then to Africa, where Pelagius was on terms of personal friendship with Augustine, from whom his opinions must have been concealed. Leaving Cœlestius behind him he sailed for Palestine, and Jerome gave him a cordial welcome; but Cœlestius began to propagate his master's views, probably in a crude and extreme form, and his opinions were immediately and formally condemned by the African church. The news of this exposure and condemnation soon reached the East, and roused the hostility of Jerome. Pelagius was accused first before John of Jerusalem, and then before the synod of Diospolis in 415, but acquitted. There was more tendency to his views in the East than in the West, and there was a close connection between the East and many of the British monasteries. The doctrines of Pelagius were formally condemned by the councils of Carthage and Milevi, and Pope Innocentius anathematized the two heresiarchs in 417—a sentence ultimately confirmed by Zosimus. Little is known of the future career of Pelagius. It is surmised by many that he returned for safety to his native country. But his followers were soon placed under civil disabilities, confiscation and exile being awarded them by an imperial edict of Constantinople. Pelagius left behind him various works. His commentaries on the Epistles are now found in the Benedictine edition of Jerome. Some of his letters are extant, and there are many fragments preserved in the writings of his opponents and contemporaries. The theology of Pelagius eliminated the distinctive doctrines of the church—original sin, moral inability, and the need of divine grace to renovate. In speciously attempting to denude redemption of mystery, he robbed it of reality. His system was certainly superficial in its gauge of the depth of human weakness; and as it felt not the need of divine assistance, it ignored it. His opinions were not stated by himself very distinctly, and his antagonists accused him of lubricity. But his character was unexceptionable, as Augustine bears witness. Of the personal appearance of Pelagius we know something—if we can believe his enemies. "He had," says Orosius, "broad shoulders, a thick neck, a portly front, but was lame, and with only one eye." In short, he seems to have been a sturdy islander, unlike the dry and withered monks of southern climates; for Jerome descends so far as to describe him in these terms, Scotorum pultibus prægravatus— "Made obese with Scotch porridge."—J. E.
PELAGIUS I., Pope, was elected pope in 555 by Greek influence. Most of the bishops and other ecclesiastics of Italy withdrew from communion with him at first, so that only two bishops were present at his ordination. He subscribed the decrees of the fifth council of Constantinople, and the three chapters, which led them to separate from him. In vain did he issue a circular letter to Christendom assuring them of his orthodoxy; in vain did he send Roman ecclesiastics into Upper Italy to convince the bishops; in vain did he call upon Narses to support the church with the sword; the schism continued. Yet Justinian supported him. He died February 28th, 560.—S. D.
PELAGIUS II., Pope, was elevated to the papal see in 578. His consecration took place without a confirmation of it having been received from Constantinople; on which account Gregory was sent thither to apologize for the matter and solicit imperial protection against the Lombards, who had laid siege to Rome. He also applied to the Franks, but in vain. He was embroiled in disputes about the three chapters. When John, patriarch of Constantinople, was honoured with the title of universal or œcumenical bishop, 587, Pelagius II., to whom the decisions of the council at Constantinople were sent, remonstrated strongly against the title. He died in 590 at Rome.—S. D.
PELAYO, King of Gijon and Oviedo, was chosen king about 718 by the christians who had taken refuge in the mountains of the Asturias against the tyranny of the Mahometan conquerors. On the heights of Covadunga and in the cavern of St. Mary, the brave chief awaited the attack of the Moslem general Alxaman, overwhelmed his army by showers of rocks and stones from the heights, and then, sallying forth, inflicted a terrific loss on the fugitives. This success was followed up by a victory equally important over Manuza, another Mahometan chief; thenceforth the christians were left in undisturbed possession of the Asturias. They began to repair their cities, and to found new ones, and to cultivate the ground. The remainder of Pelayo's reign was probably peaceful; he died in 737, leaving the crown to his son, Favila. His exploits have formed the groundwork for countless poems—F. M. W.
PELISSIER, Aimable Jean Jacques, Duc de Malakhoff, Marshal of France, was born at Maromme, near Rouen, 6th November, 1794; died 22nd May, 1864. His family were farmers. Leaving the military school of St. Cyr, he entered the army in 1815, and in 1839 was sent to Algeria with the rank of lieutenant-colonel. He commanded the left wing at the battle of Isey, and in 1845 made himself talked of thoughout Europe by suffocating with burning fascines some hundreds of hostile Kabyles, in a cavern where they had taken shelter from their French pursuers, who offered them quarter if they would surrender. He had been military commander of the province of Oran and raised to the rank of general of division, when in 1851-52 he superintended the successful expedition in Kabylia. In January, 1854, he superseded Canrobert in the command of the army before Sebastopol, and the selection was so far justified by success, that under his command the key of the Russian position, the Malakhoff, was taken by the French, on the 8th September, 1855; and from general he became Marshal Pelissier and Duke de Malakhoff. After the Orsini attempt on the life of the emperor of the French, he replaced M. de Persigny as French ambassador in London (April, 1858), but with the war of 1859 between France and Austria, was summoned to take the command of the army of observation at Nancy, an appointment which was considered significant.—F. E.
PELL, John, an English clergyman and mathematician, was born at Southwyke on the 1st of March, 1610, and died at Laingdon in Essex on the 21st of December, 1685. He studied at Cambridge, where he distinguished himself highly by his mathematical attainments, and became a friend and correspondent of the famous Henry Briggs. In 1643 he was appointed professor of mathematics at Amsterdam, and in 1646 at Breda. His principal work, called "Idea Matheseos," was published in 1650. In 1654 he was appointed by Cromwell to the office of envoy to the protestant Swiss cantons. After the restoration of Charles II. he took holy orders, and obtained in 1661 the rectory of Fobbing, and in 1663 that of Laingdon. He was noted for a benevolent simplicity of character, which was often imposed upon.—W. J. M. R.
PELLERIN, Joseph, a celebrated collector of medals, was born at Marli le Roi, near Versailles, in 1684. Besides Hebrew, Syriac, Arabic, Greek, and Latin, he made himself master of English, Spanish, and Italian; to the possession of which latter languages he owed his appointment as a clerk in the marine. In this capacity he rendered many important services, and under different ministers rose to the post of commissary-general, retiring from infirmity in 1745 with a pension. His remaining years were devoted to the accumulation and arrangement of a magnificent collection of medals, the nucleus of which he had already formed, and which was purchased by the king in 1776 for three hundred thousand francs. This collection, which included a medal of Euthydemus, king of Bactriana—a monarch known only through certain passages in Polybius—he has described in his "Observations on Medals," 9 vols., quarto, a work of great beauty and value. Pellerin died at Paris in 1782, in the ninety-ninth year of his age.—W. J. P.
PELLEW. Edward. See Exmouth.
PELLICAN, Conrad, an eminent Hebraist and commentator of the Reformation period, was born in 1478 at Rutfach in Alsatia, and joined the Franciscans at an early age, as the
