RELIGIOUS ENCYCLOPEDIA
Pelagius
of Zosimus before he wrote this epistle, which can scarcely have appeared many weeks after the end of April, 418. It was an extremely comprehensive document which gave a history of the entire controversy, with copious excerpts from the writings of both Celestius and Pelagius. The Africans expressed their thanks for this condemnation of their two arch-opponents in a letter (likewise lost) written after a synod had been held. To demonstrate the impossibility of any reconciliation, Augustine wrote his last books against Pelagius and Celestius, the Libri duo de gratia Christi and the De peccato originali.
Pelagianism was officially dead in the West, but the imperial edicts of 419 and 421 show that the heresy still exercised a secret influence. The chief figure of this second period was Julian of Eclanum (q.v.). How he had been won over to Pelagianism is unknown, but it would seem that his 7. Julian of studies in Cicero and his Stoic and Eclanum. especially Aristotelian philosophy, combined with the influence of his friend Paulinus of Nola, made Julian a Pelagian as soon as he became a theologian. The Epistola tractoria of Zosimus gave Julian the opportunity to present his views, since it made the condemnation of Pelagius and Celestius incumbent on the orthodox. Before going into exile either because he had refused to subscribe to the Epistola tractoria, or because he had disobeyed the edict of 419 which punished by deposition and banishment refusal to subscribe to the condemnation of Pelagius and Celestius, Julian wrote two letters to Zosimus criticizing the condemnation of Celestius at Carthage in 411. In Rome itself Julian pleaded against the doctrine of original sin, probably during the pontificate of Zosimus, who anathematized him. In the brief schism which followed the death of Zosimus in Dec, 418, the Italian bishops were largely Pelagian. This tendsncy was aided by a letter now lost, but probably written by Julian to Valerius, the influential " count " in Ravenna. The charge made in this letter that Augustine condemned marriage was answered (late in 418 or early in 419) by the great bishop's first book De nuptiis et concupiscentia ad Valerium. This book was answered by Julian, in the summer of 419, in his four books (of which only fragments have been preserved) Ad Turbantium; md to the same period belongs a Pelagian document, doubtless composed by Julian himself, sharply jpposing " Manichean " opponents and exhorting the Pelagians to stand firm. This document is ilosely related to the letter, written probably in the summer of 419, which Julian sent in the name of jighteen Pelagian bishops to Rufus, bishop of Thessalonica. This letter was apparently designed to ;a,n a home for the writers during their exile in the East; but the number of these exiles, many of whom soon returned repentant, is uncertain. Not later ;han 421 Julian himself, after many wanderings, same with his friends, including Florus, Orontius, ind Fabius, to Theodore of Mopsuestia (q.v.), who ivas Pelagian in sympathy. Despite the banishment )f Julian, the polemic between him and Augustine still continued. In 420 Augustine wrote his second
book De nuptiis et concupiscentia ad Valerium, quickly followed by his Libri quatuor contra duas epistulas Pelagianorum. Both of these works mention Julian but do not oppose him directly. When Augustine, however, received the complete copy of his opponent's Ad Turbantium, he wrote, not earlier than 421, his Libri sex contra Julianum. Julian was unaware of this latter work when in Cilicia he again attacked Augustine in his Octo libri ad Florum. Of this polemic Augustine heard nothing before 427; and his detailed reply broke off with the sixth book, the work being accordingly called Opus imperfectum.^ There is nothing to show that Julian replied to either of the two works specifically directed against him by Augustine, nor is much known of his life after the completion of his Ad Forum. He presented no new theses, but summed up in a system the principles of Pelagius; formulated the sharp distinction from Augustinianism; and, retiring the ascetic, emphasized the intellectualmoral element. Shortly after the death of Theodore of Mopsuestia in 428, Julian, with his friends Florus, Orontius, and Fabius, was in Constantinople where he sought to win the emperor and the new patriarch, Nestorius (q.v.), over to this side. The friendship between Theodore and Nestorius, combined with the affinity of Pelagianism with Nestorian Christology (see Christology, IV., § 1), may have moved Julian to make this step; but Nestorius, not knowing of the course of events in the West, sought for information from Pope Celestine I. For some reason the pope remained silent, and Nestorius, apparently regarding Julian and his comrades as orthodox, though not himself a Pelagian, permitted them to remain for the time in Constantinople. The patriarch seemed also friendly to Celestius, probably in 429. In the latter part of the same year, however, Marius Mercator published at Constantinople his Commonitorium super nomine Calestii, to demonstrate that Celestius, Pelagius, Julian, and his companions were heretics who had long been under the ban in the West and among all the orthodox of the East. Early in 430, therefore, the Pelagians were expelled by the emperor from Constantinople, and the verdict of the West was likewise adopted by the anti-Nestorian Council of Ephesus in 431. According to Prosper, Julian, about 439, sought to regain his bishopric by a feigned repentance, only to be successfully opposed by Pope Sixtus III. at the instance of Leo, later the Great.
Meanwhile Pelagianism lingered on, not only in Britain, where Agricola disseminated Pelagian views until checked by Germanus, bishop of Auxerre, in 429 ; and Ireland, where the commentaries of Pelagius were long popular, but also 8. Decline throughout the West, and even in North and Disap- Africa. Pope Celestine I. relinquished pearance. his active support of the Augustinians against Gallic Semi-Pelagianism (q.v.) after the death of Augustine and the Vandal invasion of Africa; and the accession, in 432, of Sixtus I'll., who before the time of the Epistula tractata had figured as the most influential patron of the Pelagians, probably accounts for the change of situation
Pelagitis Penance