Page:Catholic Encyclopedia, volume 11.djvu/668

 PELAOIUS

604

PELAGinS

trict round Rome is without protection; and the army of these most unspeakalile jieople will take possession of the places still held for the empire." TIioukIi no imperial troops came to Rome, the exarch succeeded in concluding a truce with the Lombards. Taking ad- vantage of this "peace and quiet", Pelagius II re- newed the exertions of his namesake to put an end to the schism caused in Italy by the condemnation of the Three Chapters by Vigilius. The deacon Gregory was recalled from Constantinople, and assisted the pope in the correspondence which was forthwith initiated with Bishop Klias of Grade and the bishdjis of Istria. In one letter after another the pttpr liadr them remem- ber tliat the faith of Peter could not be crushed nor changed, and that that faith which he held was the faith of the Council of Chalcedon, as well as of the first three general councils; and, in the most touching terms, he exhorted them to hold to that glorious ec- clesiastical unity which they were breaking "for the sake of superfluou.-i questions and of defending hereti- cal chapters". The words of the pope were, however, lost upon the schismatics, and equally without effect was the \'iolence of the Exarch Smaragdus, who seized Severus, the successor of Elias, and, by threats, com- pelled him to enter into communion with the orthodox bishop, John of Ravenna (.588). But as soon as Sev- erus returned to his see, he repudiated what he had done, and the schism continued for some two hun- dred years longer.

Pelagius was one of the popes who laboured to pro- mote the celibacy of the clergy, and he issued such stringent regulations on this matter, with regard to the subdeacons in the island of Sicily, that his successor Gregory I thought them too strict, and modified them to some extent. But if Gregory had to cheek the zeal of Pelagius in one direction he emulated it in another. The protest of Pelagius against the assumption of the title "cecumenical" by the Patriarch of Constanti- nople was repeated with added emphasis by his former secretary. Among the works of piety recorded of Pelagius may be noted his adorning of the Shrine of St. Peter, turning his own house into a hospital for the poor, and rebuilding the Church of St. Lawrence, where may still be seen a mosaic (probably executed by Pelagius) depicting St. Lawrence as standing on the right side of Our Lord. Pelagius fell a victim to the terrible plague that devastated Rome at the end of 589 and was buried in St. Peter's.

Liber Pontif. ed. Ddchesne. I (Paria, 1886), 309; Paul the De.\con, Hist. Lonfjobard, (Berlin. 1879) ; for the letters of Pela- gius and Gregort I see Mon. Germ. Epp., II, III (Berlin, 1892—); Grisar, Hist, ties papes, I. pt. ii (Paris, 1906), — an English translation of this work is to be published shortly; Hodgkin, Italu and her Invaders, V, VI (Oxford, 1896); Barmby in Smith, Dirt, of Christ, Biog, (London, 1.SS7), s. v.; for the Istrian schism see Masn, Lives of the Popes in the Early Middle Ages, I (London, 1902).

Horace K. Mann.

Pelagius and Pelagianism. — Pelagianism re- ceived its name from Pelagius and designates a heresy of the ilflh century, which denied original sin as well as Chri.stian grace.

I. Life and Writinos of Pelaoius. — Apart from the chief episodes of the Pelagian controversy, little or nothing is known about the personal career of Pela- gius. It is only after he batle a lasting farewell to Rome in A. D. 411 that the sources become more abun- dant ; but from 418 on history is again silent about his person. As St. Augustine (De peccat. orig., xxiv) testi- fies that he lived in Rome "for a very long time", we may presume that he resided there at least since the reign of Pope .Vnastasius (.398-401). But about his long life prior to the year 400 and above all about his youth, we are left wholly in the dark. Even the country of his birth is disputed. While the most trust- worthy witnesses, such iis Augustine, Orosius, Prosper, and Marius Mercator, are quite explicit in assigning Britain as his native country, as is apparent from his

cognomen of Brito or Rritannicus, Jerome (Praef. in Jerem., lib. I and III) ridicules him as a "Scot" (loc. eit., "habet enim progcniem Scotii-e gentis de Britan- norum vicinia"), who being "stulTcd with Scottish porridge" {Scolorum i)iiUilius prayninitus) suffers from a weak memory. Rightly ;u-guiiig tlKit the "Scots" of those days were really the Irish, 11. Ziinnier ("Pelagius in Irland", p. 20, Berlin, 1!K)1 1 has recently advanced weighty reasons for the hypothesis tluit the true home of Pelagius must be sought in Ireluid, ;in<l that he journeyed through the southwest of Britain to Rome. Tall in stature and portly in aijpcarance (Jerome, loc. cit., "grandis et corpulentus"), Pelagius was highly educated, spoke and wrote Latin as well as Greek with great fluency and was well versed in theology. Though a monk and consequently devoted to practical asceti- cism, he never was a cleric; for both Orosius and Pope Zosimus simply call liim a "layman". In Rome itself he enjoyed the reputation of austerity, while St. Au- gustine called him even a "saintly man", vir sanclus: with St. Paulinus of Nola (405) and other prominent bishops, he kept up an edifying correspondence, which he u.sed later for his personal defence. '

During his sojourn in Rome he composed several works: "De fide Trinitatis libri III", now lost, but extolled by Gennadius as "indispensable reading- matter for students"; "Eclogarum ex divinis Scrip- turis liber unus", in the main collection of Bible pas- sages based on Cyprian's " Testimoniorum libri III", of which St. Augustine has preserved a number of frag- ments; "Commentarii in epistolas S. Pauli", elabo- rated no doubt before the destruction of Rome by Alaric (410) and known to St. Augustine in 412. Zimmer (loc. cit.) deserves credit for having rediscov- ered in this commentary on St. Paul the original work of Pelagius, which had, in the course of time, been attributed to St. Jerome (P. L., XXX, 645-902). A closer examination of this work, so sudden!y_i)ecome famous, brought to light the fact that it contained the fundamental ideas which the Church afterwards C9nr demned as "Pelagian heresy". In it Pe'agius denied the primitive state in paradise and original sin (cf. P. L., XXX, 678, "Insaniunt, qui de Adam per tradu- cem asserunt ad nos venire peccatum"), insisted on the naturalness of concupiscence and the death of the body, and ascribed the actual existence and univer- saUty of sin to the bad example which Adam set by his first sin. As all his ideas were chiefly rooted in the old, pagan philosophy, especially in the popular system of the Stoics, rather than in Christianity, he regarded the moral strength of man's will (liberum arbitrium), when stcilid li\ a-ceticism, as sufficient in itself to desire anil Inaiiaii] the loftiest ideal of virtue. The value of Ciirisi s rrdiiiiption was, in his opinion, limited mainly to instruction (dnclriiKi) ;ind example (cxcmplum), which the Saviimr t hrew into the balance as a counter- weight against .\dam's wicked example, so that nature retains the ability to conquer sin and to gain eternal life even without the aid of grace. By justific;it ion we are indeed cleansed of our personal sins through faith alone (loc. cit., 663, "per solam fidem iustilicat Deus impium con vertendum " ), b\it this pardon (iirnlin re- misaionis) implies no interior renovation or ssmctifica- tion of the soul. How far the sola-fides doctrine "had no stouter champion before Luther than Pelagius" and whether, in particular, the Protestant ctmception of fiducial faith dawned upon him many centuries before Luther, as Loofs ("Realencyklopa<lie fiir pro- test. Theologie", XV, 7.5o, Leipzig, 1904) a-ssumes, prob.ably ne(-ds more careful investigation. For the rest, Pelagius would have announced nothing new by this doctrine, since the .\ntinomists of the early .\pos- tolic Church were already familiar with "justification by faith alone" (cf. Jit'stification); on the other hand, Luther's boast of having been the first to pro- claim the doctrine of abiding faith, might well arouse opposition. However, Pelagius insists expressly (loc.