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 FELAOinS

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PELAOinS

aries were Latins, and to invoke the decision of Innocent I ; meanwhile silence was imposed on both parties.

But Pelagius was granted only a short respite. For in the ver>- same year, the Gallic bishops, Heros of .Vrlos and I^azarus of .\ix, who, after the defeat of the usurper Const antinc (411), had resigned their bishop- rics and gone to Palestine, brought the matter before Bishop Eulogius of Qesarca, with the result that the latter summoned Pelagius in December, 41,5, before a synod of fourteen bishops, held in Diospolis, the an- cient Lydda. But fortune .again favoured the heresi- arch. About the proceedings and the issue we are ex- ceptionally well informed through the account of St. .\ugustine. ''Degcstis PeLagii" (P. L., XLIV, 319 sqq.), written in 417 and based on the acts of the synod. Pelagius punctual!}' obeyed the summons, but the principal complainants, Heros and Lazarus, failed to make their appearance, one of them being prevented by ill-health. And as Orosius, too, derided and perse- cuted by Bishop John of Jerusalem, had departed, Pelagius met no personal plaintiff, while he found at the same time a skilful advocate in the deacon Anianus of Celeda (cf. Hieronym., 'Ep. cxhii", ed. Vallarsi, I, 1067). The principal points of the petition were trans- lated by an interpreter into Greek and read only ia_ an extract. Pelagius, having won the good-will of the assembly by reading to them some private letters of prominent bishops — among them one of Augustine (Ep. cxlvi) — began to explain away and disprove the various accusations. Thus from the charge that he made the possibility of a sinless life solely dependent on free will, he exonerated himself by saying that, on the contrary, he required the help of God {adjutorium Dei) for it, though by this he meant nothing else than ; the grace of creation [gratia crealionis). Of other/ doctrines with which he had been charged, he said! that, formulated as they were in the complaint, they did not originate from him, but from CEelestius, and that he also repudiated them. After this hearing there was nothing left for the synod but to discharge the defendant and to announce him as worthy of communion with the Church. The Orient had now spoken twice and had found nothing to blame in Pelagius, because he had hidden his real sentiments from his judges.

III. Continuation and End of the Controversy (41.5-8). — The new acquittal of Pelagius did not fail to cause excitement and alarm in North Africa, whither Orosius had ha.stened in 416 with letters from Bishops Heros and Lazarus. To parry the blow, something decisive had to be done. In autumn, 416, 67 bishops from Proconsular Africa assembled in a synod at Carthage, which was presided over by Aurelius, while fifty-nine bishops of the ecclesiastical province of Numidia, to which the See of Hippo, St. Augustine's see, belonged, held a synod in Mileve. In both places the doctrines of Pelagius and Caelestius were again rejected as contradictory to the Catholic faith. How- ever, in order to secure for their decisions "the au- thority of the Apostolic See", both synods wrote to Innocent I, requesting his supreme sanction. And in order to impress upon him more strongly the serious- ness of the situation, five bishops (Augustine, Aure- lius, Al>T)ius, Evodius, and Possidius) forwarded to him a joint letter, in which they detailed the doctrine of original sin, infant baptism, and Christian grace (St. Augustine, "Epp. clxxv-vii"). In three sepa- rate epistles, dated 27 Jan., 417, the pope answered the synodal letters of Carthage and Mileve as well as that of the five bishops (Jaff6, "Regest.", 2nd ed., nn. 321-323, Leipzig, 1SS5). Starting from the principle that the resolutions of provincial synods have no binding force until they are confirmed by the supreme authority of the Apostolic See, the pope developed the Catholic teaching on original sin and grace, and excluded Pelagius and Caelestius, who

were reported to have rejected these doctrines, from communion with the Church until they should come I to their senses {donee resipiscant) . In Africa, where the decision was received with unfeigned joy, the whole controvensy was now regarded as closed, and Augustine, on 23 September, 417, announced from the pulpit (Serm., cxxxi, 10, in P. L., XXXVIII, 734), "Jam de hac causa duo concilia mi.ssa sunt .ad Sedem apostolicam, inde etiam rcscripta venerunt; causa finita est". (Two synods have written to the Apos- tolic See about this matter; the rephes ha^fe come back; the question is settled.) But he was mistaken; the matter was not yet settled.

Innocent I died on 12 March, 417, and Zosimus, a Greek by birth, succeeded him. Before his tribunal the whole Pelagian question was now opened once more and discussed in all its bearings. The occasion for this was the statements which both Pelagius and Caelestius submitted to the Roman See in order to jus- tify themselves. Though the previous decisions of Innocent I had removed all doubts about the matter itself, yet the question of the persons involved was un- decided, viz. Did Pelagius and Caelestius really teach the theses condemned as heretical? Zosimus' sense of justice forbade him to punish any one with excom- munication before he was duly convicted of his error. And if the steps recently taken by the two defendants ■ were considered, the doubts which might arise on this | point, were not wholly groundless. In 41t> Pelagius i had published a new work, now lost, "De libero arbi- trio libri IV", which in its phraseology seemed to verge towards the Augustinian conception of grace and infant baptism, even if in principle it did not abandon the author's earlier standpoint. Speaking of Christian grace, he admitted not only a Divine revela- tion, but also a sort of interior grace, viz. an illumina- tion of the mind (through sermons, reading of the Bible, etc.), adding, however, that the latter served not to make salutary works possible, but only to facilitate their performance. As to infant baptism he granted that it ought to be administered in the same form as in the case of adults, not in order to cleanse the children from a real original guilt, but to secure to them en- trance into the "kingdom of God". Unbaptized chil- dren, he thought, would after their death be excluded from the "kingdom of God", but not from "eternal hfe". This work, together with a still extant confes- sion of faith, which bears witness to his childlike obedience, Pelagius sent to Rome, humbly begging at the same time that chance inaccuracies might be cor- rected by him who "holds the faith and the see of Peter". All this was addressed to Innocent I, of whose death Pelagius had not yet heard. Cselestius, also, who meanwhile had changed his residence from Ephesus to Constantinople, but had been banished thence by the anti-Pelagian Bishop .Atticus, took ac- tive steps towards his own rehabilitation. In 417 he went to Rome in person and laid at the feet of Zosimus a detailed confession of faith (Fragments, P. L., XLV, 1718), in which he affirmed his belief in all doctrines, "from the Trinity of one God to the resurrection of the dead " (cf . St. Augustine, " Depeccato orig.", xxiii).

Highly pleased with this Catholic faith and obedi- ence, Zosimus sent two different letters (P. L., XLV, 1719 sqq.) to the African bishops, saying that in the case of Caelestius Bishops Heros and Lazarus had pro- ceeded without due circumspection, and that Pelagius too, as was proved by his recent confession of faith, had not swerved from the Catholic truth. As to Caeles- tius, who was then in Rome, the pope charged the Africans either to revise their former sentence or to convict him of heresy in his own (the pope's) presence within two months. The papal command struck Africa like a bomb-shell. In great haste a synod \yas convened at Carthage in November, 417, and writing to Zosimus, they urgently begged him not to rescind the sentence which his predecessor. Innocent I, had