Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 44.djvu/254

Pelagius and Lazarus, and, without fully acquitting Pelagius, blamed the African bishops for undue haste; finally, on receiving the accused's confession from Palestine, with a letter in his favour from Praylius, the new bishop of Jerusalem, he declared him entirely cleared (417).

The African bishops, in answer, reiterated their charges before the end of 417, and again more solemnly in the next year (1 May 418) in a synod of 214 (or 224) prelates at Carthage. Furthermore, they now began also to set in motion the civil power, probably by means of Augustine's friend, Count Valerius.

Representations were made to the emperors Theodosius and Honorius. Pelagius was consequently banished from Rome, and sentence of confiscation and banishment was passed upon all his followers. Zosimus himself found it convenient to reconsider the matter, summoned Celestius before him, and, on the withdrawal of the latter, condemned Pelagianism by a circular letter (‘Epistola Tractoria’). Subscription to its terms was enforced throughout Italy and Africa, and eighteen bishops were deprived for refusing their assent; chief among these was Julian, bishop of Eclanum in Apulia, the great defender of Pelagianism in the next generation.

The personal history of Pelagius, after his condemnation in 418, is very obscure. He is said to have died at the age of over seventy, in a small Syrian town. He is described by Jerome and Orosius as tall, stout, and elderly at the time of his visit to Palestine.

Pelagius specially enraged Jerome and the high monastic party by his opposition to the extreme celibate ideals. ‘The virginal life,’ he was accused of saying, ‘is not commanded,’ and his system was condemned as a ‘philosophy of this world,’ that is, essentially rationalistic; but the charges of folly and luxuriousness, brought by Jerome and Orosius, seem to have been rooted mainly in ‘odium theologicum,’ and to be inconsistent with the strong language of Augustine and Paulinus in praise of his piety and virtue. His temper was rather studious than active; he thought and wrote, while Celestius and others undertook the business of public disputation. His life shows the first sign of the intellectual activity of the Celtic church, which afterwards bore fruit in the Irish missions. Pelagius journeyed from end to end of the Roman empire in order to propagate his opinions, and his activity and that of his friends was very probably what turned afresh the attention of catholic Christianity upon our islands, and led, among other things, to the Irish mission of Palladius [q. v.] in 431.

Throughout the middle ages theological controversy tended to revert to the questions raised by Pelagius, and Thomas Bradwardine [q. v.], one of the most famous of fourteenth century English doctors, celebrated by Chaucer as proverbially learned, left a great treatise on the subject—‘De Causa Dei contra Pelagium.’

[Pelagius's own writings, as mentioned in text: with additional Letters and Libelli, e.g. to Paulinus, Pope Innocent, &c. A book of his, in 4 parts, on Freewill is referred to by Augustine, De Gratia Christi, § 45, and Ep. 186, § 34, cf. Tillemont, xiii. 687; St. Jerome, esp. On Jeremiah, bks. i. iii. and preface; Jerome's Letters, e.g. 133, cf. his Collected Works (Benedictine ed.), v. 57, &c.; Gennadius, c. xlii. of De Viris Illustribus; Orosius's Apology, cc. 2, 4, 12, 29, 31, cf. Gallandius's Bibliotheca Vet. Patrum, vol. ix.; Orosius, De Arbit. Lib., cf. Tillemont, xiii. 562–5, &c., 687, &c.; Augustine (Benedictine ed.), vols. ii. x.; Bright's Select Anti-Pelagian Treatises of St. Augustine (viz., De Spiritu et Littera, De Natura et Gratia, De perfectione Justitiæ Hominis, De Gestis Pelagii, De Gratia Christi et de Peccato Originali, Contra duas Epistolas Pelagianorum); Marius Mercator's Adv. Pel. in Gallandius, viii. 615, &c.; Commonit. ii. 2; Prosper of Aquitaine, Works, i. 399–400, iii. 69–70 (ed. of 1782); Bede on Canticles, iv. 719 (Giles's Bede, ix. 195); Gildas's Hist. § ix.; Bright's Church Hist. pp. 249, 269, 276–9, 285; Robertson's Church Hist. ii. 139–54; Haddan and Stubbs, under A.D. 415, &c.; Stokes's Ireland and Celtic Church, pp. 20–2; Reeves's Adamnan; Ussher's Works, ed. Elrington, passim; notice by Professor Ince in Dictionary of Christian Biography.] 

PELGRIM, JOYCE (fl. 1514), stationer in London, is first heard of in 1504, when an edition of the ‘Ortus Vocabulorum’ was printed for him in Paris. In 1506, in partnership with another stationer, Henry Jacobi, he issued a book of hours and a psalter according to the use of Sarum, and an edition of Lyndewode's ‘Provinciale.’ From the colophons of these books it is clear that Jacobi lived at the sign of the Trinity, and Pelgrim at the sign of St. Anne, both in St. Paul's Churchyard. Under the patronage of William Bretton, an important merchant of the staple of Calais, who assisted them with money, they worked in partnership for a few years, having books printed for them both in the Low Countries and in France. After 1508, when they had issued seven books, the name of Pelgrim no longer appears in connection with the business, though Jacobi still continued at work. About 1513 the latter moved to Oxford, and