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 234 PELAGIUS PELASGIANS PELAGIFS, the founder of the religious sys- tem called Pelagianism. Little is known of his life, but he is supposed to have been a British monk whose real name was Morgan. Pie went to Rome about 409, where he was distin- guished by his purity of life and his zeal for the reform of the clergy and laity. With his disciple Coelestius he went to Carthage in 411. Pelagius soon left Africa for Palestine, but Coe- lestius, who endeavored to be admitted among the presbyters of Carthage, was accused of heresy before a synod held in that city in 412 and condemned for the following doctrines : 1, Adam was created mortal, so that he would have died whether he had sinned or not; 2, Adam's sin injured only himself, and not the human race ; 3, new-born infants are in the same condition in which Adam was before his fall ; 4, the whole human race neither dies in consequence of Adam's death or transgression, nor rises from the dead in consequence of Christ's resurrection ; 5, infants obtain eternal life, though they be not baptized ; 6, the law is as good a means of salvation as the gospel ; 7, there were some men, even before the ap- pearance of Christ, who did not commit sin. These seven propositions (others count only six, leaving out the fifth, or joining it to one of the other propositions) are skill regarded as the cardinal points of the Pelagian system, al- though it is difficult to decide how far Pelagius accorded with all of them. In consequence of the condemnation of Coelestius, Pelagius himself was soon attacked in Palestine, where Jerome became one of his most zealouS oppo- nents. Jerome, conjointly with Orosius, ac- cused Pelagius at a synod held in Jerusalem in 415. The- matter was referred to Pope Inno- cent I., but at another synod of 15 bishops, held in the same year at Diospolis, under Eulogius of Csesarea, Pelagius was acquitted. The churches of Africa reiterated their re- jection of the system in a synod of 69 bishops at Carthage, and in a synod of 61 Numid- ian bishops at Mileum, both held in 416. The decision of Innocent was satisfactory to the African bishops, and Pelagius addressed to him an explanatory statement, which did not reach Rome until after Innocent's death. His successor, Zosimus, was induced by the confes- sion of faith that Coelestius, then in Rome, had drawn up, and also by the letters and protesta- tions of Pelagius, to declare the two accused sound in faith and unjustly persecuted. The African bishops, 214 in number, met again in a synod at Carthage, and stood by their former decision; and Augustine, the most powerful opponent of Pelagius, appealed to the emperor Honorius (418), who ordered the suppression of the new heresy. Another council at Car- thage, attended by delegates from all the prov- inces of Africa, specified and solemnly con- demned as heretical nine doctrines of Pelagius. Similar declarations were issued by the bishops Theodotus of Antioch and Praylius of Jerusa- lem. Zosimus now also lost confidence in the new teachers, and published his Epistola Trac- toria, in which the Pelagian doctrine is con- demned. Many bishops of the western church- es subscribed to this epistle ; but Julian, bishop of Eclanum in Apulia, undertook the defence of the system. He had to sacrifice his office, and to go with Pelagius and Cculestius to Asia. Little is known of the further history of Pelagius, his two friends, and their doctrines, except that the last were again condemned as heretical by the oecumenical council of Ephe- sus in 431. The followers of Pelagius never formed a sect properly so called, but Pela- gianism long maintained a foothold in the church. See Wiggers, Versuch einer prag- matischen Darstellung des Augustinianismus und Pelagianismus (2 vols., Berlin, 1831-'3 ; English translation by Prof. Emerson, New York, 1840), and Jacobi, Die Lehre des Pela- gius (Leipsic, 1842). PELARGONIUM. See GEBANIUM. PELASGIANS (Gr. HeAaoyof), a people spoken of by the ancient Greeks as the early inhab- itants of the Grecian peninsula, the islands and coasts of the ^gean, and portions of Asia Minor and Italy. Our knowledge about them is very vague and contradictory. Several Egyptologists, including Lenormant and Cha- bas, suppose they find in the Egyptian inscrip- tions detailed accounts of the Pelasgic race. According to them the Pelasgians were, even earlier than the 15th century B. 0., a mighty people in possession of the northern coasts of the Mediterranean. They carried on an ex- tensive commerce both by sea and land, and had a navy large enough to venture on a war with Egypt. They formed a confederation with the Libyans, Tyrrhenians, and Acha3ans during the reign of Rameses II., which near- ly conquered Lower Egypt, and at one time advanced beyond Memphis. (See LIBYANS.) Ancient Greek writers speak of the Pelasgians as tribes not formed into a nation, without a navy, not warlike, but migratory and agri- cultural. Homer regards them as the aborigi- ne's of Greece, whose original seat was in the neighborhood of Dodona, and who spread themselves over Thessaly, Bceotia, Attica, and a portion of the Peloponnesus, especially Ar- gos and Arcadia. He connects them also with Asia Minor and Crete. ^Eschylus makes Pe- lasgus, the king from whom the race derived its name, a ruler over the whole of Greece ; while Herodotus says that Greece was called Pelasgia, and includes under the common name of Pelasgians the Athenians, the Arcadians, the lonians of Asia Minor, the Lemnians, the Samothracians, and the Crestonians. On the other hand, Thucydides says the Pelas- gians were only the most numerous of the many kindred races which inhabited Greece. They came from the east, passing over from Asia Minor, where they -had built the two cities which bore the name of Magnesia, to the islands and the mainland of Greece, and es- tablishing themselves principally in Thessaly,