Pelagius

Pelagius, a celebrated heresiarch of the 5th century. He was probably born about the middle of the 4th century, in Britain, or, according to some, in Brittany, his name being supposed to be a Greek rendering (Pelagios) of the Celtic appellative Morgan ('sea-born'). He was a monk, but he never entered into holy orders. He settled in Rome about 400, where he seems to have been scandalised by the low tone and morals then obtaining. His views seem to have been early developed; and during his stay in Rome he seems to have given them full expression—especially in his commentaries on the Pauline Epistles, which were published at this time. It has been remarked that his doctrinal tendencies have something in common with those of the Eastern Church, and may therefore be taken as showing that Eastern influences were still alive in the British churches. But more probably his theology was the outcome of his own devout and earnest, but narrow and anti-speculative mind. Jerome and Orosius tell tales to his discredit; but these are refuted by the respect with which Augustine always speaks of his character and conduct. The controversy about Pelagianism was not started by Pelagius, but by a devoted disciple of his. In Rome he had attached to his views a follower of great energy named Cælestius, probably an Irish Scot, originally a lawyer, who was practising in Rome when Pelagius came thither. He became a monk, and accompanied Pelagius wherever he went. In 410, after the sack of the city by the Goths, the two withdrew to Africa. After some time Pelagius made a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, where he met St Jerome. Cælestius having remained at Carthage, and sought to be admitted to ordination, his doctrines became the subject of discussion, and in a synod several opinions ascribed to him were condemned—proceedings which introduced St Augustine into the controversy. Meanwhile Pelagius remained at Jerusalem, and news of the proceedings at Carthage having been carried to Palestine, in 415 he was accused of heresy before the synod of Jerusalem. As adopted by Cælestius, his doctrines seem to have been a reaction against Gnosticism, Manicheism, and Fatalism, in the interest as he conceived of a higher morality than he found in Rome. The Pelagian heresy was held to deny original sin; Adam's sin injured himself only; his posterity are born as innocent as he was before the fall. Adam would have died even if he had not sinned. Children are baptised that they may be united to Christ, not that they may be purged from original sin. It is possible to live without sin. Grace as understood by the Catholic Church was not required; free-will and the teaching of the law may suffice; Pelagius did not grant that the will must be moved by God before a man can take one step onwards towards life eternal. The essence of the doctrine is a view of the freedom of the will that may be called liberty of indifferences; the will is equally free to choose to do good and to do evil. This freedom is found also in heathens; and thus natural ability heightens human responsibility, while it seems to diminish the need of divine grace.

The impeachment failed, and in a synod subsequently held at Diospolis in the same year Pelagius evaded condemnation by accepting the decrees of the synod of Carthage. But a new synod of Carthage in 416 condemned Pelagius and Cælestius, and wrote to Pope Innocent I. requesting his approval of the sentence, with which request Innocent complied. Zosimus, the successor of Innocent, wavered; but a council of 214 bishops was held in Carthage, in which the doctrines of Pelagius were formally condemned in nine canons; and on receipt of these Zosimus reopened the cause, cited and condemned Cælestius and Pelagius, and published a decree adopting the canons of the African Council, and requiring that all bishops should subscribe them, under pain of deposition. Nineteen Italian bishops refused to accept these canons and were deposed. Their leader was Julian, Bishop of Eclanum, near Beneventum. Pelagius himself was banished from Rome in 418 by the Emperor Honorius, and he and Cælestius were again condemned by the Council of Ephesus in 431. The date and place of the death of Pelagius are not known. The most important of the writings on the Pelagian side have been lost. Julian is chiefly known through the replies of Augustine, whose anti-Pelagian treatises are edited by the Rev. Dr W. Bright (1880). Pelagius's Fourteen Books of a Commentary on St Paul's Epistles, his Epistle to Demetrius, and his Memorial to Pope Innocent, included by collectors in the works of St Jerome, are much mutilated, but yet almost certainly genuine. All his other works have been lost, except some fragments.

SEMI-PELAGIANISM was a modification of the doctrine of the Pelagians as to the powers of the human will, and as to the effects to be attributed to the action of the supernatural grace of God, and of the divine decree for the predestination of the elect. The Pelagians, discarding altogether the doctrine of the fall of Adam, and the idea that the powers of the human will had been weakened through original sin, taught that man, without any supernatural gift from God, is able, by his own natural powers, to fulfil the entire law, and to do every act which is necessary for the attainment of eternal life. The condemnation of this doctrine by the several councils held in the early part of the 5th century is capable of various constructions, and has been urged by some to the extreme of denying altogether the liberty of man, and converting the human will into a merely passive instrument, whether of divine grace upon the one hand, or of sinful concupiscence upon the other. The writings of St Augustine on this controversy have been differently construed by the different Christian communions, and the same diversity of opinion existed in his own day. Among those who, dissenting from the extreme view of Pelagius, at the same time did not go to the full length of the Augustinian writings in opposition to Pelagius, were some monks of the southern provinces of Gaul, and especially of Marseilles, whence their school was called Massilian, from the Latin name (Massilia) of that city. Of these leaders the chief was a priest named Cassian (Joannes Cassianus), who had been a deacon at Constantinople. Of the system which he propounded it may be enough to say that it upheld the sufficiency of man's natural powers only so far as regards the first act of conversion to God and the initial act of man's repentance for sin. Every man naturally possesses the capability of beginning the work of self-conversion; but for all ulterior acts, as well as for the completion of justification, the assistance of God's grace is indispensable. The Semi-Pelagian doctrine is often confounded with that of the Molinistic (see MOLINA) school of Roman Catholic theology; but there is one essential difference. The latter persistently maintain the necessity of grace for all supernatural acts, even for the beginning of conversion, although they are generally represented as agreeing with the Semi-Pelagians as to the mode of explaining the freedom of the human will acting under the influence of divine grace. The chief writers in the controversy were Prosper, Hilary, and Fulgentius; and the question was referred to Celestine, Bishop of Rome in 431. It continued, however, to be agitated in the West for a considerable time. Faustus, Bishop of Reji (Riez in the Basses Alpes), towards the end of the 5th century revived the error, and it was condemned in a council held at Arles in 475, and still later in a synod (the second) held at Arausio (Orange) in 525, and again in the third council of Valence in 530. The words of Augustine were formally accepted; but the tendency which produced Pelagianism and Semi-Pelagianism has often reappeared.

See works on Pelagius by Wiggers (1832; trans. by Emerson, Andover, 1840); Jacobi (1842); Wörter (1866); Klasen (1882); for Semi-Pelagianism, the monograph of Geffken (1826); also the articles AUGUSTINE, JANSENISM, PREDESTINATION, SIN, WILL.