CELESTINE I, POPE, saint. — He was a native of Campania. He was elected and consecrated on 10 September 422, six days after the death of Boniface I (4 September 422). He consecrated the Basilica Julia in Trastevere and endowed it richly.
During his time, the title of St Sabina was also established on the Aventine. He introduced into the divine service, before the proper liturgy (Missal of the Faithful), an official and regular psalmody with the participation of the entire assembly, divided into two alternating choirs, whereas previously only passages from the Epistles and the Gospel had been read. His activity outside Rome was inspired by a firm awareness of the special powers of the Roman See. In a letter of c. 424 to nine bishops of Illyricum, he reconfirmed the privileges of papal vicar granted by his predecessors to the bishop of Thessalonica over Eastern Illyricum. Thus, in the letter to the bishops of the Narbonese and Viennese provinces (26 June 428), he reproved certain customs contrary to ecclesiastical tradition, implicitly approving what his predecessor had done against the intrigues of Patroclus, bishop of Arles (426), who had obtained supremacy over those regions from Pope Zosimus. In Africa, however, he encountered resistance from the episcopate regarding Apriarius, a priest of Sicca Veneria, who had been condemned by his own bishop but had found too ready a hearing in Rome and was therefore disavowed (428).
In the dogmatic controversies of these years, Celestine dealt with errors concerning grace that derived from Pelagianism, which had already been condemned.
Prosper of Aquitaine relates (Chronicon, ad a. 404: PL 51, 595) that in 431 Celestine sent to the Scots (Irish) their first bishop in the person of Palladius, who some time earlier had fought Pelagian doctrines in Britain. These doctrines had also found favour in Gaul, especially in the monasteries of Provence, under the much-mitigated form later called Semipelagianism. St Augustine, warned by Prosper of Aquitaine, began the struggle against the error; after his death, Prosper obtained from Celestine a document in which the orthodoxy and authority of Augustine were extolled (Denz-U, no. 128). In the manuscripts, this document is followed by a collection of ten decisions on grace, called the Capitularies of Celestine (ibid., nos. 129-42); but great as their authority is, they are of private origin.
Celestine also intervened in Constantinople against Julian of Eclanum, the great opponent of St Augustine, who had found support with Nestorius, bishop of Constantinople; but it was the doctrines of Nestorius himself that were to cause the greater stir, for he admitted two persons in Christ. He had dared to send to Rome his most controversial homilies (spring 428). They were judged unfavourably there, and after some delay a Roman Council convened in August 430 ordered Nestorius to disavow the error within ten days of the notification of the sentence and entrusted the execution to Cyril of Alexandria (11 August 430). This might have sufficed, but the emperor wished the matter to be judged in a general council, which met at Ephesus at Pentecost 431. The papal legates arrived after the event, but they approved what had been done and subscribed to the acts.
Celestine died the following year (27 July 432), after nine years, ten months and seven days of pontificate. He was buried near the basilica of St Sylvester in Priscilla on the Via Salaria, with an epitaph of which the text is preserved.