CELESTINE I, Pope, Saint. - He was a native of Campania. He was elected and consecrated on September 10, 422, six days after the death of Boniface I (September 4, 422). He consecrated the Basilica Julia in Trastevere and endowed it richly.
Also in his time the titulus of St. Sabina arose on the Aventine. He introduced into the divine service, before the liturgy properly so called (Missa fidelium), an official and regular psalmody with the participation of the whole assembly, divided into two alternating choirs, whereas previously only passages from the Epistles and the Gospel were read. His activity outside Rome was inspired by a firm awareness of the very special powers of the Roman see. In a letter of ca. 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 provinces of Narbonne and Vienne (June 26, 428) he condemned 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 from Pope Zosimus supremacy over those regions. In Africa, on the other hand, he encountered the resistance of the episcopate regarding Apiarius, a priest of Sicca Veneria, condemned by his own bishop, who had found too easy a hearing at Rome and was therefore disavowed (428).
In the dogmatic controversies of these years C. found himself dealing with errors concerning Grace that derived from the already condemned Pelagianism.
Prosper of Aquitaine relates (Chronicon, ad a. 404: PL 51, 595) that C. sent in 431 to the Scots (Irish) their first bishop in the person of that Palladius who some time earlier had fought the Pelagian doctrines in Britain. These doctrines had found favor also in Gaul, especially in the monasteries of Provence, under the much mitigated form later called Semipelagianism. St. Augustine, warned by Prosper of Aquitaine, began at once the struggle against the error; after his death, Prosper obtained from C. a document in which the orthodoxy and authority of Augustine are extolled (Denz-U, n. 128). In the manuscripts the document is followed by a collection of ten decisions concerning Grace, called the Capitularies of Celestine (ibid., nn. 129-42); but however great their authority, they are of private origin.
C. intervened also at Constantinople against Julian of Eclanum, the great adversary of St. Augustine, who had found support with Nestorius, bishop of Constantinople; but there the doctrines of Nestorius himself, who admitted two persons in Christ, were to cause greater scandal. He had dared to send to Rome his most disputed homilies (spring 428). They were judged unfavorably there, and after some delay the Roman Council assembled in August 430 ordered Nestorius to disavow the error within ten days of the notification of the sentence and entrusted its execution to Cyril of Alexandria (August 11, 430). This might have sufficed, but the emperor wished the matter to be judged in a general council, which assembled at Ephesus at Pentecost of 431. The papal legates arrived after matters were concluded, but they approved the proceedings and subscribed the acts.
C. died the following year (July 27, 432), after 9 years, 10 months and 7 days of pontificate. He was buried near the basilica of St. Silvester in Priscilla on the via Salaria with an epitaph whose text is preserved.
Bibliography6 works
Ireneo Daniele