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 richly endowed II.
At the same time, the titular church of S. Sabina also arose on the Aventine. He introduced into divine worship, before the liturgy properly so called (Missa fidelium), 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 very special powers of the Roman see. In a letter of around 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. Likewise, in his letter to the bishops of the provinces of Narbonensis and Viennensis (26 June 428), he reproved certain practices 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 concerning Apiarius, a priest of Sicca Veneria, who had been condemned by his own bishop and had found too ready a hearing in 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 in 431 C. sent to the Scots (Irish) their first bishop, in the person of Palladius, who some time earlier had fought the Pelagian doctrines in Britain. These doctrines had also found favor in Gaul, especially in the monasteries of Provence, in the considerably mitigated form later called semi-Pelagianism. S. Augustine, informed by Prosper of Aquitaine, immediately began the struggle against the error; after his death, Prosper obtained from C. a document exalting the orthodoxy and authority of Augustine (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. also intervened at Constantinople against Julian of Eclanum, the great adversary of S. 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 a greater stir. He had dared to send to Rome his most controversial homilies (spring 428). They were judged unfavorably there, and after some delay the Roman Council assembled in August 430 ordered Nestorius to repudiate the error within ten days of notification of the sentence and entrusted its execution to Cyril of Alexandria (11 August 490). This might have sufficed, but the emperor wanted the matter to be judged in a general council, which assembled at Ephesus at Pentecost in 431. The papal legates arrived after the events had taken place, but approved the proceedings and signed the acts.
C. died the following year (27 July 432), after a pontificate of 9 years, 10 months, and 7 days. He was buried near the Basilica of S. Silvester in Priscilla on the Via Salaria, with an inscription whose text has been preserved.