JULIAN OF AECLANUM. — So named from his episcopal see (now vanished, its ruins near present-day Mirabella Eclano, east of Benevento), he was the most tenacious and combative supporter of Pelagian doctrines (c. 380–455). His father, Bishop Memor, was closely linked in friendship with Sts Augustine and Paulinus of Nola. Trained in the divine Scriptures and already distinguished among the Church Fathers, as Gennadius attests (*Vir. ill.*, 45), G., shortly after being raised to the episcopal see of Aeclanum in 418, when Pope Zosimus in his *Tractoria* confirmed the condemnation pronounced by his predecessor Innocent I against Pelagius and his supporter Caelestius, took the lead of the opposition, especially strong in southern Italy. For this reason, deposed from his see and exiled by imperial decree, he wandered through the eastern provinces of the Empire, long hosted by Bishop Theodore of Mopsuestia in Cilicia; nor could he ever return to his Aeclanum, despite his efforts at the court of Constantinople, until he died obscurely in a village in Sicily.
He wrote in defense of Pelagian doctrines two letters to Pope Zosimus and two others, after his deposition, to his partisans in Thessalonica and Rome; then, in exile in the East, two substantial works against the Catholic theses upheld by St Augustine, namely four books *to Turbanius* and eight books *to Florus*, to which St Augustine replied respectively with the six books *Contra Iulianum* (PL 44, 461) and the so-called *Opus imperfectum* (PL 45, 1049); he also wrote a *De bono constantiae*, still known to Bede (PL 91, 1072). Of all this, only the first six books *to Florus* survive intact, quoted in full by St Augustine in his reply; the rest exist only in fragments.
He also commented on various books of Holy Scripture. A lengthy commentary on the Song of Songs in seven books was still in Bede’s hands, who cites several passages from II. Reference to this commentary, together with Proverbs and Ecclesiastes, is to be seen in the work composed *Salomonis voluminibus disserendis*, which the author of a commentary on the Minor Prophets attests (PL 21, 960); this author, as G. Morin has shown with strong arguments, is precisely G. To him should be attributed with greater justification an *Expositio* of the Book of Job published in the *Spicilegium Casinense*, III, since to the same philological arguments are added Pelagian doctrines, barely discernible in the commentary on the Prophets, but in their crudest form repeatedly asserted in the exposition of Job. Finally, he translated into Latin Theodore of Mopsuestia’s commentary on the Psalms; large fragments of this survive in manuscripts once from Bobbio.
In his polemical writings G. carried to their extreme conclusions the fundamental principles of Pelagian heresy and defended them with the utmost acrimony, armed especially with persistent dialectic and inexhaustible eloquence. In his biblical commentaries he took as his basis the new version of St Jerome, whom he did not spare criticism, and expounded the literal sense using the hermeneutical principles of the early Church school, unique among Latins in this respect. In all his works he displays great learning and literary skill, a good and rich language, and a robust personal style.