GIULIANO of ECLANO. — So called from his episcopal see (now vanished, its ruins lying near present-day Mirabella Eclano, east of Benevento), he was the most tenacious and combative supporter of the Pelagian doctrines (ca. 380–455). His father Memore, a bishop, was bound by friendship to ss. Agostino and Paolino of Nola. Instructed in the divine Scriptures and already, according to Gennadius (Vir. ill., 45), distinguished among the Doctors of the Church, G., recently raised to the episcopal see of Eclano, in 418, when Pope Zosimus in his Tractoria confirmed the condemnation issued by his predecessor Innocent I against Pelagius and his henchman Caelestius, placed himself at the head of the opposition, which was particularly strong in southern Italy. Consequently, deposed from his see and driven into exile by imperial decree, he wandered through the eastern provinces of the Empire, for a long time the guest of Bishop Theodore of Mopsuestia in Cilicia; nor could he ever return to his Eclano, despite all the efforts he made at the court of Constantinople, until, it is said, he died obscurely in a village of Sicily.
In defense of the Pelagian doctrines he wrote two letters to Pope Zosimus and, after his deposition, two others to his supporters in Thessalonica and Rome; then, while exiled in the East, two substantial works against the Catholic theses upheld by s. Agostino, namely four books addressed to Turbantius and eight books addressed to Florus, to which s. Agostino replied respectively with the six books Contra Iulianum (PL 44, 461) and the so-called Opus imperfectum (PL 45, 1040); in addition, a book De bono constantiae, still known to Bede (PL 91, 1072). Of all this, only the first six books addressed to Florus survive intact, quoted in full by s. Agostino in his reply; of the rest, only a few fragments remain.
He also commented on various books of Holy Scripture. A substantial commentary on the Song of Songs in seven books was still in Bede’s hands, and he cites several passages from II. A reference to this commentary, and at the same time to Proverbs and Ecclesiastes, is to be found in the work entitled Salomonic voluminibus disserendis, whose author declares himself to be the author of a commentary on the minor prophets (PL 21, 960)—an author who, as G. Morin has demonstrated with strong arguments, is precisely G. With even greater reason, a Expositio of the Book of Job published in the Spicilegium Casinense, III, should be attributed to him, since the same philological arguments are joined by the Pelagian doctrines, barely discernible in the commentary on the Prophets but expressed in their crudest form and repeatedly asserted in the exposition of Job. Finally, he translated from Greek Theodore of Mopsuestia’s commentary on the Psalms; extensive fragments of it survive in manuscripts formerly belonging to Bobbio.
In his polemical writings G. carried the fundamental principles of the Pelagian heresy to their extreme consequences, and defended them with the greatest acrimony, armed above all with obstinate dialectic and inexhaustible eloquence. In his biblical commentaries he took as his basis the new version of s. Girolamo, whom, moreover, he did not spare criticism, and explained the literal sense according to the hermeneutical principles of the Antiochene school, unique in this respect among the Latins. In all his works he displays great learning and literary skill, a good and rich language, and a vigorous personal style.