PELAGIUS AND PELAGIANISM. - I. LIFE. -
Born in Britain (not in Ireland) around 354, died perhaps
in the region of Alexandria ca. 427. First in Rome,
where he settled perhaps ca. the year 384 and dwelt a long time,
then throughout the West, he exercised a profound influence. Orator, controversialist and writer, P. acquired
in religious circles an extraordinary prestige,
not as a priest or as a monk, in the
modern sense of the term, but as an independent
"lay doctor". Although his system sprang
from the logical development of certain of his observations, P. is intellectually linked to the circle
of the Ambrosiaster and to certain influences of the
school of Antioch (Rufinus of Syria), in
reaction to the Neoplatonizing spiritualist
tendencies and to the current, then widespread, of mystical and popular piety.
His influence extended into Campania,
into Sicily, into Africa, into Gaul and into England. It reached as far as Ephesus in 413 and
Rhodes. First Caelestius and Julian of E-
clanum, then Anianus, Turbantius and Agricola
worked intensely for the spread
of his ideas. In 410, when Alaric
invaded Italy, P. departed from it; after a
brief stay in Africa, he settled in Jerusalem, welcomed by the bishop John,
but he was immediately held suspect by St. Jerome.
Condemned in 418 by the Council of
Carthage, and already compromised by certain tumultuous incidents that occurred at Bethlehem toward
the end of 417, P., without having disavowed his
own principles, left to his disciples the task
of continuing the struggle. It is believed that his traces can be found in various points of the East: at
Antioch, where he would have been condemned a-
gain (ca. the year 425), in the region of Alexlenderbilder des Chronographen vom Jahre
354, in Jahrbuch des
deuts. archaeologiischen Instituts, Berlin, 1 [1888]).