Prosper of Aquitaine

PROSPER OF AQUITAINE. - Gallo-Roman theologian, b. at the end of the 4th century, d. around 455.

Around 426 he composed his Carmen de ingratis in 1002 hexameters (PL 51, 91-148), which is a defense of St. Augustine's ideas concerning Grace and predestination against certain monks of Marseilles and Lerins, and in it he takes up again the arguments already set out in his letter to Rufinus (ibid., 77-90).

In 428 he asked St. Augustine directly for some supplementary explanations (ibid., 67-74), who answered him with the De praedestinatione sanctorum and the De dono perseverantiae (which originally formed a single work), of which P. makes an apology in his Pro Augustino responsiones ad excerpta Genuensium (ibid., 187-202) in reply to certain doubts expressed by two priests of Genoa, Camillus and Theodore. P. would also have desired a formal condemnation of the ideas professed at Marseilles and Lerins; but from Pope Celestine he obtained only an appeal to concord (ibid. 50, 528-30), which remained, moreover, without any effect: Cassian, in fact, published his Collationes, Vincent of Lerins his Commonitorium, Arnobius the Younger his Praedestinatus. P. replied, passionately defending his master, with the De Gratia et libero arbitrio contra Collatorem (ibid. 51, 213-76), Pro Augustino responsiones ad capitula obiectionum Gallorum calumniantium (ibid. 155-74) and Pro Augustino responsiones ad capitula obiectionum Vincentianarum (ibid., 177-86), written around 432-34.

After 435, P. settled in Rome, where he published his Expositiones super psalmos (ibid., 277-426) and very probably also certain Capitula annexed to the 21st letter of Celestine. In 450 he returned to the problem of Grace in his De vocatione omnium gentium (ibid., 647-

722), though mitigating the rigor of Augustinian doctrine and making certain concessions to his adversaries. Shortly before dying, he compiled a collection of sentences: Liber sententiarum ex operibus s. Augustini delibatarum, in 392 articles (ibid., 427-96), which, according to a procedure dear to him, he set in distichs in the Epigrammata s. Augustini (ibid., 497-532). A Chronica of P. is also preserved.

The thought of P., therefore, underwent variations: at first an intransigent Augustinian (in reaction against Cassian and the Lerinese), he later attenuated his expressions and softened his thought, probably under the influence of St. Leo, arriving in the end, on the problems of Grace and predestination, at moderate conceptions. The Council of Orange (529) drew the majority of its canons from his Liber sententiarum; and in the Carolingian era his work held a place of preference among theologians.

Cirillo Vogel

A poem composed around 415 in Aquitaine, which describes the devastations of the Vandals and the Goths in Gaul and the sufferings of the population that begins to doubt divine Providence, is wrongly attributed to P. of A. (the author is an authentic Pelagian). Simple writing and not without an artistic sense.

Erik Peterson