ZOSIMUS, POPE, St. — Elected successor of Innocent I on March 18, 417; d. Dec. 26, 418.
Immediately on March 22, he granted to Patroclus, Bishop of Arles, the most distinguished privileges, subjecting to his metropolitan jurisdiction the Viennese province and the two Narbonnese provinces, and constituting him Apostolic Vicar over all the Gauls. This aroused the protests of the Gallic episcopate, which had no reason to be a partisan of Patroclus. St. Augustine had just pronounced the famous phrase: «Roma locuta est causa finita est», concerning the Pelagians, when the controversy was rekindled. Celestine (v.) present in Rome, lodged his protests before Zosimus, who, without pronouncing judgment, invited the African bishops to reconsider the previous judgments already confirmed by Innocent I and to respond within two months. Meanwhile, a letter from Pelagius and a libellus fidei addressed to Pope Innocent reached Rome, in which he attempted to demonstrate the orthodoxy of his faith; the innocence of the two heretics seemed assured, as Zosimus wrote to the Africans on Sept. 21, 417. The African bishops held a new council on this matter in May 418 and meanwhile provoked an intervention by the imperial court at Ravenna to prevent disturbances; then Zosimus addressed to the entire Christendom at the end of May a tractarian epistle (which survives only in fragments) in which, condemning Pelagius and Celestine and their doctrines, he imposed upon all bishops the acceptance of this condemnation, which almost all did in fact accept. Another controversy arose between Zosimus and the African episcopate concerning Aprisarius, a priest of Sicca Veneria, who had appealed to him against the sentence by which his bishop Urban had excommunicated him. Zosimus sent a bishop as his legate to Africa for this matter; but before its conclusion, Zosimus died and was buried at St. Lawrence. His name appears in the Roman Martyrology on Dec. 26.