for his own use. They are very short, and are a sort of compendious index to the opinions of St. Augustine. Other works are assigned to Prosper, but on insufficient authority.
(6 a) The Chronicle, probably the best known of the works of Prosper, is attributed to him without hesitation by Cassiodorus, Gennadius of Marseilles, Victorius, and Isidore, though Pithou and Garnier doubted it. It extends from the earliest age to the capture of Rome by the Vandals, a.d. 455, and consists of three parts: (1) To a.d. 326, founded, as it states, on that of Eusebius, and though much abridged, treating the subject with some independence. (2) From 326 to 378, which uses similarly Jerome's continuation of Eusebius, with both additions and omissions. (3) From 378 to 455. As might be expected, predominance is given to ecclesiastical events, especially such as concern the rise and fall of heretical doctrines. The Chronicle arose out of an endeavour to fix the date of Easter, for which purpose Prosper constructed a Paschal cycle now lost.
(b) Chronicle of Tiro Prosper. Besides the Chronicle just described, another much shorter and relating to the latest period only, bearing the name of Prosper, was edited by Pierre Pithou in 1588 from MSS. in the library of the monastery of St. Victor at Paris. It is difficult to believe that the two Chronicles could be by the same writer, or if they were, to understand why he published both, as must have been the case, about the same timer It is much more probable that Prosper of Aquitaine and Tiro Prosper, despite an apparently mistaken statement of Bede, were different persons.
The best ed. of Prosper's collected works, by Desprez and Desessarts (Paris, 1711), contains all the works rightly attributed to Prosper, together with others not belonging to him, and various pieces relating to the semi-Pelagian controversy. It is revised and reprinted in Migne's Patr. Lat. vol. li. See L. Valentin, St. Prosper d’Aquitaine (Paris, 1900).
[H.W.P.]
Proterius, St., patriarch of Alexandria, was presbyter and church-steward under Dioscorus, and left in charge of the church when Dioscorus went to the council of Chalcedon. After Dioscorus was deposed by that council, the emperor Marcian ordered a new election to the see. The suffragan bishops, except 13 detained at Constantinople by a resolution of the council (Chalced. c. 30), were assembled in synod; and the chief laymen of Alexandria came as usual to express their mind and assent to the prelate's choice (cf. Liberat. Breviar. c. 14, and Evagr. ii. 5). There was great difficulty in reaching a conclusion; for the majority of the Alexandrian church people were profoundly aggrieved by the action of the council. In their eyes Dioscorus was still their rightful "pope," the representative of Cyril and of Athanasius. Ultimately, however, opposition to the imperial mandate was felt impracticable. It was resolved to elect, and then all favoured Proterius, who was consecrated and enthroned (a.d. 452); but the passions of the Dioscorian and anti-Dioscorian parties broke out at once into tumultuous dissension, which Evagrius likens to the surging of the sea. Proterius sending Leo the usual announcement of his elevation, Leo asked some definite assurance of his orthodoxy (Leo, Ep. 113, in Mar. 453), and received a letter which he regarded as "fully satisfactory," shewing Proterius to be a "sincere assertor of the Catholic dogma," inasmuch as he had cordially accepted the Tome (Epp. 127, 130). Thereupon (Mar. 454) he wrote again to Proterius, advising him to clear himself from all suspicion of Nestorianizing, by reading to his people certain passages from approved Fathers, and then shewing that the Tome did but hand on their tradition and guard the truth from perversions on either side. Leo took care, in thus addressing the "successor of St. Mark," to dwell on that evangelist's relation to St. Peter as of a disciple to a teacher; and he bespeaks the support of the Alexandrian see in this resistance to the unprincipled ambition of Constantinople, which in the 28th canon, so called, of Chalcedon had injured the "dignity" of the other great bishoprics (Ep. 129). Another question prolonged the correspondence. The Nicene Fathers were believed to have commissioned the Alexandrian bishops to ascertain and signify the right time for each coming Easter. Leo had consulted Cyril as to the Easter of 444; and he now, in 454 applied to Proterius, through the emperor, for his opinion as to the Easter of 455, which the Alexandrian Paschal table appeared to him to place too late (Epp. 121, 127). Proterius replied to Leo at some length (Ep. 133, Apr. 454) that Egypt and the East would keep Apr. 24 as Easter Day, and expressed his belief that all Christians everywhere would "observe one faith, one baptism, and one most sacred paschal solemnity."
Proterius had troubles with his own clergy. Not long after the council a priest named Timotheus and a deacon named Peter (nicknamed Mongus) refused to communicate with him, because in his diptychs he ignored Dioscorus and commemorated the council of Chalcedon. He summoned them to return to duty; they refused, and he pronounced in synod their deposition (Liberat. c. 15; Brevic. Hist. Eutych. or Gesta in causa Acacii, in Mansi, vii. 1062). Four or five bishops and a few monks appear to have actively supported them, and to have been included in their condemnation and in the imperial sentence of exile which followed (Ep. Aegypt. Episc. ad Leonem Aug. in Mansi, vii. 525). The monks in Egypt, as elsewhere, were generally attached to the Monophysite position, which they erroneously identified with the Cyrilline. They took for granted that the late council had been practically striking at Cyril through Dioscorus; and that Christ's single personality was at stake. Thus, besides those monks who had overtly taken part with Timotheus and Peter, others apparently had suspended communion with the archbishop; and Marcian had addressed them in gentle and persuasive terms, assuring them that the doctrine of "one Christ," symbolized by the term Theotokos, had been held sacrosanct at Chalcedon, and exhorting them therefore to join with the Catholic church of the orthodox, which was one (Mansi; vii. 481). But the schism, once begun, was not thus to be abated; the zealous seceders raised a cry, which has practically never died out, that the Egyptian adherents
