Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 18.djvu/493

P E L P E L 471 the story of another Pelagia of Antioch, a famous baliet- girl of the town, who, in the full flower of her beauty and guilty sovereignty over the youth of the city, was suddenly converted by the influence of the holy bishop Nonnus, whom she had seen and heard for a moment as he preached in front of a church which she happened to pass with her gay train of attendants and admirers. She sought out Nonnus, and her tears of genuine penitence overcame his canonical scruples ; she was baptized, and, disguising her self in male attire and in the dress of a penitent, she retired to the grotto on the Mount of Olives which still bears her name, and there died after three years of strict penance. This story, which seems to combine with the name of the older Pelagia some traits from an actual history referred to by Chrysostom (Horn. Ixvii. in Mat. 3), is preserved in a narrative bearing the fictitious name of John, a deacon of the equally fictitious Xonnus, which by internal evidence is assigned by Usener to the second quarter of the 5th century. Usener, however, has shown that the very popular legend has a much older basis, and that, in common with a number of other female saints, including Marina or MARGARITA (q.v.), and Pelagia of Tarsus, whose story is closely akin to the Marina legend, Pelagia is only a Christianized travesty of an old local form of Aphrodite. The name of Marina or Pelagia is an epithet of Aphrodite ; the parallel figiire of Anthusa in Seleucia of Cilicia bears a name to be explained by the Anthera of Cnossus ; the corresponding saint at Tyre is Porphyria, corresponding to Venus Purpurissa. The contradictory attributes of a pure virgin and a penitent are explicable in legends proper to the Syrian coast, where Astarte- Aphrodite had corre spondingly opposite forms and character; the masculine garb of the converted Pelagia is to be explained from the hermaphrodite Aphroditus- Aphrodite of western Asia, the Cyprian Amathusia. See Usener, Lcgenden dcr hciligcn Pelagia, Bonn, 1879, and Gildemeister s edition of the Syriac version of the legend of Pelagia of Antioch, Bonn Univ. Prorjr. of 22d March 1879. PELAGIUS. Of the origin of Pelagius almost nothing is known. The name is supposed to be a Graecized form of the Cymric Morgan (muir, sea; gin, begotten). His contemporaries understood that he was of British birth, and gave him the distinctive appellation Brito. He was a large ponderous person, heavy both in body and mind, if we are to believe Jerome ("stolidissimus et Scotorum pultibus prsegravatus"). Born during the second half of the 4th century, he was influenced by the monastic enthu siasm which had been kindled in Gaul by Athanasius (336), and which, through the energy of Martin of Tours (361), rapidly communicated itself to the Britons and Scots. For, though Pelagius remained a layman throughout his life, and though he never appears in any strict connexion with a ccenobitical fraternity, he yet adhered to monastic disci pline (" velutt monachus "), and distinguished himself by his purity of life and exceptional sanctity ("egregie Chris- tianus "). He seems to have been one of the earliest, if not the very earliest, of that remarkable series of men who issued from the monasteries of Scotland and Ireland and carried back to the Continent in a purified form the religion they had received from it. Coming to Rome in the be ginning of the 5th century (his earliest known writing is of date 405), he found a scandalously low tone of morality prevalent. From his extant Commentaries on the Epistles of St Paul it may be gathered that men were encouraged to rely on a profession of the Christian creed, and on the magical efficacy of the sacraments, while they entirely neglected to cultivate a Christian character. This state of things Pelagius denounced. But his remonstrances were met by the plea of human weakness (" durum est, arduum est, non possumus, homines sumus, fragili carne circum- dati ; ). To remove this plea by exhibiting the actual powers of human nature became his first object. It seemed to him that the Augustinian doctrine of total depravity and of the consequent bondage of the will both cut the sinew of all human effort and threw upon God the blame which really belonged to man. Unless men had the power to do God s will, it was vain for Him to declare it. And, if men believed they were incapable of virtue, they would make no effort to reach it. His favourite maxim was, " If I ought, I can." xiccordingly, he expressed unmeasured disapproval when he heard a bishop at Rome quoting with approbation the characteristic words of Augustine : " Give what Thou commandest, and command what Thou wilt." The views of Pelagius did not originate in a conscious reaction against the influence of the Augustinian theology, although each of these systems was developed into its ultimate form by the opposition of the other. Neither must too much weight be allowed to the circumstance that Pelagius was a monk, for he was unquestionably alive to the delusive character of much that passed for monkish sanctity. Yet possibly his monastic training may have led him to look more at conduct than at character, and to believe that holiness could be arrived at by rigour of dis cipline. This view of things suited his natural tempera ment, which was essentially matter-of-fact and somewhat shallow. Judging from the general style of his writings, his religious development had been equable and peaceful, not marked by the prolonged mental conflict, the spiritual turmoil, the hand-to-hand wrestling with God, the abrupt transitions, which characterized the experience of his great opponent. With no great depth of mind, he saw very clearly the thing before him, and many of his practical counsels are marked by sagacity, and are expressed with the succinctness of a proverb ("corpus non frangendum, sed regendum est "). His interests were primarily ethical ; hence his insistence on the freedom of the will and his limitation of the action of divine grace. The peculiar tenets of Pelagius, though indicated in the commentaries which he published at Rome previous to 409, might not so speedily have attracted attention had they not been adopted by Ccelestius, a much younger and bolder man than his teacher. Ccelestius had been trained as a lawyer, but abandoned his profession for an ascetic life. When Rome was sacked by the Goths (410) the two friends crossed to Africa. There Pelagius once or twice met with Augustine, but very shortly sailed for Palestine, where he justly expected his opinions would be more cordially received. Ccelestius remained in Carthage with the view of receiving ordination. But Aurelius, bishop of Carthage, being warned against him, summoned a synod, at which Paulinus, a deacon of Milan, charged Coelestius with holding the following six errors : (1) that Adam would have died even if he had not sinned ; (2) that the sin of Adam injured himself alone, not the human race; (3) that new-born children are in the same condition in which Adam was before the fall ; (4) that the whole human race does not die because of Adam s death or sin, nor will the race rise again because of the resurrection of Christ ; (5) that the law gives entrance to heaven as well as the gospel ; (6) that even before the coming of Christ there were men who were entirely without sin. To these propositions a 7th is sometimes added, "that infants, though unbaptized, have eternal life," a corollary from the third. Ccelestius did not deny that he held these opinions, but he maintained that they were open questions, on which the church had never pronounced. The synod, notwithstanding, condemned and excommunicated him. Coelestius, after a futile appeal to Rome, repaired to Ephesus, and there received ordination. In Palestine Pelagius lived unmolested and revered,