Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 18.djvu/495

PELAGIUS 473 degraded from the priesthood, scourged, and imprisoned for teaching reprobation. The questions raised by Pelagius continually recur, but, without tracing the strife as sustained by Thomists and Janscnists on the one side and the Jesuits and Arminians on the other, this article can only indicate the general bearing of the con troversy on society and the church. The anthropology of Pelagius was essentially naturalistic. It threatened to supersede grace by nature, to deny all immediate divine influence, and so to make Christianity practically useless. Pelagius himself did not carry his rationalism through to its issues ; but the logical consequence of his system was, as Augustine perceived, the denial of the atonement and other central truths of revealed religion. And, while the Pelagians never existed as a sect separate from the church catholic, yet wherever rationalism has infected any part of the church there Pelagianism lias sooner or later appeared ; and the term " Pelagian " has been continued to denote views which minimize the effects of the fall and unduly magnify man s natural ability. These views and tendencies have appeared in theologies which are not in other respects rationalistic, as, c. y. , in Arminianism ; and their presence in such theologies is explained by the desire to remove everything which might seem to discourage human effort. It is not easy to determine how far the vices which ate so deeply into the life of the church of the Middle Ages were due to the sharpness with which some of the severer features of the Augustin- ian theology were denned during the Pelagian controversy. The pernicious belief in the magical efficacy of the sacraments and the consequent defective ethical power of religion, the superstitious eagerness to accept the church s creed without examining or really believing it, the falsity and cruelty engendered and propagated by the idea that in the church s cause all weapons were justifiable, these vices were undoubtedly due to the belief that the visible church was the sole divinely-appointed repository of grace. And the sharply- accentuated tone in which Augustinianism affirmed man s inability quickened the craving for that grace or direct agency of God upon the soul which the church declared to be need ful and administered through her divinely-appointed persons and sacraments, and thus brought a decided impulse to the development of the sacerdotal system. Again, although it may fairly be doubted whether, as Baur sup poses, Augustine was permanently tainted with the Manichrean notion of the inherent evil of matter, it can scarcely be questioned that his views on marriage as elicited by the Pelagian contro versy gave a considerable impulse to the already prevalent idea of the superiority of virginity. When the Pelagians declared that Augustine s theory of original sin discredited marriage by the impli cation that even the children of the regenerate were born in sin, he couid only reply (De Nuptiis ct Comupiscentm) that marriage now cannot partake of the spotless purity of the marriage of unfallen man, and that, though what is evil in concupiscence is made a good use of in marriage, it is still a thing to be ashamed of, not only with the shame of natural modesty (which he does not take into account) but with the shame of guilt. So that, even although he is careful to point out the advantages of marriage, an indelible stigma is still left even on the lawful procreation of children. The remark of ililman, that "all established religions subside into Pelagianism, or at least semi-Pelagianism," is unexpected, but the converse remark, that "no Pelagian ever has or ever will work a religious revolution," may be easily substantiated. It has indeed become a commonplace of historical science that in order to do or to endure great things men must believe in one form or other of predestination. They must feel confident that they are made use of by God to accomplish things that to Him seem worthy, and that until these be accomplished no earthly power can defeat or harm them. They must feel that their will is embraced in the divine and empowered by it. And it is the consciousness of their own impotence that leads men to yield themselves as instruments of the divine power. Pelagianism is the creed of quiet times and commonplace people ; Augustinianism is the inevitable faith of periods that are dangerous and eventful, and in which men must exhibit some heroism. Of the writings of Pelagius there have been preserved to us in the works of Jerome (5th vol. of Martianay s ed., and llth vol. of Vallarsi s ed.) : (1) Com- mentani in Kpistolas Pauli ; (2) Epistola ad Demetriadem (also published sepa rately by Semler, Halle, 1775) ; (3) Llbellus Fidei. But in Augustine s various writings against Pelagianism (in the 10th vol., Bened. ed.) many passages are cited from the writings of Pelagius ; and in the appendix of the same volume a valuable collection of documents connected with the controversy will be found. In the ordinary histories of the church other authorities are mentioned, and reference need here be made only to Wiggers, Versuch. . . . des Augustinismus und I elag. (Hamburg, 1833 ; translated by Emerson, Andover, 1840) ; Worter, DerPelagiiuiUmus^ ed., Freiburg, 1874); Guizot, Histoire <1e la Civilisation en e, 5 lec/m) ; Mozley, Augustinian Doctrine of Predestination (London, 1855); trance, , , and Cunningham, Historical Theology (Edin., 1803). (M. D.) . _ PELAGIUS I., pope from 555 to 560, was a Roman by birth, and first appears in history at Constantinople in the rank of deacon, and as apocrisiarius of Pope Silverius, whose overthrow in favour of Vigilius his intrigues pro moted. Vigilius continued him in his diplomatic appoint ment, and he was sent by the emperor Justinian in 542 to Antioch on ecclesiastical business ; he afterwards took part in the synod at Gaza which deposed Paul of Alex andria. In his official position he had amassed some wealth, which on his return to Home he so employed among the poor as to secure for himself great popularity ; and, when Vigilius was summoned to Byzantium in 544, Pelagius, now archdeacon, was left behind as his vicar, and by his tact in dealing with Totila, the Gothic invader, succeeded in saving the citizens from murder and outrage. He appears subsequently to have followed his master to Constantinople, and there to have taken part in the Three Chapters controversy ; in 553, at all events, he signed the " constitutum " of Vigilius in favour of these, and for refusing, along with him, to accept the decrees of the fifth general council (the 2d of Constantinople, 553) shared his sentence of exile. Like Vigilius, he afterwards, how ever, condemned the chapters, and accordingly, when the citizens of Rome, through the mediation of Xarses, begged for the restoration of the pope and his clergy, both were recalled from banishment. The emperor now asked the Roman representatives whom they should prefer Vigilius or Pelagius and it may safely be presumed that their reply, to the effect that they would not choose the latter as long as the former was alive, was hardly such as Justinian had expected or wished. Both set out for Rome, but Vigilius died mysteriously on the way at Syracuse. Pelagius, as the nominee of Justinian, at once succeeded on his arrival in Rome, but most of the clergy, suspecting his orthodoxy, and believing him to have had some share in the unlooked- for removal of his predecessor, shunned his fellowship, and only two bishops and one presbyter could be got to take part in his ordination to the pontificate. He enjoyed, however, the support of Narses, and, after he had publicly purged himself of the charge of complicity in Vigilius s death by solemn oath in the church of St Peter, he met with toleration, at least so far as his own immediate diocese was concerned, the populace remembering his former charities and his success in dealing with Totila. The rest of the Western bishops, however, still held aloof from the man who, by condemning the Three Chapters, had put a slight, as they thought, upon the council of Chalcedon ; and the episcopate of Tuscany caused his name to be removed from the diptychs. This elicited from him a circular, in which he asserted his loyalty to the four general councils, and declared that in their action against the holy see the hostile bishops had been guilty of schism. The bishops of Liguria and ^Emilia, headed by the archbishop of Milan, and those of Istria and Venice, headed by Paulinus of Aquileia, also withheld their fellow ship from one who had taken part in the council of Con stantinople ; but Narses resisted the appeals of Pelagius, who would fain have invoked the secular arm. Childebert, king of the Franks, also, even after the pope had sent a confession of his faith, refused to interfere. Pelagius died on 3d March 560, and was succeeded by John III. PELAGIUS II., a native of Rome, but of Gothic descent, was pope from 578 to 590, having been conse crated successor of Benedict I., without awaiting the sanction of the emperor, on 27th November of the former year. To make his apologies for this irregularity he sent deacon Gregory, who afterwards became Pope Gregory the Great, as his apocrisiarius to Constantinople. In 585 he sought to heal the schism which had subsisted since the time of Pelagius I. in connexion with the Three Chapters controversy by writing to the bishops of Istria with the exhortation to "avoid foolish and unlearned questions," but his efforts as a peacemaker were without success. In 588 John, patriarch of Constantinople, by reviving the XVIII. 60