Pelagia biography

Pelagi Pelagius approx. The name "Pelagia", which was fixed after him, was either a Greek alteration of his genuine name, or by a navigation in monasticism. Reliable news of him begin only with his arrival in Italy. Here he attracted attention with good customs, led the monastic Veluti Monachus and earned the friendship of St. Pavlin, Bishop of Nolan. For about a year he arrived in Rome, where he was amazed at the moral licentiousness of both laity and clergy, justified by the weakness of human nature before the irresistible power of sin.

He opposed this with the assertion that there is no irresistible sin: if he is a necessity, then this is not a sin, but if a matter of will, then it can be avoided. Pelagia outlined his main views in interpretations on the Apostle Paul [1], as well as in his message to Dimitriad. During a trip to Constantinople, he met St. John Chrysostom and studied the exegetics according to the works of Origen.

It is also known that he criticized the translation of the Bible of the Blessed Jerome. The modest and peaceful Pelagia tried to express his thoughts in generally accepted expressions, avoiding a direct clash with church consciousness; But the main follower of his ideas, the brave and ambitious patricians of the Kelesty, brought the matter to the break with the church.

In the year, they arrived together in Africa, from where Pelagia, having traveled to the blessed Augustine, Bishop Ipponian, and was friendly due to his secrecy, he went to Palestine. Meanwhile, the Kelesty, who remained in Carthage and openly expressing his views, was accused before the bishops gathered there in the following heretical positions: Adam would have died if he had not sinned; His sin is his own business and cannot be sane to all of humanity; Infants are born in the state in which Adam was before falling, and do not need baptism for eternal bliss; Before Christ and after him there were people sinless; The law also leads to the kingdom of heaven as the Gospel; As the fall of Adam was not the cause of death, so the resurrection of Christ is not the cause of our resurrection.

Realized by Augustine in two treatises and awarded to the Cabinet Cathedral in the year to excommunicate, Kelesty went to Ephesus, where he managed to get the sanitary. Meanwhile, Pelagia gained the trust of the Palestinian bishops and was justified by them on two local cathedrals - in Jerusalem and Diospol, in the year, on charges, Oro -Genea excited by Pavel. The main indictment belonged to the statement of Pelagia that "every person can easily be sinless, if only he wants." Pelagius answered: "Yes, I said that you can be sinless, but did not say that it was possible without the help of God." His explanations were found satisfactory, but the final decision of the case was provided to Bishop of Roman.

Pelagius sent him his confession of faith, in which, spreading about the truths of the universally recognized, he bypassed the essence of the controversial question. Meanwhile, a strong struggle against Pelagianism continued in Africa. The new cathedral in Carthage in the year, having spread the condemnation of Kelestia and his teacher Pelagia, turned to Pope Innocent I for confirming his sentence, which he received.

The acquittal of Pelagia to the pope was considered by the successor of Innocent Zosima, to which the Kelesty also turned to, who arrived in Rome through Constantinople where Bishop Attic rejected him as a heretic. In his written statement, the Kelestius spoke out more and clearer than Pelagia, but insisted on his former statement that his teaching is a matter of mental research, and not heresy, since it does not apply to the issues of faith, on which he accepts everything that is accepted by the pope and condemns everything that is condemned to them.

Such a statement of the student, along with the plausible theological interpretations of the teacher, prompted the pope to turn to the African bishops with a message in favor of the accused. But the Africans were not inferior; At several cathedrals, finally on Concilium Generale in Carthage G., after some hesitation, Zosima abandoned his intercession. By the decree of Emperor Honorius, ordinary measures were prescribed in the year against the founders and adherents of the new heresy, and the pope announced her conviction in the message to the whole church.

Several Italian bishops did not obey, between them Julian Eklan, a man of brilliant talents; Having left his department, he became a zealous interpreter and defender of the ideas Pelagia against Augustine, whose teaching about insurmountable grace and predestination, he skillfully convicted of a hidden manichaeism. The successor of Zosima, Vonifatiy, encouraging Augustine to an enhanced controversy against Pelagianism, tried at the same time, but unsuccessfully, to eradicate heresy with the help of secular power.

Pelagia and Kelesty came off the stage, and their traces are lost somewhere in the east. However, the disputes soon flared up with renewed vigor, since the young Italian bishop Julian Eclansky refused to recognize the condemnation, he went into exile, but did not stop exchanging polemic works with Augustine.Julian charged against Augustine himself, saying that Augustine’s arguments about carnal lust were resurrected by purely Manichaean ideas about the fundamental viciousness of sexual activity.

Augustine died in, and his last answer to Julian remained incomplete. Julian Eklan was the last real Pelagian, but the echoes of the Pelagian disputes sounded for a very long time. Literature the main sources for the teachings of Pelagia and its closest followers, except for the works of Augustine and Jerome: Paul. Orosius, "Apologeticus Contra Pel. Vossil," Historia de Controversis, Quas Pelagius etc.

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