Pelagius
354 CE–418 CE · Carthage
Pelagius (c. 354 - after 418) was a British-born ascetic and theologian active in Rome who taught that human beings could take the first steps toward salvation by their own free will, without the prior help of divine grace - the view later called Pelagianism, which also questioned the inherited guilt of original sin. Vigorously opposed by Augustine, his teaching was condemned at the Council of Carthage (418); the wider Pelagian movement was again condemned at the Council of Ephesus (431). He spent his final years in Palestine, where his death date is uncertain.
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RomeרומאItaly
What they did here
Pelagius taught and gathered a following in Rome until the city's sack in 410, urging a rigorous asceticism grounded in human free will.
Rome in this era
Under Constantine and his successors, Rome flourished as a Christian capital alongside Constantinople, with its bishop asserting primacy; Pope Leo I's 'Tome' was decisive at the Council of Chalcedon (451), and the city saw the construction of great basilicas including St. Peter's.
About Rome
# Rome In the late eleventh and twelfth centuries, Rome lay within the Papal States, the territorial domain of the Catholic Church, though its temporal glory as an empire had long faded. The city sprawled across its famous hills along the Tiber River, a landscape of crumbling ancient monuments, medieval fortifications, and Romanesque churches that dominated the skyline. The Jewish community of Rome was among Europe's most ancient, tracing roots to the second century BCE, and it flourished in a precarious but resilient position under papal authority; while confined to restricted quarters and subject to discriminatory laws, Roman Jews maintained a sophisticated intellectual and commercial life, with Hebrew scholarship and biblical commentary flourishing despite—or perhaps because of—the community's isolation. The Jewish quarter itself, densely packed and vibrant, became a center of learning where skilled scribes copied manuscripts and rabbinical discussions drew on centuries of local tradition. What made Rome extraordinary for Torah study was not merely its learned scholars but the tangible presence of antiquity itself: the community lived amid the ruins of pagan temples and Roman law, giving their interpretations of Jewish law a unique resonance, as if they were rebuilding Jewish civilization in the very streets where Roman power had once reigned supreme.
In Rome at the same time
Ammianus Marcellinus, Jerome, Calcidius, Augustine of Hippo, John Cassian, Claudian
Works
No works attributed in the corpus yet.