Pelagius
354 CE–418 CE · Rome
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.
Contested teaching
The Council of Carthage (418) condemned Pelagius's teaching that the will can turn to God without prior grace; the Pelagian movement was again condemned at the Council of Ephesus (431).
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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, on the Tiber in central Italy, grew from an Iron Age settlement into the capital of the Roman Republic and then of an empire that by the 1st century CE ruled the whole Mediterranean. Its Jewish community, attested from the 2nd century BCE, is among the oldest in Europe. Christian tradition holds that the apostles Peter and Paul died there, and the city became the seat of the popes. After the Western Empire ended in 476 it passed to Gothic kings, to Byzantium and then to papal rule as capital of the Papal States, until it became the capital of unified Italy in 1871. Vatican City, independent since 1929, lies within it.
In Rome at the same time
Pope St. Damasus I, Pope St. Siricius, Jerome, Augustine of Hippo, John Cassian, Pope St. Innocent I
Across the traditions, in Rome at the same time
In the same place & time
Sages whose lives overlapped with Pelagius’s in the same cities, drawn from their recorded journeys.
Across the traditions
In the same tradition
Pope St. Damasus I, Pope St. Siricius, Jerome, Augustine of Hippo, John Cassian, Pope St. Innocent I, Pope St. Anastasius I, Isaac of Antioch
The world in their lifetime
Thinkers and teachers of other traditions whose lives overlapped with Pelagius’s — a glimpse of the wider world they lived in. Drawn purely from recorded birth and death years.
Works
No works attributed in the corpus yet.