Appendix: Section 85 and Pope Celestine’s Letter

The Commonitory

Commonitory

Appendix: Section 85 and Pope Celestine’s Letter

Celestine’s letter was addressed to certain bishops of southern Gaul, who are named one by one. It appears that Prosper and Hilary had made a journey to Rome, where they then were, to complain to Celestine that certain bishops of southern Gaul were conniving at the unsound teaching of their clergy. They complained too of the disrespectful way these same clergy treated the memory of Augustine, who had then recently died.

Celestine writes to these bishops and blames them for conniving at a fault which, he says, they make their own by their silence. Then he goes on to charge them, as in the passage quoted in the text, “Rebuke these people; restrain their freedom to preach. If this is so, let novelty cease to assail antiquity; let restlessness cease to disturb the church’s peace.” Then, after some further urging, he adds, “We cannot wonder that they attack the living like this, when they do not shrink from trying to blacken the memory of the departed. With Augustine, whom all men everywhere loved and honored, we always held communion. Let a stop be put to this spirit of disparagement, which unhappily is growing.”

The way Vincent deals with this letter has very commonly been thought, and with reason, to show a Semipelagian leaning. His “if this is so,” stressed by being repeated again and again, quite excitedly, as we would say, shows a clear wish to shift the charge of novelty from those against whom it had been brought and to fasten it on the opposite party. “Who are the bringers of novelty? The clergy of Marseilles, as Prosper describes them, or their slanderers? Not the clergy of Marseilles: everyone knows they appeal to antiquity. Not the clergy of Marseilles, but Prosper and the rest of Augustine’s followers.” The feeling toward Augustine on the part of the clergy of Marseilles, as Celestine’s letter shows it, fits well with the spirit of section 69 above. See the note on that section, and Noris’s remarks in his History of the Pelagians, pages 246 to 248.