Julian of Eclanum
Julian of Eclanum (
Life
Julian was born in Apulia. His father was an Italian bishop named Memor or Memorius and his mother a noblewoman named Juliana. Augustine of Hippo was intimate with the family, and wrote of them in terms of great affection and respect. Around 404 Julian became a lector in the church over which his father presided, and while holding that office married a layperson named Titia.
Connections with Pelagianism
When the cases of
About the same time Julian addressed a letter to Rufus, bishop of Thessalonica (410–431), on his own behalf and that of 18 fellow-recusants. Rufus was vicarius of the Roman see in Illyricum[8] and just then in serious collision with Atticus the patriarch of Constantinople. As Atticus was a strenuous opponent of the Pelagians,[9] Julian and his brethren perhaps thought Rufus might be persuaded to favour them.[10] Zosimus died on 26 December 418 and was succeeded by Boniface I on 10 April 419. The letter of Julian to Rufus, with another to the clergy of Rome which he denied to be his,[5] were answered by Augustine in his Contra Duas Epistolas Pelagianorum. Julian avows an earnest desire to gain the aid of the Oriental bishops against the "profanity of Manicheans," for so he styles the Catholics;[11] accuses Zosimus of tergiversation and the Roman clergy of having been unduly influenced in their condemnation of the Pelagians;[12] charges both with various heresies;[13] and protests that by their means the subscriptions of nearly all the Western bishops had been uncanonically extorted to a dogma which he characterizes as "non minus stultum quam impium".[14] Garnier assigns the letter to Rufus and the two to Zosimus to 418 CE.[15]
When Julian addressed his two letters to Zosimus he was preparing a reply to the first of Augustine's two books de Nuptiis et Concupiscentia,
When driven from the West, Julian and some of his fellow-exiles went into
Towards the close of 430 Celestine convened a council at Rome, which condemned Julian and others once more.[36]
Last years
Whither he went from Constantinople does not appear, but he with other Pelagians seem to have accompanied
Sixtus III, the successor of Celestine (31 July 432) when a presbyter, had favoured the Pelagians, much to the grief of Augustine.[40] Julian attempted to recover his lost position through him, but Sixtus evidently treated him with severity, mainly at the instigation of Leo, then a presbyter, who became his successor, 440 CE.[41] When pontiff himself, Leo showed the same spirit toward the Pelagians, especially toward Julian.[42] We hear no more of Julian until his death in Sicily, c. 454[43]). Some years after his death Julian was again condemned by Joannes Talaia, bishop of Nola around 484.
Julian was an able and a learned man. Gennadius speaks of him as "vir acer ingenio, in divinis Scripturis doctus, Graeca et Latina lingua scholasticus". Besides his works already mentioned, Bede speaks of his Opuscula on the Canticles, and among them of a "libellus" de Amore, and a "libellus" de Bono Constantiae, both of which he charges with Pelagianism, giving from each some extracts.[44] Garnier claims Julian as the translator of the Libellus Fidei a Rufino Palaestinae Provinciae Presbytero, which he has published in his edition of Marius Mercator,[45] and as the author of the liber Definitionum seu Ratiocinationem, to which Augustine replied in his de Perfectione Justitiae.[46]
Julian's theology
A sympathetic and accessible account of Julian's Pelagian theology can be found in chapter 32 of Peter Brown's Augustine of Hippo: A Biography (1967, 2000). From the year 419 on, Julian and St. Augustine waged a well-matched war of books, pamphlets, letters, and sermons from which we gain a clear idea of their contrasting views. Their debate is still alive today:
Sin and will: Some Pelagians denied that the original sin of Adam was transmitted to all humans at birth. Babies, therefore, need not be baptized: they are born innocent. Adult baptism does remit sins, but for the Pelagian, this meant that the baptized Christian, after this dramatic fresh start, was now free to perfect himself alone, with or without the aid of the Church. It is worth noting that in the surviving fragments of Pelagius' writings, Pelagius writes that infants must be baptized and that there is no goodness without grace. Julian himself wrote a letter to Rome in which he said “We confess that the grace of Christ is necessary to all, both to grown-up people and to infants; and we anathematize those who say that a child born of two baptized people ought not to be baptized.” He also affirmed that grace was necessary for all: “We maintain that men are the work of God, and that no one is forced unwillingly by His power either into evil or good, but that man does either good or ill of his own will; but that in a good work he is always assisted by God’s grace, while in evil he is incited by the suggestions of the devil.” This is in contrast to Augustinian views of original sin. Pelagians viewed sin as a matter of will and not of nature, as a choice that can be reversed. Strengthened by baptism, everyone possesses enough self-control to reject evil. (In this, Pelagians drew on pagan Stoicism.) For Augustine, such optimism was dangerously naive: human will is caught in a dark internal labyrinth of untamable compulsions. No one is strong enough to save himself without God's grace and the sacraments of the Church.
The equity of God: Julian drew on the Jewish equation of divinity and law. For him, our concept of law as something rational, sensible, and proportionate is divine in origin, and mirrors the attributes of God himself. An unjust God is inconceivable as God. For Pelagians, God would not condemn every human because of one sin committed by Adam; God would not condemn to infinite torment those whose sins were finite or who had simply never heard of Christ (again, Pelagius appears to have felt differently in some of his fragments, as he claimed baptism was required for salvation for anyone). Augustine dismissed such notions of justice as too fallible to be attributed to God, whose ways are inscrutable. Pelagians rejected predestination as incompatible with the freedom of each person to effect his own salvation. Julian charged that Augustine was still Manichean, if only in temperament. A charge argued against by Augustine in Against Julian.
Sexuality: As Brown puts it, “Julian spoke boldly of the sexual instinct as a sixth sense of the body, as a [morally] neutral energy that might be used well...delicately poised between reason and animal feeling.” (1), . Julian said “We say that the sexual impulse—that is, that the virility itself, without which there can be no intercourse—is ordained by God.”.
Social reform: Julian's Pelagianism presented itself as a purifying reform movement that sought to inspire morally perfected Christians to remake Roman society from the inside out, countering its brutality and injustice.
Notes
- ^ Herbermann, Charles, ed. (1913). Catholic Encyclopedia. New York: Robert Appleton Company. .
- ^ Commonit. iii. 2.
- ^ August, cont. Julian. i. 13.
- ^ Mar. Merc. Commonit. iii. 1.
- ^ a b August. Op. Imp. i. 18.
- ^ Subnot. vi. 10–13, ix. 3.
- ^ Pagi, Critic. 418 CE, lvii.
- ^ Innocent's ep. to Rufus on 17 June 412 in Mansi, viii. 751.
- ^ Noris, Opp. iv. 884.
- ^ ib. i. 201, 202.
- ^ cont. Duas. Ep. ii. 1.
- ^ ii. 3.
- ^ ii. 2–5.
- ^ iv. 8, § 20 init.
- Migne, 292.
- ^ Mar. Merc. Subnot. praef. § 7.
- ^ ib. iii.
- ^ August. de Nuptiis et Concupisc. ii. 4, § 11.
- ^ August. Retract. ii. 53.
- ^ lib. ii. passim.
- ^ iii. 1, vi. 2.
- ^ Mar. Merc. Theod. Mops. praef. § 2.
- ^ Subnot. praef. § 1, Symb. Theod. Mops. praef. § 2.
- ^ Phot. Bibl. Cod. 177; Mar. Merc. Garnier, ad Prim. Partem, diss. vi.
- ^ Co. Eph. 431 CE, actio v. in Mansi, iv. 1337; Mar. Merc. Subnot. praef.
- ^ Subnot. passim
- ^ August. Opp. t. x. in Patrologia Latina xlv. 1050.
- ^ Prosper. contra Collator. xxi. 2, in Patr. Lat. li. 271.
- ^ Mar. Merc. Symb. Theod. Mops. praef. § 3; Garnier, ad Prim. Part. diss. ii. Migne, 35.
- ^ Garnier, u.s. 361; Coelest. ad Nestor. in Mansi iv. 1025.
- ^ Mar. Merc. Nestor. Tract. praef. § 1.
- ^ Cod. Theod. XVI. v. 65 on 30 May 428; Socr. H. E. vii. 29.
- ^ Nestor. Ep. to Celest. in Mansi, iv. 1022, 1023.
- ^ u.s. Migne, 189 seq.
- ^ Mar. Merc. Commonit. praef. § 1.
- ^ Garnier, u.s. diss. ii.
- ^ lib. ix. ind. ii. ep. 49 in Patr. Lat., xv. lxxvii. 981.
- ^ Opp. i. 362.
- ^ Relat. u.s.; Mar. Merc. Nestor. Tract. praef. § 2.
- ^ Ep. 174.
- ^ Prosper. Chron. s.a. 439.
- ^ de Promiss. Dei, pt. iv. c. 6 in Patr. Lat. li. 843.
- ^ Gennad. Script. Eccl. xlv. in Patr. Lat. lviii. 1084; Garnier, u.s. diss. i. Migne, 29.
- ^ in Cantica, praef. Migne, 1065–1077.
- ^ ad Primam Partem, dissert. v. Migne, 449, dessert. vi. Migne, 623.
- ^ Note 6 in Mar. Merc. Subnot. Migne, 145, 146). Cf. A: Bruckner, Julian von Eclanum (Leipz. 1897) in Texte und Untersuch. xv. 3.
References
- This article includes content derived from the public domain Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia of Religious Knowledge, 1914.
- Brown, Peter, Augustine of Hippo: A Biography (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000), p. 393.
- Josef Loessl, Julian von Aeclanum. Studien zu seinem Leben, seinem Werk, seiner Lehre und ihrer Ueberlieferung (Leiden, Brill, 2001) (Vigiliae Christianae, Supplements, 60).
- Mathjis Lamberigts, "The Philosophical and Theological Background of Julian of Aeclanum's Concept of Concupiscence", in Therese Fuhrer (hg), Die christlich-philosophischen Diskurse der Spätantike: Texte, Personen, Institutionen: Akten der Tagung vom 22.-25. Februar 2006 am Zentrum für Antike und Moderne der Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg (Stuttgart, Franz Steiner Verlag, 2008) (Philosophie der Antike, 28).
- Squires, Stuart. The Pelagian Controversy: An Introduction to the Enemies of Grace and the Conspiracy of Lost Souls. Eugene: Wipf and Stock, 2019.
External links
- Letter To Rome by Julian of Eclanum
- Letter To Rufus of Thessalonica by Julian of Eclanum