1. That Julian, bishop of Eclanum, held the chief place among the disciples of Coelestius, is already fully ascertained from the ecclesiastical records and from all the laws of the imperial decrees. He therefore, so long as St. Innocent, the first pope of that name (under whom he had obtained the rank of the episcopate), was alive, strove by various arts of dissimulation to conceal the wicked venom of that heresy; and under a veil of piety and charity toward the needy he attempted to screen the whole impiety of his soul. Nay more, if we give credence to Marius Mercator, this same Julian, in order to do a most welcome thing to the holy pontiff Innocent, openly and without any pretence whatever or wrapping of words, did not shrink from publicly condemning Pelagius and Coelestius as deserters of the Catholic faith.
Now the aforesaid Coelestius and Pelagius seem not to have been condemned then for the first time by Zosimus of holy memory, but by his predecessor of holy remembrance, Innocent, by whom Julian had been ordained; since after their condemnation, remaining in his communion right up to the death of the aforesaid Innocent and persevering in a sincere judgement, and communicating with the aforesaid condemner, together with him he too without doubt condemned Pelagius and Coelestius. Would then that Innocent had remained long among the living, or that Julian had met his death before that man's decease! For the Church would not have suffered such great calamities, nor would so many once most holy bishops of Campania and Italy
—those bishops, with Julian as their leader and standard-bearer, would not have stained the purity of the Catholic faith; nor, finally, would so many and so great writings, besprinkled with blasphemies and stuffed with impieties, have been sent back and forth, as it is most fully established happened through the onslaught and fury of the bishop of Eclanum. But what indeed Julian did, or what he attempted to contrive after Innocent's death, is most fully taught by the ecclesiastical records. For then, no longer able to restrain his hatred against the apostolic doctrine, as though become incapable of controlling his wrath, he openly taught the people those things which he had already learned from Coelestius; he did not fear to carp at and pluck at the most holy and moreover most learned bishops of the Catholic Church;
upon Augustine and the other Fathers of Africa he would call down curses, and, becoming daily worse, having first despised the authority, doctrine, and admonitions of St. Zosimus the pope, he led very many into bad faith. Then at last, having rejected the dogmatic epistle of the same supreme pontiff (which they call his Tractoria, and which all the bishops of the Catholic society had received with the utmost veneration of soul, as the rule of faith), he himself most shamelessly refused to subscribe to that faith together with the other bishops. 2. Yet he did not long delay to pay the penalties of such great wickednesses.
For, first cast down from the rank of the priesthood, then despoiled of his episcopal see, and at last, by imperial sanction proscribed from all the shores of Italy, he betook himself as an exile among the Easterners, finally cheated of every hope of ever being able to ascend either his own or any other man's episcopal throne. Others, on the contrary, of the bishops whom he had enlisted as associates in his wickedness, dreading above all the force, the magnitude, and the ignominy of the penalties, reckoned with themselves that it would be too shameful not to obey the judgements of the apostolic see; therefore, abandoning Julian and condemning Pelagius and Coelestius, they presented suppliant petitions to the apostolic see, by which, being mercifully received, they were restored to their own sees.
But others, who with obstinate mind did not fear to undergo the imperial and ecclesiastical penalties, were permanently deposed and stripped of office, and were driven beyond all the borders of Italy. The whole matter Marius Mercator set forth, in nearly these words, in the passage cited: 'These men' (namely Julian and the rest, his accomplices, refusing to subscribe to the epistle of Zosimus, and unwilling to act in agreement with those same Fathers), 'deposed and stripped of office not only by the imperial laws but also by the priestly statutes, were driven out of all Italy; of whom very many, coming to their senses and corrected from the aforesaid error, returned as suppliants to the apostolic see, and, being received, recovered their churches.' 3.
Moreover, as we recount these deeds of the most holy pontiff Zosimus from Marius Mercator, a most ample field would be opened to us for overturning all the falsehoods and calumnies with which Dissertation 13 On the African Councils is stuffed—which Paschasius Quesnel composed in hatred of the apostolic see. For in it, throwing everything into confusion and turning it topsy-turvy, he freely carps at the holy pontiff Zosimus, and, blaming him for excessive connivance with the Pelagians, vehemently attacks him; he describes the clerics of the Roman Church too as tinged with Pelagian soot; he extends the authority of the provincial councils in Africa beyond the due limits prescribed by the divine laws;
finally he attempted not only to diminish but even to cast down the very jurisdiction and dignity of the apostolic see, which the African Fathers then attended with the utmost reverence. But what of these impostures? He was able boldly to impose upon his own followers only, not upon us, who know most excellently from Prosper, in the Life of Augustine, that the African Fathers—then depending in the very highest degree upon the judgement of the apostolic see—never wished to assemble in a plenary synod until after the decree of Pope Zosimus had reached them. To which decree the two hundred and twelve Fathers, in order to lend support in all things, published eight canons, which are wrongly attributed to the second synod of Milevis.
'But these,' says the most learned Petavius, 'decree nothing against the Pelagians; and of those eight canons, the third, fourth, and fifth are cited by Pope Coelestine under the name of the Council of Carthage.' These things, however, we preferred to pass over in silence rather than to bring forward, since we do not intend at present to meet the individual falsehoods and frauds of the aforesaid dissertation and to refute them: especially since, for rejecting them, everyone has at hand a most abundant store of material, long ago prepared by the most eminent Cardinal Noris in his books On the History of the Pelagians.
Relying, then, upon his aids too, we have judged that only those things should be lightly touched upon which seem to pertain to the time of this heresy's rise, to its authors and standard-bearers, and finally to the deeds of a number of the Roman pontiffs; so that, namely, having prefaced a very brief history of these matters, we might prepare an easier way to those things which we presently undertake to set forth concerning the holy pontiff Leo. But the rest, which touch the cause of the African councils and vindicate the apostolic see from every stain, we have reserved to be dealt with elsewhere.