'He exasperated the local populace so much that they pitched him into his own flames.'

Matthew Graham continues his look at heretics throughout history with those connected to the letters P, Q and R  

Celts have always been troublemakers and so it should come as no surprise to find one of their number occupying a prominent position in the heresiarchal pantheon.

Pelagius (a Latinised form of Morgan) (c. 354 – c. 420) was an austere monk heralding from the British Isles who spent most of his life pursuing an ascetic existence in Rome.

Faced with the moral laxity for which that city was infamous, he concluded that the root cause of the turpitude actually lay with St Augustine’s concept of divine grace: if salvation came solely through the irresistible grace of God then it did not matter what you did since you were either already saved or never would be.

If, however, good works alone were sufficient to achieve salvation, as Pelagius believed, then the Romans were going to hell in a handbasket.

Consequences

Unfortunately for Pelagius, being personally responsible for one’s actions and salvation turned out to have far-reaching theological consequences.

If Adam just made bad choices, the whole notion of original sin immediately flies out the window. Death becomes a natural phenomenon and not a punishment. Babies must logically be born morally neutral and do not require baptizing.

Even Jesus ceases to be a saviour taking the sin of the world upon himself in the redemptive act of crucifixion, and becomes just a good teacher, a model example to us all.

Obviously such ideas did not go down well. St Jerome wrote that Pelagius was a huge corpulent man crammed with Irish porridge that dulled his memory. More serious, though, were the condemnations, accusations of heresy, excommunication and finally imperial censure.

Pelagius faded into obscurity in exile in Palestine but his heresy continued to plague the Church for the next hundred years. It seems to have been particularly popular in Britain causing St Germanus of Auxerre to be sent there twice to deal with it, the first time twenty years after the Roman withdrawal.

The heresy resurfaced during the Protestant Reformation and was condemned across Europe, including in the Thirty Nine Articles of the Church of England where Article 9 specifically states: “Original sin standeth not in the following of Adam, (as the Pelagians do vainly talk)”.

Underestimated

It would seem that St Jerome underestimated the staying power that porridge can confer.

In contrast to the Pelagian emphasis on personal responsibility, the Beguine movement to which Marguerite Porete (d. 1310) belonged stressed personal freedom, particularly from the strictures and structures of the Church. Marguerite, a French mystic, wrote a book in Old French called “The Mirror of Simple Souls” which described the seven stages of annihilation that the soul must go through on its path to true communion with God through Love.

Although warned that her work was heretical – more for not being in Latin than for its actual content, she continued to publish and was arrested by the authorities.

She spent 18 months languishing in a Parisian jail before a show trial. 21 theologians declared her work heretical but Marguerite remained silent throughout, with a plain refusal to elaborate, explain or deny her teachings.

She reputedly went to the stake in total silence and endured her end without a word. Her book continued to be circulated and became one of the great works of mediaeval mysticism but known as an anonymous work. It was only in 1965 that her authorship was reestablished.

Extreme

We’ll end this time with an extreme heretic: Peter of Bruys (fl. 1104 – 31) basically had it in for the Church structure and fabric, transubstantiation, good works and prayers, and infant baptism amongst others.

He reserved a particular antipathy, however, for the cross. During a public burning of crosses in St Gilles near Nimes in 1131, he exasperated the local populace so much that they pitched him into his own flames.

A clear case of the people taking personal responsibility for their personal freedom.

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