PROSPER OF AQUITAINE'S REFERENCES TO PALLADIUS

The teachings of Pelagius had inaugurated a vast discussion throughout the Christian Church on the subjects of grace, free will, predestination. Prosper of Aquitaine (390-465) wrote to Augustine in 428 concerning the Palagian situation in southern Gaul. He visited Rome in 431 in connection with the controversy. His Chronicle was a continuation of Jerome's, with a continuation from 378 to his own time: there seems to have been three editions, the first to 433, the second to 445, and the third to 455.

429. {Felix was raised to the patrician dignity, and Aetius was made Master of the Soldiers.}

The Pelagian Agricola, son of the Pelagian Bishop Severianus, insidiously corrupted the churches of Britain with his teachings. But, through the negotiations of the Deacon Palladius, Pope Celestine sent Germanus Bishop of Auxerre to act on his behalf, and he routed the heretics and directed the Britons to the Catholic faith. (Prospeo' s Chronicle)

431.{Nestorius was condemned, along with the heresy that bears his name, and with many Palagians who supported a dogma related to his, by a council of more than two hundred bishops assembled at Ephesus}.

Palladius was ordained by Pope Celestine and sent to the Irish believers in Christ as their first bishop.

(Prosper's Chronicle.)

440. And with no less active a concern, he (i.e. Pope Celestine) freed Britain from the same disease (ie. Palaginaism); when he shut out from their remote Ocean retreat certain enemies of grace who were in possession of their ancestral land. And, ordaining a bishop (Palladius) for the Irish, he made the barbarian island Christian while taking care to keep the Roman island Catholic." (Contra Collatorem)

FROM THE ANNALS OF ULSTER

[431] In the year 431 of the Incarnation of the Lord, Palladius was ordained bishop of the Irish by Celestine, bishop of Rome, and was sent to Ireland so that they might believe in Christ - in the eight year of Theodosius.

[432] The year of the Lord 432, according to Dionysius. Patrick reached Ireland in the ninth year of Theodosius Minor, the first year of the episcopate of Xistus, forty second bishop of the Church of Rome. So reckoned Bede and Marcelllinus and Isodore in their chronicles.

[439] Secundinus, Auxilius and Iserninus are sent -bishops themselves- to help Patrick

[444] Armagh was founded.

[461] Some place Patrick's death here.

[492] The Irish say that Patrick the archbishop died...and Vincent, in Speculum Historiarum, that Patrick was eighty years in Ireland preaching, and that God revived forty people for him. He founded 365 churches, made as many bishops and baptised 1,200.

[493] Gelasius was ordained seventh bishop of the Roman church and lived three years. Patrick, arch-apostle {apostle and martyr} of the Irish rested on the 17th of March in the sixtieth year since he had come to Ireland to baptise the Irish.