Baring-Gould’s sources: Roman Martyrology. Usuardus, Ado, Notker, Wandelbert, &c. Authority: — The fabulous Acts in Vincent of Beauvais, Spec. Hist, S. Marinus is said to have been a senator of Rome, arrested by the prefect Marcian, under the emperor Numerian. He was placed on the rack, and tom with hooks like a slave. He was afterwards cast on a gridiron, that he might be fried, but the fire went out, and a dew fell over him, and I soothed his tortured limbs. He was next exposed to wild I I beasts, but they would not touch him. He was led a < second time before the altars of the gods, and the idols fell, S. Zosimus.

Land were broken. He was then decapitated. There is no evidence that Numerian persecuted. The story of Marinus manifestly belongs to the region of romance. & ZOSIMUS, POPE.

[Roman Martyrology.] Zosimus was a Greek, son of a certain Abraham. He was called to the helm of the Church on the death of Innocent I., in the reign of Arcadius and Honorius.

One of the first acts of Zosimus was to annul the decisions of his predecessor, Innocent, on the Pelagian [followers of Pelagius, who taught people could be good without God’s grace] heresy, and to absolve the men whom Innocent, if he had not branded with an anathema, had declared deserving to be cut off from the communion of the faithful Pelagius had drawn up an elaborate creed, which he purposed to submit to Innocent; it touched but briefly on the freedom of the will and the necessity of Divine grace, and entered minutely with orthodox zeal into the subtle questions of the Divinity of Christ ‘and the nature of the Godhead.

Ccelestius, the friend and fellow-apostle with Pelagius of man’s freedom of determination against the fatalism which Augustine was introducing into Western theology, had been cast out of Constantinople by the patriarch [the title of the bishops of the great ancient sees: Rome, Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch, Jerusalem] Acacius. He went to Rome, and threw himself at the feet of Zosimus, and bade him hear the case, and adjudicate on his views with impartiality.

A solemn hearing was appointed in the basilica of S. Clement Ccelestius was heard with patience, even with favour; and Zosimus drew up a letter to the African bishops, who had condemned the teaching of Coelestius and Pelagius, in which he proclaimed Coelestius orthodox, in full communion with the Catholic Church and the see of Rome [a bishop’s “see” is his diocese, named from his seat (Latin sedes)], condemned the decision of the council of Carthage, and threatened the chief opponents of Pelagianism, Heros and Lazarus, with excommunication and deposition. A letter had arrived at Rome from Praylus, bishop of Jerusalem, written in favour of Pelagius. Zosimus not only had this read out before the council in S. Clement’s, but also sent a second letter to the African Church, in which he again unhesitatingly asserted the complete exculpation of Pelagius and Coelestius, and denounced the bishops assembled at Carthage as guilty of error, drawn into it by miserable delators of their brethren.

On the reception of these letters, the second of which was written in September, 417, the African bishops met in synod in Carthage, and sent a synodal letter to Pope Zosimus, declaring that “ the sentence against Pelagius and Coelestius, passed by Pope Innocent, ought to continue in force till both Pelagius and Coelestius had explicitly recognized the doctrine that we must in all our actions be sustained by the grace of God, by Jesus Christ, and that, not only for obtaining the knowledge, but also#the practice of righteousness, so that, without it, we can neither have, nor think, nor say, nor do anything truly holy and pious.”

The Africans sent this letter by the deacon Marcellinus, and Pope Zosimus answered in a letter, dated March 21, 418, in which he asserted that he had thoroughly examined the question of Pelagianism, and with his letter he sent all the documents on the matter to the Africans, that they also review their opposition, and recant. The close of the epistle of Zosimus, however, manifested a certain amount of hesitation in the mind of the Pope. A suspicion seems to have entered it, provoked by the earnest remonstrances and arguS. Zosimus.

ments of S. Augustine, that he had been on the wrong path. He consented to stay all further proceedings in the affair of Coelestius.

It was time for the Pope to retrace his precipitate course. Augustine and the African bishops had called to their aid a more powerful ally than even the bishop of Rome. While the Pope was ptill maintaining the orthodoxy of Pelagius, or had begun to waver, an imperial edict was issued from the court of Ravenna, peremptorily deciding on this abstruse question of theology. The law was dated April 30, 418, and in May a council of about two hundred African bishops assembled at Carthage to renew emphatically the condemnation of the doctrine of Pelagius and Coelestius. By the law of Honorius it became a crime against the State to be visited with civil penalties, to assert that Adam was bom liable to death. Pelagius and Coelestius were condemned by name, and, without hearing or appeal, to banishment from Rome. Informers were invited or commanded to apprehend, to drag before the tribunals, and to accuse the maintainers of the freedom of the human will, and its power to impel man to live a moral life, unfatally constrained by grace. Confiscation of goods and perpetual exile were to be the lot of the accomplices and followers of the heresiarchs. Augustine had triumphed, by calling to his aid the sword of the State to control those whom he could not convince with pen or tongue.

Zosimus was frightened. He hastily called Coelestius to reappear before him, and restate his case. But the proscribed fugitive, under the ban of the law, expelled from Rome, could not reappear. He fled, and Zosimus precipitately hasted to undo what he had done, and place himself in sympathy with the emperor. He condemned and anathematized the doctrines of Pelagius and Coelestius, which he had recently declared orthodox, and excommunicated the heretics. Nor was this all He sent an encyclical letter to the bishops of Christendom, requiring them to sign an anathema against Pelagius and his disciples. Eighteen bishops alone, of those who received this letter, refused to condemn their fellowChrisdans unheard. They turned against Zosimus his own language to the African bishops, in which he had accused their precipitancy and injustice in condemning these very men without process or trial, and appealed to the hearing of a general council. Among these bishops was Julian of Eclana.1 Zosimus, indignant at this appeal, flung his anathema at Julian and the other recalcitrants. Julian’s demand, however, met at first with some favour with the emperor. But Augustine left no stone unturned to prevent the assembly of a council, of the judgment of which he was doubtful. If we may trust Julian, he did not disdain to use bribery to excite those who had the ear of the feeble Honorius to dissuade him from this perilous attempt.

Before the case of Pelagianism was settled, another cause of misunderstanding arose between the African Church and the See of Rome. Apiarius, an African priest, had been degraded and excommunicated by his bishop, Urbanus of Sicca. He then went to Rome, and complained to the Pope, who took up his cause with much warmth, and peremptorily demanded his restoration. The African prelates were indignant at this interference, as it was a direct infringement of a canon they had passed in the May council, 418, forbidding a priest or deacon to appeal beyond the sea against his bishop. Zosimus thereupon sent three legates to Africa, and Archbishop Aurelius of Carthage assembled a synod to receive them. The legates of Zosimus announced 1 He was the son of a bishop, a great friend of Augustine. He married, after he was in Orders, the daughter of the bishop of Benerentum, and S. Paulinus of NoU wrote their EpUhalamium.

5*. yarlath. that they purposed excommunicating Urbanus of Sicca, unless he at once restored Apiarius. The Pope also complained of the African bishops forbidding appeals to Rome, and quoted through his legates certain canons of Sardica, which he pretended had been passed at Nicaea. The bishops assembled could not find the canons in their copies of the decrees of Nicaea, and were perplexed. They wrote to Rome to state their difficulty, requesting the Pope to examine the copies of the canons of Nicaea at Rome, and they wrote to Antioch, Alexandria, and Constantinople, to obtain copies of the Greek version of the canons. In the meantime, in deference to the Pope, Apiarius was, on his own petition, so far restored that his rank of priest was allowed him, but he was forbidden to officiate in the Church of Sicca. The answer of the African bishops did not reach Rome till Zosimus was dead.