other · 411 · Carthage
Pelagius passed through Africa in 410 with the refugees from the sack of Rome and went on to Palestine. Caelestius, his ablest follower and by training a lawyer, stayed and applied for ordination at Carthage — and was accused instead. The charges are the useful part, because they are propositions rather than a tendency: that Adam was created mortal and would have died whether he sinned or not; that his sin injured himself alone and not the human race; that infants at birth are in the state Adam was in before the fall; that the law brings men to the kingdom as well as the gospel does; that there were sinless men before Christ. Asked to condemn them, he said the question of the transmission of sin was open in the church and he would not. He was refused ordination and excommunicated, went to Ephesus and was ordained there, and the argument followed him for twenty years. He is worth distinguishing from Pelagius, who wrote more carefully and was acquitted at Diospolis in 415 by a synod that Caelestius would never have satisfied: the lawyer stated the position sharply enough to be condemned, and the master was condemned in the end for what the disciple had said.
Which of the two was actually condemned first, and for what?
Caelestius, at Carthage in 411, for six propositions he would not withdraw.