Prosper of Aquitaine

Saint Prosper of Aquitaine
Born	c. 390 Roman province of Aquitaine
Died	c. 455 Rome, Praet. prefecture of Italy
Venerated in	Roman Catholic Church Eastern Orthodox Church
Feast	June 25/July 7th

Saint Prosper of Aquitaine (Latin: Prosper Aquitanus; c. 390 – c. 455 AD), a Christian writer and disciple of Saint Augustine of Hippo, was the first continuator of Jerome's Universal Chronicle.

Prosper was a native of Aquitaine, and seems to have been educated at Marseilles. By 429 he was corresponding with Augustine. In 431 he appeared in Rome to interview Pope Celestine I regarding the teachings of Augustine; there is no further trace of him until 440, the first year of the pontificate of Pope Leo I, who had been in Gaul, where he may have met Prosper. In any case Prosper was soon in Rome, attached to the pope in some secretarial or notarial capacity. Gennadius of Massilia's De viris illustribus (lxxxiv, 89) repeats the tradition that Prosper dictated the famous letters of Leo I against Eutyches. The date of his death is not known, but his chronicle goes as far as 455, and the fact that the chronicler Marcellinus mentions him under the year 463 seems to indicate that his death was shortly after that date.

Prosper was a layman, but he threw himself with ardour into the religious controversies of his day, defending Augustine and propagating orthodoxy. In his De vocatione omnium gentium ("The Call of all Nations"), in which the issues of the call to the Gentiles is discussed in the light of Augustine's doctrine of Grace, Prosper appears as the first of the medieval Augustinians.

The Pelagians were attacked in a glowing polemical poem of about 1000 lines, Adversus ingratos, written about 430. The theme, dogma quod ... pestifero vomuit coluber sermone Britannus, is relieved by a treatment not lacking in liveliness and in classical measures. After Augustine's death he wrote three series of Augustinian defences, especially against Saint Vincent of Lerins (Pro Augustino responsiones).

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