Norman James - Prosper of Aquitaine revisited: Gallic correspondent or resident papal adviser

Recent scholars have divided on the issue of Prosper’s residence in Rome after his documented appearance to appeal to Pope Celestine for support against the anti-predestinarian party in Gaul. Green [2008] following Markus [1986] has argued that Prosper subsequently remained in Gaul and minimised any later sojourn in Rome. He has used this argument to attack the case of James [1993] that Prosper was Leo’s specialist adviser and draftsman in a number of fields which drew on the evidence of Gennadius, Bede and Photius. Hwang [2009], following Valentin [1900] makes the assumption that Prosper returned to Rome in 440 in Leo’s entourage after his diplomatic mission to Gaul during that year. This paper argues the case that both assumptions are unwarranted. Markus’s hypothesis runs contrary to the grain of the available evidence and certainly he offers no proof that Prosper ever left the Urbs after 431, just as Hwang makes an unprovable assumption in positing Prosper’s return in 440.

The balance of probabilities favours Prosper’s long residence in Rome during, and possibly prior to, the pontificate of Leo the Great rather than the Aquitanian being a distant correspondent located in Gaul during much of his late career. The evidence is based on Gennadius‘s qualified report of Prosper’s involvement in the Tome; the emergence of his Praeteritorum as an ‘official’ statement of Roman teaching on grace in the papal archives even though it cunningly subverted Celestine’s studied neutrality over the question of predestination; the lack of any correspondence between Leo and Prosper despite the survival of Leo’s correspondence with the West in extenso; the lack of any dedications in Prosper’s works to Leo despite the warm relationship which Markus and Green posit; the complete omission of any reference in Leo’s works to Cassian’s refutation of Nestorianism commissioned by the future pope which can best be explained by the influence of Prosper in Rome; and the evidence of the Epistula ad Demetriadem, now generally attributed to Prosper. The upshot is to call into serious question the conclusions of Markus and Green explaining the parallels between the works of the pope and his Gallic associate as the influence of Leo on Prosper [Markus] or that Leo had merely read Prosper’s works [Green]. The paper reaffirms Prosper’s role as a specialist adviser to Leo the Great.