Ali Bonner: The Impact of the Myth of ‘Pelagianism’: Gildas’ De excidio Britonum

This paper will examine the impact of the myth of ‘Pelagianism’ as it is seen in the sixth‑century text De excidio Britonum, written by the British monk Gildas. The creation and condemnation of the fictitious ‘Pelagianism’, which proposed a false binary choice between a model in which God caused all human virtue and a model in which man was solely responsible for his own virtue, left Christians who held that man and God co‑operated in a difficult situation. There is much textual evidence that many Christians rejected the interpretation of predestination as preordainment and held that man played some part in his own goodness. A close reading of Gildas’ De excidio helps us to understand the contemporary theological context.