Prudentius of Troyes

Happy New Year! In this post I want to inform our readers of some new books on eschatology and the theology of grace in early and medieval Christian history. On eschatology, they are:

T.C. Schmidt, transl., Hippolytus of Rome: Commentary on Daniel and ‘Chronicon’ (Georgias Press, 2017).

Peter of John Olivi, Commentary on the Apocalypse. Translation, Notes, and Introduction by Warren Lewis (Franciscan Institute Publications, 2017). This is a large commentary written in the year 1298.

On the theology of grace, most of which relate to the ninth-century controversy over divine predestination, are the following books:

Matthew Bryan Gillis, Heresy and Dissent in the Carolingian Empire: The Case of Gottschalk of Orbais (Oxford University Press, 2017).

Rachel Stone and Charles West, eds., Hincmar of Rheims: Life and Work (Manchester University Press, 2015).

Jared G. Wielfaert, Prudentius of Troyes (d. 861) and the Reception of the Patristic Tradition in the Carolingian Era (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Toronto, 2015). Available from ProQuest.

Guido Stucco, The Doctrine of Predestination in Catholic Scholasticism (2017).

Also, the following articles on the Gottschalk controversy may be of interest:

Brian Matz, “Augustine in the Predestination Controversy of the Ninth Century, Part 1: The Double Predestinarians Gottschalk of Orbais and Ratramnus of Corbie,” Augustinian Studies 46:2 (2015):155-184.

Jenny Smith, “As if Augustine Had Said: Textual Interpretation and Augustinian Ambiguity in a Medieval Debate on Predestination,” Past Imperfect 19 (2016)

Jenny Smith, “The Rebellious Monk Gottschalk of Orbais: Defining Heresy in a Medieval Debate on Predestination.” Both of Ms. Smith’s articles can be found on line.

Happy reading and wishing all of our readers a blessed 2018.

Frank

Prudentius of Troyes was one of the bishops in attendance at the Council of Quierzy in 849, which defrocked Gottschalk of Orbais, beat him almost to death, and made him throw his writings into a fire. He also assented to the canons of a council in the mid-850s which was directed against the predestinarian theology of Gottschalk.

His Tractoria shows that a little later in life Prudentius changed his views signficantly and took a very strong stand on grace against Hincmar of Reims, the archbishop who held Gottschalk in prision for twenty years for his theology of grace.

This article, recently published in Kerux 25:1 (May 2010):11-23, summarizes Prudentius’ extant writings and includes an English translation of his Tractoria. Enjoy!

Read the whole article, entitled “The Tractoria of Prudentius of Troyes (d. 861)” in PDF format.

The opening paragraph:

When the doctrine of predestination, the relationship of grace to free will, and the extent of Christ’s atonement became topics of debate in the mid-ninth century, Gottschalk of Orbais was not alone in asserting the inability of the human will to choose good apart from special enabling grace, God’s predestination of the elect to salvation and the reprobate to merited punishment, and the shedding of Christ’s blood for all believers. Remigius of Lyons, Florus of Lyons, Lupus of Fierrières, and Prudentius of Troyes similarly promoted such strict Augustinian tenets as the faith of the Church. This article briefly introduces the life and writings of Prudentius, and provides a translation of his Tractoria, which contains four chapters that succinctly illustrate his doctrine of grace.