VINCENT OF LERINS, ST, or VINCENTIS LERINENSIS (d. c. A.D. 450)

This article appears in Volume V28, Page 92 of the Encyclopedia Britannica.

Encyclopedia Britannica - Main :: VAN-VIR

VINCENT OF LERINS, ST, or VINCENTIS LERINENSIS (d. c. A.D. 450) , an ecclesiastical writer of the Western Church of whose personal history hardly anything is known, except that he was a native of Gaul, possibly brother of St Loup,

bishop

Troyes

TROYES

, that he became a monk and priest at Lerinum, and that he died in or about 450. Lerinum (Lerins, off Cannes) had been made by Honoratus, afterwards

bishop

of Arles, the seat of a monastic community which produced a number of eminent churchmen, among them Hilary of Arles. The school did not produce an extensive literature, but it played an important part in resisting an exaggerated Augustinianism by reasserting the freedom of the will and the continued existence of the divine image in human nature after the fall. As regards Vincent he himself tells us that only after

long

LONG, GEORGE (1800-1879)
LONG, JOHN DAVIS (1838– )

and sad experience of worldly turmoil did he betake himself to the haven of a religious life. In 434, three years after the council of Ephesus, he wrote the Commonitorium adversus profanas omnium haereticorum novitates, in which he ultimately aims at

Augustine

AUGUSTINE, SAINT (354-430)
AUGUSTINE, SAINT (d. c.613)

doctrine

DOCTRINE

of grace and predestination. In it he discusses the " notes " which distinguish Catholic truth from heresy, and (cap. 2)

lays

LAYS

down and applies the famous threefold test of orthodoxyquod ubique, quod

semper

SEMPER, GOTTFRIED (1803–1879)

, quod ab

omnibus

OMNIBUS (Lat. " for all ")

creditum est. It is very striking that in his appeal to tradition Vincent assigns no part to the bishops as suchapart from the council; he appeals to the ancient " teachers," not to any apostolic succession. His " semi-Pelagian " opposition to

Augustine

AUGUSTINE, SAINT (354-430)
AUGUSTINE, SAINT (d. c.613)

is dealt with by Prosper of Aquitania in his Pro Augustini doctrina responsiones ad capitula objectionum Vincentiarnarium. It explains why the Commonitorium has reached us only in a mutilated form.
The Commonitorium has been edited by

Baluze

BALUZE, ETIENNE (1630-1718)

(Paris, 1663, 16699 and 1684) and by Klupfel (Vienna, 1809). It also occurs in vol. 1. of Migne's Patrol. Ser. Lat. (1846). A full summary is given in A. Harnack's History of Dogma, hi. 23o if. See also F. H. Stanton, Place of Authority in Religion, pp. 167 ff.; A. Cooper-Marsdin, The School of Lerins (Rochester, 1905).

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