That papal responses about Pelagianism belong to a specifically legal domain is a secondary conclusion of the chapter. The primary conclusion can be integrated with a central argument about the origins of the first papal jurisprudence, viz., that it was demand-driven, and that the demand was driven by uncertainty. We should not be surprised at uncertainty in late Antiquity about grace and free will when modern scholars write in such different terms about Augustine. Many modern people prefer Pelagius, but Augustine’s understanding of grace won the assent of intellectuals like Gottschalk in the ninth century, Bradwardine in the fourteenth, and Luther and Calvin in the sixteenth, and it continued to have adherents within Catholicism, even after the Council of Trent. Self-evident the solution to the argument was not. Given the violently opposed views, in this apparently purely Western controversy, it is not surprising that the apostolic see was asked for a response. Baffled by the paradox of divine omnipotence and human free will, it did what it would do in subsequent centuries: step back from acceptance of Augustine’s late views, without breathing a word of criticism against him.

Tensions arising from the establishment of monasteries in Gaul by John Cassian get associated in a long decretal of Celestine I with Cassian’s mild but firm critique of Augustine of Hippo’s views on grace and free will. These topics are the only core theological subjects discussed at length in the Dionysiana and Quesnelliana collections: the latter has three fascinating letters of Innocent I to African bishops, apparently endorsing their hard-line views on grace and (corrupted) nature, but in fact significantly silent on key points, stoppping short of some hard-line Augustinian positions.