# Poem on the Ungrateful (Against the Enemies of Grace) - Author: [Prosper of Aquitaine](https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/authors/prosper-of-aquitaine/) - Latin title: *Carmen de ingratis (Peri achariston)* - Date: ca. 429-432 (approximate) - Source: J.-P. Migne, ed., Patrologiae cursus completus, series Latina, vol. 51 (Paris, 1861), digital text of the printed volume (Latin text: Migne, Patrologia Latina, digitized by Open Greek and Latin (patrologia_latina-dev, University of Leipzig), CC BY-SA 4.0) - Translation: Claude, from the original text, unless a passage says otherwise; each passage below gives the translator - Work page: https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/prosper-carmen-ingratis/ - Passages: 33 ## Lines 1–30 - URL: https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/prosper-carmen-ingratis/1/#p-1 - Source: PL 51:93–95 - Translation: Claude (claude-opus-5-5), 2026-09-27 Summary: Prosper's preface states the poem's theme, the origin of a holy will and of faith, and the poem opens with a prayer and with Pelagius's teaching that Adam was created mortal and passed on no guilt. ### Latin text Unde voluntatis sanctæ subsistat orige, / Unde animis pietas insit, et unde fides: / Adversum ingratos falsa et virtute superbos, / Centenis decies versibus excolui. / Quos si tranquilla studeas cognoscere cura, / Tutus ab adverso turbine, lector, eris, / Nec libertate arbitrii rapiere rebellis, / Ulla nec audebis dona negare Dei. / Sed bona quae tibi suat, a operante fatebere Christo, / Non esse I. merite sumpta, sed ad meritum. / CONGENITÆ in Christo gentis mihi / castus ab alto / insinuatus amor, proprias excedere vires / Me jubet, atque pias accendere carmine mentes. / Ne post confecturo celebris victoria bellum, / Securos animos incauta pace resolvat: / Ceu metus eliso jam nullus ab hoste supersit, / Nec caput attriti virosum palpitet anguis. Unde igitur commenta mali sopita resurgant, / Quemve ipso de fine dotum nova promat origo, / Da fari, Pater omnipotens, artemque malignam / Pandere, prostratus qua rursum nititur error. DOGMA quod antiqui satiatum felle draconis, / Pestifero vomuit coluber sermone Britannus, / Hac primos homines eretos ditione ferebat; / Ut seu præscriptum mandatum transgrederentur, / Sive inculpati, servata lege, manerent, / Mortem istam prorsus, qua carnem vita relinquit, / Oppeterent; quæ non peccato parta, sed ipso / Instituente Deo, comes esset fixa creatis. / Progenitos igitur nullum traxisse reatum / De patribus, neque dissimiles nunc nascier illo ### English translation (Claude) [Preface] Whence the origin of a holy will arises, whence piety is in souls, and whence faith: this, against the ungrateful, proud of a false virtue, I have worked out in ten times a hundred verses. If you take care to learn them with a quiet mind, you will be safe, reader, from the hostile whirlwind; you will not be swept away, a rebel, by freedom of choice, nor will you dare to deny any of God's gifts. But you will confess that the good things that are yours, by Christ's working, are not taken up from merit, but toward merit. [The poem] Love for the race made kin in Christ, a chaste love instilled from on high, bids me go beyond my own strength and kindle pious minds with song, lest, after a famous victory has finished the war, it relax secure spirits with a careless peace, as though, the enemy being crushed, no fear remained and the venomous head of the trampled snake no longer quivered. Whence, then, the lulled inventions of evil rise again, and what deceit a new origin brings forth from their very end, grant me to tell, almighty Father, and to lay bare the malicious art by which error, laid low, strives up again. The dogma which, steeped in the gall of the ancient dragon, the British serpent vomited out in pestilent speech, held that the first humans were made on this condition: that whether they transgressed the command laid down or remained blameless, keeping the law, they would in any case meet this death by which life leaves the flesh; which was not born of sin, but by God's own ordaining was fixed as the companion of what he created. Therefore, it said, their offspring drew no guilt from their fathers, and are not now born unlike that ### Scripture references - Gen 3:15: echo, low confidence ### Translation notes - The first ten lines are the poem's elegiac preface (ten times a hundred verses: the poem has about 1,000 lines). "The British serpent" is Pelagius. In "what deceit" the printed "dotum" is read as dolum, and "eretos" (were made) as creatos; both are uncertain OCR readings translated by sense. The crushed head of the snake echoes Gen 3:15. ### Citation (SBL) Prosper of Aquitaine, Ingrat. 1 (PL 51:93–95; trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/p/prosper-carmen-ingratis/1). ## Lines 31–60 - URL: https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/prosper-carmen-ingratis/1/#p-31 - Source: PL 51:97 - Translation: Claude (claude-opus-5-5), 2026-09-27 Summary: Prosper sets out the Pelagian teaching on nature, law, grace, and baptism, and then tells how the Fathers, led by Rome, condemned it. ### Latin text Ortu primorum, qui libertate male usi / Peccarunt, forma nocui, non semine proli. / Posse autem insontes omnes virtutis in arce / Vitam agere, et menti ingenitum servare decorem: / Arbitrio quoniam subsistat recta volentis. / Naturalis bonos, Lexque insita cordibus intus / Hoc moneat, quod scripta foris: cui gratia Christi / Addita perfugium lapsis generaliter in se / Condiderit, sacro si vellent fonte novari: / Ut sponte attractum venia solvente reatum, / Sponte sua in vires proprias natura rediret; / Quoque per errores esset spoliata vigore, / Hunc servare semel posset purgata receptum. / Tam dives vero hoc donum baptismatis esse, / Et tam multa homini conferri fœdere in isto, / Ut parvis etiam, vitioque carentibus omni / Congruat, ut qui sunt geniti bene, sint meliores, / Naturaeque bonum adjecto illustretur honore. / Nullum autem ex cunctis exsortem muneris hujus, / Judicio genitum esse Dei; sed quemque mereri / Libertate sua, ut capiat promissa vocantis, / Quae sint aversis indebita, debita rectis. TALIA cum demens late diffunderet error, / Commentisque rudes traheret lethalibus aures, / Affuit; exhortante Deo, provisa per orbem / Sanctorum pia cura Patrum, non dispare motu / Conficiens diros jaculis coelestibus hostes. / Iisdem namque simul decretis Spiritus unus / Intonuit. Pestem subeuntem prima recidit / Sedes ROMA Petri; quæ pastoralis honoris / Facta caput mundo, quidquid non possidet armis, ### English translation (Claude) origin of the first parents, who, using their freedom badly, sinned, harming their offspring by example, not by seed. All, it said, can live innocent in the citadel of virtue and keep the inborn beauty of the mind, since uprightness rests in the choice of the one who wills. Natural good, and a law set within hearts, teach this inwardly, as the written law does outwardly; and the grace of Christ, added to these, established in itself a refuge for the fallen generally, if they were willing to be renewed in the holy font: so that, once pardon had loosed the guilt contracted by free will, nature might of its own accord return to its own strength, and the vigor of which it had been stripped by errors it could, once cleansed, keep after receiving it once. So rich, they say, is this gift of baptism, and so much is conferred on man in this covenant, that it suits even little ones, who lack all fault, so that those who are well born may be better, and the good of nature be made glorious by added honor. None of all men, they say, was born by God's judgment shut out from this gift; but each one merits by his own freedom to take hold of the promises of the one who calls, which are not owed to those who turn away, but owed to the upright. When mad error was spreading such things far and wide, and drawing untaught ears with deadly inventions, there came, at God's urging, the pious care of the holy Fathers, provided throughout the world, moving as one, destroying the fierce enemies with heavenly darts. For with the same decrees the one Spirit thundered. The plague as it crept in was first cut down by Rome, the see of Peter, which, made the head of the world for pastoral honor, whatever it does not possess by arms ### Scripture references - Rom 2:15: allusion, medium confidence ### Translation notes - The Pelagian claims are reported in indirect speech ("they say" is supplied for clarity). Rome's primacy "for pastoral honor" and its rule "by religion" rather than by arms are Prosper's own claim, translated as written. ### Citation (SBL) Prosper of Aquitaine, Ingrat. 31 (PL 51:97; trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/p/prosper-carmen-ingratis/31). ## Lines 61–90 - URL: https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/prosper-carmen-ingratis/1/#p-61 - Source: PL 51:99 - Translation: Claude (claude-opus-5-5), 2026-09-27 Summary: Prosper recounts the condemnation of Pelagianism in the East (Pelagius's recantation in Palestine), by Jerome, by Atticus of Constantinople, at Ephesus, in Sicily, and in Africa. ### Latin text Relligione tenet. Non segnior inde ORIENTIS / Rectorum cura emicuit: captumque nefandi / Dogmatis auctorem constrinxit lege benigna / Commentum damnare suum; nisi corpore Christi / Abjungi et sancto mallet grege dissociari. / Lene quidem hoc, nimiumque malos tolerasse ' videtur / Judicium: sed sancta fides examine in illo / Vicit oborturam diro de semine prolem. / Prospectum namque est divino et munere / cautum, Ut licet instantem declinans bestia pœnam, / Perfidiæ secum sensus tenuisset eosdem; / Ipsa tamen proprium germen damnando necaret, / Ore malam exstinguens sobolem, quam protulit ore. Tunc etiam Bethlei praeclari Dominii hospes, / Hebræo simul et Graio, Latioque venustus / Eloquio, morum exemplum, mundique magister / HIERONYMUS, libris valde excellentibus hostem / Dissecuit, noscique dedit quo turbine veram / Vellent exortæ lucem obscurare tenebrae. / Quid loquar, et curam magna quam gessit in urbe / Constantinopoli, docto bonus ore sacerdos / ATTICUS, antiqua legatos haereticorum / Confutando fide? De qua tunc impia corda, / Quamvis se obducta tegerent velamine forma / Judicii, et tacitae tulerant tormenta repulsae. Prætereo quanto fuerit bene mota tumultu / Clara EPHESOS, non passa suis consistere tectis / Vasa irae, et morbi flatus, et semina mortis: / Quaque fide tellus etiam TRINACRIA fervens, / Agmen vipereum propriis exegerit oris. Tu causam fidei flagrantius, AFRICA, nostræ / Exsequeris; tecumque suum jungente vigorem / Juris apostolici solio, fera viscera belli ### English translation (Claude) it holds by religion. Nor was the care of the rulers of the East slower to shine forth: it bound the captured author of the wicked dogma by a kindly law to condemn his own invention, unless he preferred to be cut off from the body of Christ and separated from the holy flock. This judgment seems indeed lenient, and to have borne too much with the wicked; but holy faith in that trial overcame the brood that was to spring from the dire seed. For it was foreseen and guarded by divine gift that, though the beast, dodging the penalty that threatened it, had kept the same treacherous views within itself, it would yet kill its own shoot by condemning it, extinguishing with its mouth the evil brood it had brought forth with its mouth. Then too the guest of the Lord's renowned Bethlehem, graceful in Hebrew, Greek, and Latin eloquence, an example of conduct and teacher of the world, Jerome, dissected the enemy in most excellent books, and made known with what whirlwind the darkness that had arisen wished to obscure the true light. What shall I say of the care that in the great city of Constantinople the good bishop Atticus bore with learned mouth, refuting the envoys of the heretics with the ancient faith? From it, then, the impious hearts, though they covered themselves with the veil of a feigned show of judgment, bore also the torments of a silent rebuff. I pass over with what great tumult famous Ephesus was rightly stirred, not suffering to remain under its roofs the vessels of wrath, the breath of disease, and the seeds of death; and with what faith the land of Trinacria too, burning with zeal, drove the viperous troop from its shores. You, Africa, pursue the cause of our faith more ardently; and, with the throne of apostolic law joining its vigor to yours, the fierce entrails of the war ### Scripture references - Rom 9:22: echo, medium confidence ### Translation notes - "The rulers of the East": the synod of Diospolis (415), where Pelagius condemned propositions attributed to him. Atticus was bishop of Constantinople (406–425). Ephesus: the council of 431, which condemned Caelestius's party. Trinacria is Sicily. "Vessels of wrath" echoes Rom 9:22. "Feigned show" renders "obducta... forma", uncertain in the digital text. ### Citation (SBL) Prosper of Aquitaine, Ingrat. 61 (PL 51:99; trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/p/prosper-carmen-ingratis/61). ## Lines 91–120 - URL: https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/prosper-carmen-ingratis/1/#p-91 - Source: PL 51:101–103 - Translation: Claude (claude-opus-5-5), 2026-09-27 Summary: Prosper praises the African councils against Pelagianism, led by Aurelius of Carthage, and above all Augustine, through whom grace answered the heresy everywhere. ### Latin text Conficis, et late prosternis limite victos. / Convenere tui de cunctis urbibus almi / Pontifices, geminoque senum celeberrima cotu / Decernis quod Roma probet, quod regna, / sequantur. Nec sola est illic synodorum exerta potestas; / Ceu quos non possent ratione evincere nostri, / Vi premerent: discussæ artes, virusque retectum est / Hæretici sensus; nullumque omnino relictum, / Docta fides quod non dissolveret argumentum, / Condita sunt, et scripta manent, quae de cafaractis /' \ / Æterni fontis fluxere undante meatu / Et tercentenis procerum sunt edita linguis /,Sic moderante suam legem bonitate severa. / I Ut qui damnato vellent de errore reverti, / Acciperent pacem, pulsis qui prava tenerent. An alium in finem posset procedere sanctum / Concilium, cui dux AURELIUS, ingeniumque /:AUGUSTINUS erat? quem Christi gratia cornu / Uberiore rigans, nostro lumen dedit ævo / Accensum vero de lumine: nam cibus illi, / Et vita, et requies Deus est; omnisque volu,,.. / Unus amor Christi est, unus Christi est honor illi. / Et dum nulla sibi tribuit bona, fit Deus illi / I et in sancto regnat Sapientia templo. / Istius ergo inter cunctos, qui de grege sancto / Insanas pepulere feras, industria major, / Majus opus, totum præstantius imbuit orbem. / Nam quocumque gradum convertit callidus hostis, / Quaque per ambages anceps iter egit opertas, / Hujus ab occursu est præventus, mille viarum / Insidiis aditum non repperientibus ullum. ### English translation (Claude) you finish off, and lay the conquered low far and wide. Your kindly bishops came together from all your cities, and in a most famous double assembly of elders you decree what Rome approves, what kingdoms follow. Nor was it only the power of synods that was put forth there, as if they pressed by force those whom our side could not overcome by reason: the arts were broken up, and the venom of the heretical view uncovered; and no argument at all was left that learned faith did not dissolve. Things were set down, and remain written, which from the floodgates of the eternal fountain flowed in an overflowing course and were issued by the tongues of three hundred leaders, kind severity thus tempering its law: that those who wished to turn back from the condemned error should receive peace, and those who held perverse views be driven out. Could the holy council proceed to any other end, whose leader was Aurelius, and whose mind was Augustine? He it was whom the grace of Christ, watering him from a richer horn, gave to our age as a light kindled from the true light: for God is his food, his life, and his rest; and all his will is the one love of Christ; Christ's honor alone is his. And while he ascribes no good things to himself, God becomes all to him, and Wisdom reigns in a holy temple. Of this man, then, among all who drove the mad beasts from the holy flock, the diligence was greater, the work greater, and it filled the whole world more excellently. For wherever the cunning enemy turned his step, wherever he made his doubtful way by hidden windings, he was forestalled by meeting this man, and the snares of a thousand roads found no entrance at all. ### Scripture references - John 1:9: echo, low confidence ### Translation notes - The "double assembly" refers to the African councils of 416 (Carthage and Milevis) or to the general council of Carthage in 418; "three hundred" is Prosper's round figure. Aurelius was bishop of Carthage. "God becomes all to him": the digital text has lost a word at the line break ("fit Deus illi / ... et in sancto"); translated by sense with "all" (omnia) supplied. "Light kindled from the true light" echoes John 1:9. ### Citation (SBL) Prosper of Aquitaine, Ingrat. 91 (PL 51:101–103; trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/p/prosper-carmen-ingratis/91). ## Lines 121–150 - URL: https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/prosper-carmen-ingratis/1/#p-121 - Source: PL 51:103 - Translation: Claude (claude-opus-5-5), 2026-09-27 Summary: Through Augustine's books God answered the Pelagians, but now new opponents arise within the church who place the power to do good in natural free will, and Prosper asks how they differ from the Pelagians. ### Latin text Cumque foris rabies avidorum exclusa luporum / Frenderet, inque omnes mendacia verteret artes: / Ne mentes ullarum ovium corrumpere posset, / Neu dubia obliquis turbaret corda querelis; / Istius ore viri fecit Deus; istius ore / Flumina librorum mundum effluxere per omnem, / Quae miles humilesque bibunt, campisque animorum / Certant vitalis doctrinae immittere rivos. JAMQUE procellosæ disjecto turbine noctis, / Heu! nova bella, novi partus oriuntur in ipso / Securae matris gremio: quae crescere natis / Visa sibi, discors horret consurgere germen, / Degeneres pavitans inimico ex semine foetus, / In quibus ante diu, specie fallente, benignus / Errarat genitricis amor, cum obducta decoris / Moribus, externæ stirpis tegeretur origo. / Sic VERIS subeunt falsa, et descrimine caeco, / Fronte placent, quae fine latent; sic laudis amore / Virtutum studium corrumpitur, atque ab honesto / Principio in vitium exitur plerumque tumoris: / Quo quidam inflantur nunc turpiter, atque perempti / Dogmatis exstinctas tentant animare favillas; / Dum libertatem arbitrii, affectumque volendi / In naturalis motus virtute locantes, / Tam bona quemque docent sectari posse suopte / Ingenio, quam posse subest cuique in mala / ferri. QUOD qui confirmas, quinam distabis ab illis, / Qui dicunt, nullo peccati vulnere læsum / Naturale bonum, cumque illo lumine nasci / Nunc omnes homines, quod primis ingeneralum est? ### English translation (Claude) And when the rage of the greedy wolves, shut out, gnashed outside, and turned its lies to every art, lest it should corrupt the minds of any sheep or disturb wavering hearts with crooked complaints, God acted through this man's mouth; through this man's mouth rivers of books flowed out through all the world, which the meek and humble drink, and in the fields of souls they strive to let in the streams of life-giving teaching. And now, when the whirlwind of the stormy night had been scattered, alas! new wars, new births arise in the very bosom of the secure mother: she, who seemed to herself to grow through her children, shudders to see a discordant shoot rise up, trembling at degenerate offspring from enemy seed, in whom for a long time, by a deceiving appearance, the kindly love of the mother had erred, while, covered by the beauty of their conduct, the origin of a foreign stock was hidden. So do false things creep in beneath true ones, and by a blind confusion they please at the front which lie hidden at the end; so by the love of praise the zeal for virtues is corrupted, and from an honorable beginning one often passes into the vice of swelling pride: by which some are now shamefully puffed up, and try to blow alive the extinguished sparks of a dogma that was destroyed, while, placing freedom of choice and the disposition to will in the strength of a natural motion, they teach that each person can pursue good things by his own ability, as much as it lies with each to be carried into evil. You who affirm this, in what will you differ from those who say that natural good was hurt by no wound of sin, and that all men are now born with that light which was inborn in the first? ### Scripture references - Acts 20:29: echo, low confidence ### Translation notes - The "new births" in the church's bosom are the critics of Augustine in southern Gaul (the so-called semi-Pelagians), whom Prosper calls the ungrateful. Wolves outside the fold echo Matt 7:15 and Acts 20:29. ### Citation (SBL) Prosper of Aquitaine, Ingrat. 121 (PL 51:103; trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/p/prosper-carmen-ingratis/121). ## Lines 151–180 - URL: https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/prosper-carmen-ingratis/1/#p-151 - Source: PL 51:105 - Translation: Claude (claude-opus-5-5), 2026-09-27 Summary: Prosper accuses his opponents of secretly cherishing Pelagian views, and imagines the Pelagian exiles offering to accept original sin and infant baptism provided free choice be left unimpaired. ### Latin text An vero excerpis quædam, quae parte recisa / Suscipias, cordisque sinu purgata recondas? / Dic igitur quidnam inde probes, quid vero refutes, / Et de damnatis quid sit quod crimine solvas. / An dextram pacis palam dare te pudet hosti? / Nec tutum est ulla pulsos ex parte tueri / Simpliciter? Quos non dubitas excludere templo, / Pelle animo. Nova te discordia dividit abs te: / Corde foves, quod in ore premis: conjungere. / amicis / Mentibus, et tecum cupidis componere foedus / Lege tua; jam parce tuis, et congrue pactis. ECCE pererratis terrarum finibus adsunt, / Implentesque tuas lacrymosis questubus aures / Incipiunt: Pulsi mundo, nullaque recepti / Sede vagi, tandem fama exhortante redimus, / Quaeque placent vobis amplectimur: edita nobis / Doctrinæ vestræ est pietas; nihil inficiando / Discutimus: liceat vobiscum jungere sensum. / Immortalem hominem factum si creditis, et nos / Credimus, inciderit mortem peccando, suamque / Progeniem culpa et letho devinxerit omnem: / Nullus non egeat sacro baptismate Christi, / Infantesque etiam purgentur fonte lavacri: / Dum nostri decus arbitrii, lumenque creatum / Principio, quod sponte potest insistere rectis, / Manserit illæsum, nec viribus absit ab illis, / Quas, condente Deo, generaliter omnis in Adam / I Suscepit natura hominis, nec suppetat ulli / I De non accepta arbitrii virtute querela: / Cum sine delectu seu Lex, seu Gratia Christi ### English translation (Claude) Or do you pick out certain things which, with part cut away, you may accept and store, purged, in the bosom of your heart? Tell us, then, what you approve from it and what you reject, and which of the condemned things you release from the charge. Are you ashamed to give the enemy the right hand of peace openly? And is it not safe to defend, in any part, those who were driven out, simply? Those whom you do not hesitate to exclude from the temple, drive from your mind. A new discord divides you from yourself: you cherish in your heart what you hold down in your mouth. Join yourself to friendly minds, and with those who desire it make a treaty on your own terms; spare your own now, and agree to the pacts. Behold, having wandered through the ends of the earth, they are here, and, filling your ears with tearful complaints, they begin: "Driven from the world, received in no place, wanderers, at last, urged on by report, we return, and we embrace what pleases you: the piety of your teaching has been set out to us; we dispute nothing by denying it. Let us join our view with yours. If you believe that man was made immortal, we too believe it; that he fell into death by sinning, and bound all his offspring by guilt and death; that there is no one who does not need the holy baptism of Christ, and that infants too are cleansed in the font of the washing: provided only that the glory of our choice, and the light created in the beginning, which of its own accord can stand firm in right things, remain unhurt, and be not absent from those strengths which, by God's founding, all human nature received generally in Adam; and that no one have any complaint of a power of choice not received: since, without distinction, whether the Law or the grace of Christ ### Translation notes - The speech of the exiled Pelagians runs on into the next section. ### Citation (SBL) Prosper of Aquitaine, Ingrat. 151 (PL 51:105; trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/p/prosper-carmen-ingratis/151). ## Lines 181–210 - URL: https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/prosper-carmen-ingratis/1/#p-181 - Source: PL 51:107 - Translation: Claude (claude-opus-5-5), 2026-09-27 Summary: The Pelagians' speech ends with a plea for admission, and Prosper weighs how his opponents would answer, since admitting them would violate the decrees of the Fathers and the emperors, yet refusing them while tolerating the same views at home would be unjust. ### Latin text Omnem hominem salvare velit: donumque vocantis / Sic sit propositum, ut nullus non possit ad illud / Libertate sua, proprioque vigore venire: / Sitque salus dignis salvari ex fonte volendi. / Hæc si vestra fides, vestra est doctrina, remotis / Quae vestro exemplo rejecimus. addite sanctis / Nos gregibus, tandemque boni deffendite vestros. TALIA submissus si defleat hostis apud te, / Quid referes? quo te affectu comperta movebunt? / Consultas, trepidas, nutas, cunctaris et hæres, / Quove anceps se præcipitet sententia volvis. / Injustum est animis cognatis non dare pacem: / Et quos una fides, eadem sapientia nectit, / His communem aditum sanctorum ad sancta negare. / Jungere sed foedus cum talibus, et violare / Sanctorum decreta Patrum, regumque piorum / Scriptas lege Dei leges contemnere, multum / Hostile est, nimiumque audax et perniciosum. ERGO Petri solium Romam, et Carthaginis altae / Concilium repetant humiles, eademque perorent, / Quae frustra hic trepido sunt deplorata favori. / Sed cum mille senum prudentia pervigil (olim / Perspectum notumque tenens, quod tota nefandæ / Hæreseos summa exigua sub parte tegatur, / De qua plena mali labes renovetur et omne / Commenti corpus per singula membra resurgat); / Antiquas adhibentem artes rejecerit hostem, / Limitibusque suis steterit censura salubris: / Numquid non justus, poterit dolor abdita cordis / Rumpere, et in tales miseros excire querelas, / Ut dicant: Quænam ista, Patres, in cordibus almis / Justitia est? quo fine graves, quo fine severi, ### English translation (Claude) wills to save every man; and that the gift of the one who calls be so set before us that there is no one who cannot come to it by his own freedom and his own strength; and that salvation belong to those worthy to be saved from the spring of their willing. If this is your faith and your teaching, with the things removed which we have rejected after your example, add us to the holy flocks, and at last, good men, defend your own." If the enemy, humbled, were to weep such things before you, what would you answer? With what feeling would they move you once learned? You deliberate, you tremble, you waver, you delay and hesitate, and you turn over which way your doubtful opinion should throw itself. It is unjust not to give peace to kindred minds, and to deny to those whom one faith and the same wisdom bind the common access of the saints to holy things. But to join a treaty with such men, and to violate the decrees of the holy Fathers, and to despise the laws of pious kings, written by the law of God, is most hostile, and too bold and ruinous. Let them, then, humbly seek again Peter's throne at Rome and the council of lofty Carthage, and plead there the same things that were lamented here in vain to a fearful favor. But when the watchful prudence of a thousand elders (long since having perceived and holding it known that the whole sum of the wicked heresy may be hidden under a small part, from which the full stain of evil may be renewed and the whole body of the invention rise again through its single members) has rejected the enemy plying his old arts, and the healthful censure has stood within its bounds: will not a just grief be able to break open the hidden places of the heart, and stir the wretches to such complaints that they say: "What justice is this, Fathers, in your kindly hearts? To what end, so harsh, to what end so severe, ### Scripture references - 1 Tim 2:4: quotation, high confidence ### Translation notes - "Wills to save every man" quotes 1 Tim 2:4, which the Gallic critics of Augustine pressed. "Pious kings": the imperial laws against the Pelagians (418 and after). "Spring of their willing" renders "fonte volendi" (the digital text has "votendi"). ### Citation (SBL) Prosper of Aquitaine, Ingrat. 181 (PL 51:107; trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/p/prosper-carmen-ingratis/181). ## Lines 211–240 - URL: https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/prosper-carmen-ingratis/1/#p-211 - Source: PL 51:107 - Translation: Claude (claude-opus-5-5), 2026-09-27 Summary: The imagined Pelagians complain that they are excluded while others teach the same views freely, and Prosper turns to examine what Pelagius taught and what was condemned. ### Latin text Claudere terrarum nobis persistitis orbem? / Nosne sumus toto mundo, quorum undique vobis / Sit suspecta fides, quos non tolerare queatis, / Si nostra a vestro vel syllaba dissonet ore? / Non verbis jam nos argumentisve tuemur; / Judicium exemplo petimus. Quod pace manente, / Libera multorum vox astruit, hoc sine bello / Cedatur nobis. Non nostra inventa fovemus, / Nec primis studii' insistimus: ecce recisum est / Unde olim certamen erat, vestrisque reversi / Cedimus, et quæcumque illis placuere, proponamus. / Quid superest culpæ? Quo nos decet usque repelli? / Si vero hæc etiam, quæ nos pia ducimus, absunt / A veris, et vestra illis bene cura repugnat; / Cur extra invidiam pænamque erroris habentur / Qui damnata docent, et per clara oppida tuti, / His magnos implent populos, quas nos perhibentes / Plectimur, et nulla sinimur consistere terra? / Hæc in pontificum sancto deprompta senatu, / Quam curam exigerent, et quae decreti moverent, / Perspicis. An quoniam culpa securus operta, / Non premeris synodo, nec te pœnæ metus urget, / Spernis propositi speciem terroris, et isthæc, / Plena velut vanis simulacris somnia rides? / Ergo gerendorum evenio, et fine remoto, / Hæc tantum in medium quae jam sunt gesta vocemus: / Ut fac ite et illis quale hoc sit discutiatur, / Quod disceptantes dudum in diversa movemur. / INTER multa suis quae.tradidit hæresiarches / (Quod cognoscis), ait, naturam quæ bona facta est, ### English translation (Claude) do you persist in closing the circle of the earth to us? Are we the only ones in the whole world whose faith is everywhere suspect to you, whom you cannot tolerate if even a syllable of ours sounds different from your mouth? We no longer defend ourselves by words or arguments; we ask for judgment by precedent. What, while peace remains, the free voice of many asserts, let that be granted to us without war. We do not cherish our own inventions, nor do we hold to our first pursuits: see, what was once the point of conflict has been cut away; we have turned back and yield to yours, and whatever has pleased them we put forward. What guilt remains? How far must we be driven back? But if these things too, which we count pious, are far from the truth, and your care rightly fights against them, why are those held free of ill-will and of the penalty of error who teach condemned things and, safe through famous towns, fill great peoples with the very things for asserting which we are punished and allowed to stand in no land?" You see what care these things, brought before the holy senate of bishops, would demand, and what decrees they would provoke. Or, because you are secure in your hidden fault, are not pressed by a synod, and no fear of punishment drives you, do you scorn the spectre of the terror I have set out, and laugh at these things as dreams full of empty phantoms? Then let us set aside what is still to be done and its outcome, and bring into the open only what has already been done, so that it may easily be discussed, even with them, what this is over which we have long been moved in different directions in dispute. Among the many things which the heresiarch handed down to his followers (as you know), he says that the nature which was made good ### Translation notes - "Whatever has pleased them": "them" refers to the many (Prosper's Gallic opponents) whose views the Pelagians now claim to share. The line "Ut fac ite et illis..." is garbled in the digital text and is translated by sense (facile). The heresiarch is Pelagius. ### Citation (SBL) Prosper of Aquitaine, Ingrat. 211 (PL 51:107; trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/p/prosper-carmen-ingratis/211). ## Lines 241–270 - URL: https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/prosper-carmen-ingratis/1/#p-241 - Source: PL 51:107 - Translation: Claude (claude-opus-5-5), 2026-09-27 Summary: Prosper lists the Pelagian propositions condemned by councils, including the one Pelagius himself disowned in Palestine (grace given according to fitness), and begins to state his opponents' view that grace calls all but each responds by his own choice. ### Latin text Nullis cum vitiis in quoquam omnino creari, / Nec cuiquam primi culpam nocuisse parentis, / Et quoniam tales nascantur nunc quoque, qualis / Ile fuit nostri generis pater ante reatum: / Posse hominem sine peccato decurrere vitam, / Si velit, ut potuit nullo delinquere primus / Libertate sua. Nempe hæc damnata fateris / Conciliis, mundique manu. Connectit et illud / Idem auctor, quod lex ita sanctos miserit olim / Cœlorum in regnum, sicut nunc gratia mittit. / Hoc quoque judicio sancto scis esse peremptum. / Objectum est aliud ipsum dixisse magistrum: / Quod meritis hominum tribuatur gratia Christi, / Quantum quisque Dei donis se fecerit aptum. / Sed nimus adversum hoc fidei, nimiumque repugnans / Esse videns, dixit se non ita credere, et illos / Damnari dignos quorum mens ista teneret. / Quo cernis, cum judicibus damnantibus ista / Consensisse reum, nec quemquam hoc posse tueri, / Quæ tamen ipse suis rursum excoluisse libellis / Delegitur, reprobum in sensum fallendo reversus. NUNC igitur, quoniam quid nostris displicuisset / Ostensum est, quam sana fides sit vestra patescat. / Gratia qua Christi populus sumus, hoc cohibetur / Limite vobiscum, et formam hanc ascribitis illi, / Ut cunctos vocet illa quidem, invitetque; nec ullum / Præteriens, studeat communem afferre salutem / Omnibus, et totum peccato absolvere mundum. / Sed proprio quemque arbitrio parere vocanti, / Judicioque suo, mota se extendere mente ### English translation (Claude) is created in no one at all with any vices, and that the guilt of the first parent harmed no one; and that, since men are now born such as the father of our race was before his guilt, a man can run through life without sin if he wills, just as the first man could, by his freedom, commit no offense. Indeed, you confess that these things were condemned by councils and by the hand of the world. The same author adds this as well: that the law once sent the saints into the kingdom of heaven just as grace sends them now. This too, you know, was destroyed by holy judgment. It was objected that the master himself had said another thing: that the grace of Christ is given according to men's merits, in proportion as each has made himself fit for God's gifts. But seeing this to be too contrary to the faith and too repugnant, he said he did not believe so, and that those whose minds held it deserved to be condemned. By this you see that the accused agreed with the judges who condemned these things, and that no one can defend them; yet he himself is found to have cultivated them again in his books, returning by deceit to a reprobate mind. Now, then, since it has been shown what displeased our side, let it appear how sound your faith is. The grace by which we are Christ's people is confined by you within this limit, and you ascribe to it this form: that it calls all, indeed, and invites them, and, passing over none, strives to bring a common salvation to all and to absolve the whole world from sin; but that each one by his own choice obeys the one who calls, and by his own judgment, his mind moved, stretches himself ### Scripture references - Rom 1:28: echo, medium confidence ### Translation notes - The propositions are those examined at the synod of Diospolis (415), where Pelagius condemned the view that grace is given according to merit; Prosper says he later defended it again in his books. "Reprobate mind" echoes Rom 1:28. ### Citation (SBL) Prosper of Aquitaine, Ingrat. 241 (PL 51:107; trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/p/prosper-carmen-ingratis/241). ## Lines 271–300 - URL: https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/prosper-carmen-ingratis/1/#p-271 - Source: PL 51:111 - Translation: Claude (claude-opus-5-5), 2026-09-27 Summary: Prosper finishes stating his opponents' view of grace and free will, then asks how they can say grace passes over no one, when the gospel has not yet reached all lands. ### Latin text Ad lucem oblatam, quæ so non subtrahat ulli, / Sed cupidos recti juvet, illustretque volentes. / HinC adjutoris Domini bonitate magistra, / Crescere virtutum studia, ut quod quisque petendum Mandatis didicit, jugi sectetur amore. / Esse autem edoctis istam communiter æquam / Libertatem animis, ut cursum explere beatum / Persistendo queant; finem effectumque petitum / Dante Deo, ingentis qui numquam desit honestis. / Sed quia non idem est cunctis vigor, et variarum / Illecebris rerum trahitur dispersa voluntas; / Sponte aliquos vitiis succumbere, qui potuissent / A lapsu revocare pedem, stabilesque manere. / JAM quia summatim, ut potuit, sententia vestra / Decursa est: Dic unde probes quod gratia Christi / Nullum omnino hominem de cunctis qui generantur / Prætereat, cui non regnum vitamque beatam / Impertire velit? Nec enim vel tempore nostro / Omnibus in terris jam certum est insinuatum / Christi evangelium: ne dicam exordia doni / NonujUijisse simul toto decurrere mundo. / Idemad cunctos ferri sunt jussa: sed uno / Tempore non agitur, quod tempore dicitur uno. / Dumque suis aditus Domino pandente ministris, / Crescunt primitiæ, fuerint omnino necesse est / Quasdam terrarum partes, ubi gratia nondum / Corda hominum tenebris absolverat impietatis, / Et dira innumeri demersi nocte peribant, / Cum multæ accepto fulgerent lumine mentes. eAN bonitas divina quidem non destitit omnes / Velle vocare homines, sed non simul apta fuerunt / Corda, quibus possent conferri dona salutis; ### English translation (Claude) toward the light offered, which withdraws itself from no one, but helps those who desire the right and enlightens those who will. Hence, with the goodness of the Lord as helper and teacher, the zeal for virtues grows, so that what each has learned from the commandments must be sought, he pursues with unbroken love. Moreover, you say that this freedom is common and equal to souls that have been taught, so that they can complete the blessed course by persevering, and the end they sought is accomplished by the gift of God, who never fails the upright. But since not all have the same vigor, and the will, scattered, is drawn by the allurements of various things, some of their own accord succumb to vices, who could have called back their foot from the fall and stood firm. Now, since your view has been run through in summary, as well as could be, tell me how you prove that the grace of Christ passes over no man at all of all who are born, to whom it would not wish to impart the kingdom and the blessed life. For not even in our own time has the gospel of Christ been surely made known in all lands, not to say that the beginnings of the gift did not run through the whole world at once. The commands were given to carry it to all alike; but what is said at one time is not done at one time. And while, as the Lord opens the way for his ministers, the firstfruits grow, there must surely have been some parts of the earth where grace had not yet freed men's hearts from the darkness of impiety, and countless men perished, sunk in dread night, while many minds shone with the light they had received. Or did the divine goodness indeed not cease to will to call all men, but the hearts were not at once fit to which the gifts of salvation could be given, ### Scripture references - Matt 28:19: allusion, medium confidence - Mark 16:15: allusion, medium confidence ### Translation notes - "Who never fails the upright": the printed line has an extra word ("ingentis"), probably corrupt; translated by sense. The commands to carry the gospel to all allude to Matt 28:19 and Mark 16:15. The line "NonujUijisse simul toto decurrere mundo" is garbled in the digital text; translated by sense. ### Citation (SBL) Prosper of Aquitaine, Ingrat. 271 (PL 51:111; trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/p/prosper-carmen-ingratis/271). ## Lines 301–330 - URL: https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/prosper-carmen-ingratis/1/#p-301 - Source: PL 51:113 - Translation: Claude (claude-opus-5-5), 2026-09-27 Summary: Prosper argues that his opponents' account of the unreached nations agrees with the Pelagian view that grace is given according to merit, and asks why, if God wills all to be saved, not all are saved. ### Latin text Dum morum obsistit feritas truculenta magistris, / Difficilesque aditu transcurrit gratia gentes: / Ut quoniam lucem offerri voluisset, et ipsis / Demonstrare Deus; sua quemque adversa voluntas, / Arguat, et culpa obstringat, quia lumine primo / Per vitia oppresso, sit facta indigna secundo? / Quod si firmatur, nequidquam plectimus illos, / Qui nullum innatum vitium nascentibus aiunt, / Incolumique omnes cum libertate creari: / Gratia quos Christi meritorum examine justo / Eligat, et dignos vita vocet, accipiatque. / Namque utrumque simul sapitis, qui dicitis, Omnes / Omnibus oblatum potuisse apprendere munus, / Naturae quoniam non sit detracta facultas, / Nec sine justitia pereant qui mentis honorem / Sordibus obruerint vitiorum, ut lumen ab alto / Emissum indigna nollet requiescere sede. / Sic. quod nascendo est unum, distare volendo; / Ut meritum ad paucos, naturaque spectet ad / omnes. SED tamen haec aliqua si vis ratione tueri, / Et credi tam stulta cupis, jam pande quid hoc sit, / Quod bonus omnipotensque Deus, non omnia subdit / Corda sibi, pariterque omnes jubet esse fideles? / Nam si nemo usquam est quem non velit esse redemptum: / Haud dubie impletur quidquid vult summa potestas. / Non omnes autem salvantur, magnaque pars est / Quæ sedet in tenebris mortis, nec vivificatur. / An varii motus animorum talia gignunt, / Libertasque facit causam non omnibus unam? / Ergo hominis valida arbitrio divina voluntas, ### English translation (Claude) while the savage wildness of their ways resists the teachers, and grace runs past nations hard to approach: so that, since God had wished to offer the light to them too and to show it, each one's own hostile will accuses him and binds him with guilt, because, the first light having been crushed by his vices, he has been made unworthy of the second? But if this is affirmed, in vain do we punish those who say that no vice is inborn in those who are born, and that all are created with their freedom unharmed; whom the grace of Christ, by a just weighing of merits, chooses, calls as worthy to life, and receives. For you hold both views at once when you say that all could have grasped the gift offered to all, since the faculty of nature has not been taken away, and that those do not perish without justice who have buried the honor of the mind in the filth of vices, so that the light sent from on high would not rest in an unworthy seat. So what is one in being born, you say, differs in willing, so that merit regards the few, and nature regards all. But if you wish to defend these things by any reasoning, and want such foolish things to be believed, explain now what this is: that the good and almighty God does not subject all hearts to himself and command all alike to be faithful? For if there is no one anywhere whom he does not will to be redeemed, without doubt whatever the highest power wills is fulfilled. But not all are saved, and a great part sits in the darkness of death and is not made alive. Or do the varied motions of souls produce such things, and freedom makes the cause not one for all? Then the divine will is strong by man's choice, ### Scripture references - Luke 1:79: allusion, medium confidence - Matt 4:16: allusion, low confidence - 1 Tim 2:4: allusion, medium confidence ### Translation notes - "Sits in the darkness of death" echoes Isa 9:2 as quoted in Matt 4:16 and Luke 1:79. ### Citation (SBL) Prosper of Aquitaine, Ingrat. 301 (PL 51:113; trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/p/prosper-carmen-ingratis/301). ## Lines 331–360 - URL: https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/prosper-carmen-ingratis/1/#p-331 - Source: PL 51:113 - Translation: Claude (claude-opus-5-5), 2026-09-27 Summary: Prosper answers that grace does not merely advise, as the Law does, but changes and re-creates the heart, so that the growth of faith comes from grace alone, not from the preacher or the hearer. ### Latin text Aut etiam invalida est, operis cui finis in illo est. / Quem frustra juvisse vel ii, nisi præferat ille / Affectum cujus comitetur gratia cursum. eAT si, dimota certandi nube, serenis / Quæ sunt vera oculis mecum intueare modeste, / Et vetera exemplis manifestis plena videbis / Sæcula, et in nostro cognosces tempore multa / Quae doceant virtute Dei conversa illorum / Corda, quibus recti nihil umquam insederat, et quæ / Nullum justitiae signum sensumve gerebant. / Namque ut nunc saevas gentes et barbara regna, / Igno prius aut spreti nova gratia Christi / Attrahit, et terra templum sibi condit in omni: / Sic prius immites populos urbesque rebelles, / Vincente obstantes animos pietate, subegit. / Non hoc consilio tantum hortatuque benigno / Suadens atque docens, quasi normam Legis haberet / Gratia; sed mutans intus mentem, atque reformans, / Vasque novum ei fracto fingens, virtute creandi. / Non istud monitus Legis, non verba prophetæ, / Non præstata sibi præstat natura; sed unus / Quod fecit, reficit. Percurrat Apostolus orbem; / Prædicet, hortetur, plantet, riget, increpet, instet, / Quaque viam verbo reseratam invenerit, intret: / Ut tamen his studiis auditor promoveatur, / Non doctor, neque discipulus, sed gratia sola / Efficit, inque graves addit plantaria fructus. / Hæc semen fidei radicem affigere menti. / Eque sinu cordis validum jubet edere germen. / Hæc maturandam segetem servatque fovetque; / Ne lolium et tribuli, et vanæ dominentur avenæ: ### English translation (Claude) or even weak, if the completion of its work lies in man, whom it would have wished in vain to help unless he showed beforehand the disposition whose course grace accompanies. But if, the cloud of contention removed, you look modestly with me with serene eyes on what is true, you will see the ancient ages full of plain examples, and in our own time you will recognize many things that teach that by God's power the hearts of those were converted in whom nothing upright had ever lodged, and which bore no sign or sense of justice. For as now the new grace of Christ draws savage nations and barbarian kingdoms, formerly ignorant or scornful of it, and founds a temple for itself in every land, so before it subdued untamed peoples and rebellious cities, piety conquering the minds that resisted. It did this not only by counsel and kind exhortation, persuading and teaching, as though grace had the pattern of the Law; but by changing the mind within and reforming it, and fashioning a new vessel from the broken one by the power of creating. Not the warnings of the Law, not the words of the prophet, not nature supplies this, for it cannot supply what was given to it; but the One who made, remakes. Let the Apostle run through the world; let him preach, exhort, plant, water, rebuke, insist, and enter wherever he finds the way opened for the word: yet that the hearer may be advanced by these efforts, it is not the teacher, nor the disciple, but grace alone that effects it, and adds heavy fruit to the plantings. Grace bids the seed of faith fix its root in the mind, and from the bosom of the heart put forth a strong shoot. Grace guards and fosters the crop as it ripens, lest darnel and thistles and empty wild oats prevail; ### Scripture references - 1 Cor 3:6: allusion, high confidence - 1 Cor 3:7: allusion, high confidence - 2 Tim 4:2: allusion, medium confidence - Jer 18:4: allusion, medium confidence - Matt 13:25: echo, low confidence ### Translation notes - Planting and watering allude to 1 Cor 3:6–7; "rebuke, insist" to 2 Tim 4:2; the new vessel from the broken to Jer 18:4; the darnel to Matt 13:25. "Not nature supplies this, for it cannot supply what was given to it" renders "Non praestita sibi praestat natura", which may also mean "nature does not supply to itself what is supplied to it". ### Citation (SBL) Prosper of Aquitaine, Ingrat. 331 (PL 51:113; trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/p/prosper-carmen-ingratis/331). ## Lines 361–390 - URL: https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/prosper-carmen-ingratis/1/#p-361 - Source: PL 51:115 - Translation: Claude (claude-opus-5-5), 2026-09-27 Summary: Prosper quotes his opponents' claim that grace guards those it calls but that the will, informed by preaching, must first rouse itself, and objects that this leaves grace wholly outside man, acting only as a speaker or a book acts on a reader. ### Latin text Ne ventus frangat. torrens trahat, æstus adurat: / Neu cum se nimium læta et præfortis in altum / Extulerit, turpi procumbat strata ruina. ET nos ista, inquis, sentimus de bonitate / Ac virtute Dei: quae ni foveatque regatque / Quos vocat, et tutos peccato præstet ab omni; / Non sua servabit quemquam prudentia, nec se / Perficiet solis naturæ viribus ullis. / Sed quia jam in nobis et velle et nolle creatum est, / Arbitriique sui quo vult intendere motus / Libertas accita potest, patuitque per aurem / Judicio cordis, quo mundum proposuisset / Consilio servare Deus: mens excita longum / Excutiat somnum; seque illi subdat et aptet, / Qui cupidam ei fidam promissa in gaudia ducat. / Illic est nobiscum quod te sentire ferebas? / Hæc sincera fides? Hæc Christi gratia tecum est? / Cujus opus, fixo distinctum limite, totum / Extra hominem statuis clausa penitus fore mentis: / Vixque Deum sensus carnis permittis adire, / Per quos sumpta foris animus dijudicet itus, / Seque ferat quoquo librata examina pondus / Presserit arbitrii: veluti cum voce loquentis, / Aut rerum actarum specie, quas vidimus, aut quas / Legimus, exoritur secreta cordis in aula, / Nunc amor, aut odium, nunc spes, metus, ira, dolorque: / Nec tamen hos motus scriptor, narrator, et auctor / Insevere animo ( quamvis forte hæc quoque vellent); / Sed de perceptis mens judex sponte movetur, / Et pro more suo, quantum se exercuit istis, / Transit in affectum quem confirmaverit et se, ### English translation (Claude) lest the wind break it, the torrent sweep it away, the heat scorch it; or lest, when it has lifted itself too joyful and over-strong on high, it fall, laid low in shameful ruin. "We too," you say, "hold these things of the goodness and power of God: that unless it fosters and rules those it calls, and keeps them safe from every sin, no one's own prudence will preserve him, nor will he accomplish anything by the strength of nature alone. But since willing and not willing have already been created in us, and the freedom of one's own choice, once summoned, can direct its motion where it wills, and it has been made known through the ear to the judgment of the heart by what counsel God had purposed to save the world, let the mind, aroused, shake off its long sleep, and submit and fit itself to him who leads the eager and faithful into the promised joys." Is this where you stand with us, as you claimed to think? Is this sincere faith? Is this the grace of Christ you hold? Its work you mark off by a fixed boundary and set wholly outside man, shut out entirely from the door of the mind; you scarcely allow God to reach the senses of the flesh, by which the mind judges what it takes in from outside and moves itself wherever the balanced scales of choice have pressed down the weight: as when, from the voice of a speaker, or from the sight of things done which we have seen, or which we have read, there arises in the secret hall of the heart now love or hatred, now hope, fear, anger, and grief; and yet the writer, the narrator, and the author did not plant these motions in the mind (though perhaps they wished to); but the mind, as judge, is moved of its own accord by what it has perceived, and, after its own manner, as far as it exercises itself on these things, passes into the disposition it has confirmed for itself, ### Translation notes - "Shut out from the door of the mind" reads "fore mentis" for the printed "fore icentis"; "scarcely" reads "Vixque" for the printed "Vivque". ### Citation (SBL) Prosper of Aquitaine, Ingrat. 361 (PL 51:115; trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/p/prosper-carmen-ingratis/361). ## Lines 391–420 - URL: https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/prosper-carmen-ingratis/1/#p-391 - Source: PL 51:117 - Translation: Claude (claude-opus-5-5), 2026-09-27 Summary: Grace, unlike preaching, which only knocks at the soul, completes its own work, giving life, light, and love; without faith even virtuous works are sin, so that grace is wholly free. ### Latin text Illa volendo sequens, istis nolendo resistens. / At vero Omnipotens hominem cum gratia salvat, / Ipsa suum consummat opus; cui tempus agendi / Semper adest quæ gesta velit: non moribus illi / Fit mora, non causis anceps suspenditur ullis. / Nec quod sola potest, cura officioque ministri / Exsequitur, famulisve vicem committit agendi. / Qui quamvis multa admoveant mandata vocantis; / Pulsant. non intrant animas. Deus ergo sepultos / Suscitat, et solvit peccati compede vinctos. / Ille obscuratis dat cordibus intellectum; / Ille ex injustis justos facit, indit amorem / Quo redametur amans, et amor quem conserit ipse est. / Hunc itaque affectum, quo sumunt mortui vitam, / Quo tenebræ fiunt lumen, quo immunda nitescunt, / Quo stulti sapere incipiunt, ægrique valescunt, / Nemo alii dat, nemo sibi, non littera Legis, / Nec naturalis sapientia, quæ semel acta / In præceps, labi novit, consurgere nescit, / Et licet eximias studeat pollere per artes, / Ingeniumque bonum generosis moribus ornet; / Cæca tamen finem ad mortis per devia currit, / Nec vitæ æternæ veros acquirere fructus / De falsa virtute potest, vanamque decoris / Occidui speciem, mortali perdit in ævo. / Omne etenim probitatis opus, nisi semine veræ / Exoritur fidei, peccatum est, inque reatum / Vertitur, et sterilis cumulat sibi gloria pænam. USQUE adeo donum est quod credimus, et data gratis / Gratia, non merita ditat mercede vocatos: / Nec justorum operum discernit facta; sed omnes ### English translation (Claude) following those things by willing, resisting these by not willing. But when the Almighty saves a man by grace, grace itself completes its own work; the time of acting is always at hand for what it wills to do: no delay comes to it from a man's ways, it is not held in suspense, uncertain, by any causes. Nor does it carry out by the care and service of a minister what it alone can do, or hand the task of acting to servants. They, though they bring many commands of the one who calls, knock, but do not enter souls. God, then, raises the buried, and frees those bound in the fetter of sin. He gives understanding to darkened hearts; he makes the unjust just; he puts in the love by which the lover is loved in return, and the love he sows is himself. This disposition, then, by which the dead take life, by which darkness becomes light, by which the unclean shine, by which fools begin to be wise and the sick grow well, no one gives to another, no one to himself; not the letter of the Law, nor natural wisdom, which, once driven headlong, knows how to slip but not how to rise again; and though it strives to be strong through outstanding arts, and adorns a good mind with noble conduct, yet, blind, it runs through trackless ways to the end of death, and cannot gain the true fruits of eternal life from a false virtue, and it loses the empty show of a beauty that sets, in a mortal age. For every work of goodness, unless it springs from the seed of true faith, is sin, and is turned into guilt, and a barren glory heaps up punishment for itself. So truly is what we believe a gift, and grace given freely does not enrich those it calls with a reward for merits; nor does it judge between the deeds of just works; but all ### Scripture references - Rom 14:23: allusion, high confidence - 1 John 4:16: echo, medium confidence - Eph 2:1: echo, low confidence - Rom 4:4: echo, low confidence ### Translation notes - "Every work of goodness, unless it springs from... faith, is sin" alludes to Rom 14:23. "The love he sows is himself" echoes 1 John 4:8, 16. ### Citation (SBL) Prosper of Aquitaine, Ingrat. 391 (PL 51:117; trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/p/prosper-carmen-ingratis/391). ## Lines 421–450 - URL: https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/prosper-carmen-ingratis/1/#p-421 - Source: PL 51:117 - Translation: Claude (claude-opus-5-5), 2026-09-27 Summary: If grace rewarded merit it would choose only the just, but Christ came to seek the lost; deathbed converts baptized after wicked lives show that faith itself, and the will to be reborn, is grace's gift. ### Latin text Sola ex immundis mundos fluit, utque legentem / Lectus amet, non hoc studio, sed munere sumit. / Nam si spectatrix meritorum est gratia, et illis / Se tribuit, quorum est animus purgatior, et quos / Per libertatem arbitrii sibi repperit aptos, / Insontes tantum, justosque assumere solos / Debuit, et veri cupidos ac recta volentes. / Perversos autem, et scelerum assuetudine turpes / Deturbare procul, lucemque negare tenebris. / Atqui Salvator mundi non præmia justis / Solvere, nec sanis venit conferre medelam / Sed quod dispersum exciderat, fractum atque jacebat, / Quærere; et inventum reparare, addere curæ. DENIQUE ne quisquam ex morum splendore putetur / Censeri, aut fidei merito ad bona summa vocari, / Ceu non divino sit munere mentibus ipsa / Inspirata fides; recole innumerabile vulgus / Retro senum et juvenum, qui cæca turpiter usi / Libertate animi, per cultus dæmoniorum, / Per magicas artes, per amorem rapta tenendi, / Per stupra, per cædes vitam duxere nefandam: / Et tamen incumbente obitu, jam limite in ipso / Extremi flatus, miserantem nocte remota / Cognovere Deum; purgatorisque lavacri / Munere, nulla mali linquentis signa prioris, / Exempti mundo mutarunt tartara solio. / Quæ merita hic numeras? Si praecedentia cernas, / Impia; si quæris post addito, nulla fuerunt. / Si vero merito ascribis, voluisse renasci: / Nempe utero fidei parta est tam recta voluntas. / Porro fidem quis dat, nisi gratia? sic bene velle ### English translation (Claude) it alone makes clean out of unclean; and that the one chosen may love the one who chose him, he receives this not by effort but by gift. For if grace were a spectator of merits, and gave itself to those whose mind is purer, and whom it found fit for itself through freedom of choice, it ought to have taken up only the innocent and only the just, those eager for the truth and willing what is right; and the perverse and those foul from the habit of crimes it ought to have driven far off, and denied light to darkness. But the Savior of the world came not to pay rewards to the just, nor to bring healing to the healthy, but to seek what had fallen away, scattered, broken, and lying, and to restore what was found and give it into care. Finally, lest anyone be thought to be rated by the splendor of his conduct, or called to the highest goods by the merit of faith, as if faith itself were not breathed into minds by divine gift: recall the countless throng of old and young in times past, who, using shamefully the blind freedom of the mind, through the worship of demons, through magic arts, through love of keeping what was stolen, through sexual immorality, through murders, led a wicked life; and yet, when death was upon them, at the very edge of the last breath, their night removed, they came to know God in his mercy; and by the gift of the cleansing washing, with no signs left of their former evil, taken from the world, they exchanged Tartarus for a throne. What merits do you count here? If you look at those that went before, they were impious; if you seek those added afterward, there were none. If you ascribe it to merit that they willed to be reborn, surely so right a will was brought forth from the womb of faith. And who gives faith, if not grace? So it is that willing well ### Scripture references - Matt 9:12: allusion, medium confidence - Luke 19:10: allusion, medium confidence - John 15:16: echo, low confidence ### Translation notes - Healing for the sick alludes to Matt 9:12–13 and Luke 5:31–32; seeking the lost to Luke 19:10. "Tartarus" is Prosper's classical word for hell. ### Citation (SBL) Prosper of Aquitaine, Ingrat. 421 (PL 51:117; trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/p/prosper-carmen-ingratis/421). ## Lines 451–480 - URL: https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/prosper-carmen-ingratis/1/#p-451 - Source: PL 51:119 - Translation: Claude (claude-opus-5-5), 2026-09-27 Summary: Faith, which creates the merit of the will, is born of God alone; Prosper attacks his opponents' view that seeking, asking, and believing before baptism are man's own, which makes grace a wage and no longer grace. ### Latin text Gratia dat tribuendo fidem quæ credita scat, / Quæque voluntatis meritum creet, ipsaque solo / Nascatur spirante Deo, mentemque reformans, / De cinere algenti sopitum suscitet ignem. / Ergo voluntatis genitrix, operumque creatrix / Non est ex merito; quoniam quod non fit ab illa, / Non bene fit: QUEM non recto via limite ducit; / Quanto plus graditur, tanto longinquius errat. / Sive igitur meritum, credens exsistere posse / Ante fidem, donas virtutibus impietatis; / Sive illam vis esse tuam, non munere dantis / Sumptam, sed genitam de libertate volendi; / Nullum habet in vobis salvatrix gratia sedem, / Inflato exclusa arbitrio, quod fronte superba / Erigitis, spatio ut gravius majore ruatis. DIVINORUM operum quod ponitis in redimendis / Principium? Mandata Dei facere ante lavacrum, / Nosse et amare Deum, promissis credere Christi, / Quaerere, pulsare, et petere, proprium omnibus esse / Asseritis, qui se studeant aptare vocanti. / Anne ab aquis divina manus renovare receptos / Incipit, et vitae causa est sua cuique voluntas; / Ut merces operum sit gratia judiciumque / De pretio, quo quod donum perhibetur ematur! / An vero auxilium verbo Deus inchoat, et se / Voce ministrorum mundo declarat in omni: / Ut pulsante aures sermone illecta voluntas, / Judicio præcurrat opem, nec gratia jam sit / Gratia; quae legis fungens vice, jure monentis / Solum agat, atque agro cum plantatore ministret, ### English translation (Claude) grace gives, by granting faith, which, once believed, heals, which creates the merit of the will, and is itself born by the breath of God alone, and, reforming the mind, rouses the sleeping fire from the cold ash. Therefore the mother of the will and the creator of works is not from merit; since what is not done by it is not done well. Whom the way does not lead along a straight line, the further he walks, the further he strays. Whether, then, believing that merit can exist before faith, you give it to the virtues of impiety; or you wish faith to be your own, not received by the gift of the giver but born of the freedom of willing: saving grace has no seat among you, shut out by a puffed-up choice, which with proud brow you raise up, only to fall the more heavily from a greater height. What beginning do you set for the divine works in those to be redeemed? To do God's commands before the washing, to know and love God, to believe the promises of Christ, to seek, to knock, and to ask, you assert, is the proper act of all who strive to make themselves fit for the one who calls. Does the divine hand only begin to renew those received from the waters, and is each one's own will the cause of his life, so that grace is the wage of works, and a judgment of price, by which what is called a gift is bought? Or does God begin his help with the word, and declare himself by the voice of his ministers in all the world, so that the will, enticed by speech knocking at the ears, runs ahead of his help by its own judgment, and grace is no longer grace; which, doing the office of the law, acts only by the right of one who warns, and serves the field along with the planter, ### Scripture references - Matt 7:7: allusion, high confidence - Rom 11:6: allusion, high confidence - Rom 4:4: echo, low confidence ### Translation notes - "Which, once believed, heals" translates the printed "quae credita scat", which is corrupt; the sense is uncertain. "Seek, knock, ask" alludes to Matt 7:7; "grace is no longer grace" to Rom 11:6. ### Citation (SBL) Prosper of Aquitaine, Ingrat. 451 (PL 51:119; trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/p/prosper-carmen-ingratis/451). ## Lines 481–510 - URL: https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/prosper-carmen-ingratis/1/#p-481 - Source: PL 51:121 - Translation: Claude (claude-opus-5-5), 2026-09-27 Summary: Prosper charges that his opponents, by making grace no more than law and teaching and by denying that Adam's fall wounded the soul, adopt the condemned Pelagian dogma, and he ironically invites them to draw its consequences. ### Latin text Terraque seminibus det, non Deus, incrementum; / Ubere ceu gleba subsistat, et arte colentis / Exoritura seges; neque quidquam cordis in arvo / Præsulcet divina manus, quo temperet æquor / Edomitum, faciatque satis gaudere novales? Talibus assumptis inimico ex dogmate, nonne / Perspicuum est quantum damnatos confoveatis? / Dum cuique, ad verae capienda exordia vitæ, / Naturam affectum fidei conferre docetis; / Dumque aliud non est vobiscum gratia quam Lex, / Quamque propheta monens, et quam doctrina ministri. / Scilicet ut tale arbitrium generaliter insit / Semine damnato genitis in corpore mortis, / Quale habuit nondum peccati lege subactus / Primus homo; et nullum in prolem de vulnere vulnus / Transierit, nisi corpoream per conditionem: / Quæ sic exterius respondeat, ut nihil intus / Imminuat, teneatque suum substantia mentis / Splendorem; et nulla pœnali nocte prematur. ADDITE quod superest tumidi, ruituraque valli Congerite, et causis causas aptate sequentes. / Et quia nil primae periit virtutis apud vos, / Dicite ab illæsis animis procedere veram / Justitiam, Deo dignam, cœloque locandam: / Ut frustra Christus sit mortuus. Edite multos / Arte et sponte sua sanctos ab origine mundi, / Absque Deo placuisse Deo: decretaque Legis / Tunc data, cum pejor mos et corruptior ætas / Terrore instanti et formidine mortis egeret. / Dicite plecentes apices, mortisque ministros / Huc explesse operis quod gratia vivificatrix. ### English translation (Claude) and the earth gives the increase to the seeds, not God; as if the clod stood by its own fertility, and by the skill of the tiller the crop were to spring up; and the divine hand did not first furrow anything in the field of the heart, to work the tamed plain and make the fallow land rejoice in what is sown? With such things taken over from the hostile dogma, is it not plain how much you cherish those who were condemned? You teach that, for taking up the beginnings of true life, nature confers on each the disposition of faith; and with you grace is nothing other than the Law, than the prophet's warning, than the minister's teaching. That is to say, that the same choice is present in general in those born of condemned seed in the body of death as the first man had when not yet subdued by the law of sin; and that no wound passed from his wound to his offspring except through the bodily condition, which answers to it outwardly in such a way that within it lessens nothing, and the substance of the mind keeps its own splendor and is pressed by no penal night. Add what remains of your swollen rampart, soon to fall; heap it up, and fit consequent causes to causes. And since nothing of the first virtue has perished among you, say that true righteousness proceeds from unharmed souls, worthy of God and to be set in heaven: so that Christ died in vain. Put forward many saints from the origin of the world who by skill and of their own accord pleased God without God; and that the decrees of the Law were given at a time when worse ways and a more corrupt age needed the terror of threats and the fear of death. Say that the punishing letters and the ministers of death fulfilled here the work that life-giving grace ### Scripture references - 1 Cor 3:7: allusion, high confidence - Rom 7:24: allusion, high confidence - Rom 7:23: allusion, medium confidence - Gal 2:21: quotation, high confidence - 2 Cor 3:7: allusion, medium confidence ### Translation notes - Increase from God alludes to 1 Cor 3:6–7; "body of death" and "law of sin" to Rom 7:23–24; "Christ died in vain" to Gal 2:21; "ministers of death" and the letter to 2 Cor 3:6–7. The final lines (to the next section) are ironic: Prosper states what his opponents' premises imply. ### Citation (SBL) Prosper of Aquitaine, Ingrat. 481 (PL 51:121; trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/p/prosper-carmen-ingratis/481). ## Lines 511–540 - URL: https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/prosper-carmen-ingratis/511/#p-511 - Source: PL 51:123 - Translation: Claude (claude-opus-5-5), 2026-09-27 Summary: Prosper ironically lays out the Pelagian conclusions his opponents' premises imply, including that infants need no inner cleansing, and calls on them instead to confess that fallen nature is wounded and can rise only by Christ's grace. ### Latin text Nunc agite, et quoniam fuerit sine lege voluntas / Libera, quam scripti munibat pagina cordis; / Sic vitam æternam acquiri potuisse, vacante / Hac ope quæ legem supereminet, ut sine lege / Ex naturali ponit virtute capessi: / Nunc autem sæclis vergentibus in mala multa, / Crevisse auxilium; non quo cessante, salutem / Non caperet per difficiles natura labores; / Sed quo conatus operum affectusque juvante, / Propositam citius ferret mens libera palmam. / Dicite, cum infantes renovantur, non renovari / Insontes animas, et sola carne renasci / Exterius lotos, non exsistentibus illis / Internis maculis: quoniam licet edere rectæ / Signa voluntatis nequeant, tamen hoc magis omni / Sorde vacent, super auctoris quod conditionem / De proprio nihil addiderint quod fons aboleret. HÆC si non vestris spirant de cordibus, et vos / Non cum damnatis eadem ratis extulit alto / Mergendos pelago, submittite vela tumoris, / Nobiscumque humiles placido consistite portu. / Edite constanter naturæ vulnera victæ, / Exutam virtute animam, cæcataque cordis Lumina, et in pœnam propriam jaculis superatis / Armatum arbitrium, numquam consurgere posse, / Inque novos lapsus semper nitendo revolvi: / Cui sua sit laqueus sapientia, morsque subactum / Detineat, nisi vera salus ex munere Christi / Adsit, et oppressam dignetur gratia mentem. AN vestrum sublimem animum pudet ista fateri, / Ne sub tam multis morbis sit vilior æger? / Cum nihil ex omni maorum dote supersit / Quo medici mereatur opem, et mercede valescat. ### English translation (Claude) now performs; and that, since the will was free without the law, fortified by the page written on the heart, eternal life could thus have been gained, without this help that rises above the law, just as you claim that without the law it is grasped by natural virtue; but that now, as the ages sank into many evils, the help has increased: not as though, without it, nature could not take hold of salvation through hard labors, but so that, with it aiding the efforts and dispositions for works, the free mind might carry off the prize set before it more quickly. Say that when infants are renewed, innocent souls are not renewed, and that they are reborn in the flesh only, washed outwardly, there being no inner stains in them: since, though they cannot show signs of a right will, yet they are the more free of all filth in that, beyond the condition given by their maker, they have added nothing of their own for the font to abolish. If these things do not breathe from your hearts, and the same ship has not carried you out to the deep with the condemned, to be sunk in the sea, lower the sails of your pride, and stand humbly with us in the calm harbor. Declare steadfastly the wounds of conquered nature, the soul stripped of virtue, the blinded eyes of the heart, and the choice armed for its own punishment with the very darts that overcame it, so that it can never rise, and by its striving is always rolled back into new falls; for which its own wisdom is a snare, and death holds it subdued, unless true salvation from the gift of Christ is present, and grace counts the crushed mind worthy. Or is your lofty spirit ashamed to confess these things, lest the sick man be held cheaper under so many diseases, since nothing at all of his dowry of virtues is left by which he might merit the physician's help and get well for a fee? ### Scripture references - Rom 2:15: allusion, medium confidence - Eph 1:18: echo, low confidence ### Translation notes - The law written on the heart alludes to Rom 2:15. "Grace counts the crushed mind worthy": the printed "dignetur" may be a slip for a verb such as "erigat" (raise); translated as printed. "Of virtues" translates the printed "maorum", probably morum (good conduct); uncertain. The opening "Nunc agite, et" is read as "Nunc agit; et" ("now performs"), completing the previous sentence; if "agite" (come now) is right, the sense is unchanged: Prosper continues to state, ironically, what his opponents must say. ### Citation (SBL) Prosper of Aquitaine, Ingrat. 511 (PL 51:123; trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/p/prosper-carmen-ingratis/511). ## Lines 541–570 - URL: https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/prosper-carmen-ingratis/511/#p-541 - Source: PL 51:123 - Translation: Claude (claude-opus-5-5), 2026-09-27 Summary: Prosper says his opponents belong with the Pelagians, then states that all fell in Adam, as Paul teaches, and that grace, not a judge of merits, alone leads to itself; he quotes his opponents' objection that this abolishes reward and punishment. ### Latin text Ergo in castra gradum revocate hostilia, et illis / Addite vos, quorum ingenio et fallacibus armis / Luditis ejusdem vibrantes spicula linguæ. / Exsultate bonis naturæ, et mentis honorem; / Omnibus a sæculis illæsum stare docete. / Ne vos in totum retegatis dogmate nudo, / Corporeo tantum decurrere tramite pœnam / Peccati perhibete, animi nihil imminuentem. / Vulnere transfixos absolvite crimine, et ipsam / Justitiam accusate Dei, transire sinentis / Supplicium, quo non vultis transire reatum. / SED non injustus Deus est: manifestaque Pauli / Vox docet, uno omnes homines cecidisse ruente; / In quo tota simul series prostrata populorum / Deperiit, nec habet quisquam quo surgere possit / Ad vitam, sacro nisi rursum nascitur ortu- / Quotquot enim summo justos numeratis ab ævo, / Hac ope non dubium est salvatos, quam modo toto / Latius Omnipotens exercet gratia mundo, HÆC, sicut dictum est, non judex est meritorum, / Quæ nisi plena malis non invenit: et nisi donet / Quæ bona sunt, nihil efficiet bene cæca voluntas. / Hæc ut cujusquam studio affectuque petatur, / Ipsa agit, et cunctis dux est venientibus ad se: / Perque ipsam nisi curratur, non itur ad ipsam. / Ergo ad iter per iter ferimur: sine lumine lumen / Nemo videt: vitam sine vita inquirere mors est. / Currere currentum si non, et velle volentum est: Nec vitiis pœnam deberi, aut præmia laudi, / Si vel naturam obstrictam mala velle necesse est, / Vel nostro ascribi nequeunt bene gesta labori. / NUMQUID non eadem sapiunt, eademque perorant ### English translation (Claude) Then take your step back into the enemy's camp, and join those with whose wit and deceitful arms you play, brandishing the darts of the same tongue. Exult in the goods of nature, and teach that the honor of the mind has stood unharmed through all the ages. And, so as not to uncover yourselves wholly with the naked dogma, declare that the punishment of sin runs only along a bodily path, diminishing nothing of the soul. Acquit of guilt those pierced through by the wound, and accuse the very justice of God, who lets the punishment pass on where you will not let the guilt pass on. But God is not unjust; and the plain voice of Paul teaches that all men fell when the one fell; in whom the whole line of peoples, laid low together, perished, and no one has the means to rise to life unless he is born again by a holy birth. For as many as you count righteous from the earliest age, there is no doubt they were saved by this help which now the almighty grace exercises more widely in the whole world. This grace, as has been said, is not a judge of merits, which it finds only full of evils; and unless it gives what is good, the blind will will do nothing well. That it may be sought by anyone's zeal and longing, grace itself acts, and it is the guide of all who come to it; and unless one runs through it, one does not come to it. So we are carried to the way by the way: without light no one sees the light: to seek life without life is death. "If running is not of those who run, nor willing of those who will," you say, "then neither is punishment owed to vices nor reward to praise, if either nature is bound and must will evil, or good deeds cannot be ascribed to our labor." Do not those masters of yours think the same things and plead the same, ### Scripture references - Rom 5:12: allusion, high confidence - Rom 9:16: allusion, high confidence - Rom 9:14: echo, medium confidence - John 3:3: echo, low confidence - Ps 36:9 (35:10 LXX): echo, low confidence ### Translation notes - All falling in the one alludes to Rom 5:12–19; "not of those who run, nor of those who will" to Rom 9:16; "without light no one sees the light" echoes Ps 36:9. The objection in the last lines is the opponents', which Prosper says is that of their Pelagian masters ("you say" is supplied). ### Citation (SBL) Prosper of Aquitaine, Ingrat. 541 (PL 51:123; trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/p/prosper-carmen-ingratis/541). ## Lines 571–600 - URL: https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/prosper-carmen-ingratis/511/#p-571 - Source: PL 51:127 - Translation: Claude (claude-opus-5-5), 2026-09-27 Summary: Prosper answers that all humanity, made in God's image, fell in Adam, so that the will is darkened and wounded; grace does not destroy choice but heals it, and man must feed on the tree of life rather than on the fruit of his own choice. ### Latin text Vestri illi, quorum ructatis verba, magistri? / Sed quia consimili cognata superbia questu / Prompsit, et vobis nunc respondetur et illis. Inviolata Dei quondam et sublimis imago / In primo cuncti fuimus patre, dum nemore almo / Degit, et edicto parens cavet arbore ab una. / At postquam rupta mandati lege, superbum / Consilium mixtum invidiæ de fonte recepit, / Corruit, et cuncti simul in genitore cadente / Corruimus: transcurrit enim virosa per omnes / Peccati ebrietas, corrupti et cordis in alvo / Persistit, cruda fervet carbunculus esca. / Hinc animi vigor obtusus, caligine tetra / Induitur, nec fert divinæ fulgura lucis / Lumen iners: hinc arbitrium per devia lapsum / Claudicat, et cæcis conatibus inque ligatis / Motus inest, non error abest. Manet ergo voluntas / Semper amans aliquid quo se ferat, et labyrintho / Fallitur, ambages dubiarum ingressa viarum: / Vana cupit, vanis tumet et timet; omnimodaque / Mobilitate ruens in vulnera vulnere surgit. Hoc itaque arbitrium cum sanat gratia, tolli / Dicitis, et perimi vi aspirante putatis. / Quid mirum rabido si corde phreneticus æger / Morbum amat, et pellit medicum? Cognoscito tandem / Antiqui commenta doli, et desuescite captas / Aures vipereo rursum præbere susurro. / Parcite de fractis præcerpere noxia poma / Arbitrii ramis: non hæc vos esca reformat, / Nec speciem angelici nutrit cibus ille decoris. / Sed vetitorum avidos, et tetra bile tumentes, / De fastiditæ procul abripit arbore vitæ. ### English translation (Claude) those masters of yours, whose words you belch out? But since a kindred pride has uttered a like complaint, the answer is now given both to you and to them. We all were once God's inviolate and lofty image in our first father, while he lived in the nourishing grove and, obeying the command, kept away from one tree. But after he broke the law of the command and took in a proud counsel mixed from the fountain of envy, he fell, and we all fell together in our falling parent: for the venomous drunkenness of sin runs through all, and stays in the belly of the corrupted heart, an inflamed boil seething from raw food. Hence the vigor of the mind is dulled and clothed in foul darkness, and its sluggish eye cannot bear the lightning of the divine light; hence choice, slipping through trackless ways, limps, and in its blind and fettered efforts there is motion, but error is not absent. So the will remains ever loving something to carry itself toward, and is deceived in a labyrinth, having entered the windings of uncertain roads: it desires vain things, swells and fears with vain things; and, rushing with every kind of restlessness, it rises from wound into wounds. So when grace heals this choice, you say it is taken away, and you think it is destroyed by the force that breathes on it. What wonder if the frenzied sick man, with raving heart, loves his disease and drives away the physician? Recognize at last the inventions of the ancient deceit, and unlearn the habit of offering your captured ears again to the viper's whisper. Stop plucking harmful fruit from the broken branches of choice: this food does not reform you, nor does that food nourish the beauty of angelic glory. Rather it snatches those greedy for forbidden things, and swollen with foul bile, far away from the tree of life they despised. ### Scripture references - Gen 1:27: allusion, medium confidence - Gen 2:17: allusion, medium confidence - Gen 3:6: allusion, medium confidence - Gen 3:24: allusion, low confidence ### Translation notes - The tree of life and the forbidden tree allude to Gen 2:9, 16–17 and 3:22–24; the image to Gen 1:27; the viper's whisper to Gen 3:1–5. ### Citation (SBL) Prosper of Aquitaine, Ingrat. 571 (PL 51:127; trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/p/prosper-carmen-ingratis/571). ## Lines 601–630 - URL: https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/prosper-carmen-ingratis/511/#p-601 - Source: PL 51:127 - Translation: Claude (claude-opus-5-5), 2026-09-27 Summary: Restored nature and merit come from God as gift, which we return to him; infants, who have no merits, show this, since grace brings some to baptism and leaves others, apart from any merit of their parents. ### Latin text Hujus ope et fructu vescendum est, ut revalescens / Languida mens, etiam propriis bene viribus uti / Possit, et in Christo inveniat quod perdidit in se. NON igitur, quisquis terreni veste parentis / Exueris, priscum naturæ perdis honorem, / Sed recipis: sic acquirens quibus ante carebas, / Ut tua sint, si collatis utare modeste, / Et quod habes, hoc te acceptum fatearis habere. / Fons igitur meriti est lucis Pater; inde quod in nos / Fluxerit, hoc nobis majorum est causa bonorum, / Dum largitori sua reddimus, aeque relatis / Augemur, nostrumque bonum fit gloria dantis. / SED qui judicium arbitrii, meritumque tueris, / Quique hominum studiis ascribis dona vocantis: / Infantum discerne animos, et dissere quales / Affectus, qualesque habeant haec pectora motus. / Da teneris mores, et libertate volendi / Instrue, vix auræ tenuis lactisque capaces. / Nulla tibi arbitrii respondent signa, nec ullis / Dissociare pares meritis potes: omnibus una est / Natura, et pariter nequeunt bona vel mala velle. / Et tamen ex istis miseratrix gratia quosdam / Eligit, et rursum genitos baptismate transfert / In regnum æternum, multis in morte relictis, / Quorum causa fuit similis de vulnere eodem. NEC meritis istud poteris aptare parentum: / Ceu pia profuerit redimendis cura bonorum, / Abstuleritque aliis aliena ignavia vitam; / Cum videas multos sanctis genitoribus ortos, / Nullo salvari studio potuisse suorum: / Expositisque aliis ob turpia crimina matrum, / Missam externorum curam, quae stercore raptos ### English translation (Claude) On its help and fruit we must feed, so that the weak mind, regaining strength, may also be able to use its own strength well, and find in Christ what it lost in itself. So then, whoever you are who are stripped of the garment of your earthly parent, you do not lose the ancient honor of nature, but receive it back: acquiring what you lacked before in such a way that it is yours, if you use what was conferred modestly, and confess that what you have you have as received. The fountain of merit, then, is the Father of lights; what has flowed from there into us becomes for us the cause of greater goods, while we return to the giver what is his, and are increased by what we return, and our good becomes the glory of the giver. But you who defend the judgment of choice and merit, and ascribe to men's efforts the gifts of the one who calls: distinguish the souls of infants, and explain what dispositions and what motions these breasts have. Give the tender ones a character, and equip with the freedom of willing those who can scarcely take in thin air and milk. No signs of choice answer you, nor can you separate equals by any merits: all have one nature, and alike they cannot will either good or evil. And yet from these, merciful grace chooses some, and, born again by baptism, carries them over into the eternal kingdom, while many are left in death whose case was the same, from the same wound. Nor can you fit this to the merits of parents, as though the pious care of the good helped those to be redeemed, and the negligence of others took life away from others; for you see many born of holy parents who could not be saved by any zeal of their own families; and for others, exposed because of the shameful crimes of their mothers, the care of strangers was sent, which, snatching them from the dunghill, ### Scripture references - Jas 1:17: quotation, high confidence - 1 Cor 4:7: allusion, high confidence - Col 3:9: echo, low confidence ### Translation notes - "Father of lights" quotes Jas 1:17; "what you have you have as received" alludes to 1 Cor 4:7. The infants exposed by their mothers and rescued by strangers who had them baptized is an argument Augustine also uses (Letter 98). ### Citation (SBL) Prosper of Aquitaine, Ingrat. 601 (PL 51:127; trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/p/prosper-carmen-ingratis/601). ## Lines 631–660 - URL: https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/prosper-carmen-ingratis/511/#p-631 - Source: PL 51:129 - Translation: Claude (claude-opus-5-5), 2026-09-27 Summary: Twins, one saved and one lost, show that grace distinguishes without merit; all are justly condemned in Adam, so no one may complain that not all are freed. ### Latin text Per fontem vitae coelesti traderet aulæ. Quid si diversum hunc finem, quo gratia Christi / Unum alio pereunte legit, donatque salute, / In geminis etiam videas? quod dividis uno / Tempore conceptos atque uno tempore natos, / Non ullos potes arbitrii prætendere motus. / Cessat opus, cessat meritum, nihil editur impar. / Sed Deus et tales discernit, quo mage Christi / Excellat bonitas, quæ sola est causa vocatis / Et fidei et meriti: quoniam Sapientia dives / Hoc etiam tribuit multis, ut sancta operatis, / In finem vitæ, fieret de munere merces. NON autem recte, nec vere dicitur, illos / Qui sunt exsortes divini muneris, et quos / Gratia neglexit degentes mortis in umbra, / Peccati non esse reos, quia recta gerendi / Non data sit virtus. Naturæ compede vinctos / Procubuisse negant, nec ab uno germine credunt / Omnigenam prolem cum pœna et crimine nasci. / Quod qui non renuit, videt hujus pondera culpæ / Tam valida pariter miseris incumbere mole, / Ut si nulla etiam cumulent mala, sit tamen unum hoc / Sufficiens scelus, ad mortem nascendo luendam. HANC igitur legem quam per se nemo resolvit, / Si merito et juste positam, impositamque fatemur: / Cur querimur quod non omnes salvantur ab illa? / Cum si progeniem super omnem irrupta maneret, / De cunctis juste damnatis non quereremur, / An quod de toto ferretur, non toleratur / De parte? et melius foret omnia debita cogi, / Quam summa ex solida elementer multa remitti? / Quis vero exemptus squallenti carcere, pulset / Invidia miserantis opem, quia non simul omnes ### English translation (Claude) might hand them over through the font of life to the heavenly court. What if you see this different end, by which the grace of Christ chooses one while another perishes, and gives him salvation, even in twins? Since you separate those conceived at one time and born at one time, you cannot allege any motions of choice. Work is absent, merit is absent, nothing unequal is brought forth. But God distinguishes even such, so that the goodness of Christ may stand out the more, which alone is the cause, for those called, both of faith and of merit: since rich Wisdom grants this too to many, that for those who have done holy things to the end of life, the reward should come from the gift. But it is not rightly or truly said that those who have no share in the divine gift, and whom grace passed by as they lived in the shadow of death, are not guilty of sin, because the power of doing right was not given. They deny that men lie prostrate, bound by the fetter of nature, nor do they believe that from one stock all offspring is born with punishment and guilt. But whoever does not reject this sees that the weight of this guilt lies equally on the wretched with so strong a mass that, even if they heap up no further evils, this one crime is still enough to be paid for by death through being born. If, then, we confess that this law, which no one undoes by himself, was laid down and imposed deservedly and justly, why do we complain that not all are saved from it? For if it remained unbroken over all offspring, we would not complain of all being justly condemned; or is what would be borne for the whole not tolerated for a part? And would it be better for all debts to be exacted than for much of the full sum to be mercifully remitted? Who, released from the filthy prison, would assail with envy the help of the one who had mercy on him, because he did not ### Scripture references - Rom 9:11: allusion, high confidence - Rom 9:13: allusion, medium confidence - Luke 1:79: echo, low confidence - Matt 18:27: echo, low confidence ### Translation notes - The twins allude to Jacob and Esau in Rom 9:10–13. "Reward from the gift" reflects Augustine's teaching that God crowns his own gifts. "Shadow of death" echoes Luke 1:79. ### Citation (SBL) Prosper of Aquitaine, Ingrat. 631 (PL 51:129; trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/p/prosper-carmen-ingratis/631). ## Lines 661–690 - URL: https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/prosper-carmen-ingratis/511/#p-661 - Source: PL 51:131 - Translation: Claude (claude-opus-5-5), 2026-09-27 Summary: Those freed by grace do not complain that others are left but pray for them and learn how much they were forgiven; only the ungrateful complain, making salvation depend on their own choice, while the faithful owe all to Christ. ### Latin text In lucem veram tenebris eduxerit iisdem? Cum pœnam qua mersus erat, non experiatur / Quam misere ferat addictus, nisi liber ab illa. / Denique tunc illum socialem mente benigna / Concipit tactum, quo submissa prece Christum / Conciliet miseris, sueta qui nocte gravati / Nulla gerunt vota effugii. TANTUM nocet error, / Ut juvet errare; et veteris contagia morbi / Tam blande obrepunt, ut quo languetur ametur. / Unde ergo hæc oritur querimonia? Non movet illos / Talis cura, quibus necdum est sua pœna dolori, / Et qui se nulla credunt a luce relictos. / Qui vero tenebris exempti in lumine vivunt, / Gaudent, et quantum sibi sit bonitate vocantis / Dimissum, ex illis discunt qui debita solvunt. Vos igitur soli queruli, solique superbi: / Vos soli INGRATI, quos urit gratia, cujus / Omne opus arbitrio vultis subsistere vestro: / Et quod non cuncti mortales atria vitæ / Ingrediuntur, ita ex ipsis pendere putatis, / Ut tam ex judicio constet cujusque quod intrat, / Quam quod non intrat, ceu par in utrumque facultas / Suppetat; et tam sit proprium bona quam mala velle. / I procul, insana impietas, artesque malignas / Aufer, et auctorem comitare exclusa Britannum: / Nos humiles tenuesque sumus grex parvus, et altis / Inniti metuens, quia sufficientia nostra / Ex Christo est; si quid recti sapimus, volumusque, / Illi debemus qui vincula nostra resolvit, / Proque malis bona restituit, non inveniendo / Quod merito legeret, sed donans quo legeretur, / Ut de perceptis prodiret causa merendi; ### English translation (Claude) lead all together out of the same darkness into the true light? For he does not feel how wretchedly the condemned man bears the punishment in which he himself was sunk, unless he is free of it. Then, at last, with kindly mind he conceives that fellow-feeling by which with humble prayer he wins Christ for the wretched, who, weighed down in their accustomed night, have no wish to escape. So great is the harm of error that it delights to err; and the contagion of the old disease creeps in so smoothly that what one languishes from is loved. Whence, then, does this complaint arise? Such care does not move those for whom their own punishment is not yet a grief, and who believe themselves deserted by no light. But those who, freed from darkness, live in the light rejoice, and learn from those who pay their debts how much has been forgiven them by the goodness of the one who calls. You alone, then, are complainers, you alone are proud: you alone are UNGRATEFUL, whom grace galls, for you want all its work to rest on your own choice; and the fact that not all mortals enter the halls of life you think depends on themselves in such a way that it rests as much on each one's judgment that he enters as that he does not, as though an equal power were available for either, and it were as much one's own to will good as evil. Away, mad impiety; take your malicious arts away, and, shut out, go with your British author. We are humble and slight, a little flock, afraid to lean on high things, because our sufficiency is from Christ; if we know or will anything right, we owe it to him who loosed our chains and gave back good for evil, not finding what he might choose for its merit, but giving that by which one would be chosen, so that from what was received a cause of merit might come forth; ### Scripture references - Luke 12:32: allusion, high confidence - 2 Cor 3:5: allusion, high confidence - Rom 12:16: echo, low confidence - Luke 7:47: echo, low confidence ### Translation notes - The poem's title word INGRATI ("the ungrateful") is capitalized in the edition. "Little flock" alludes to Luke 12:32; "our sufficiency is from Christ" to 2 Cor 3:5; "afraid to lean on high things" echoes Rom 11:20 and 12:16. "Fellow-feeling" translates the printed "socialem... tactum", probably affectum; uncertain. ### Citation (SBL) Prosper of Aquitaine, Ingrat. 661 (PL 51:131; trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/p/prosper-carmen-ingratis/661). ## Lines 691–720 - URL: https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/prosper-carmen-ingratis/511/#p-691 - Source: PL 51:131 - Translation: Claude (claude-opus-5-5), 2026-09-27 Summary: Why some are chosen and others left, though all are alike, is hidden, and faith does not pry; as with the calling of the Gentiles, the last day, and the unequal conditions of birth, the potter distinguishes his vessels. ### Latin text Deque datis in danda, gradus industria crescens / Scanderet, atque bonum fieret Deus omnibus / unum. CUR vero humani generis de germine toto / Pars quædam in Christo rursum generanda legatur, / Pars pereat, cum causa eadem simul implicet omnes, / Nec discernantur merito, qui munere distant; / Non satis audemus scrutari, nec per opertas / Ire vias, callesque gradu pulsare remotos. / Multa etenim bene tecta latent, nescitaque prosunt / Dum mansueta fides quædam dilata modeste / Sustinet, et nullo ignorat non edita damno. Sic quando electum ex cunctis populum Deus unum / Leges, sacris, templo, unguento, signisque fovebat; / Quod fuit occultum, mundique in fine retectum est, / Non oberat nescire omnes quandoque vocandas / In regnum æternum gentes, totumque per orbem / Donandum quod spes parvæ tunc plebis habebit. Sic postrema dies qua mundi clauditur ætas / Notitiæ nostræ non data; nec tamen hujus / Secreti impatiens sanctorum turba laborat. / Ipsa quoque humani generis carnalis origo, / Quam multas vario circumtegit ordine causas? / Cumque omnes de fermento producat eodem / Una manus, nec diversis elementa parentum / Principiis coeant: limo procedit ab uno / Dispar opus, mutat numeros per vascula fictor, / Materiamque unam discernit jure creantis. / Ergo eadem natura animæ, naturaque carnis / Diversis mundum sub conditionibus intrat. / His regnare datum est, illos servire necesse est: / nos decor, et vires valde, viridisque senectus Suscipit, hos species inhonora, et debile corpus: / His viget ingenium præclaris artibus aptum, ### English translation (Claude) and from things given to things yet to be given, a growing diligence might climb by steps, and God might become for all their one good. But why, from the whole stock of the human race, some part is chosen to be born again in Christ, and some part perishes, when the same cause entangles all together, and those who differ in gift are not distinguished by merit, we do not dare to search out too far, nor to go along hidden ways, nor to tread remote paths with our step. For many things lie well covered, and not knowing them is profitable, while gentle faith modestly bears with certain things deferred, and without loss is ignorant of what has not been revealed. So when God fostered one people chosen out of all with laws, rites, temple, anointing, and signs, what was hidden and has been unveiled at the end of the world, it did no harm not to know: that all nations were one day to be called into the eternal kingdom, and that throughout the world would be given what the hope of a small people then held. So the last day, by which the age of the world is closed, is not given to our knowledge; and yet the throng of saints is not troubled, impatient of this secret. The very fleshly origin of the human race too, how many causes it covers in varied order! And though one hand brings forth all from the same leaven, and the elements of the parents do not come together from different principles, from one clay comes unequal work: the potter varies the measures through his vessels, and distinguishes the one material by the right of the creator. So the same nature of soul and the same nature of flesh enter the world under different conditions. To these it is given to rule, those must serve; beauty and great strength and a green old age receive some, others an unhonored look and a weak body; in some there flourishes a mind fit for famous arts, ### Scripture references - Rom 9:21: allusion, high confidence - Eph 3:6: allusion, medium confidence - Mark 13:32: allusion, medium confidence - Rom 11:33: echo, medium confidence - 1 Cor 15:28: echo, low confidence ### Translation notes - The potter and the vessels allude to Rom 9:20–21; the hidden call of the Gentiles to Eph 3:5–6; the unknown last day to Mark 13:32; "inscrutable" ways to Rom 11:33. "God for all their one good" may echo 1 Cor 15:28. ### Citation (SBL) Prosper of Aquitaine, Ingrat. 691 (PL 51:131; trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/p/prosper-carmen-ingratis/691). ## Lines 721–750 - URL: https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/prosper-carmen-ingratis/511/#p-721 - Source: PL 51:133 - Translation: Claude (claude-opus-5-5), 2026-09-27 Summary: Just as the unequal conditions of birth do not lead anyone to accuse the creator, so the hidden counsel of election is not to be pried into; with Paul, Prosper trembles and confesses God's judgment inscrutable but true and just. ### Latin text Hunc tarda premit gelidus præcordia sanguis: / Quosdam nec licitus calor incitat ad generandum. / Ast alii insanum nequeunt frenare furorem: / Hunc mitem et placidum tranquilla modestia comit, / … His et mille modis semen variantibus unum, / Impariles subeunt distincta exordia formas. / Nec tamen hæc inter tam compugnantia quisquam / Arguit auctorem, qui secum continet hujus / Legem operis, dum judicio placita explicat æquo, / Et rerum causas obscurat justa potestas. Si terrenum igitur figmentum, addictaque morti / Progenies, ita dissimili producitur ortu, / Ut cum operis species pateat, tamen edita non sit / Norma voluntatis de qua venit hic modus impar; / Quid mirum si consilii super omnia magni / Arcanum latet, et placito subducitur alto? / Quod dum vana fluunt mundi, dum in corpore mortis / Vivitur, et positi expletur certamen agonis, / Non cognoscendum texit Deus, utiliusque / Duxit ad examen quædam velate piorum. / NON ergo instamus clausis, nec operta procaci / Urgemus cura, satis est opera Omnipotentis / Cernere, et auctorem cunctorum nosse bonorum; / Quo sine nil rectum mens inchoat. Audeat amens / Impietas tumido arbitrio subnectere causas / Divinorum operum: nos cum manifesta videmus / Dona Dei, quorum est fons unus, summa voluntas; / Cum Paulo tremuisse juvat, stupidumque modeste Invictum ad solium Christi suspendere nutum: / Cujus judicium sic inscrutabile et altum / Dicimus, ut verax prorsus fateamur et æquum. ### English translation (Claude) in one, cold sluggish blood weighs on the breast; some, not even lawful warmth stirs to beget; but others cannot rein in an insane fury; this one, mild and calm, a quiet modesty adorns; … With these and a thousand ways varying the one seed, distinct beginnings take on unequal forms. And yet among things so much at odds no one accuses the author, who holds within himself the law of this work, while he unfolds his good pleasure by fair judgment, and a just power keeps the causes of things in shadow. If, then, the earthly frame, and the offspring given over to death, is brought forth by such unlike births that, though the look of the work is plain, yet the rule of the will from which this unequal measure comes has not been published, what wonder if the secret of the great counsel above all things lies hidden, and is withdrawn into his lofty good pleasure? While the vain things of the world flow by, while we live in the body of death and the contest of the appointed struggle is fought out, God has covered it from our knowledge, and thought it more useful to veil certain things for the testing of the pious. We, then, do not press upon closed things, nor urge hidden things with impudent care; it is enough to see the works of the Almighty and to know the author of all good things, without whom the mind begins nothing right. Let mad impiety dare to tie the causes of divine works to swollen choice: we, when we see the plain gifts of God, whose one fountain is his supreme will, are glad to tremble with Paul, and in modest awe to hang, astonished, on the nod of Christ before his unconquered throne: whose judgment we call so inscrutable and deep that we confess it wholly true and just. ### Scripture references - Rom 11:33: allusion, high confidence - Rom 7:24: echo, medium confidence ### Translation notes - After line 4 a line is missing; Migne prints a bracketed note supplying a sense (roughly: harshness of an untamable temper drives another), which is not part of Prosper's text and is removed. "Tremble with Paul" and "inscrutable" allude to Rom 11:33; "body of death" to Rom 7:24. ### Citation (SBL) Prosper of Aquitaine, Ingrat. 721 (PL 51:133; trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/p/prosper-carmen-ingratis/721). ## Lines 751–780 - URL: https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/prosper-carmen-ingratis/511/#p-751 - Source: PL 51:135 - Translation: Claude (claude-opus-5-5), 2026-09-27 Summary: Prosper warns the new people of God, grafted in by grace, not to be misled by the ascetic virtue of his opponents, who build on their own choice rather than on Christ the rock and cornerstone. ### Latin text Nam meritum ad mortem subeundam sufficit unum; / Ad Vitam, niSi quod donarit gratia, nullum. Tu vero, o nova gens, veteris quæ stirpe oleastri / Vulsa, et sacræ ramis inolescis olivæ, / Quærere formatæ; senis te frondis honorem / Non studio cœpisse tuo, sed jure potentis / Agricolæ insertam fecundo vivere ligno: / Vince superborum flatus, et vana furentum / Turbinibus stabili fortis pietate resiste: / Nec tibi fallacis subrepat imago decoris, / Nullum ex his errare putes. Licet in cruce vitam / Ducant, et jugi afficiant sua corpora morte, / Abstineant opibus, sint casti, sintque benigni, / Terrenisque ferant animum super astra relictis: / Si tamen hæc propria virtute capescere quemquam / Posse putant, sitve ut dignus labor iste juvari, / Ingenium meruisse aiunt bona vera petentis: / Crescere quo cupiunt, minuuntur; proficiendo / Deficiunt; surgendo cadunt; currendo recedunt. / Unde etenim vane frustra splendescere quærunt. / Inde obscurantur: quoniam sua, laudis, amore, / Non quæ sunt Christi quærunt, nec fit Deus illis / Principium, et capiti non dant in corpore regnum. / Non horum templo est Christus petra fundamentum; / Sed super instabilem arbitrii nutantis arenam / Assurgunt, foeda lapsuri mole tumoris. / Illi quem quidam reprobarunt ædificantes, / Nunc etiam reprobant lapidem, pariesque sine ipso / Tertius esse volunt, quem nullo foedere nectat / Angulus, et quem nulla habeat compago ligatum: / Hi thalamum ad sponsi non perducuntur, et intrant ### English translation (Claude) For one merit is enough for undergoing death; for life, none, except what grace has given. But you, O new people, who, torn from the stock of the wild olive, are grafted and grow in the branches of the holy olive, learn, now formed, that you did not begin the honor of the ancient foliage by your own effort, but by the right of the mighty farmer were grafted to live on the fruitful wood. Overcome the blasts of the proud, and resist the vain whirlwinds of the raging, strong in steadfast piety; and let not the image of a deceiving beauty creep upon you, so that you think none of these men errs. Though they lead their life on the cross, and afflict their bodies with unceasing death, abstain from wealth, are chaste and kind, and, leaving earthly things, bear their minds above the stars: yet if they think anyone can lay hold of these things by his own virtue, or that he can be such that this labor deserves to be helped, and say that the mind of one seeking true goods has merited it: by what they want to grow, they are lessened; by advancing they fall short; by rising they fall; by running they go backward. For whence they seek in vain to shine with empty things, thence they are darkened: since, for love of praise, they seek their own, not the things of Christ; nor is God for them the beginning, and they do not give the kingdom in the body to the head. For them Christ the rock is not the foundation of the temple; but on the unstable sand of a wavering choice they rise, about to fall under the foul mass of their pride. The stone which certain builders rejected, these now also reject, and want, without it, a third wall, which no corner binds with any bond, and which no joint holds fastened together. These are not led to the bridegroom's chamber, and they enter ### Scripture references - Rom 11:17: allusion, high confidence - Phil 2:21: allusion, high confidence - Matt 7:26: allusion, medium confidence - 1 Cor 3:11: allusion, medium confidence - Ps 118:22 (117:22 LXX): allusion, high confidence - Eph 2:20: allusion, medium confidence - Matt 25:10: allusion, medium confidence - Col 1:18: echo, low confidence ### Translation notes - The grafted olive alludes to Rom 11:17–24; seeking their own, not Christ's, to Phil 2:21; the rock and sand to Matt 7:24–27 and 1 Cor 3:11; the rejected stone to Ps 118:22 (Matt 21:42); the corner joining two walls to Eph 2:14–20; the bridegroom's chamber to Matt 25:10. "Learn, now formed" translates the corrupt "Quærere formatæ" by sense. The opponents' asceticism (the monks of southern Gaul) is acknowledged and then judged, as Prosper writes it. ### Citation (SBL) Prosper of Aquitaine, Ingrat. 751 (PL 51:135; trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/p/prosper-carmen-ingratis/751). ## Lines 781–810 - URL: https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/prosper-carmen-ingratis/511/#p-781 - Source: PL 51:137 - Translation: Claude (claude-opus-5-5), 2026-09-27 Summary: Prosper says his opponents reject Pelagianism in words while keeping its core; Pelagius at least showed his poison openly, while they confess original sin and infant baptism but deny that the soul was wounded. ### Latin text Libertate sua: quæ Christi gratia confert, / Non acceperunt, et habent: non attrahit illos / Vis Patris ad Verbum, sed sponte et præpete cursu / Præveniunt cessantis opem: nec ad omne serendum / Ejus egent, sine quo sibi plurima posse videmur. / Quid prodest verbis commentum Pelagianum / Respuere, et sola damnatos plectere voce? / Cum paucis squalida sublatis de cute nervis, / Intima viperei foveantur viscera sensus? / O bene quod diri erroris malus ille magister / Nullo prælevit lethalia pocula melle: / Sed non ambigua infectum feritate venenum / Protulit, et gustu virus detexit amaro! / Nam si argumenti primordia non onerasset / His quæ discipuli dempserunt callidiores, / Innumeras dubio cepisset plasmate mentes; / Quæ dum multa vident informia limine in ipso, / Horrida terrificæ declinant atria mortis. / Nec jam illis possunt attriti illudere fures, / Quorum quo tendant artes, atque unde oriantur, / Non dubiis promptum est cuivis cognoscere signis. Non igitur cum damnatis sentire videntur, / Cum dicunt mortem in cunctos transisse per unum / Primum hominem, cujus crimen resperserit omnes / Nec quemquam in vitam æternam nisi fonte renatum / Venturum: infantesque reos hoc munere solvi, / Quos prima ad mortem generaliter edat origo. / Sed cum damnatis sapiunt, damnataque promunt, / Cum dicunt, nihil esse animis per vulnus avitum Detractum decoris, splendoremque omnibus illum ### English translation (Claude) by their own freedom: what the grace of Christ confers they have not received, and yet they have it; the power of the Father does not draw them to the Word, but of their own accord, in swift course, they forestall the help of one who delays; nor for every sowing do they need him without whom they seem to themselves able to do very much. What good is it to spit out the Pelagian invention in words and to punish the condemned with the voice alone, when, with a few sinews removed from the filthy skin, the inmost bowels of the viperous view are cherished? How fortunate that that evil master of dire error smeared the deadly cups with no honey, but brought out a poison tainted with unmistakable fierceness, and revealed the venom by its bitter taste! For if he had not loaded the first principles of his argument with the things which his craftier disciples took away, he would have captured countless minds with an ambiguous fiction; but minds, seeing many misshapen things on the very threshold, turn away from the horrid halls of terrifying death. Nor can the worn-out thieves now deceive them, for it is easy for anyone to know, by no doubtful signs, where their arts tend and whence they arise. They do not, then, seem to think with the condemned when they say that death passed into all through the one first man, whose crime has stained all; and that no one will come into eternal life unless reborn from the font; and that guilty infants are set free by this gift, whom the first origin brings forth, all alike, to death. But they do think with the condemned, and put forward condemned things, when they say that nothing of their beauty was taken from souls by the ancestral wound, and that that splendor in all ### Scripture references - John 6:44: allusion, high confidence - Rom 5:12: allusion, high confidence ### Translation notes - The Father drawing to the Word alludes to John 6:44; death passing to all through one man to Rom 5:12. "How fortunate" reads "O bene quod" for the printed "O lene quod". "They seem to themselves" reads the printed "videmur" as videntur, by sense. ### Citation (SBL) Prosper of Aquitaine, Ingrat. 781 (PL 51:137; trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/p/prosper-carmen-ingratis/781). ## Lines 811–840 - URL: https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/prosper-carmen-ingratis/511/#p-811 - Source: PL 51:139 - Translation: Claude (claude-opus-5-5), 2026-09-27 Summary: Prosper reports his opponents' view that the will can see and do good, come to Christ by its own way, and persevere without God's help so that merit may be its own, and warns the faithful that Christ is their righteousness and all are born wounded. ### Latin text Nunc talem innasci, qualis fuit ante ruinam. / Hinc libertatem arbitrii discernere suo / Posse oculo cordis, quidquid sit rite gerendum, / Nec solum ad vitæ præsentis commoda solers / Sufficere ingenium, quo se tueatur et ornet; / Sed summis etiam mentem aptam percipiendis / Æternisque bonis, sponte ad cœlestia ferri: / Perque viam ad Christum, quam fecerit ipsa, venire. / Hinc hominem multa recti assuetudine firmum / Posse repugnare adversis, nec cedere pœnis / Quas superandae animæ per carnem admoverit hostis, / Auxilio abscedente Dei, qui deserat apte / Utiliterque suos, ut de certamine agonis / Quæsitas referant palmas: ne nulla piorum / Sint merita, et verae privemur laudis honore; / Si quod naturæ sensu noluntque, voluntque, / Præceptisque tenent legalibus insinuatum, / Divini auxilii manus hæc operetur in illis: / Ceu solis Christi famulis virtute carere / Sit dignum, et non posse probos apprendere mores, / Quos plerumque habeant etiam simulacra colentes. TALIA lingua procax cum verbis fundit ineptis, / Effuge, tu nova gens, hostiles effuge sensus, / Et procul a laqueis sapiens abjungere mortis. / Christus enim tua justitia est, quo te duce oportet / Currere, ne cursus, Christo sine, sit vagus error. / Nemo etenim, nemo est, qui non cum vulnere primi / Sit patris genitus: quo vulnere mens prius intus / Percussa est, quam membra foris, cum mente receptum est / Quod regione poli disjecta superbia suasit. / Sic animus, cui lumen erat de lumine summo, ### English translation (Claude) is now inborn just as it was before the ruin. Hence, they say, freedom of choice can discern with its own eye of the heart whatever is to be done rightly, and the skillful mind suffices not only for the advantages of the present life, to protect and adorn itself, but, being also fit to receive the highest and eternal goods, the mind is carried of its own accord to heavenly things, and comes to Christ by a way that it has made itself. Hence a man made firm by long habit of right can resist adversities and not yield to the punishments which the enemy has applied through the flesh to overcome the soul, the help of God withdrawing, who deserts his own fittingly and usefully, so that from the contest of the struggle they may bring back palms they have sought; lest the pious have no merits, and we be robbed of the honor of true praise, if what they will or do not will by the sense of nature, and hold as instilled by the commands of the law, the hand of divine help should work in them: as though it were fitting for Christ's servants alone to lack virtue and be unable to lay hold of upright conduct, which even idol-worshippers mostly have. When the impudent tongue pours out such things in foolish words, flee, you new people, flee the hostile views, and wisely separate yourself far from the snares of death. For Christ is your righteousness; with him as your leader you must run, lest your course, without Christ, be a wandering error. For no one, no one at all, was not born with the wound of the first father; by which wound the mind was struck within before the limbs without, when the mind took in what pride, cast down from the region of the sky, had urged. So the soul, whose light came from the highest light, ### Scripture references - 1 Cor 1:30: allusion, high confidence - Luke 10:18: echo, low confidence - Ps 18:5 (17:6 LXX): echo, low confidence ### Translation notes - "They say" is supplied: the propositions are the opponents'. The printed "mittis" at the end of a line is debris and is removed. Christ as righteousness alludes to 1 Cor 1:30 and Jer 23:6; pride cast down from the sky to the fall of the devil (Isa 14:12; Luke 10:18); the snares of death to Ps 18:5. ### Citation (SBL) Prosper of Aquitaine, Ingrat. 811 (PL 51:139; trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/p/prosper-carmen-ingratis/811). ## Lines 841–870 - URL: https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/prosper-carmen-ingratis/511/#p-841 - Source: PL 51:141 - Translation: Claude (claude-opus-5-5), 2026-09-27 Summary: The fallen soul, blinded, cannot even know its wound; the arts and sciences that remain to it cannot lead to true life, and if nature were unharmed Christ would have died in vain. ### Latin text Arbitrium involvit tenebris; et luce relicta, Consilio legit tetræ nigrescere noctis. / Nec jam captivos oculos extollere in altum / Sponte potest: quoniam hoc etiam spoliante tyranno / Perdidit, ut quanto jaceat sub vulnere norit. SI quid enim de principiis felicibus illi, / Et vita exsilii superest prudenter agenda, / Hoc sanum, et quo nil fuerit sublimius in se / Credit, amatque suum mundi sapientia sensum, / Innumeras sese claram mirata per artes: / Quod conjecturis sublimibus abdita quærit, / Quod meminit recte, sapit acriter, æstimat apte: / Quod studium fandi excoluit, quod legibus urbes / Instituit, moresque feros ratione recidit, / Ut pœnæ metus officio certarit amoris. Jam cum exercetur numeris, ad sidera cœli / Per cursus noscenda suos, et scire videtur / Defectus solis varios, lunæque labores, / Quam speciosa sibi est, et quam vanescit in ipsis? QUÆ licet ex primo naturæ habeantur honore; / Non tamen ad veram possunt perducere vitam. / (Denique ab his præceps in multas relligiones / Decidit, et factis hæsit factore relicto.) / Nam si nunc etiam illæsis vigor ille maneret, / In quo insons natura fuit; sua quemque voluntas / Conciliare Deo, pœnaque absolvere posset: / Nequidquam Christus mortem moriendo piaret, / Peccatum et mundi sanguis non tolleret Agni, / Nec genus humanum generari rursus egeret / Conditione nova: quoniam sapientia sana, / Sana fides, sanum arbitrium, mens libera morbo, / Vitam agerent dignam summorum participatu. SED prostrata semel, quanto natura profundo / Immersa, et quantæ sit mole oppressa ruinæ; ### English translation (Claude) wraps its choice in darkness; and, leaving the light, by its own counsel chose to grow black with foul night. Nor can it now of itself lift its captive eyes on high: since, as the tyrant despoiled it, it lost even this, to know under how great a wound it lies. For if anything remains to it from those happy beginnings, and for the prudent conduct of the life of exile, the wisdom of the world believes this sound, and that nothing was more sublime in itself, and loves its own sense, admiring itself as famous through countless arts: that it seeks hidden things by lofty conjectures, that it remembers rightly, understands keenly, judges fitly; that it has cultivated the study of eloquence, that it has founded cities with laws, and cut back savage ways by reason, so that fear of punishment vied with the duty of love. And when it busies itself with numbers, in learning the stars of heaven by their courses, and seems to know the varied eclipses of the sun and the labors of the moon, how beautiful it is to itself, and how it fades away in these very things! Though these come from the first honor of nature, yet they cannot lead to the true life. (In the end it fell headlong from these into many religions, and clung to things made, leaving their maker behind.) For if even now that vigor remained unharmed in which nature was innocent, each one's own will could reconcile him to God and absolve him from punishment; in vain would Christ have atoned for death by dying, and the blood of the Lamb would not take away the sin of the world, nor would the human race need to be begotten again under a new condition: since sound wisdom, sound faith, sound choice, a mind free of disease would lead a life worthy of sharing in the highest things. But how deep nature, once laid low, has been sunk, and under how great a mass of ruin it is crushed, ### Scripture references - Rom 1:25: allusion, high confidence - John 1:29: allusion, high confidence - Gal 2:21: allusion, medium confidence - John 3:3: echo, low confidence ### Translation notes - Turning from the maker to things made alludes to Rom 1:21–25; the Lamb taking away the sin of the world to John 1:29; Christ dying in vain to Gal 2:21. ### Citation (SBL) Prosper of Aquitaine, Ingrat. 841 (PL 51:141; trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/p/prosper-carmen-ingratis/841). ## Lines 871–900 - URL: https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/prosper-carmen-ingratis/511/#p-871 - Source: PL 51:143 - Translation: Claude (claude-opus-5-5), 2026-09-27 Summary: The depth of the fall is shown by the incarnation and death of the Word, by which alone captives are redeemed; the redeemed must not be proud of what nature retains or credit their recovered sight to free will, as the serpent persuaded Adam. ### Latin text Verbum homo fit, rerumque sator sub conditione / Servilis formæ dignatur virgine nasci. / Inque infirmorum cunctos descendere sensus. / Vexatur virtus, sapientia ludificatur: / Justitia injustos tolerat, clementia sævos: / Gloria contemptum subit, et tormenta potestas: / Inque crucis poenam nulli violabilis usquam / Vita agitur: cujus perimatur morte peremptor; / Justo ut pro injustis effuso sanguine, sit mors / Unius insontis multorum vita reorum. / Hoc igitur pretio captivi cum redimuntur, / Agnoscant quali conclusi carcere, quove / Obsessi fuerint morbo; quibus eripiendis / Succurri haud aliter potuit quam morte medentis. / Et quia de magnis opibus nonnulla supersunt, / Quæ decorent nudos, et quæ solentur egenos: / Non ita pro summis oblectent ultima lapsos, / Ut de supplicio tumeant, atque ordine verso, Quo sunt effecti miseri, sint inde superbi. / Aut cum hebetes visus, longa ex caligine tandem, / … / Naturæ hoc potius, libertatique volendi, / Quam Christo tribuant: ne scilicet evacuetur / Arbitrii virtus, si desit recta legendi. / Hoc patribus primis mortis sator insinuatus / Consilio est: hac arte omnes prostravit in uno, / Dum suadet multo præstantius esse, quod ipsis / (Non tribuente licet Domino) sponderet habendum / Prudens libertas, vetitoque instructa cupido: / Quæ nunc per veteris serpens vestigia fraudis, / Deceptos simili studet inflammare furore: ### English translation (Claude) the Word becomes man, and the sower of all things, under the condition of a servant's form, deigns to be born of a virgin and to go down into all the feelings of the weak. Power is harassed, Wisdom is mocked; Justice bears with the unjust, Mercy with the cruel; Glory undergoes contempt, and Power torments; and Life, nowhere violable by any, is driven to the punishment of the cross, so that by its death the slayer might be slain; so that, the blood of the just being poured out for the unjust, the death of the one innocent might be the life of many guilty. When captives, then, are redeemed at this price, let them recognize in what a prison they were shut, or by what disease they were besieged; for their rescue help could come in no other way than by the death of the healer. And because, of their great wealth, some things remain that adorn the naked and console the needy, let not these last things so delight those fallen from the highest that they swell with pride over their punishment, and, the order reversed, are proud of the very thing by which they were made wretched. Or when their dulled eyes, at last, after long darkness, … let them not ascribe this to nature and the freedom of willing rather than to Christ: lest, forsooth, the power of choice be emptied if it lacks the right of choosing. With this counsel the sower of death crept in on the first parents; by this art he laid all low in one, persuading them that it was far better to have what prudent freedom and desire, taught by the forbidden thing, would promise them (though the Lord did not grant it); and now, a serpent creeping in the footsteps of his old fraud, he strives to inflame the deceived with a like fury: ### Scripture references - John 1:14: allusion, medium confidence - Phil 2:7: allusion, high confidence - 1 Pet 3:18: allusion, high confidence - Heb 2:14: allusion, medium confidence - Mark 10:45: echo, low confidence - Gen 3:5: allusion, medium confidence ### Translation notes - After "after long darkness" a line is missing; Migne prints a bracketed note giving the sense ("they lift to heaven and enjoy the light of truth"), which is not Prosper's text and is removed. The servant's form alludes to Phil 2:7; the just for the unjust to 1 Pet 3:18; the slayer slain by death to Heb 2:14; the life of many to Mark 10:45 and Rom 5:19. ### Citation (SBL) Prosper of Aquitaine, Ingrat. 871 (PL 51:143; trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/p/prosper-carmen-ingratis/871). ## Lines 901–930 - URL: https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/prosper-carmen-ingratis/511/#p-901 - Source: PL 51:145 - Translation: Claude (claude-opus-5-5), 2026-09-27 Summary: The serpent persuades men that the mind can love Christ by nature and that grace only repays merit; Prosper calls the faithful to confess that they are a new creation, members of Christ the head, from whom all their strength flows. ### Latin text Ut quoniam pulchrum est veris impendere curam, / Justitiæque avidos bona nosse et velle salubre est: / Suadeat ingenio cujusque hoc lucis inesse / Ut naturali mens vivida mobilitate, / Non spirante Deo, Christi exardescat amore, / Utque ita salvatrix nil gratia conferat istis, / Sed referat; pretioque bonos, non munere ditet. HIs de seminibus multo jam plura oriuntur, / Et frumenta inter primo turgentia lacte, / Spinis fulta subit seges horrida zizaniorum. / Sed nos qui Domini semen sumus, agricolæque / Stamus ope, et supera perflati vivimus aura, / Viperei calicis gustum procul excutiamus: / Divinique operis constanter confiteamur / Figmentum nos esse novum, quod prorsus ab illa / Stirpe vetustatis discretum est, atque recisum, / Et jam sit penitus carnalis originis exsors, / Qui membrum est Christi, capitisque in corpore vivit: / A quo subjectos vigor omnis manat in artus; / Et sic quæque suo vegetantur in ordine partes, / Ut quod agunt, et dispositis quod motibus explent, / Ex illo possint, qui summa atque ultima pacans, / Ut nos insereret summis, se miscuit imis. CONTICEANT igitur qui dicunt esse cavendum / Ne desit sanctis sumendæ causa coronæ, / Si non ipsorum bona repperiantur in illis. / Hoc etenim tumida nimis impietate docentes, / Quid nisi justitia nos et virtute, Deoque, / Dispoliare volunt: ne lux in nocte coruscet, / Languida ne in vires redeant, ne mortua vivant. / Sed nobis summo verorum a fonte bonorum ### English translation (Claude) so that, since it is a fine thing to spend care on true things, and it is wholesome for those eager for justice to know and will the good, he persuades them that there is so much light in each one's natural ability that the mind, alive with a natural motion, without God breathing on it, may blaze with the love of Christ, and that saving grace thus confers nothing on such men but pays them back, and enriches the good with a price, not with a gift. From these seeds many more things are now springing up, and among the wheat, swelling with its first milk, a bristling crop of tares, propped up by thorns, comes up. But let us, who are the Lord's seed, who stand by the help of the farmer and live breathed on by the breath from above, shake the taste of the viper's cup far from us; and let us steadfastly confess that we are the new creation of the divine work, which has been wholly separated and cut off from that old stock, and has now no share at all in a fleshly origin, since it is a member of Christ and lives in the body of the head: from him all vigor flows into the limbs beneath him, and so each part is given life in its own order, so that what they do, and fulfill with ordered motions, they are able to do from him who, bringing peace to the highest and the lowest, mingled himself with the lowest to graft us into the highest. Let them be silent, then, who say we must take care that the saints do not lack a ground for receiving a crown, if goods of their own are not found in them. For in teaching this with too swollen an impiety, what do they want but to strip us of justice, of virtue, and of God, lest the light flash in the night, lest the weak return to strength, lest the dead live? But for us let it be our glory to draw these things ### Scripture references - Matt 13:25: allusion, medium confidence - 2 Cor 5:17: allusion, medium confidence - Eph 4:16: allusion, medium confidence - Col 1:20: echo, low confidence - 1 Cor 12:27: echo, low confidence ### Translation notes - The tares among the wheat allude to Matt 13:24–30; the new creation to 2 Cor 5:17; the body and head to Eph 4:15–16 and Col 2:19; peace for the highest and lowest to Col 1:20. The opponents' worry that the saints would lack a ground for their crown is quoted as Prosper states it. ### Citation (SBL) Prosper of Aquitaine, Ingrat. 901 (PL 51:145; trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/p/prosper-carmen-ingratis/901). ## Lines 931–960 - URL: https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/prosper-carmen-ingratis/511/#p-931 - Source: PL 51:145 - Translation: Claude (claude-opus-5-5), 2026-09-27 Summary: Like branches in the vine, believers bear fruit only in Christ; whatever good they do, they do by freedom, but freedom redeemed and moved by Christ's grace. ### Latin text Haurire hæc, supero et semper splendore nitere, / Gloria sit; non spes in feni flore caduco. / Sicut enim palmes nullos valet edere fructus / Non in vite manens, quæ de radice ministra / Succum agat in frondes, et musto compleat uvas: / Sic infecundi virtutum, et fruge carentes / Perpetui cibus ignis erunt: qui vite relicta / Audent effusa de libertate comarum / Fidere, ne Christi sint ubertate feraces: / Et mage se credunt propriis excellere posse, / Quam si virtutum placitarum sit Deus auctor. / Viles ergo putent se deformesque futuros, / Cum transformatis fiet Deus unica sanctis / Gloria: corporei nec jam pressura laboris / Conteret incertos, sed in omnibus omnia semper / Christus erit. Quod si pulchrum et super omnia magnum est, / Cur pudet hac etiam fletus in valle potentes / Esse Deo, minimumque operis mortalis habere, / Quod non est nisi peccatum quo discrucietur / Libertas: ad quam solam male gesta recurrant? Et tamen in sanctos animum cum intendimus actus, / Cum desideriis carnis mens casta repugnat, / Cum tentatori non cedimus, et per acerbas / Vexati pœnas, illæso corde mallemus; / Libertate agimus; sed libertate redempta, / Cui Deus est rector, summoque ex lumine lumen, / Vita, salus, virtus, sapientia: gratia Christi est, / Qua currit, gaudet, tolerat, cavet, eligit, instat, / Credit, sperat, amat, mundatur, justificatur. Si quid enim recti gerimus, Domine, auxiliante / Te gerimus; tu corda moves; tu vota petentis ### English translation (Claude) from the highest fountain of true goods, and always to shine with splendor from above; not to hope in the fading flower of grass. For just as a branch can bear no fruit unless it remains in the vine, which, serving from the root, drives sap into the leaves and fills the grapes with juice, so those barren of virtues and lacking fruit will be food for everlasting fire, who, leaving the vine, dare to trust in the sprawling freedom of their foliage, so as not to be fruitful through Christ's abundance; and they believe they can excel more by their own powers than if God were the author of virtues pleasing to him. Let them think, then, that they will be base and misshapen when God becomes the one glory of the transformed saints, and no longer will the pressure of bodily toil crush them in uncertainty, but Christ will always be all in all. And if this is fair and great above all things, why is it shameful, even in this valley of weeping, to be strong in God, and to have the least share in mortal work, which is nothing but the sin by which freedom is tormented, to which alone evil deeds go back? And yet when we bend our mind to holy acts, when the chaste mind fights against the desires of the flesh, when we do not yield to the tempter, and, harassed by bitter punishments, we would rather [die] with heart unharmed, we act by freedom; but by freedom redeemed, whose ruler is God, light from the highest light, life, salvation, power, wisdom: it is the grace of Christ by which it runs, rejoices, endures, takes care, chooses, presses on, believes, hopes, loves, is cleansed, is justified. For if we do anything right, Lord, we do it with you helping us; you move hearts; you grant the prayers of the one who asks ### Scripture references - Isa 40:6: allusion, medium confidence - John 15:4: allusion, high confidence - John 15:6: allusion, high confidence - 1 Cor 15:28: allusion, high confidence - Ps 84:6 (83:7 LXX): allusion, medium confidence - Gal 5:17: echo, low confidence ### Translation notes - The fading flower of grass alludes to Isa 40:6–8 and 1 Pet 1:24; the vine and branches to John 15:4–6; "all in all" to 1 Cor 15:28 and Col 3:11; the valley of weeping to Ps 84:6. In "we would rather [die] with heart unharmed" the verb is supplied by sense; the line seems to have lost a word. ### Citation (SBL) Prosper of Aquitaine, Ingrat. 931 (PL 51:145; trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/p/prosper-carmen-ingratis/931). ## Lines 961–979 - URL: https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/prosper-carmen-ingratis/511/#p-961 - Source: PL 51:147 - Translation: Claude (claude-opus-5-5), 2026-09-27 Summary: The poem ends with a prayer: God crowns his own gifts, yet this does not make human effort idle, since without him the will only strays; may our choice proceed from his help, and his will be done in us as a true sabbath rest. ### Latin text Quæ dare vis, tribuis, servans largita, creansque / De meritis merita, cumulans tua dona coronis. / Non autem hoc curam minui, studiumque resolvi / Virtutum, aut opus ingenii torpere putandum est, / Quod bona sanctorum tua sunt, et quidquid in illis / Aut sanum, aut validum est, de te viget: ut videatur / Nil actura hominis, te cuncta gerente, voluntas: / Quæ sine te quid agit, nisi quo procul exsulet a te? / Præcipites semper calles, et devia motu / Ingressura suo: nisi fessam, tu bone, et ægram / Suscipias, referas, foveas, tuearis, honestes. / Tunc fiet cursus velox, oculique videntes, / Libera libertas, sapiens sapientia, justum / Judicium, et fortis virtus, et sana facultas. / Hujus opis semper, Pater, indigeamus: ab ipsa / Prodeat arbitrium nostrum, nihil hac sine sensus / Corporei possint, opus ut servile quiescat. / Et tua dum in nobis agitur, non nostra voluntas, / Legitima in sanctis ducamus sabbata festis. ### English translation (Claude) what you wish to give, keeping what you have bestowed, and creating merits from merits, crowning your own gifts with crowns. But it must not be thought that care is lessened by this, or zeal for virtues relaxed, or the work of the mind made sluggish, because the goods of the saints are yours, and whatever in them is sound or strong thrives from you, so that man's will might seem to do nothing while you do all. For without you what does it do, except wander far from you, ever ready to enter headlong paths and byways by its own motion, unless you, O good one, take it up weary and sick, bring it back, cherish it, guard it, and honor it? Then its course will be swift, and its eyes will see; freedom will be free, wisdom wise, judgment just, virtue strong, and capacity sound. Of this help, Father, may we always stand in need; from it may our choice proceed; without it may our bodily senses be able to do nothing, so that the servile work may rest. And while your will, not ours, is done in us, may we keep lawful sabbaths in holy feasts. ### Scripture references - Lev 23:7: allusion, medium confidence - Matt 26:39: echo, medium confidence - Matt 6:10: echo, low confidence - Heb 4:9: echo, low confidence ### Translation notes - "Crowning your own gifts" echoes Augustine (e.g. Letter 194.19; Grace and Free Will 6.15). The servile work and sabbaths allude to Lev 23:7–8 and Num 28:18, read spiritually as rest from sin; "your will, not ours" echoes Matt 26:39 and Matt 6:10. ### Citation (SBL) Prosper of Aquitaine, Ingrat. 961 (PL 51:147; trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/p/prosper-carmen-ingratis/961).