Bishop of Troyes and participant in some of the most controversial events of the time. Born in Spain, he was baptized under the name Galindo. Fleeing to Gaul to escape the Moors, he changed his name to Prudentius and studied in the Palatine school. Elected bishop of Troyes in 840 or 845, he soon acquired a sparkling reputation for his erudition, and the formidable Hincmar, bishop of Reims, recruited his aid during the controversy involving the theologian Gottschalk of Fulda. Gottschalk's unorthodox views on predestination had earned him the vicious condemnation of Hincmar, as well as his imprisonment and harsh treatment at the monastery of Hautvilliers. Prudentius only added to the controversy when he defended the Augustinianism of Gottschalk in preaching a double predestination and denying the general saving will of Christ. He authored a defense of the Augustinian doctrine of double predestination in the Epistola ad Hincmarum and attacked the theologian John Scotus Erigena in the work De Praedestinatione Contra Joannem Scotum. He also composed a continuation of the Annales Bertiniani, a history of the Franks, which extended the account from 835 to 861. While never canonized officially, his feast day is still kept at Troyes on April 6.
Prudentius (? in Aragon, Spain – 6 April 861 at Troyes, France) was bishop of Troyes, a chronicler and an opponent of Hincmar of Reims in the controversy on predestination.
Life
Prudentius left Spain in his youth and came to the Frankish Empire, where he changed his name from Galindo to Prudentius. He was educated at the Palatine School, At the court of King Louis the Pious he took over writing the Annals of St Bertin from about 835 until his death in 861. He became Bishop of Troyes in 843.
At Troyes his feast is celebrated on 6 April as that of a saint, though the Bollandists do not recognize his cult. His works, with the exception of his poems, are printed in Migne's Patrologia Latina, CXV, 971–1458. His poems in Monumenta Germaniae Historica Poetæ Lat., II, 679 sq.
Theological views
In the controversy on predestination between Gottschalk of Orbais, Archbishop Hincmar of Reims, and Bishop Pardulus of Laon, he opposed Hincmar in an epistle addressed to him. In this epistle, which was written about 849, he defends a double predestination, viz., one for reward, the other for punishment, not, however, for sin. He further upholds that Christ died only for those who are actually saved.
The same opinion he defends in his De prædestinatione contra Johannem Scotum, which he wrote in 851 at the instance of Archbishop Wenilo of Sens who had sent him nineteen articles of Eriugena's work on predestination for refutation. Still it appears that at the synod of Quierzy, he subscribed to four articles of Hincmar which admit only one predestination, perhaps out of reverence for the archbishop, or out of fear of King Charles the Bald.
In his Epistola tractoria ad Wenilonem, written about 856, he again upholds his former opinion and makes his approval of the ordination of the new bishop Æneas of Paris depend on the latter's subscription to four articles favouring a double predestination. Of great historical value is his continuation of the Annales Bertiniani from 835 to 61, in which he presents a reliable history of that period of the Western Frankish Empire.
He is also the author of Vita Sanctæ Mauræ Virginis and some poems.
Hincmar of Reims wrote that Prudentius died "still scribbling away at many things that were mutually contractory and contrary to faith."
