Tuesday, August 11, 2026

Pope Leo (c. 430-449) Teaching that Only Jesus was Exempt from Original Sin in "Anti-Pelagian Summaries of the Epistles of Saint Paul"

  

X. Concerning the sin of Adam, which passed on to all people without any exception, neither has it been absent [in anyone] except in Christ Jesus, who alone received human nature in such a way that the contagions of the ancient sin did not hold him. And just as through the sin of one the death of everyone was introduced, so through the righteousness of one the life of all was repaired (5:19). (Pope Leo, “Anti-Pelagian Summaries of the Epistles of Saint Paul: To the Romans,” c. 430-449, trans. Francis X. Gumerlock, in Francis X. Gumerlock, “Translation of Four Neglected Texts from the Pelagian Controversy,” in The Oxford Handbook of the Pelagian Controversy, ed. Anthony Dupont, Giulio Malavasi, and Brian Matz [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2025], 595. According to Gumerlock, “These summaries, or chapter headings, . . . were found in a codex at Fulda, written in the year 546” [Ibid., 594])

 

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