Venerable Prosper of Aquitaine

CRITICAL: category corrected from "hierarch" to "venerable" — all sources (including the Orthodox OCA) explicitly state that Prosper was never a bishop or even a priest; he was a married layman who around 428 persuaded his wife to enter religious life, after which he himself became a monk at a monastery near Marseille.

Born c. 390 in Aquitaine (Gaul), he became one of the most learned laymen of the fifth-century Latin West — St. Photios called him "the Eradicator of Heresies." He first appears in the record around 429, praised by Blessed Augustine of Hippo for his moral integrity and eloquence. Prosper became the chief popular defender of Augustine's teaching on grace and predestination against the Pelagian and semi-Pelagian monks of southern Gaul, corresponding directly with Augustine and later carrying the controversy to Rome, where in 431 he obtained Pope St. Celestine I's support for Augustinian doctrine.

Around 440, Pope St. Leo the Great recruited him as a secretary; scholars believe Prosper is the true author of the treatise "On the Incarnation of the Lord" later attributed to Leo. His most enduring work, the "Epitoma Chronicon," continues Jerome's world chronicle down to 455, providing an eyewitness account of the Vandal sack of Rome that year. He is venerated as a model of lay/monastic devotion to true doctrine and died in Rome, some sources say c. 455, others c. 463.