Basilica of St. Clement before which Caelestius appeared. The propositions drawn up by the deacon Paulinus of Milan, on account of which Caelestius had been condemned at Carthage in 411, were laid before him. Caelestius refused to condemn these propositions, at the same time declaring in general that he accepted the doctrine expounded in the letters of Pope Innocent and making a confession of faith which was approved. The pope was won over by the conduct of Caelestius and said that it was not certain whether he had really maintained the false doctrine rejected by Innocent, and therefore Zosimus considered the action of the African bishops against Caelestius too hasty. He wrote at once in this sense to the bishops of the African province and called upon those who had anything to bring against Caelestius to appear at Rome within two months. After he received from Pelagius a confession of faith, together with a new treatise on free will, Zosimus held a new synod of the Roman clergy, before which both these writings were read. The assembly held the statements to be orthodox, and Zosimus again wrote to the African bishops defending Pelagius and reproving his accusers, among whom were the Gallic bishops Hero and Lazarus. Archbishop Aurelius of Carthage quickly called a synod, which sent a reply to Zosimus in which it was argued that the pope had been deceived by heretics. In his answer, Zosimus declared that he had settled nothing definitely, and wished to settle nothing without consulting the African bishops. After the new synodal letter of the African council of 1 May 418 to the pope, and after the steps taken by the emperor Honorius against the Pelagians, Zosimus issued his Tractoria, in which Pelagianism and its authors were finally condemned. Shortly after this, Zosimus became involved in a dispute with the African bishops in regard to the right of clerics who had been condemned by their bishops to appeal to the Roman See. When the priest Apiarius of Sicca had been excommunicated by his bishop on account of his crimes, he appealed directly to the pope, without regard to the regular course of appeal in Africa, which was exactly prescribed. The pope at once accepted the appeal, and sent legates with credentials to Africa to investigate the matter. Another, potentially wiser, course would have been to have first referred the case of Apiarius to the