St. Prudentius Galindo

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.