c. 400) the Christian presbyter, wrote a work, no longer extant, which opposed a number of common 5th-century practices,[1] and which inspired one of the most violent of the polemical treatises of Jerome (died 420).
[3] Some Protestant historians regard Vigilantius, along with Jovinian, Aerius of Sebaste and Helvidius, as 4th-5th century early proto-protestants.
[4] On his return to Severus in Gaul he was ordained; and, having soon afterwards inherited means through the death of his father, he set out for Palestine, where Saint Jerome received him with great respect at Bethlehem.
About 403, some years after his return from the East, Vigilantius wrote his work against some church practices, in which he argued against the veneration of relics, as also against the vigils in the basilicas of the martyrs, then so common, the sending of alms to Jerusalem, the rejection of earthly goods and the attribution of special virtue to the unmarried state, especially in the case of the clergy.
[5] The doctrines of Vigilantius, at least to the extent that they are understood on the basis of Jerome's letter, feature strongly in the 'Twelve Conclusions' of the English Lollards.