Writing in 413 to Anicia Juliana, the mother of the recently dedicated virgin Demetrias, Augustine of Hippo expressed his concern that her daughter had been preyed upon by the author of a dangerous letter containing novel doctrines on divine grace. The letter to which Augustine referred was indeed dangerous: it was none other than the now famous Epistula ad Demetriam of Pelagius, the manifesto in which the holy man made known to influential members of the Roman church the ideas on the nature of the soul for which he would eventually be condemned as a heretic. Augustine's implication is that despite or perhaps because of her exalted social standing, Demetrias was in danger of becoming a pawn in a high-stakes game of ecclesiastical authority. Augustine knew – as Pelagius would have known – that by addressing the letter to a figure so exalted as Demetrias, its contents would acquire an aura of respectability for a wider readership that would be difficult, if not impossible, to dispel. The letter is one of the few undisputed works of Pelagius to survive.