- stances, but he was a strenuous upholder of Orthodoxy and
would make no concession. It was decided, therefore, to find a pretext for deposing him, and with that view libels were circulated, insinuating that he was now acting in collusion with the Goths. His residence was in the Lateran palace near the Asinarian gate, and he was accused of plotting to admit the enemy through that portal. He repudiated the charge and removed his habitation to an interior part of the city.[1] A letter was then forged, in which his treasonable relations with Vitigis were set forth in precise terms;[2] where-*upon he was summoned to the presence of the general on the Pincian. He found Belisarius sitting at the feet of his wife, who was reclining on a couch; and the moment he entered, Antonina addressed him with: "My Lord Pope, what have we done to you and the Romans that you should wish to betray us to the Goths?" She had scarcely finished speaking, when a pair of subservient deacons stripped him of his pallium, and hastily enveloped him in a monkish habit. He was then hurried away to exile, while the information was spread among the populace that the Pope had been made a monk.[3] After his deposition, Vigilius was consecrated without delay or difficulty, little or nothing being known at Rome of the pledges he had given at the Byzantine Court to apostatize from the Catholic faith. Theodora soon claimed the fulfilment of his promises, but in the West he found himself in an atmosphere where no departure from Orthodoxy would be tolerated, whilst in the East the tide was running so strongly against the Monophysites that no neutral ecclesiastic could be so indiscreet as to espouse their cause. He, therefore, put her off with professions of
