utterances and pronouncements as to his unfaltering allegiance to the Council of Chalcedon. He organized a solemn procession to St. Peter's, and, standing before the high altar with the Cross and Gospels held above his head, and the Imperial vicegerent at his side, affirmed his innocence of all the charges which had been made against him.[1] He also addressed an Encyclical "To All the People of God," in which he expressed his reverence in detail for everything held sacred in the West, and his especial veneration for the memory of "the Orthodox bishops, Theodoret and Ibas."[2] By these asseverations he won over the Italian people and hierarchs in general to his side, but the sees of Milan and Aquileia for long maintained a schismatic attitude to the pontificate, and the Church of Gaul declined communion with Rome for more than half a century.[3]
The Fifth Oecumenical Council was totally ineffective in procuring a union between the Monophysites and the Catholic world. For more than a decade before that synod the heretics of the One-Nature had been a spreading sect, and they ultimately established themselves as one of the permanent Churches of the East. This result is, perhaps, to be attributed to the steady patronage bestowed on them by Theodora. From the monastery at Sycae, with which she zealously associated herself, emanated several prelates, whose missional activities brought over whole districts and even
- ↑ Lib. Pontif., Pelagius; Marcel. Com., an. 554. There was a popular rumour that he had murdered Vigilius.
- ↑ Epist. 6 (Migne, S. L., lxix, 391).
- ↑ See his Epistles; Hefele, Hist. Councils, iv, 343, etc., for details of the schism. According to Liberatus (24) Theodore Ascidas gave it as his confidential opinion that he and Pelagius ought to have been burnt alive for the trouble they had brought into the Church over Origen and the Three Chapters.
