undistinguishing
flames over the most orthodox buildings. The statues of the emperor were
broken, and his person was concealed in a suburb, till, at the end of
three days, he dared to implore the mercy of his subjects. Without his
diadem, and in the posture of a suppliant, Anastasius appeared on the
throne of the circus. The Catholics, before his face, rehearsed their
genuine Trisagion; they exulted in the offer, which he proclaimed by
the voice of a herald, of abdicating the purple; they listened to the
admonition, that, since all could not reign, they should previously
agree in the choice of a sovereign; and they accepted the blood of two
unpopular ministers, whom their master, without hesitation, condemned to
the lions. These furious but transient seditions were encouraged by the
success of Vitalian, who, with an army of Huns and Bulgarians, for
the most part idolaters, declared himself the champion of the Catholic
faith. In this pious rebellion he depopulated Thrace, besieged
Constantinople, exterminated sixty-five thousand of his
fellow-Christians, till he obtained the recall of the bishops, the
satisfaction of the pope, and the establishment of the council
of Chalcedon, an orthodox treaty, reluctantly signed by the dying
Anastasius, and more faithfully performed by the uncle of Justinian. And
such was the event of the first of the religious wars which have been
waged in the name and by the disciples, of the God of peace. [79]

[Footnote 76: Petavius (Dogmat. Theolog. tom. v. l. v. c. 2, 3, 4,
p. 217-225) and Tillemont (Mem. Eccles. tom. xiv. p. 713, &c., 799)
represent the history and doctrine of the Trisagion. In the twelve
centuries between Isaiah and St. Proculs's boy, who was taken up into
heaven before the bishop and people of Constantinople, the song was
considerably improved. The boy heard the angels sing, "Holy God! Holy
strong! Holy immortal!"]

[Footnote 77: Peter Gnapheus, the fuller, (a trade which he had
exercised in his monastery,) patriarch of Antioch. His tedious story is
discussed in the Annals of Pagi (A.D. 477--490) and a dissertation of M.
de Valois at the end of his Evagrius.]

[Footnote 78: The troubles under the reign of Anastasius must be
gathered from the Chronicles of Victor, Marcellinus, and Theophanes. As
the last was not published in the time of Baronius, his critic Pagi is
more copious, as well as more correct.]

[Footnote 79: The general history, from the council of Chalcedon to