industry. If in the company of saints and angels
they enjoyed the rewards of piety, they must have smiled at the idle
fury of the theological insects who still crawled on the surface of the
earth. The foremost of these insects, the emperor of the Romans, darted
his sting, and distilled his venom, perhaps without discerning the true
motives of Theodora and her ecclesiastical faction. The victims were no
longer subject to his power, and the vehement style of his edicts could
only proclaim their damnation, and invite the clergy of the East to
join in a full chorus of curses and anathemas. The East, with some
hesitation, consented to the voice of her sovereign: the fifth general
council, of three patriarchs and one hundred and sixty-five bishops, was
held at Constantinople; and the authors, as well as the defenders, of
the three chapters were separated from the communion of the saints, and
solemnly delivered to the prince of darkness. But the Latin churches
were more jealous of the honor of Leo and the synod of Chalcedon: and
if they had fought as they usually did under the standard of Rome, they
might have prevailed in the cause of reason and humanity. But their
chief was a prisoner in the hands of the enemy; the throne of St. Peter,
which had been disgraced by the simony, was betrayed by the cowardice,
of Vigilius, who yielded, after a long and inconsistent struggle, to
the despotism of Justinian and the sophistry of the Greeks. His apostasy
provoked the indignation of the Latins, and no more than two bishops
could be found who would impose their hands on his deacon and successor
Pelagius. Yet the perseverance of the popes insensibly transferred to
their adversaries the appellation of schismatics; the Illyrian, African,
and Italian churches were oppressed by the civil and ecclesiastical
powers, not without some effort of military force; [97] the distant
Barbarians transcribed the creed of the Vatican, and, in the period of a
century, the schism of the three chapters expired in an obscure angle of
the Venetian province. [98] But the religious discontent of the Italians
had already promoted the conquests of the Lombards, and the Romans
themselves were accustomed to suspect the faith and to detest the
government of their Byzantine tyrant.

[Footnote 92: See the Chronicle of Victor, p. 328, and the original
evidence of the laws of Justinian. During the first years of his reign,
Baronius himself is in extreme good humor with th