tissimus ac si Catholicus, (Anonym. Vales. p. 720;)
yet his offering was no more than two silver candlesticks (cerostrata)
of the weight of seventy pounds, far inferior to the gold and gems of
Constantinople and France, (Anastasius in Vit. Pont. in Hormisda, p. 34,
edit. Paris.)]

[Footnote 79: The tolerating system of his reign (Ennodius, p. 1612.
Anonym. Vales. p. 719. Procop. Goth. l. i. c. 1, l. ii. c. 6) may be
studied in the Epistles of Cassiodorous, under the following heads:
bishops, (Var. i. 9, vii. 15, 24, xi. 23;) immunities, (i. 26, ii. 29,
30;) church lands (iv. 17, 20;) sanctuaries, (ii. 11, iii. 47;) church
plate, (xii. 20;) discipline, (iv. 44;) which prove, at the same time,
that he was the head of the church as well as of the state. * Note: He
recommended the same toleration to the emperor Justin.--M.]

[Footnote 80: We may reject a foolish tale of his beheading a Catholic
deacon who turned Arian, (Theodor. Lector. No. 17.) Why is Theodoric
surnamed After? From Vafer? (Vales. ad loc.) A light conjecture.]

[Footnote 81: Ennodius, p. 1621, 1622, 1636, 1638. His libel was
approved and registered (synodaliter) by a Roman council, (Baronius,
A.D. 503, No. 6, Franciscus Pagi in Breviar. Pont. Rom. tom. i. p.
242.)]

[Footnote 82: See Cassiodorus, (Var. viii. 15, ix. 15, 16,) Anastasius,
(in Symmacho, p. 31,) and the xviith Annotation of Mascou. Baronius,
Pagi, and most of the Catholic doctors, confess, with an angry growl,
this Gothic usurpation.]

I have descanted with pleasure on the fortunate condition of Italy; but
our fancy must not hastily conceive that the golden age of the poets,
a race of men without vice or misery, was realized under the Gothic
conquest. The fair prospect was sometimes overcast with clouds; the
wisdom of Theodoric might be deceived, his power might be resisted and
the declining age of the monarch was sullied with popular hatred and
patrician blood. In the first insolence of victory, he had been tempted
to deprive the whole party of Odoacer of the civil and even the natural
rights of society; [83] a tax unseasonably imposed after the calamities
of war, would have crushed the rising agriculture of Liguria; a rigid
preemption of corn, which was intended for the public relief, must
have aggravated the distress of Campania. These dangerous projects were
defeated by the virtue and eloquence of Epiphanius and Boethius, who, in
the presence of Theodoric himself, successfully pleaded