f the gifts received from pious princes in the
past."

It was on such liberality that the material power of the Church was
slowly strengthening itself. Similarly, as in the East, clerical
privilege was beginning to be allowed in the law courts: the Church was
acquiring the right to judge all cases in which her officers were
concerned. Theodoric's successors bettered his instructions.
Athalaric allowed to the Roman pope the jurisdiction over all suits
affecting the Roman clergy.

[Sidenote: Weakness of the Church.]

But this picture of toleration and privilege which we obtain from the
official letters of Cassiodorus, cannot be regarded as a complete
description of the attitude of the East Gothic rule towards the
Catholic Church. Pope after pope was the humble slave of the Gothic
ruler. They were sent to Constantinople as his envoys, and though they
stood firm for the Catholic faith and in rejection of all compromise
with regard to the doctrine of Chalcedon, they were entirely impotent
in Italy itself. Catholic Italy was at the feet of the Arian Goth.
The cruel imprisonment of Pope John, used as a political tool in 525
and flung away when he proved ineffective, gave a new martyr to the
Roman calendar; and, in spite of {32} the absence of direct evidence,
it is difficult to regard the executions of Symmachus and of Boethius
as entirely unconnected with religions questions. Both were Catholics;
both, to use Mr. Hodgkin's words,[3] "have been surrounded by a halo of
fictitious sanctity as martyrs to the cause of Christian orthodoxy."
The father-in-law, "lest, through grief for the loss of his son-in-law,
he should attempt anything against his kingdom," Theodoric "caused to
be accused and ordered him to be slain." [4] Boethius, who wrote the
most famous work of the Early Middle Age, _The Consolation of
Philosophy_, a book which became the delight of Christian scholars, of
monks and kings, was translated by Alfred the West Saxon, and formed
the foundation of very much of the Christian thought of many succeeding
generations, met a horrible death in 526 on a charge of corresponding
with the orthodox Emperor Justin. No doubt the main reason for the
butchery was political; but it is impossible in this age wholly to
separate religion from politics; especially when we read, in almost
immediate conjunction with the story of the murder of these men, that
Theodoric ordered that on a certain day the Arians should take
posses