escape, but was taken with his family thirty miles out of the city, and
brought back. His five sons were slain before his eyes at Chalcedon: he
repeated all the while as a true penitent these words: "Thou art just, O
Lord, and thy judgments are righteous."[49] When the nurse offered her
own child instead of his youngest, he would not suffer it. Last of all
he himself was massacred, after a reign of twenty years. His empress,
Constantina, was confined with her three daughters, and murdered with
them a few months after. The tyrant was slain by Heraclius, governor of
Africa, after a tottering reign of eight years. When Phocas mounted the
throne, his images were received and set up at Rome: nor could St.
Gregory, for the sake of the public good, omit writing to him letters of
congratulation.[50] In them he makes some compliments to Phocas, which
are not so much praises as respectful exhortations to a tyrant in power,
and wishes of the public liberty, peace, and happiness.[51] The saint
nowhere approved his injustices or tyranny, though he regarded him, like
Jehu, as the instrument of God to punish other sinners. He blamed
Mauritius, but in things truly blameable; and drew from his punishment a
seasonable occasion of wholesome advice which he gave to Phocas, whom
the public safety of all Italy obliged him not to exasperate.

This holy pope had labored many years under a great weakness of his
breast and stomach, and was afflicted with slow fevers, and frequent
fits of the gout, which once confined him to his bed two whole years. On
the 25th of January, 604, he gave to the church of St. Paul several
parcels of land to furnish it with lights: the act of donation remains
to this day engraved on a marble stone in the same church. God called
him to himself on the 12th of March, the same year, about the
sixty-fourth of his age, after he had governed the church thirteen
years, six months, and ten days. His pallium, the reliquary which he
wore about his neck, and his girdle, were preserved long after his
death, when John the deacon wrote, who describes his picture drawn from
the life, then to be seen in the monastery of St. Andrew.[52] His holy
remains rest in the Vatican church. Both the Greek and Latins honor his
name. The council of Clif, or Cloveshove, under archbishop Cuthbert, in
747, commanded his feast to be observed a holyday in all the monasteries
in England; which the council of Oxford, in 1222, {579} extended to the
whole