will be involved in the guilt and punishment of Andronicus and his
impious followers. These spiritual terrors were enforced by a dexterous
application to the Byzantine court; the trembling president implored
the mercy of the church; and the descendants of Hercules enjoyed the
satisfaction of raising a prostrate tyrant from the ground. [121] Such
principles and such examples insensibly prepared the triumph of the
Roman pontiffs, who have trampled on the necks of kings.

[Footnote 114: The penitential jurisprudence was continually improved
by the canons of the councils. But as many cases were still left to
the discretion of the bishops, they occasionally published, after
the example of the Roman Praetor, the rules of discipline which they
proposed to observe. Among the canonical epistles of the fourth century,
those of Basil the Great were the most celebrated. They are inserted in
the Pandects of Beveridge, (tom. ii. p. 47-151,) and are translated by
Chardon, Hist. des Sacremens, tom. iv. p. 219-277.]

[Footnote 115: Basil, Epistol. xlvii. in Baronius, (Annal. Eccles. A.
D. 370. N. 91,) who declares that he purposely relates it, to convince
govern that they were not exempt from a sentence of excommunication his
opinion, even a royal head is not safe from the thunders of the Vatican;
and the cardinal shows himself much more consistent than the lawyers and
theologians of the Gallican church.]

[Footnote 116: The long series of his ancestors, as high as Eurysthenes,
the first Doric king of Sparta, and the fifth in lineal descent
from Hercules, was inscribed in the public registers of Cyrene, a
Lacedaemonian colony. (Synes. Epist. lvii. p. 197, edit. Petav.) Such a
pure and illustrious pedigree of seventeen hundred years, without adding
the royal ancestors of Hercules, cannot be equalled in the history of
mankind.]

[Footnote 117: Synesius (de Regno, p. 2) pathetically deplores the
fallen and ruined state of Cyrene. Ptolemais, a new city, 82 miles
to the westward of Cyrene, assumed the metropolitan honors of the
Pentapolis, or Upper Libya, which were afterwards transferred to
Sozusa.]

[Footnote 118: Synesius had previously represented his own
disqualifications. He loved profane studies and profane sports; he
was incapable of supporting a life of celibacy; he disbelieved the
resurrection; and he refused to preach fables to the people unless he
might be permitted to philosophize at home. Theophilus primate of Egypt,
who