ored to the Arians".

This last exception does not seem an unreasonable one. Surely Theodoric
could hardly have expected that Justin would exert his Imperial power in
order to force any of his subjects back into what he deemed a deadly
heresy. But for some cause or other, probably because he perceived the
mistake which he had committed in giving to the world so striking a
demonstration of the new alliance between Emperor and Pope, Theodoric's
ambassadors, on their return to Ravenna, found their master in a state
of wrath bordering on frenzy. All, both Pope and Senators, were cast
into prison and there treated with harshness and cruelty. The Pope, who
was probably an aged and delicate man, began to languish in his dungeon,
and there he died on the 25th of May, 526.

In the meantime, while the Papal embassy had been absent on its mission
to Constantinople, Theodoric had perpetrated another crime under the
influence of his maddening suspicions. Symmachus, father-in-law of
Boethius, the venerable head of the Senate, a man of saintly life and
far advanced in years, had probably dared to show that he condemned as
well as lamented the execution of his brilliant son-in-law. Against him,
therefore, a charge, doubtless of treason, was brought by command of the
king. To be accused was of course to be condemned, and Symmachus was put
to death in one of the prisons at Ravenna.

After the deaths of these three men, Boethius, Symmachus, and Pope John,
all chance of peace between Theodoric and his subjects, and what was
worse, all chance of peace between Theodoric and his nobler and truer
self was over, and there was nothing left him but to die in misery and
remorse. It was probably in these summer days of 526 that (as before
stated) he presented his young grandson Athalaric to his faithful Goths
as their king. An edict was issued--and the faithful groaned when they
saw that it bore the counter-signature of a Jewish Treasury-clerk--that
on Sunday the 30th of August all the Catholic churches of Italy should
be handed over to the Arians. But this tremendous religious revolution
was not to be accomplished, nor was an insurrection of the Catholics to
be required in order to arrest it. The edict was published on Wednesday
the 26th of August. On the following day the King was attacked by
diarroea, and after three days of violent pain he died on the 30th of
August, the very day on which the churches were to have been handed over
to the here