domain. The chance of Acacius lay
throughout in the pride of that monarch who was become the sole inheritor
of the Roman name, as Pope Felix reminded him, and who would fain see Nova
Roma the centre of ecclesiastical rule, as it was become the head of the
diminished empire. Anastasius, after Zeno, was still more swayed by these
motives than his predecessor.

But here we touch the completeness of the success which followed the trust
placed in their apostolate by the seven immediate successors of St. Leo. In
proportion as Rome became in the temporal order a mere municipal city, the
sacerdotal authority of its bishop came out into clearer light. Three times
in the fifth century Rome was mercilessly sacked--in 410, in 455, in 472.
Its senators were carried into slavery, its population diminished. The
finishing stroke of its ignominy may be said to be the deposition, by a
barbarian _condottiere_, of the poor boy whose name, repeating in
connection the founder of the city with the founder of the empire, seemed
to mock the mortal throes of the great mother. But this lessening of the
secular city, so far from lessening the authority of the spiritual power,
reveals to all men, believers or unbelievers, that the pontificate, whose
seat is locally in the city, has a life not derived from the city. Rome's
temporal fall exhibits in full the intangible spiritual character of the
pontificate. If St. Peter had to any seemed to rule because he was seated
on the pedestal of the Caesarean empire, when that empire fell the Apostle
alone remained to whom Christ gave the charge, whom He invested with the
"great mantle".[111] The bishop of the city in which an Arian Ostrogoth
ruled supreme as to temporal things was acknowledged by the head of the
empire, from whom the Ostrogoth derived his title, as the person in whom
our Lord's word--the creative word which founds an empire as it makes a
world--was accomplished, had been during five hundred years accomplished,
would be for ever accomplished.[112]

The malice of Acacius largely led to this result. His attack was the
prelude to the sifting of the Pope's prerogative during thirty-five years:
its sifting by a rival at Constantinople, by the eastern bishops, by the
eastern emperor, who had now also become the sole Roman emperor; and the
sifting was followed by a full acknowledgment. Nothing but this hostile
conduct would have afforded so indubitable a proof of the thing impugned.
While the ancien