Pope, as upon their people--applied to the papal authority itself.

A more emphatic attestation of that authority than the confession given in
519 to Pope Hormisdas by the whole Greek episcopate, and by the emperor at
the head of his court, could hardly be drawn up. It settled for ever the
question of right, and estopped Byzantium, whether in the person of Caesar
or of patriarch, from denial of the Pope's universal pastorship, as derived
from St. Peter. We have seen that not only did Justinian, when the leading
spirit in his uncle's freshly-acquired succession to the eastern empire, do
his utmost to bring about this confession, but that in the first years of
his reign his letter to Pope John II. reaffirmed it; and his treatment of
Pope Agapetus when he appeared at Constantinople, not only as Pope, but in
the character of ambassador from the Gothic king Theodatus, exhibited that
belief in action. But now a state of things quite unknown before had
ensued. Hitherto Rome had been the capital, of which even Constantine's
Nova Roma was but the pale imitation. But the five times captured,
desolate, impoverished Rome which came back under Narses to Justinian's
sway, came back not as a capital, but as a captive governed by an exarch.
Was the bishop of a city with its senate extinct, its patriciate destroyed,
and with forty thousand returned refugees for its inhabitants, still the
bearer of Peter's keys--still the Rock on which the City of God rested? Had
there been one particle of truth in that 28th canon which a certain party
attempted to pass at the Council of Chalcedon, and which St. Leo
peremptorily annulled, a negative answer to this must now have followed.
That canon asserted "that the Fathers justly gave its prerogatives to the
see of the elder Rome because that was the imperial city". Rome had ceased
to be the imperial city. Did the loss of its bishop's prerogatives follow?
Did they pass to Byzantium because it was become the imperial city, because
the sole emperor dwelt there? Thus, about a hundred years after the repulse
of the ambitious exaltation sought by Anatolius, its rejection by the
provident wisdom and resolute courage of St. Leo was more than justified by
the course of events. St. Leo's action was based upon the constitution of
the Church, and therefore did not need to be justified by events. But the
Divine Providence superadded this justification, and that under
circumstances which had had no parallel in the pre