s under him by
every means to comply. However, many bishops complained of this pressure to
the papal legate Stephen, who pronounced against the edict, which seemed
indirectly to impeach the authority of the Fourth Council. He even refused
communion with Mennas because he had broken his first promise and given his
assent before the Pope had decided upon it. Through the whole West the
writings of Theodore, Theodoret, and Ibas were little known, but the
decrees of Chalcedon were zealously maintained. The edict was refused,
especially in Northern Africa. It was censured by the bishop Portian in a
writing addressed to the emperor, and by the learned deacon Ferrandus.

Means had been taken by fraud and force to win the whole East to consent to
the edict.[144] Mennas, patriarch of Constantinople; Ephrem, patriarch of
Antioch; Peter, patriarch of Jerusalem, crouched before the tyranny of
Justinian; and so also Zoilus of Alexandria, though he promised Vigilius
that he would not sign the edict, afterwards subscribed it.[145] At this
point Justinian sought before everything to get the assent of the Pope, and
he sent for Vigilius to Constantinople. He claimed the presence of Vigilius
as his subject in virtue of the conquest of Belisarius: he meant to use
this authority of Vigilius as Pope for his own purpose. Vigilius foresaw
the difficulties into which he would fall. At length he left Rome in 544,
before Totila began the second siege. He lingered in Sicily a year, in 546;
he then travelled through Greece and Illyricum. At last he entered
Byzantium on the 25th January, 547, and was welcomed with the most
brilliant reception. Justinian humbly besought his blessing, and embraced
him with tears. But this good understanding did not last long. Vigilius
approved the conduct of his legates and refused his communion to Mennas,
who, in signing the formula of Hormisdas, had bound himself to follow the
Roman See, and had broken his special promise. Vigilius withdrew it also
from the bishops who had subscribed the imperial edict. He and the bishops
attending him saw in this edict a scheme to help the Acephali, upon whom
Vigilius repeated his anathema. But Mennas feared the emperor much more
than he feared the Pope, whose name he now removed from commemoration at
the Mass. Vigilius, like the westerns in general, considered the edict to
be useless and dangerous, as giving a pretext for seeming to abrogate the
Council of Chalcedon, and also as a cl