prevented by the
crowd which burst in, indignant at the ill-treatment offered to the
Church's first bishop, and by the disgust of the soldiers at the gaol-work
put upon them. The emperor, seeming to repent his hastiness, sent high
officers of State to assure the Pope of personal security, at first with
the threat to have him removed by force if he was not content with this;
then he empowered the officers to swear that no ill should befal him. The
Pope thereon returned to the palace of Placidia. But there, in spite of
oaths, he was watched, deprived of his true servants, surrounded with paid
spies, attacked with every sort of intrigue, even his handwriting forged.
Then, seeing his palace entirely surrounded by suspicious persons, he
risked, on the 23rd December, 551, a flight across the Bosphorus to the
Church of St. Euphemia in Chalcedon, in which the Fourth Council had been
held. Here, in January, 552, he published his decree against Theodore and
Mennas, and was for a long time sick. When the emperor, with the offer of
another oath, sent high officials to invite him to return to the capital,
he replied that he needed no fresh oaths if the emperor had only the will
to restore to the Church the peace which she enjoyed under his uncle
Justin. He desired the emperor to avoid communion with those who lay under
his ban. In his Encyclical of the 5th February, 552, he made known to all
the Church what had passed, and expressed his belief and his wishes. Even
in his humiliation the successor of Peter inspired a great veneration.
They tried to approach him. He soon received a writing from Theodore
Askidas, Mennas, Andrew, archbishop of Ephesus, and other bishops, in which
they declared their adherence to the decrees of the four General Councils
which had been made in agreement with the legates of the Apostolic See, as
well as to the papal letters. They consented also to the withdrawal of all
that had been written on the Three Chapters, and besought the Pope to
pardon as well their intercourse with those who lay under his ban as the
offences committed against him, in which also they claimed to have had no
part. So things were brought to the condition in which they were before the
appearance of the last imperial edict. Vigilius now returned from Chalcedon
to Constantinople.

Mennas, who died in August, 552, was succeeded by Eutychius. He addressed
himself to the Pope on the 6th January, 553, whose name had been restored
by Mennas t