n of a
right to interpret and to define the Church's doctrine for the Church. The
usurper Basiliscus had been the first to issue an imperial decree on
doctrine. This was in favour of heresy. He was followed in this by the
legitimate emperors Zeno and Anastasius, also in favour of heresy. On the
contrary,[171] the edicts of Justinian were generally in conformity with
the decisions of the Church: generally occasioned by bishops, often drawn
up by them. But in the council called by him at Constantinople in 553, he
issued decrees on doctrines which only the Church could decide. In doing
this he infringed her liberty as grossly as the three whose unlawful act he
was imitating. The whole effect of his reign was that State despotism in
Church matters lowered the dignity of the spiritual power. The dependence
of his bishops on the court became greater and greater. The emperor's will
became law in the things of the Church. He persecuted Vigilius: he deposed
his own patriarch Eutychius. His example, as that of the most distinguished
Byzantine monarch, told with great force upon his successors, for the
persecution of future Popes and the deposition of future patriarchs.

The Italy which he had won at the cost of its ruin as to temporal wellbeing
was, after his death in 565, speedily lost as to its greater portion, and
the Romans[172] of the East did little more for it. The Rome which he had
reduced almost to a solitude, and ruled through a prefect with absolute
power, escaped in the end from the most cruel and heartless despotism
inflicted by a distant master on a province at once plundered and
neglected. His own eastern provinces suffered terribly from barbarian
inroads, and the end of the thirty-seven years' domination, which had
seemed a resurrection at the beginning, showed the mighty eastern empire
from day to day declining, the western bishops under the action of the Pope
more and more exerting an independence which the East could not prevent,
the patriarch of Constantinople more and more advancing as the agent of the
imperial will in dealing with eastern bishops. What the See of St. Peter
was at the end of the sixth century it remains to see in the pontificate of
the first Gregory, who shares with the first Leo the double title of Great
and Saint.

NOTES:

[115] Mansi, viii. 795-99.

[116] This refers to the reunion of a great portion of the eastern Church,
which had fallen a prey to the most manifold errors since the Co