not know any fact of history which brings out more distinctly
the character of the Pope as inheriting the charge over the whole Church
committed by our Lord to St. Peter. That was not a charge depending on the
city in which it might be exercised. It was a charge committed to the chief
of the Apostles. As our Lord promised to be with the apostolic body to the
consummation of the world, as all their spiritual powers depended on His
being with them, so, above all, most of all, the spiritual power of their
head. Rome might be absolutely destitute of inhabitants after Totila's
victory, but the Pope was not touched. Rome might cease to be capital even
of a province, but the Pope was not touched. And it was a series of the
most terrible disasters which revealed this prerogative of the Pope as head
of the Christian hierarchy. The Pope might be a captive at Constantinople,
scorned, deceived, torn away even from the refuge of the altar, surrounded
with spies, betrayed by subservient bishops and patriarchs, and, worst of
all, be labouring under the stigma of an election originally enforced by
arbitrary violence; a despotic emperor might do his worst, but the Pope's
successors carried on his prerogatives unimpaired. The walls of Aurelian
preserved Rome from the Lombard, but the Pontiff who kept guard over them
was not contained in them. His rule was intangible by material attack as
it was beyond the reach of material despotism. Italy might be ruined, and a
new Rome made out of its ruins, but the Pope would be the maker of it. And
the most terrible calamity was chosen to reveal this singular prerogative.
The death of _Senatus populusque Romanus_ discovered even to the outside
world the life which proceeded from St. Peter's body, as each archbishop
received from St. Peter's successor the pallium which had been laid upon
it. Thus was conveyed to the mind by the senses that participation of the
Primacy, in which consisted all the authority which he exercised over other
bishops. The violence of the Teuton, the misbelief of the Arian, the
despotism of the Byzantine, were unconsciously co-operating to this result.

For it must be added that the Rome which survived after the conquest by
Justinian only lived by the Primacy of which it was the seat. Two
historians[186] of the city, writing from quite opposite points of view,
one a Catholic Christian, the other a rationalistic unbeliever, unite in
witnessing that from the time of Narses the spir