me way he has interfered with the elections at
Alexandria. We learn from the instruction given by Pope Hormisdas to his
legates that all the eastern bishops when they came to Constantinople
obtained an audience of the emperor only through the bishop of
Constantinople. The Pope carefully warns his legates against submitting to
this pretension. Pope Gelasius told the bishop in his day that his see had
no ecclesiastical rank above that of a simple bishop. We laugh, he said, at
the pretension to erect an apostolical throne upon an imperial residence.
But, in the meantime, Constantinople has become the head of all civil
power. The emperor of the West has ceased to be. The Roman senate, at the
bidding of a Herule commander of mercenaries, has sent back even the
symbols of imperial rank to the eastern emperor; and in return Zeno has
graciously made Odoacer patricius of Rome, with the power of king, until
Theodorick was ready to be rewarded with the possession of Italy for
services rendered to the eastern monarch, with the purpose likewise of
diverting his attention from Nova Roma. Therefore, in spite of the
submission rendered by all the East, the bishops, the court, the emperor,
and by Justinian himself; in spite, also, of two bishops successively
degraded by an emperor, the bishop of Constantinople ever advances. The law
of Justinian, which acknowledges the Pope as first of all bishops in the
world, and gives him legal rank as such, makes the bishop of the new
capital the second. Presently Justinian becomes by conquest immediate
sovereign of Rome. The ancient queen and maker of the empire is humbled in
the dust by five captures; is even reduced to a desert for a time; and when
a portion of her fugitive citizens comes back to the abandoned city, a
Byzantine prefect rules it with absolute power. A Greek garrison, the badge
of Rome's degradation, supports his delegated rule. Presently the seat of
that rule is for security transferred to Ravenna, and Rome is left, not
merely discrowned, but defenceless. All the while the bishop of
Constantinople is seated in the pomp of power at the emperor's court;
within the walls of the eastern capital his household rivals that of the
emperor; in certain respects the public worship gives him a homage greater
than that accorded to the absolute lord of the East. He reflects with
satisfaction that the one person in the West who can call his ministration
to account is exposed to the daily attacks of