ding emperor. To suffer an
infringement of that pontificate would be to lose the grasp over the
hundred varieties of worship allowed by the State. Yet when Constantine
acknowledged the Christian faith, the names of St. Peter and St. Paul were
in full possession of the city, so far as it was Christian. They were its
patron-saints. Every Christian memory rested on the tradition of St.
Peter's pontifical acts, his chair, his baptismal font, his dwelling-place,
his martyrdom. The impossibility of such a series of facts taking
possession of a heathen city during the period antecedent to Constantine's
victory over Maxentius, save as arising from St. Peter's personal action at
Rome, is apparent.

In the second half of this period, from Constantine to St. Gregory, the
civil pre-eminence of Rome is perpetually declining. The consecration of
New Rome as the capital of the empire, in 330, by itself alone strikes at
it a fatal blow. Presently the very man who had reunited the empire divided
it among his sons, and after their death the division became permanent.
Valentinian I., in 364, whether he would or not, was obliged to make two
empires. From the death of Theodosius, in 395, the condition of the western
empire is one long agony. The power of Constantinople continually
increases. At the death of Honorius, in 423, the eastern emperor becomes
the over-lord of the western. During fifty years Rome lived only by the arm
of two semi-barbarian generals, Stilicho and Aetius. Both were assassinated
for the service; and in the boy Romulus Augustulus a western emperor ceased
to be, and the senate declared that one emperor alone was needed. After
fifty years of Arian occupation, the Gothic war ruined the city of Rome. In
Gregory's time it had ceased to be even the capital of a province. Its lord
dwelt at Constantinople; Rome was subject to his exarch at Ravenna.

Yet from Constantine and the Nicene Council the advance of Rome's Primacy
is perpetual. In Leo I. it is universally acknowledged. At the fall of the
western empire Acacius attempts his schism. He is supported while living by
the emperor Zeno, and his memory after his death by the succeeding emperor
Anastasius, who reigned for twenty-seven years, longer than any emperor
since Augustus had reigned over the whole empire. All the acts of these two
princes show that they would have liked to attach the Primacy to their
bishop at Constantinople. Anastasius twice enjoyed the luxury of depos