hurch, which I did not
wish to insist upon during these unquiet times. It is true that I
concluded this contract with the barbarian King."

A movement of indignation escaped the Byzantines present.

"Not from love of worldly power, not to acquire any new privileges, did
I treat with the King of the Goths, at that time master of this
country. No! the saints be my witness! I did it merely because it was
my duty to prevent the lapse of an ancient right of the Church."

"An ancient right?" asked Belisarius impatiently.

"An ancient right!" repeated Silverius, "which the Church has neglected
to assert until now. Her enemies oblige her to declare it at this
moment. Know then, representative of the Emperor! hear it, generals and
soldiers! that which the Church demanded of Theodahad has been her
right for two centuries; the Goth only confirmed it. In the same place
whence the Prefect, with sacrilegious hand, took this document, he
might also have found that which originally established our right. The
pious Emperor Constantinus--who, first of all the predecessors of
Justinian, received the teaching of the Gospel--moved by the prayers of
his blessed mother, Helena, and after having trampled his enemies under
foot by the help of the saints, and particularly by that of St. Peter,
did, in thankful acknowledgment of such help, and to prove to all the
world that crown and sword should bow before the Cross of Christ,
bestow the city of Rome and its district, with all the neighbouring
towns and their boundaries, with jurisdiction and police, taxes and
duties, and all the royal prerogatives of earthly government, upon St.
Peter and his successors for all time, so that his Church might have a
secular foundation for the furtherance of her secular tasks. This
donation is conferred in all form by a legal document; the curse of
Gehenna is laid upon all who dispute it. And I ask the Emperor
Justinian, in the name of the Trinity, whether he will acknowledge this
legal act of his predecessor, the blessed Emperor Constantinus, or if,
in worldly avarice, he will overthrow it, and thereby call down upon
his head the curse of Gehenna and eternal damnation?"

This speech of the Bishop of Rome, spoken with all the power of
ecclesiastical dignity and all the art of worldly rhetoric, was of
irresistible effect.

Belisarius, Procopius, and the generals, who, a moment before, would
willingly have passed an angry judgment upon the treacherous priest,