ation by a synod of bishops at Jerusalem; but for the
most part there was no need of such pronouncement. African bishops and
Syrian monks here and there refused obedience; but the Church as a
whole was agreed.

[Sidenote: Pope Vigilius.]

Pope Vigilius, it would seem, was in exile for six months on an island
in the Sea of Marmora. On December 8, 553, he formally anathematised
the Three Chapters. On February 23, 554, in a _Constitution_, he
announced to the Western bishops his adhesion to the decisions {21} of
the General Council. Before the end of 557 he was succeeded, on his
death, by Pelagius, well known in Constantinople. He, like Vigilius,
had once refused but now accepted the Council.

When Rome and Constantinople were agreed, the adhesion of the rest of
the Catholic world was only a question of time. But the time was long.
In North Italy there was for long a practical schism, which was not
healed till Justin II. issued an explanatory edict,[6] and the genius,
spiritual and diplomatic, of Gregory the Great was devoted to the task
of conciliation. Still it was not till the very beginning of the
eighth century[7] that the last schismatics returned to union with the
Church: thus a division in the see of Aquileia, by which for a time
there were two rival patriarchates, was closed. Already the rest of
Europe had come to peace.

[Sidenote: The Aphthartodocetes.]

The last years of Justinian were disturbed by a new heresy, that of
those who taught that the Body of the Lord was incorruptible, and it
was asserted that the emperor himself fell into this error. The
evidence is slight and contradictory, and the matter is of no
importance in the general history of the Church.[8] But it is worth
remembering that little more than a century after his death his name
was singled out by the Sixth General Council for special honour as of
"holy memory." His work, indeed, had been great, as theologian and as
Christian emperor; there was no more important or more accurate writer
{22} on theology in the East during the sixth century; and he must ever
be remembered side by side with the Fifth General Council which he
summoned. There were many defects in the Eastern theory of the
relations between Church and State; but undoubtedly under such an
emperor it had its best chances of success.

[Sidenote: The work of Justinian.]

Justinian has been declared to have forced upon the Empire which he had
reunited the orthodoxy of