atholic bishop at the side, and
from the court, of an Arian king, and thus he expressed the work of the
Catholic bishops throughout Gaul in the sixth century then beginning. An
apostate from the Catholic faith has said of them that they built up France
as bees build a hive; but he omitted to say that they were able and willing
to do this because they had a queen-bee at Rome, who, scattered as they
were in various transitory kingdoms under heretical sovereigns, gave unity
to all their efforts, and planted in their hearts the assurance of one
undying kingdom. We shall have presently to quote other words of St.
Avitus, speaking, as he says, in the name of all his brethren to the
senators of Rome: "If the Pope of the city is called into question, not one
bishop, but the episcopate, will seem to be shaken". But that, which he
here foresaw, explains in truth a process, of which we do not possess a
detailed history, but which resulted, by the time of St. Gregory, in the
triumph of the Catholic faith over that most fearful heresy which had
contaminated the whole Teuton race of conquerors at the time of their
conquest. The glory of this triumph is divided between St. Peter's See and
the Catholic bishops in the several countries, working each in union with
it. So was formed the hive, not only of France, but of Christ; the hive
which nurtured all the nations of the future Europe.

When Faustus,[73] the ambassador sent by Theodorick to Anastasius to obtain
for him the royal title, returned to Rome in 498, he found Pope Anastasius
dead. The deacon Symmachus was chosen for his successor, and his
pontificate lasted more than fifteen years. But Faustus had hoped to gain
the approval of Pope Anastasius to the Henotikon set up by the emperor Zeno
at the instance of Acacius, and forced by the emperor Anastasius on his
eastern bishops, and specially on three successive bishops of
Constantinople--Fravita, Euphemius, and Macedonius--who took the place of
the second, when he had been expelled by the emperor. Faustus, who was
chief of the senate, with a view to gain to the emperor's side the Pope to
be elected in succession to Anastasius, brought from the East the old
Byzantine hand; that is to say, he bore gifts for those who could be
corrupted, threats for those who could be frightened, and deceit for all.
So freighted he managed to bring about a schism in the papal election, and
the candidate whom he favoured, Laurentius, was set up by a smal