king, who had just
besought of him the royal title; that it required him to cast aside his
patronage of Eutychean heretics; to rescind from the public records of the
Church the name of that bishop who had composed the document called the
Henotikon, the very document which the emperor was compelling his eastern
bishops to accept and promulgate as the confession of the Christian faith.
And let the frankness with which the Pope appeals to the universally
admitted authority of St. Peter's See be at the same time considered, with
the official statement that the emperors were wont immediately to
acknowledge the accession of a Pope[80] and attest their communion with
him.

What was the answer which the eastern emperor made to this letter? He did
not answer by denying anything which the Pope claimed as belonging to his
see, but by rekindling the internal schism which had been laid to sleep by
the recognition of Pope Symmachus. Before sending this letter, the Pope had
held a council of seventy-two bishops in St. Peter's on March 1, 499, which
made important regulations to prevent cabal and disturbance at papal
elections such as had just taken place. This council had been subscribed by
Laurentius himself,[81] and the Pope in compassion[82] had given him the
bishopric of Nocera. Now the emperor Anastasius, reproved for his misdeeds
and misbelief by Pope Symmachus in the letter above quoted, caused his
agents, the patrician Faustus and the senator Probinus, to bring grievous
accusations against Symmachus and to set up once more Laurentius as
anti-pope.[83] In their passionate enmity they did not scruple to bring
their charge against Pope Symmachus before the heretical king Theodorick.
The result of this attempt was that Rome, during several years at least,
from 502 to 506, was filled with confusion and the most embittered party
contentions. Theodorick was induced to send a bishop as visitor of the
Roman Church, and again to summon a council of bishops from the various
provinces of Italy to consider the charges brought against the Pope. During
the year 501 four such councils were held in Rome, of which it may be
sufficient to quote the last, the Synodus Palmaris.[84] Its acts say that
they were by command of king Theodorick to pass judgment on certain charges
made against Pope Symmachus. That the bishops of the Ligurian, Aemilian,
and Venetian provinces, visiting the king at Ravenna on their way, told him
that the Pope himself ought