n the history of the Church. A large and
marked part in it was taken by the man who for thirty-eight years was to
rule the eastern empire, to expel the Goths from Italy, thus recovering the
original seat of Roman power, and the Vandals from Africa, and so once more
attach the great southern provinces, for so many ages the granary of Rome
and Italy itself, to the existing Byzantine realm. Before, however, this
was done, when, after the death of Theodorick, the Gothic kingdom still
subsisted under his grandson Athalarick and his daughter Amalasunta, the
emperor Justinian addressed to Pope John II., in the year 533, a letter
from which I quote as follows. I preface that this letter was carried to
the Pope by two imperial legates, the bishops Hypatius and Demetrius. It
begins:[115] "Rendering honour to the Apostolic See and to your Holiness,
whom we ever have revered, and do revere, as is befitting a father, we
hasten to bring to the knowledge of your Holiness everything which
concerns the state of the churches. For the existing unity of your
Apostolic See, and the present undisturbed state of God's holy churches,
has always been a thing which we have earnestly sought to maintain. And so
we lost no time in subjecting and uniting all bishops of the whole eastern
region[116] to the See of your Holiness. We have now, therefore, held it
necessary that the points mooted, though they are clear and beyond doubt,
and have been ever firmly maintained and proclaimed by all bishops
according to the teaching of your Apostolic See, should be brought to the
knowledge of your Holiness. For we do not allow that anything concerning
the state of the churches, clear and undoubted though it be, when once
mooted, should not be made known to your Holiness, who is the head of all
the holy churches. For, as we said, in all things we hasten to increase the
honour and authority of your See." He then proceeds to recite a creed which
carefully condemns the errors of Nestorius on the one side, and Eutyches on
the other, and acknowledges "the holy and glorious Virgin Mary to be
properly and truly Mother of God". At the beginning of this creed he
introduces the words: "All bishops of the holy and apostolic Church, and
the most reverend archimandrites of the sacred monasteries, following your
Holiness, and maintaining that state and unity of God's holy churches which
they have from the Apostolic See of your Holiness, changing no wit of that
ecclesiastical st