hern Africa by the sword
of the same great general.

Justinian, with not less precision than former emperors, acknowledged all
his life long the primacy of the Roman See. We need not exclude political
motives from this acknowledgment, but we must allow to him the fullest
conviction as to its legitimate authority. If now and then, under the
impulse of passion or despotic humour, he seemed to disregard its rights,
he soon strove again to obtain the Pope's assent to his measures. In his
edict to his own patriarch Epiphanius, he declared expressly that he held
himself bound accurately to inform the Pope, as head of all bishops,
concerning the circumstances of his realm, especially since the Roman
Church by its decisions in faith had overthrown the heresies which arose in
the East.[119] The imperial theologian was very unwilling to give up the
initiative in the determination of ecclesiastical questions; nevertheless,
he acknowledged in the Bishop of Old Rome the superior judge without whose
confirmation his own steps remained devoid of force and effect.[120]

The man who was born an Illyrian peasant, who was the leading spirit during
the nine years' reign of another Illyrian peasant, his uncle, who succeeded
him in 527, and ruled the greatest kingdom of the earth during thirty-eight
years; to whom the bitter Vandal in Africa and the nobler Goth in Italy
yielded up their equally ill-gotten prey; who became the great legislator
of the Roman world, by the commission given to his chief lawyers to select
and, after correction, tabulate the laws of the emperors his predecessors;
to whom, in consequence, the actual nations of Europe owe what was to them
the fountain of universal right, demands a somewhat detailed account of his
character, his purposes, and his actions. When the prince of the poets of
Christendom, the only poet who has spoken in the name and with the voice of
Christendom, meets his spirit under the guidance of Beatrice, the emperor
utters words the truth of which all must feel:

"Caesar I was and am Justinian,
Moved by the will of that Prime Love I feel
I clear'd the encumbered laws from vain excess".[121]

It is in this character that Justinian lives for all history, and his name
stands out among all Byzantine sovereigns with a lustre of its own. I have
therefore first quoted the most definite words of the great legislator,
spontaneously acknowledging the right of St. Peter's successor to know and
to