nstans'
chamberlain in 649, came to Italy as exarch with orders to arrest the
pope and bring him to Constantinople: this it seemed to him a prudent
thing to do; he was to judge for himself. Olympius decided it was not
a prudent thing to do. He found the Italian bishops and the people
eagerly Catholic. There is a story that he attempted instead to take
the pope's life as he said Mass, but this is probably untrue, for we
find pope and exarch presently excellent friends. He went on into
Sicily to meet the first invasion of the Saracens in that island, and
died there of the pestilence.

Theodore Calliopas was appointed exarch for the second time as his
successor in 652. He had either less sagacity or less scruple than his
predecessor, for in the following year he appeared with an army in
Rome. He found the pope ill and in bed before the high altar of S.
John Lateran. He surrounded the church and entered it with his men,
who were guilty of violence and desecration. But the pope, to save
bloodshed, surrendered himself to the exarch, shouting as he emerged
from the church, "Anathema to all who say that Martin has changed a
jot or tittle of the Faith Anathema to all who do not remain in his
orthodox Faith even to the death." Through the tumultuous and weeping
city the pope passed to the palace of the exarch upon the Palatine
Hill. He entered it a prisoner and was presently smuggled away on
board ship to Constantinople, where he was examined and condemned to
death, insulted in the Hippodrome, and his sentence commuted to
imprisonment and exile to Cherson, where he died in 655.

The controversy slumbered. Before long, surely to the amazement of the
West, the emperor landed in Italy at Tarentum with the object of
finally dealing with the Lombards, for Rothari was dead. It is said he
asked some hermit there in the south: "Shall I vanquish and hold down
the nation of the Lombards which now dwelleth in Italy?" The answer
was as follows, and, rightly understood, contained at least the
fundamental part of the truth: "The nation of the Lombards," said the
hermit after a night of prayer, "cannot be overcome because a pious
queen coming from a foreign land has built a church in honour of S.
John Baptist who therefore pleads without ceasing for that people. But
a time will come when that sanctuary will be held in contempt, and
then the nation shall perish."[1]

[Footnote 1: Diaconus. v. 6; cf. Hodgkin, _op. cit_. vi. 272. Paulus
adds t