with the bloom of the empire ; while Xew Rome marked the beginning of its decline. When the Western empire fell into the hands of the barbarians, the Roman bishop was the only surviving heir of this imperial past, or, in the well-known dictum of Hobbes, " the ghost of the deceased Roman empire, sitting crowned upon the grave thereof." Again, the very remoteness of Rome from the imjDerial court was favorable to the development of a hierarchy inde- pendent of all political influence and intrigue ; while the bishop of Constantinople had to purchase the political advan- tages of the residence at the cost of ecclesiastical freedom. The tradition of the donatio Constantini, though a fabrication of the eighth century, has thus much truth : that the transfer of the imperial residence to the East broke the way for the temporal power and the political independence of the papacy. Further, amidst the great trinitarlan and christological controversies of the Nicene and post-Xicene age, the popes maintained the powerful prestige of almost undeviating ecu- menical orthodoxy and doctrinal stability ; ^ while the see of Constantinople, with its Grecian spirit of theological restless- ness and disputation, was sullied with the Arian, the Nestorian, the Monophysite, and other heresies, and was in general, even in matters of faith, dependent on the changing humors of the ' That the apostle Andrew brought the gospel to the ancient Byzantium, is an entirely unreliable legend of later times. ^ One exception is the brief pontificate of the Arian, Felix II., whom the empe- ror Constantius, in 355, forcibly enthroned during the exile of Liberius, and who is regarded by some as an illegitimate anti-pope. The accounts respecting him are, however, very conflicting, and so are the opinions of even Roman Catholic histori- ans. Liberius also, in 357, lapsed for a short time into Arianism, that he might be recalled from exile. Another and later exception is Pope Honorius, whom even the sixth ecumenical council of Constantinople, 681, anathematized for Monothelite heresy 288 THIED PERIOD. A.D. 311-590. court. Hence even contending parties in the East were accus- tomed to seek counsel and protection from the Roman chair, and oftentimes gave that see the coveted opportunity to put the weight of its decision into the scale. Tliis occasional prac- tice then formed a welcome basis for a theory of jurisdiction. The Roma locuta est assmned the character of a supreme and iinal judgment. Rome learned much and forgot nothing. She knew how to turn every circumstance, with consunnnate ad- ministrative tact, to her own advantage. Finally, though the Greek church, down to the fourth ecumenical council, was unquestionably the main theatre of church history and the chief seat of theological learning, yet, according to the universal law of history, " Westw^ard the star of empire takes its way," the Latin church, and consequently the Roman patriarchate, already had the future to itself. "While the Eastern patriarchates were facilitating by internal quarrels and disorder the conquests of