papal system and the constitutional episcopal system in the Roman church, which was left unsettled even by the council of Trent. Under Hormisdas (514-523) the Monophysite party in the Greek church was destroyed by the energetic zeal of the ortho- dox emperor Justin, and in 519 the union of that church with Rome was restored, after a schism of five-and-thirty years. Theodoric offered no hinderance to the transactions and embassies, and allowed his most distinguished subject to assert liis ecclesiastical supremacy over Constantinople. This semi- barbarous and heretical prince was tolerant in general, and very liberal toward the Catholic church ; even rising to the principle, which has waited till the modern age for its recog- nition, that the power of the prince should be restricted to ' Comp. Hefele, ii. p. 615 sqq. ^ So named from the building in Rome, in which it was held : " A porticu beati Petri Apostoli, quEe appellatur ad Palmaria," as Anastasius says. In the histories of councils it is erroneously given as Synodus III. Many historians, Gieseler among them, place it in the year 503. * Libellus apologeticus pro Synodo IV. Romana, in Mansi, viii. 274. This vindi- cation was solemnly adopted by the sixth Roman council imder Symmachus, in 503, and made equivalent to a decree of council. 326 THIRD PEEIOD. A.D. 311-590. civil government, and should permit no trespass on the con- science of its subjects. " No one," says he, " shall be forced to believe against his will/' Yet, toward the close of his reign, on mere political suspicion, he ordered the execution of the ce*brated philosopher Boethius, with whom the old Roman literature far more worthily closes, than the Roman empire with Augustulus ; and on the same ground he caused the death of the senator Symmachus and the incarceration of Pope John I. (523-526). Almost the last act of his reign was the nomination of the worthy Felix III. (IV.) to the papal chair, after a protracted struggle of contending parties. With the appointment he issued the order that hereafter, as heretofore, the pope should be elected by clergy and people, but should be confirmed by the temporal prince before assuming his office ; and with this understanding the clergy and the city gave their consent to the nomination. Yet, in spite of this arrangement, in the election of Boni- face II. (530-532) and John 11. (532-535) the same dis- graceful quarrelling and briberies occurred ; — a sort of chronic disease in the history of the papacy. Soon after the death of Theodoric (526) the Gothic empire fell to pieces through internal distraction and imperial weakness. Italy was conquered by Belisarius (535), and, with Africa, again incorporated with the East Roman empire, which renewed under Justinian its ancient splendor, and enjoyed a transient after-summer, i^d yet this powei-ful, orthodox emperor was a slave to the intriguing, heretical Theodora, whom he had raised from the theatre to the throne ; and Belisarius likewise, his victorious