132 THE DECLINE AND FALL not reign, they should previously agree in the choice of a sover- eign ; and they accepted the blood of two unpopular ministers, whom their master, without hesitation, condemned to the lions. These furious but transient seditions were encouraged by the success of Vitalian, who, with an army of Huns and Bulgarians, for the most part idolaters, declared himself the champion of the Catholic faith. In this pious rebellion he depopulated Thrace, besieged Constantinople, exterminated sixty-five thou- sand of his fellow-Christians, till he obtained the recall of the bishops, the satisfaction of the pope, and the establishment of the council of Chaleedon, an orthodox treaty, reluctantly signed by the dying Anastasius, and more faithfully performed by the First reurioiu uncle of Justinian. And such was the event of the fi>:sf of the a4 ' religious wars which have been waged in the name, and by the disciples, of the God of peace. ^^ Justinian has been already seen in the various lights of a prince, a conqueror, and a lawgiver : the theologian ^^ still re- mains, and it affords an unfavourable prejudice that his theo- logy should form a very prominent feature of his portrait. The sovereign sympathized with his subjects in their supersti- tious reverence for living and departed saints ; his Code, and more especially his Novels, confirm and enlarge the privileges of the clergy; and, in every dispute between a monk and a layman, the partial judge was inclined to pronounce that truth and innocence and justice were always on the side of the church. In his public and private devotions the emperor was assiduous and exemplary ; his prayers, vigils, and fasts displayed the austere penance of a monk ; his fancy was amused by the hope or belief of personal inspiration ; he had secured the patronage of the A^irgin and St. Michael the archangel ; and his Theological character and govern- ment of Jus- tinian. A.D 519-565
- • The general histor)', from the council of Cha'cedon to the death of Anastasius,
may be found in the Breviary of Liberatus (c. 14-19), the iid and iiid books of Eva- grius, the abstract of the two books of Theodore the Reader, the Acts of the Synods, and the Epistles of the Popes (Concil. torn. v.). [Also the Ecclesiastical History of Zacharias of Mytilene.] The series is continued with some disorder in the xvth and xvith tomes of the M6moires Ecclesiastiques of Tillemont. And here I must take leave for ever of that incomparable guide — whose bigotry is over- balanced by the merits of erudition, diligence, veracity, and scrupulous minuteness. He was prevented by death from completing, as he designed, the vith century of the church and empire. 82 The strain of the Anecdotes of Procopius (c. 11, 13, 18, 27, 28), with the learned remarks of Alemannus, is confirmed, rather than contradicted, by the Acts of the Councils, the fourth book of Evagrius, and the complaints of the African Facundus in his xiith book — de tribus capitulis, "cum videri doctus appetit importune . . . spontaneis quaestionibus ecclesiam turbat ". See Proccp. de Bell. Goth. 1. iii. c. 35.
