Throughout this time the West had escaped very lightly. Even Maxentius had begun his reign by seeking to secure the good-will of the Christians. Eusebius, indeed, makes the incredible statement[73] that in order to please and flatter the Roman people he pretended to embrace the Christian faith and “assumed the mask of piety.” Probably all he did was to leave the Christians of Rome in peace. The chair of St. Peter had remained empty for four years after the death of Bishop Marcellinus. In 308 Marcellus was elected to fill it and the Church was organised afresh. But it was rent with internal dissensions. There was a large section which insisted that the brethren who had been found weak during the recent persecution should be received back into the fold without penance and reproach. Marcellus stood out for discipline; the quarrel became so exacerbated that Maxentius exiled the Bishop, who shortly afterwards died. A priest named Eusebius was then chosen Pontiff, but the schismatics elected a Pontiff of their own, Heraclius by name, and the rival partisans quarrelled and fought in the streets. Maxentius, with strict impartiality, exiled both. The record of this schism is preserved in the curious epitaph composed by Pope Damasus for the tomb of Eusebius: “Heraclius forbade the lapsed to bewail their sins; Eusebius taught them to repent and weep for their wrong-doing. The people were divided into factions, raging and furious: then came sedition, bloodshed, war, discord, strife.[74] Forthwith both were driven away by the cruelty of the tyrant. While the Bishop preserved intact the bonds of peace, he endured his exile gladly on the Trinacrian shores, knowing that God was his judge, and so passed from this world and from life.” ----- Footnote 73: _Hist. Eccles._, viii., 14. Footnote 74: _Scinditur in partes populus gliscente furore; Seditio, cædes, bellum, discordia, lites._ ----- On the confession of Damasus himself, the state of the Roman Church warranted the interference of Maxentius if it resulted in “sedition, bloodshed, war, discord, and strife,” and the “cruelty of the tyrant” in this particular case is not proven. Eusebius died in Sicily in 310; in the following year Miltiades was elected Bishop, and Maxentius restored to the Roman Christians their churches and cemeteries, which for eight years had been in the hands of the civil authorities.