To this aspect of his life we can give here but little attention; but it is not to be doubted that it was as a theologian that the men of his Constantinople heard most of their ruler's doings. Far into the dark hours, says the chronicler of his reign, he sat writing the theological treatises which expressed the teaching of the Church; night after night he would study in his library the writings of the Fathers, and the Sacred Scriptures, with some learned prelates or monks at hand, that he might discuss with them the questions as they rose before his mind. From the time of his predecessor he had been engaged in corresponding with Popes on theological points, and when he became sole ruler he determined once for all to settle the side issues which depended on the great Monophysite contest. Edict after edict, letter after letter, treatises closely argued and tightly packed with patristic and scriptural learning, and even hymns, showed the restless activity of the imperial theologian. When in 535 Anthemius of Trebizond was made Patriarch of Constantinople, and when Pope Agapetus came on a mission from the Gothic King Theodahad, the discussion of articles of the faith brought the deposition of the patriarch as a monophysite, and the succession of Mennas, head of the hospice of Samson. Then came the conflict with the Origenists, which led indirectly to the controversy of "the Three Chapters" and the session of the Fifth General Council. Of this it were here a weariness to tell. Let it suffice to say that on May 5, 553, the Council met in the southern gallery of the great Church of the Divine Wisdom. The Pope himself was at Constantinople but he would not attend the sessions. He was lodged at first in the royal palace of Placidia at the eastern end of the promontory, beyond S. Irene, looking over the sea to Asia and the churches of Chalcedon. Then he fled by night to cross the Bosphorus and took refuge in the Church of S. Euphemia at Chalcedon where a hundred years before the council had sat. Embassies crossed and recrossed the sea; even the great general Belisarius was an envoy, but Vigilius, when the Council met, refused to join it, to speak, or to vote: and the Council made short work of the foolish, bombastic, hesitating pontiff. It condemned those who refused to receive its decisions and struck Vigilius out of the diptychs on which were inscribed the names of those prayed for at the Eucharist.