When Gregory, taking with him several of his monks, sailed away from Italy, he little dreamed that years were to pass before he should return. On his arrival in Constantinople, the first matter to claim his attention was the ugly new heresy started by Eutyches, who had drawn the Emperor and many others into the path of error by declaring that there was to be no resurrection of the flesh. Gregory was politely received by the Emperor, and instantly requested the latter to call a conference in which the dogma should be discussed. Tiberius consented, and there followed the famous conference in which Gregory’s fiery eloquence and invincible logic quashed the heresy at once. When he had finished speaking, the Emperor commanded that a fire should be lighted, and with his own hands and in the presence of a vast concourse burnt the book which Eutyches had written to propound the heresy, and declared himself now and for ever the faithful son of the Church. Eutyches, touched to the heart by Gregory’s arguments, accepted defeat and rebuke as but small punishment for his fault, and when he was dying, soon afterwards, pulled up the skin of one poor emaciated hand with the fingers of the other and cried to those around him, “I confess that in this flesh we shall rise from the dead!” Gregory proved a successful ambassador in every way. The relations between the Church and the imperial court had been badly interrupted by the Lombard invasion, but he welded them smoothly and firmly together. Tiberius died while Gregory was in Constantinople, and his successor, Maurice, was badly disposed to the Church. Gregory brought him to a better mind and obliged him to rescind an edict he had just issued forbidding any member of the army to embrace the monastic life. At last, after six years of what must have been the most anxious work, requiring all that the great man had of wisdom and firmness and tact, he returned to Italy—to find his beloved Rome in terrible distress from a visitation of the pestilence. Gregory at once devoted himself to the care of the sick and dying, and one can fancy how the poor people’s eyes lighted up when he appeared among them again. Then the good Pope Pelagius succumbed to the disease, and at once all eyes turned to Gregory, who was unanimously elected as his successor.