So ten years after the emperor Constantine IV. in the Sixth Council and the Council itself asked from the Pope for the confirmation of its decrees, his son Justinian II. required the Pope as his subject to accept as one of five patriarchs, three of whom it may be said were nonentities, a position of subjection to himself in the spiritual domain. The place left for the Pope’s signature _after_ that of the emperor and _before_ that of the bishop of Constantinople graphically represents the idea which Justinian II. was seeking to impose. The Pope was to sign as patriarch and first of the five, not as the successor of St. Peter, who in virtue of his Primacy “set his seal,” according to the expression of the Sixth Council, on the whole. In the Trullan canons, the Byzantine idea having evolved itself with undeviating encroachment during three centuries, appears complete. Its completeness is shewn in two things. Constantine IV. asked the Pope to confirm the Council; his son Justinian confirms it himself, and the council which he would confirm exhibits an eastern primacy seated at Constantinople. It admits not only the priority, but in a certain sense the superiority of the Roman primacy; but it would keep both the eastern and the western primacy under the imperial control. The eastern primacy would make itself the chief instrument of this control, and so practically put itself above the western. As has been seen above, the emperors through four patriarchs of their capital tried during forty years to force the Monothelite heresy on the Popes. In like manner from the Trullan Council they tried to force the Greek discipline and the eastern primate upon the Popes. Had they succeeded the ambition of the Byzantine prelates would have reached its full success.(144) The imperial residence on the Bosphorus would have taken the place of old Rome. The city of Constantine, fighting for very existence with the ever-advancing Mohammedan, tried this last stroke in its hour of greatest weakness.