This privation of its original freedom, according to which the Pope’s consecration followed at once upon his complete and legitimate election by clergy and people, the Roman Church owed to the Arian Herule Odoacer, during his occupation of Italy. It was eagerly grasped, after Theodorich and Theodatus had exercised it, by Justinian, when he became, by conquest, lord of Rome. I have already recorded the infamous violence exerted by Belisarius as soon as he had entered Rome, at the bidding of the Empress Theodora, upon St. Silverius. Now we have the eastern emperors, through the seventh century, exerting, sometimes directly, sometimes by delegation to their exarch, this stolen privilege. It was taken by Odoacer ostensibly for the preservation of order in the election, and the prevention of violence. I suppose it is the furthest reach of disloyalty to exercise a power which has been entrusted for protection to the injury of the party protected. This disloyalty was perpetually shown by the eastern emperors to the Popes, whose Primacy over the Church they acknowledged, until they finally lost the opportunity by the new-creation of the Western empire, and the acquisition of temporal sovereignty by the Popes. At the accession of Honorius I., in 625, it is stated to have been the custom, upon the death of a Pope, that the Archpriest, the Archdeacon, and the first of the Notaries signified his death to the exarch. The Acts of the new election, subscribed by clergy and laity, were deposited in the archives of the Lateran. A copy of them was sent to the emperor. The report sent to the exarch was the more important. This Viceroy of Italy was humbly besought for his consent: nay, even the Archbishop and Judges of Ravenna were asked to obtain it from him. The clergy and people of Rome had to look to the exarch, the emperor’s delegate, even more than to the emperor, since he stood in more immediate relation to Rome, and determined the decision of the Byzantine court. The Romans, suffering from the delay of their bishop’s consecration, would entreat the emperor to lessen the time of disturbance by allowing the exarch to confirm their choice.(10)