But another part of Justinian’s conduct is no less salient. He is not the first, indeed, but he is the chief of the theologising emperors. The disastrous assumption of dictating doctrine, and deciding in theological controversies, which, at the moment of the fall of the western empire, the insurgent Basiliscus had begun during his short-lived reign, and Zeno continued, and Anastasius reinforced, was taken up with far greater force by Justinian. He laboured during eight years just at the middle of the sixth century to exhibit Pope Vigilius at Constantinople as the first of _his_ five patriarchs: he made the bishop of his capital hold a General Council without the Pope: he imposed his own doctrinal lucubrations upon that Council. He raised in the minds of the western bishops suspicions and fears as to Pope Vigilius being forced to become his instrument. The patriarch Epiphanius, who had weakly yielded to him, he afterwards deposed. Pope Vigilius escaped at last to die at Syracuse on his return to Rome worn out with the “contradiction of sinners” which he had experienced. In his person St. Peter had been a captive; seeds of schism and distrust had been scattered by Justinian in the West: which it required all the wisdom, the energy, and the patience of the great St. Gregory a generation later to overcome and root out. The following theologising emperors, Heraclius, Constans II., Justinian II., the poor phantom Philippicus Bardanes, and lastly Leo III., were only completing and crowning Justinian’s double work, of making an ecumenical patriarch, and an emperor behind him, the ultimate judge of doctrine. But had Leo III. succeeded in his attempt to grasp spiritual and temporal power in one hand, the Church of God would have come to an end. The whole future of the world was touched by the issue of this conflict.