It is to be noted that a Pope, whose election had been long delayed by the mere arbitrary will of emperor or exarch, as soon as he was consecrated, entered into the full possession of his unrestricted rights. The exarch who had power to delay, who had power to plunder the Lateran treasury of the Church, as Isaac and John Platina did, had no power to lessen the dignity of St. Peter’s succession when once acknowledged. Even Vigilius is admitted to have emancipated himself from the thraldom of Theodora; and Eugenius, forced upon the Romans by the tyranny of Constans II., was a blameless Pope, who did not yield to the heresy of Constans. What manner of men were they who were loyal vassals to the most iniquitous rulers, and when solicited by their own faithful peoples to break an abhorred yoke yet held them back, and adhered to those who gave them neither protection nor justice? They did not rule as Satraps in a kingdom worn down to prostration by centuries of arbitrary power, but were acknowledged as sitting in the apostolic throne of Faith and Justice by rough lords from the North, to whom obedience in spiritual things was a Christian virtue learned with great difficulty by those who inherited a natural independence. Interminable intestine quarrels among the western potentates, who yet accept the voice of an unarmed Pope as the interpreter of faith, and the most upright arbiter of human justice, are a proof the more how deeply the rule of St. Peter had sunk into the western mind. What guarantee of truth can be offered by the course of human things if this be not one? That is the testimony of the three centuries from Genseric the Vandal to Aistulf the Lombard. The testimony of Teuton conquerors, who burn what they once worshipped, and worship what they once burnt, who enter on their dominion as spoilers and develop into Christian monarchs. The testimony of Constantine’s imperial successors, who own the papal succession to St. Peter, while they try to bend it to their will, and in the attempt subject half their empire to an anti-Christian tyranny. Lastly, the testimony of St. Leo the Great and fifty-one successors to the time when St. Leo III., invested with civil sovereignty, employed the acknowledged greatness of his spiritual power to restore the empire which the first Leo saw sinking in ruins. CHAPTER VIII. FROM SERVITUDE TO SOVEREIGNTY.