In the meantime Roman Commissioners were urging upon the emperor Heraclius at Constantinople to issue the imperial consent to the consecration of the Pope. After many negotiations, the chief of the clergy there showed them a doctrinal writing, the Ecthesis, and said, “We will only support you in your matter if you promise us to persuade the Pope to subscribe this act and to recognise without reserve the doctrines therein contained”. The Commissioners, who perceived the drift of the act, and that on account of this the first See of Christendom had so long remained unfilled, answered calmly and prudently: “In this affair we can do nothing. A message has been entrusted to us, but no order given us to make a confession of faith. We will give you the assurance that we will inform the Elect of everything that you have said; that we will show him this paper and beseech him, if he approve of its contents, to subscribe it. Be so good, therefore, as to put no hindrance to our mission for this matter, to do us no violence, and not to detain us without end. None can do violence to another, especially in a matter of faith; for in such a case even the weakest becomes very strong, even the quietest feels himself a hero; and since he strengthens his soul with the word of God, the most violent attacks serve only to confirm not to weaken him. And how much more does this apply to the Church and clergy of Rome, who, from the beginning to the present, as eldest of all the churches under the sun, presides over all! Having received this privilege according to the canons, as well from councils and apostles as from their supreme Head, in this matter of succession in the Pontificate, it is subject to no writings whatsoever, to no issue of synodical documents; but in all these matters all are subject to it according to sacerdotal law.” This is what with a most sacred and becoming confidence, fearing nothing, those intrepid ministers(20) of the immovable Rock said to the clergy of Constantinople; who thereupon ceased from their pretension, and promised to obtain for them the imperial confirmation. Pope Severinus, after suffering the double humiliation of having the treasury of the Church sacked by the emperor’s viceroy, and his own election unconfirmed for nearly twenty months, ascended the throne of Peter on the 28th May, 640, and sat two months and six days. “He loved the clergy, and was most liberal to them all,” says of him the Book of the Popes; “holy, benignant above all men, a lover of the poor, large-handed, most gentle.” In this short Pontificate he found time to reject the imperial decree, called the Ecthesis.