Prologue To The Seven Volumes Of The Formation Of Christendom. Contents To The Seven Volumes Of The Formation Of Christendom. Preface. Chapter I. The Pope And The Byzantine. Chapter II. Pope Martin, His Council, And His Martyrdom. Chapter III. Heraclius Betrays The Faith, And Cuts His Empire In Two. Chapter IV. Christendom And Islam. Chapter V. Old Rome And New Rome. Chapter VI. An Emperor Priest And Four Great Popes. Chapter VII. Rome’s Three Hundred Years, 455-756 From Genseric To Aistulf, Between The Goth, The Lombard, And The Byzantine. Chapter VIII. From Servitude To Sovereignty. Chapter IX. The Making Of Christendom. Index. Footnotes CHAPTER I. THE POPE AND THE BYZANTINE. I have hitherto conducted the history of the Throne of the Fisherman built by the Carpenter’s Son in unbroken succession from St. Peter to St. Gregory the Great. It is a period of 575 years from the Day of Pentecost A.D. 29 to St. Gregory’s death in A.D. 604. This period is very nearly bisected by the conversion of Constantine. The first half contains the action of the Primacy over against a hostile heathen empire. The second half contains its action upon an empire which, at least in principle, acknowledged union with the Catholic Church as a duty, a privilege, and a necessity. The testimony rendered by Councils and by Fathers to the Roman Primacy may be said to be complete in the time of St. Gregory. Subsequent Councils can only add a closer precision to the testimony of the Council of Chalcedon. Subsequent acts of the Eastern empire can scarcely go beyond the submission of its episcopate, its emperor, and its nobles to Pope Hormisdas. The point of that submission consists in the solemn acceptance of the line of Roman bishops as inheriting the charge given by our Lord to St. Peter. Subsequent legislation can but apply in detail the acceptance by Justinian of the Pope’s right to examine everything which belongs to the doctrine or concerns the conduct of the Church throughout the world. And force is even added to this acceptance, because it was made when the Pope, John II., to whom it was made, was not in fact his temporal subject. I propose to treat in this volume of a period embracing two hundred years. It runs from the time of St. Gregory the Great to the founding of the holy Roman empire, in the person of Charlemagne, by Pope St. Leo III.