Out of the province of Northern Africa, the earliest cradle of the Latin Church, came Cæcilian, bishop of Carthage. A few years ago he had himself been convened before the two Western councils of the Lateran and of Arles, and had there been acquitted of the charges brought against him by the Donatists. If any of the distant orientals had hoped to catch a sight of the bishop of the "Imperial City," they were doomed to disappointment. Doubtless had he been there his position as prelate of the capital would have been, if not first, at least among the first. But Sylvester was now far advanced in years; and in his place came the two presbyters, who, according to the arrangement laid down by the Emperor, would have accompanied him had he been able to make the journey. In this simple deputation later writers have seen--and perhaps by a gradual process the connection might be traced--the first germ of _legati a latere_. But it must have been a very far-seeing eye which in Victor and Vincentius, the two unknown elders, representing their sick old bishop, could have detected the predecessors of Pandulf or of Wolsey. With them, however, was a man who, though now long forgotten, was then an object of deeper interest to Christendom than any bishop of Rome could at that time have been. It was the world-renowned Spaniard, as he is called by Eusebius; the magician from Spain, as he is called by Zosimus; Hosius, bishop of Cordova. He was the representative of the westernmost of European churches; but, as Eusebius of Cæsarea was the chief counsellor of the Emperor in the Greek Church, so was Hosius in the Latin, as shown in the darkest and most mysterious crisis of Constantine's life.