Pope Felix sat until 530, and was then succeeded by Bonifacius II., the son of a Goth; not, however, without a temporary schism, occasioned by the attempt of King Athalarick to exert the arbitrary power used by his grandfather Theodorick in the election. Pope John II. followed in 532. In this Pope's time Cassiodorus was made Praetorian prefect by King Athalarick, and wrote to the Pope as a son to his father: "Be careful to remind me what I am to do. I wish to deal rightly, though I am blamed. A sheep which desires to hear the voice of his shepherd is not so easily led astray; and if he has one who warns continually at his side, can scarcely be criminal. I am, indeed, judge in the palace, but shall not therefore cease to be your disciple. For we execute this office well when we do not in the least depart from your injunctions. Since, then, I wish to be guided by your counsels and supported by your prayers, you must show your hand when there is anything in me otherwise than would be desired. That chair which is the wonder of the whole world should carefully protect its own, since, though it is given to the whole world, yet it admits in you a special local love."[118] The Pope, to whom the Praetorian prefect of Athalarick, the temporal sovereign, addressed this language, is John II., to whom Justinian, from Byzantium, spoke as a son, and whose primacy he acknowledged in terms so ample, before he became, by the conquest of Belisarius, the temporal lord of Rome; the year, also, before he reconquered Northern Africa by the sword of the same great general. Justinian, with not less precision than former emperors, acknowledged all his life long the primacy of the Roman See. We need not exclude political motives from this acknowledgment, but we must allow to him the fullest conviction as to its legitimate authority. If now and then, under the impulse of passion or despotic humour, he seemed to disregard its rights, he soon strove again to obtain the Pope's assent to his measures. In his edict to his own patriarch Epiphanius, he declared expressly that he held himself bound accurately to inform the Pope, as head of all bishops, concerning the circumstances of his realm, especially since the Roman Church by its decisions in faith had overthrown the heresies which arose in the East.[119] The imperial theologian was very unwilling to give up the initiative in the determination of ecclesiastical questions; nevertheless, he acknowledged in the Bishop of Old Rome the superior judge without whose confirmation his own steps remained devoid of force and effect.[120]