Means had been taken by fraud and force to win the whole East to consent to the edict.[144] Mennas, patriarch of Constantinople; Ephrem, patriarch of Antioch; Peter, patriarch of Jerusalem, crouched before the tyranny of Justinian; and so also Zoilus of Alexandria, though he promised Vigilius that he would not sign the edict, afterwards subscribed it.[145] At this point Justinian sought before everything to get the assent of the Pope, and he sent for Vigilius to Constantinople. He claimed the presence of Vigilius as his subject in virtue of the conquest of Belisarius: he meant to use this authority of Vigilius as Pope for his own purpose. Vigilius foresaw the difficulties into which he would fall. At length he left Rome in 544, before Totila began the second siege. He lingered in Sicily a year, in 546; he then travelled through Greece and Illyricum. At last he entered Byzantium on the 25th January, 547, and was welcomed with the most brilliant reception. Justinian humbly besought his blessing, and embraced him with tears. But this good understanding did not last long. Vigilius approved the conduct of his legates and refused his communion to Mennas, who, in signing the formula of Hormisdas, had bound himself to follow the Roman See, and had broken his special promise. Vigilius withdrew it also from the bishops who had subscribed the imperial edict. He and the bishops attending him saw in this edict a scheme to help the Acephali, upon whom Vigilius repeated his anathema. But Mennas feared the emperor much more than he feared the Pope, whose name he now removed from commemoration at the Mass. Vigilius, like the westerns in general, considered the edict to be useless and dangerous, as giving a pretext for seeming to abrogate the Council of Chalcedon, and also as a claim on the part of the emperor to the highest authority in Church matters. Justinian tried repeatedly his personal influence with the Pope, that also of bishops and officers of State. He even had him watched for a length of time and cut off from all approach, so that the Pope exclaimed, "If you have made me a prisoner, you cannot imprison the holy Apostle Peter". Yet the intercourse of Vigilius with eastern bishops soon convinced him that they were generally agreed with the emperor; that a prolonged resistance on his part would produce a new division between Greeks and Latins; that considerable grounds existed for the condemnation of the Three Chapters, with which, hitherto, he had not been well acquainted. So he allowed the subject to be further considered, held out a prospect of agreeing with the emperor, and readmitted Mennas to his communion, who restored the Pope's name in the liturgy. This reconciliation took place on the feast of the Princes of the Apostles, 29th June, 547.