Let this letter from beginning to end be considered as written by a Pope just after his election, the validity of which had been disputed by another candidate whom the emperor had favoured--by a Pope living actually under the unlimited power of an Arian sovereign, who was in possession of Italy, and who ruled in right of a conqueror, though he used his power generally with moderation and equity; further, that it was addressed to one who had become the sole Roman emperor, the over-lord of the king, who had just besought of him the royal title; that it required him to cast aside his patronage of Eutychean heretics; to rescind from the public records of the Church the name of that bishop who had composed the document called the Henotikon, the very document which the emperor was compelling his eastern bishops to accept and promulgate as the confession of the Christian faith. And let the frankness with which the Pope appeals to the universally admitted authority of St. Peter's See be at the same time considered, with the official statement that the emperors were wont immediately to acknowledge the accession of a Pope[80] and attest their communion with him. What was the answer which the eastern emperor made to this letter? He did not answer by denying anything which the Pope claimed as belonging to his see, but by rekindling the internal schism which had been laid to sleep by the recognition of Pope Symmachus. Before sending this letter, the Pope had held a council of seventy-two bishops in St. Peter's on March 1, 499, which made important regulations to prevent cabal and disturbance at papal elections such as had just taken place. This council had been subscribed by Laurentius himself,[81] and the Pope in compassion[82] had given him the bishopric of Nocera. Now the emperor Anastasius, reproved for his misdeeds and misbelief by Pope Symmachus in the letter above quoted, caused his agents, the patrician Faustus and the senator Probinus, to bring grievous accusations against Symmachus and to set up once more Laurentius as anti-pope.[83] In their passionate enmity they did not scruple to bring their charge against Pope Symmachus before the heretical king Theodorick. The result of this attempt was that Rome, during several years at least, from 502 to 506, was filled with confusion and the most embittered party contentions. Theodorick was induced to send a bishop as visitor of the Roman Church, and again to summon a council of bishops from the various provinces of Italy to consider the charges brought against the Pope. During the year 501 four such councils were held in Rome, of which it may be sufficient to quote the last, the Synodus Palmaris.[84] Its acts say that they were by command of king Theodorick to pass judgment on certain charges made against Pope Symmachus. That the bishops of the Ligurian, Aemilian, and Venetian provinces, visiting the king at Ravenna on their way, told him