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foregone conclusion; and on April 11, 548, he published Judicatum , in which he solemnly anathematized the Three Chapters, while emphasizing that his support for the doctrines of Chalcedon remained unshaken.
    Thus, when the empress died eleven weeks later, it might have been thought that she and her husband had triumphed and had succeeded at last in restoring unity to the Church. In fact, the split was soon revealed to be deeper than ever. Theodora had always been more feared than her husband; while she lived, many distinguished churchmen had preferred to keep a low profile rather than incur her displeasure. After her death, they came out publicly in opposition to the imperial edict, and gradually others across Europe followed suit. Whatever Vigilius might have said to the contrary, it was generally accepted that his anathemas had dangerously undermined the authority of Chalcedon; and the pope was now generally reviled throughout Western Christendom as a turncoat and apostate. In Carthage, indeed, the bishops went further still and excommunicated him. Vigilius saw that he had gone too far. He had never wanted to condemn the Three Chapters in the first place and had done so only as a result of the intolerable pressure put upon him by Justinian and Theodora. There was nothing for it but to retract, which—with what little dignity he could muster—he did.
    For Justinian, this was the last straw. He now ordered his religious adviser, Theodore Ascidas, Archbishop of Caesarea, to draft a second edict which went considerably further than its predecessor, and he summoned a General Council of the Church to endorse it. Supported, no doubt, by many of the Western churchmen in Constantinople, Vigilius protested that this document flew in the face of the principles of Chalcedon and called upon the emperor to withdraw it immediately. Justinian predictably refused, whereupon the pope summoned a meeting of all the bishops from both East and West who were present in the city. This assembly pronounced unanimously against the edict, solemnly forbidding any cleric to say Mass in any church in which it was exhibited. When, a few days later, two prelates ignored the decree, they were excommunicated on the spot—as was (for the third time) the patriarch himself.
    On hearing the news, Justinian flew into one of the terrible rages for which he was famous, and the pope, fearing that he was no longer safe from arrest, sought refuge in the Church of St. Peter and St. Paul, which the emperor had recently built on the Marmara just to the south of St. Sophia. Scarcely had he reached it, however, when there arrived a company of the Imperial Guard. According to a number of Italian churchmen who were eyewitnesses of what took place and who subsequently described it in detail to the Frankish ambassadors, 4 they burst into the church with swords drawn and bows ready strung and advanced threateningly on the pope, who made a dash for the high altar. Meanwhile, the various priests and deacons surrounding him remonstrated with the guards, and a scuffle ensued during which several of them were injured, though none seriously. The soldiers then seized hold of the pope himself, who was by this time clinging tightly to the columns supporting the altar, and tried to drag him—some by the legs, some by the hair, others by the beard—forcibly away. But the more they pulled, the tighter he clung, until at last the columns came loose and the whole altar crashed to the ground, narrowly missing his head.
    By this time a considerable crowd, attracted by the commotion, had begun to protest vehemently against such treatment being accorded to the Vicar of Christ; and the soldiers, manifestly unhappy, wisely decided to withdraw, leaving a triumphant though badly shaken Vigilius to survey the damage. The next day there arrived a high-powered delegation led by Belisarius himself, to express the emperor’s regret for what had occurred and to give the pope a formal assurance that