Western bishops would not come to it. The council met in May, 553; 165 bishops were present, all Easterns, except six Africans. They asked the Pope to preside, but he would not come. Instead he sent them a new decree, the Constitutum, condemning sixty propositions of Theodore, but forbidding any other condemnation. The council refused to accept the Constitutum, and condemned all Three Chapters, also, among others, Origen.[1] At last Vigilius, deserted by all his friends, worn out with the long imprisonment and the ill-treatment, only anxious to be set free and to go back home to Rome, gave in and also condemned the Three Chapters. He was then allowed to go back, but the unhappy Pope never saw his own city again. He died of the effects of ill-treatment at Syracuse in 555, leaving the reputation of a well-meaning man who was not strong enough to bear persecution, or to firmly make up his mind in a difficult question. He was the weakest of all the Popes. His successor, Pelagius I (555–561), confirmed the council, which was then, after some opposition, accepted by all the West; although one see, Aquileia, stayed in schism till 700, because of this question. It need hardly be said that all the dogmatic decrees of the Second Council of Constantinople entirely agree with the faith of Ephesus and Chalcedon. No one has disputed its orthodoxy. The question about which Vigilius could not make up his mind was whether it was expedient to condemn men who had died a century ago, whose names, in the West at any rate, were hardly known, for the chance of conciliating these Monophysites. The Western bishops were angry at the Emperor's interference, at their Pope being taken to Constantinople and ill-treated there. If they thought the council was contradicting Chalcedon, they were mistaken. Its 5th Canon formally confirms the last council.[2]
We may end this discussion of the Roman Primacy over Eastern Christendom by quoting the famous Formula of Hormisdas. St. Hormisdas was Pope from 514 to 523. The great
