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avail. The papal legate who ruled the council treated their plea with contempt. "Have pity on us; have pity on us!" cried the feeble old men. No pity was shown them. They were forced to sign the deposition of their patriarch, and then packed off to Alexandria to see to the election of his successor. There they were met with a storm of indignation. Proterius, who had been serving as locum tenens for Dioscurus during his absence, and who therefore was presumed to be one of his supporters, now turned round to accept ordination on the lines of Chalcedon. This raised the passions of the populace to fever heat. We cannot be surprised that the excited people, hating the renegade for his treason to their banished patriarch, and taking advantage of the temporary weakness of the government at the death of Marcian, rose in a mad riot, and murdered the man they regarded as a Judas. Thus another red stain was added to the annals of the Coptic Church. When, on the death of the banished patriarch Dioscurus, Timothy Ælurus was elected his successor at Alexandria, the rivalry of the two parties in the city was revived. This was before the murder of Proterius; but that crime did not end the quarrel. The new Emperor Leo banished Ælurus, and a really good man, Timothy Surus or Salofaciolus, was elected to the patriarchate on the basis of Chalcedon. So highly respected was he that people would greet him in the street, saying, "Even if we do not communicate with thee, yet we love thee." Efforts were now made by moderate men to bring about a settlement that should unite the two parties. But the cleavage was too deep. It was racial as well as theological. The party of Chalcedon, the Melchites, were Greek; the Copts were Monophysite almost to a man. This is the secret of the obstinate continuance of the schism. It was a national movement, and the intrusion of patriarchs of the Greek persuasion was resented as an outrage on the rights of the national Church. The new Coptic patriarch, John Talai, who seems to have acted weakly if not dishonourably in accepting the vacant post on the death of the good Timothy (a.d. 482), when the emperor had