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zantium. The world, he said, had two appointed rulers the sacred authority o the bishops, and the kingly power; but the significance of the bishops must be greater because they would also be summoned to give an account before the Divine Judge of what the kings had done. The Christian Emperors had need of the bishops for their eternal sal- vation, and the bishops for their part needed the laws of the sovereign in so far as this world is concerned. The self-same Pope also gave expression to the ties which welded the born Roman and the rightful monarch of a newer Rome together, and thus manifested a universal- istic consciousness of the ancient co-ordination of the two halves of the Empire.
Anastasius II, the successor of Pope Gelasius, sought to reunite the Churches, but went so far in conciliating the East that Rome itself was split into parties. Then Anastasius died, two Popes were elected, and both East and West asked Theodoric to act as arbitrator. He was already involved in personal political conflicts with Byzantium, and decided in favour of the candidate of the Rome-minded group and against the choice of the minority friendly to the East. But no sooner was the schism which separated East and West ended, than the political opposition between Rome and the Arian Goths waxed stronger. This was understandable enough. In 518, Justin, an or- thodox Catholic, ascended the throne in the East and began to perse- cute the fellow countrymen and co-religionists of Theodoric; the Popes meanwhile were subjects of an heretical king; and in Italy almost every city had both a Catholic and an Arian Church and generally two rival bishops as well. When Byzantium had weakened the Monophysites and so made it easier for Italy to rejoin the Empire, Theodoric, who had now been forsaken by his Vandal allies, turned the tables and wrote on them the sombre message of his last years to the world. A Pope, John I, also felt his heavy hand. Theodoric called him to Ra- venna, forced him to ease the lot of the Arians in Constantinople and threw him into prison when he returned because the results attained were not satisfactory. There death released him a few days after- ward.
During the same year (526) Theodoric also died, leaving his plans unfulfilled. He had succeeded neither in effecting harmony between the Romans and the East Goths, nor in establishing a Germanic fed-
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