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593-595] material arms. Agilulf met Gregory on the steps of St Peter's, and the weighty wisdom of the prelate gave power to his prayers for the city: they prevailed, the siege was abandoned, and Agilulf went back to Milan, where the letters of Gregory were as familiar to the clergy and as powerful as was his rule in Rome.

Thither came epistles to Theodelinda, the Arian Agilulf's Catholic wife, instructing her in the right belief as to the still unfinished strife about the Three Chapters, and to Constantius the bishop, begging him to negotiate a peace between the Lombards and the Empire.

Peace was impossible so long as the Caesar at Constantinople claimed the lordship of all Italy, and the Lombard barbarian asserted all real power over the peninsula. Nor was Gregory at the time the person to bring the foes together, for in August 593 he had written to the Emperor Maurice in terms of criticism strangely bold and direct. When Maurice was "not yet lord of all" he had been Gregory's own lord, and still the pope would call himself the unworthy servant of the pious Emperor. But a new edict which forbade a civil servant of the Empire, or a soldier, to become priest or monk, seemed to him a monstrous infringement of individual and religious liberty. By it, he said, the way to heaven would be closed to many, for while there were those who could lead a religious life in a secular dress, yet more there were who unless they forsook all things could in no way attain salvation. What answer would he, who from notary had been made by God first captain, then Caesar, then Emperor, then father of Emperor yet to be, and to whose care the priests of God had been entrusted, make to the divine inquest of the Last Day if not one single soldier was allowed to be converted to the Lord? And Gregory drew a lurid picture of the "end of the ages" which seemed to be at hand, the heavens and the earth aflame and the elements melting with fervent heat, and the Divine Judge ready to appear with the six orders of angels in His train. Yet it is an illustration of the fidelity with which Gregory performed all his secular obligations that he had caused the law against which he so vehemently protested to be published in the usual way.

This was not the only divergence in opinion between the pope and the imperial Court. Gregory, with all his respect for authority, was at least able to hold his own, and there was for a while at least no breach in the friendly relations with Constantinople. Maurice sent relief to the sufferers from the Lombard invasion, and Gregory lost no opportunity of advising that the separate peace which he had made with Agilulf should be enlarged at least into a general truce. Gregory, inter gladios Langobardorum, could appreciate the needs of Italy in a way that was impossible for the distant Augustus. In 595 however the divergence came to a head. The Emperor reviewed the pope's peace policy in terms of contemptuous condemnation and Gregory answered in one of the most vigorous of all his letters, dated June 595. He resented the imputation