Page:The age of Justinian and Theodora (Volume 2).djvu/333

 year, as Justinian was not yet prepared to push the question to a crisis. In 547, however, Emperor and Pope met at Constantinople, and embraced each other with the greatest seeming cordiality. For some time they worked together in perfect concord, while Justinian entirely won over the head of the Western Church to his views; and in the next year a papal decree was promulgated, under the title of the "Judicatum," in which the Three Chapters were anathematized in the terms dictated by the Imperial theologian. But this decisive act was the signal for Western indignation to rise to its height; and Vigilius was stricken with awe at finding that he could scarcely count on a single adherent in the Roman half of the Empire. Latin ecclesiastics at once began to compose and circulate elaborate treatises in which they contravened the Imperial and Papal pronouncements and maintained that the proceedings at Chalcedon had been infallible in every detail. Vigilius, therefore, withdrew his Judicatum without reserve, a measure which caused the tension of opinion between Emperor, Pope, and Patriarch to become acute. The arch-priests excommunicated each other, and Justinian became desperate at finding himself defied at the moment when he believed himself to be in touch with the goal. He issued a new edict (551), condemning the Three Chapters, and insisted that the Pope