Page:The age of Justinian and Theodora (Volume 2).djvu/338

 of the Council he effected a reconciliation with Justinian by the issue of a second Constitutum, by which he retracted the first, and again advocated the views he had professed in his Judicatum. Being thus restored to Court favour he was entrusted with the Pragmatic Sanction and set out for Rome, as related above; but he was now broken by years, and illness compelled him to interrupt his voyage at Syracuse, where he died in the spring of 555. The Emperor now judged sagaciously that the vacant Popedom was an allurement which would dissipate the most assured theological convictions; and he determined to test its potency on the man who above all others was best fitted for the Papal seat. When an intimation was conveyed to the redoubtable champion of Chalcedon, Pelagius, that the pontificate was the prize of his recantation, the weapons with which he had so long defended the Three Chapters escaped from his nerveless grasp; and, while he accepted the tiara of the West with one hand, he signed with the other a convention that his faith was assimilated in all respects to that of the princely donor. The report of his defection preceded him to Rome, and on his arrival there the influence of Narses scarcely availed to induce three ecclesiastics of sufficient rank to perform the ceremony of his consecration. He had covenanted with Justinian to enforce the decrees of the Fifth General Council in the West with the authority which attached to the occupant of St. Peter's chair; but the hostility of the Latin bishops was so positive that he was obliged to shelter himself behind ambiguous