Page:The age of Justinian and Theodora (Volume 2).djvu/341

 she had the satisfaction of seeing her favourite sect dividing the allegiance of the population with the Catholics throughout Asia and Africa. Thenceforward, the Orthodox in the East were called Melchites ("Royalists"), in contradistinction to the Jacobites, as representing the Imperial party in religion.

In his relations with religion, Justinian is presented to us in no less than six different aspects. We have seen him as a builder of churches, and as an ecclesiastical statesman; it still remains for us to consider him as a hierarch or clerical legislator, as a persecutor of heretics, as a missionary or converter of the heathen, and as a theologian or Christian metaphysician.

I. In the first department the Emperor enacted Constitutions dealing with clerical life and authority in every relationship, his maxim being that the salvation of the State and the individual depended on the Church being maintained in its integrity. In the case of a bishopric becoming vacant, three candidates were to be nominated, and the most fit elected by the votes of the ecclesiastics and the principal citizens of the locality; but, if obtained by bribery, the election was annulled. Essential qualifications of a bishop were that he should be above thirty years of age and have no children or grandchildren, whereby his attention might be distracted from his sacred duties. It was necessary also that he should not be addicted to a curia, unless he had gained his freedom from the same, through having spent fifteen years in a monastery. In the exercise of his office he was