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 134 THE HISTORY OF MEDIEVAL EUROPE the time, was threatened with force when he fled to sanctu- aries for safety, and finally was banished to a desert island. The fifth oecumenical council of the Church, held at Con- stantinople in 553 in the new church of St. Sophia, supported Justinian; and those clergy who sided with Vigilius were punished with stripes, imprisonment, exile, and deposition. Vigilius himself in the end submitted, but by so doing les- sened the authority of the Papacy in the West, where the Archbishops of Milan and Aquileia termed him a traitor to orthodoxy and initiated a long schism. During the remain- der of his reign Justinian controlled the elections of popes and church affairs generally. In short, Justinian was as autocratic in religious as in i political matters and acted as if supreme head of the Church. Religious But ne was a ^ so as eager to forward the interests policy of f Christianity as he was to restore the power of Justinian. . .- the Roman Empire. He was generous in gifts to churches and monasteries, zealous in encouraging mission- aries to the barbarians, and severe in legislation against pagans and heretics. He has the discredit of having closed the schools of philosophy at Athens and of confiscating the endowments even of Plato's Academy and the funds whose income supplied the salaries of the professors, who them- selves fled to the Persian court. In Justinian's old age, when he had lost interest in wars and in the details of the defense of the Empire, which had once so absorbed his attention, he still loved to engage in theological discussions and was still intent upon making his people one in faith and doctrine. Justinian's trouble with the pope illustrates the extreme difficulty of holding together in one Church the two halves The East- of the Christian world in East and West. It has cm Church been estimated that Constantinople was at vari- ance with Rome over religious matters nearly half of the time between 337 and 878. The eighth and last council in the East which is accepted as oecumenical by the Roman Church was that held in Constantinople in 869. The final schism did not come until 1054, but there had been little true unity for a long time before. Ever since then, despite