But lest those who have thus written to you should be offended, send them a letter declaring under an imposition of an anathema that you neither take away anything from the faith of the synod of Chalcedon nor receive those who do, and that you condemn whatsoever it condemned and absolve whatsoever it absolved. And thus I believe that they may soon be satisfied.… As to what you have written to the effect that you are unwilling to transmit my letter to Queen Theodelinda on the ground that the fifth synod is named in it, for you believed that she might be offended, you did right not to transmit it. We are therefore doing now as you recommended, namely, only expressing approval of the four synods. Yet as to the synod which was afterward called at Constantinople, which is called by many the fifth, I would have you know that it neither ordained nor held anything in opposition to the four most holy synods, seeing that nothing was done in it with respect to the faith, but only with respect to three persons, about whom nothing is contained in the acts of the Council of Chalcedon;[250] but after the canons had been promulgated, discussion arose, and final action was ventilated concerning persons.
(f) Paulus Diaconus, Historia Langobardorum, IV, 32, 33, 36. (MSL, 95:657.)
The continuation of the schism in Istria and the rise of the two patriarchates of Aquileia. The Emperor Phocas and the title “Head of All the Churches.”
32. In the following month of November [A. D. 605] King Agilulf concluded peace with the Patrician Smaragdus for a year, and received from the Romans twelve thousand solidi. Also the Tuscan cities Balneus Regis [Bagnarea] and Urbs Vetus [Orvieto] were conquered by the Lombards. Then appeared in the heavens in the months of April and May a star which is called a comet. Thereupon King Agilulf again made a peace with the Romans for three years.
33. In the same days after the death of the patriarch Severus, the abbot John was made patriarch of old Aquileia in his place with the approval of the king and Duke Gisulf. Also in Grados [Grado] the Roman[251] Candidianus was appointed bishop. In the months of November and December a comet was again visible. After the death of Candidianus, Epiphanius, who had formerly been the papal chief notary, was elected patriarch by the bishops who stood under the Romans; and since this time there were two patriarchs.
36. Phocas, as also has been related above, after the murder of Maurice and his sons, obtained the Roman Empire and ruled for eight years. At the request of Pope Boniface[252] he decreed that the seat of the Roman and Apostolic Church should be the head of all churches [caput omnium ecclesiarum], because the Church of Constantinople in a proclamation had named itself first of all. At the request of another Pope Boniface,[253] he commanded that the idolatrous rubbish should be removed from the old temple which bore the name of the Pantheon, and from it a church should be made to the holy Virgin Mary and all martyrs, so that where formerly the service [pg 600] not of all gods but of all idols was celebrated, now only the memory of all saints should be found.
4. Gregory the Great and the Lombards.
The Lombards entered Italy 568, and gradually spread over nearly all the peninsula. The territories retained by the Emperor from the conquests of Justinian were only the Exarchate of Ravenna, the Ducatus Romanus, and the Ducatus Neapolitanus, the extreme southern parts of the peninsula and Liguria. The Lombards were the last Germanic tribe to settle within the Empire, and like so many others they were Arians. Theodelinda, the queen of the Lombards, was a Bavarian princess and a Catholic. Her second husband, Agilulf, seems to have been favorably disposed to Catholicism, far more so than Authari, her first husband.