A Source Book for Ancient Church History - Mirrors

657eight years. At the request of Pope Boniface 252 he decreed thatthe seat of the Roman and Apostolic Church should be the headof all churches [caput omnium ecclesiarum], because the Churchof Constantinople in a proclamation had named itself first of all.At the request of another Pope Boniface, 253 he commanded thatthe idolatrous rubbish should be removed from the old templewhich bore the name of the Pantheon, and from it a churchshould be made to the holy Virgin Mary and all martyrs, so thatwhere formerly the service not of all gods but of all idols was [600]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 overnearly all the peninsula. The territories retained by theEmperor from the conquests of Justinian were only the Exarchateof Ravenna, the Ducatus Romanus, and the DucatusNeapolitanus, the extreme southern parts of the peninsula andLiguria. The Lombards were the last Germanic tribe to settlewithin the Empire, and like so many others they were Arians.Theodelinda, the queen of the Lombards, was a Bavarianprincess and a Catholic. Her second husband, Agilulf, seemsto have been favorably disposed to Catholicism, far more sothan Authari, her first husband.(g) Paulus Diaconus, Historia Langobardorum, IV, 5-9. (MSL,95:540.)Paulus Warnefridi, known as Paulus Diaconus (circa 720-circa 800), was himself a Lombard, and in writing his Historyof the Lombards shows himself the patriot as well as the loyalson of the Roman Church. To do this was at times difficult.252 Boniface III, 606-607.253 Boniface IV, 607-615.