which is more clear than that of Jerusalem, and generally preferred.

RELIGION.

PELAGIUS I., pope, was born at Rome, and elected pope in 555. He endeavoured to reform the clergy; and when Rome was besieged by the Goths, obtained many concessions from Totila, in favour of the citizens. He died in 560.

JOHN III., sirnamed CATILINE, pope after Pelagius I., 560, was zealous in the decoration of churches, and died 573.

BENEDICT I., pope, called by the Greek writers Bonosus, a Roman by birth, and son of one Boniface, was elected to the pontifical chair in 574, after a vacancy of ten months, occasioned by the disordered state of Italy. At this period the Lombards overran that country, and fixed themselves in it under Alboin. Grief on account of the ravages they committed is said to have put an end to the life of Benedict, after filling the see somewhat above four years.

PELAGIUS II., pope, was of Gothic extraction, and the son of Winigild, but a native of Rome. He succeeded Benediet I. in 578. He laboured much to reconcile the bishops of Istria and Venice to the Roman see, but without success, and he opposed John, patriarch of Constantinople. In consequence of an inundation of the Tiber, which laid under water a considerable part of the city of Rome, and the adjacent country, a very mortal pestilential distemper broke out, which proved fatal to Pelagius in 590, after he had presided over the Roman see eleven years and between two and three months.

GREGORY I., sirnamed the Great, pope of Rome, was born at Rome, of a patrician family, A. D. 544. He discovered such abilities in the exercise of the senatorial employments, that the emperor Justin the younger appointed him prefect of Rome. Pope Pelagius II. sent him nuncio to Constantinople, to demand succours against the Lombards. When he thought of enjoying a solitary life, he was elected pope by the clergy, the senate, and the people of Rome, A.D. 590. Besides his learning and diligence in instructing the church, both by writing and preaching, he had a very happy talent in winning over princes in favour of the temporal as well as spiritual interest of the church. He undertook the conversion of the English, and sent over some monks of his order, under the direction of Augustine their abbot. With respect to the chastity of the churchmen, he was very rigid, asserting, that a man who had ever had commerce with a woman ought not to be ad

mitted to the priesthood; and he always caused the candidates for it to be examined on that point. He likewise exerted himself against such as were found guilty of calumny. However, he flattered the emperor Phocas, while his hands were yet reeking with the blood of Mauritius, and of his three children, who had been butchered in his sight. He likewise flattered Brunehaut, a very wicked queen of France.

This pope certainly possessed extraordinary abilities, and many commendable qualities. There was, however, a strange mixture of inconsistencies in his character. In some respects he discovered a sound and penetrating judgment, but in others the most shameful and superstitious weakness. It is impossible to read the absurd and ridiculous tales inserted in his dialogues, and circulated in some of his letters, without either pronouncing him credulous and superstitious in the extreme, or accusing him of very criminal hypocrisy, and of practising the most scandalous religious frauds. To one of these conclusions we are also unavoidably led, when we read of the solemnity and liberality with which he distributed his wonder-working relics, and the gravity with which, from old women's dreams, of apparitions and visions, he deduced the doctrine of purgatory, which afterwards proved such a mine of wealth to the church. He was no friend to secular and polite learning, as sufficiently appears from his epistles and dialogues. He is accused of destroying the noble monuments of ancient Roman magnificence, that those who visited the city might not attend more to the triumphal arches than to holy things; and of burning a multitude of heathen books, Livy in particular. He died in 605. His works were printed at Paris, in 1705, in 4 vols. folio.

SABINIAN, pope, succeeded Gregory the Great, but reigned only five months.

BONIFACE III., pope, was elected A. D. 605, and reigned only eight months and twenty-three days; yet in that short period, by favouring the emperor Phocas, he had the important title of Universal Bishop exclusively conferred on himself and his successors.

BONIFACE IV., pope, who obtained the additional favour from Phocas, of converting the famous heathen temple, built by Agrippa, called the pantheon, into a church. Several literary works are ascribed to him, but they are suspected to be spurious. He died, A. D. 614, in the ninth year of his pontificate, and was canonized.

DEUS DEDIT, or God's Gift, pope, successor of Boniface IV., in the year 614. He reigned but three years; and we have but few particulars transmitted to us respecting him, farther than that he was a native of Rome, and son of a sub-deacon of the church, and that his election to the pontificate was unanimous. He was a pious and benevolent man, and to him have

been imputed divers miracles. Moreri mentions one in which he healed a leprous man by bringing his mouth in contact with his own. The biographer gives little credit to such a report, but thought it necessary to insert it to quiet the minds of the devotees to the Catholic religion.

BONIFACE V., pope, a Neapolitan, and presbyter of the Roman church, succeeded Deus Dedit in 619. Not much is known concerning his actions. In 624 he sent the pall to Justus, newly elected archbishop of Canterbury, and interested himself in the progress of Christianity in Britain, for which an opportunity was offered by the marriage of Edwin, the Pagan king of Northumberland, to Edelberg, the sister of Eadbald king of Kent. Boniface sent letters and presents to the new-married couple, but did not live to see the fruits of his exhortations, dying in 625. Some decretal epistles are ascribed to him, of which three or four are remaining.

HONORIUS I., pope, was a Campandan by birth, and the son of Petronius, a person of consular dignity. He was chosen to fill the Roman see on the death of pope Boniface V. in the year 625. At that time the Lombards, who were masters of a considerable part of Italy, were at peace with the empire, but at war among themselves. For king Adaloaldus, having a fit of lunacy, to which he is said to have been subject, put several of the chief lords of that nation to death, the rest prudently determined to depose him, and raised to the throne Arioaldus, duke of Turin, who had married his sister. But the latter, though a man of unblemished character, and distinguished merit, was an Arian; and Adaloaldus not only a sound catholic, but also a liberal benefactor to the church. The pope, therefore, espoused the cause of the deposed prince with great zeal, and employed all his influence both with the Lombards and Romans, to procure his restoration. By his intrigues he continued to extend the civil war among the Lombards for a time; but he was ultimately disappointed of his grand object as Arioaldus continued to fill the Lombard throne until his death. The most remarkable circumstance in the life of Honorius, was his having been induced to give his sanction to the opinions of the Monothelites, who maintained that in Christ there was one will only, and one operation, for which he was solemnly condemned by the sixth general council, in the pontificate of pope Agatho. He died in the year 638, after a pontificate of nearly thirteen years. Eight of his letters are extant in the fifth volume of the "Collect Concil," and an "Epigram on the Apostles looking up towards Heaven with Astonishment at the Ascension of Christ," in the twelfth volume of the "Bibl. Patr."

EPIPHANIUS, patriarch of Constantinople. He strenuqusly vindicated the orthodox doctrines against the Eutychians,

and after his elevation to his dignity in the year 520, procured the condemnation of the latter in a synod of bishops held at Constantinople. Whilst he was patriarch, the decrees of the council of Chalcedon were confirmed, and a reconciliation was completed between the churches of Constantinople and Rome, after a schism which lasted thirty-five years. Five letters of this patriarch to pope Hormisdas on the subject of the union are extant in the fourth volume of the collection of the Latin councils.

SERGIUS, patriarch of Constantinople in 610, was a native of Syria, and the chief of the sect of Monothelites, the principle of which was, that there is only one will, and one operation in Christ. This heresy was condemned in the council of Constantinople. Sergius died in 639.

JUNILIUS, an African bishop, and author of a work of merit, entitled "De partibus Divinæ Legis, Lib. II," which is written by way of question and answer, and forms a kind of introduction to the study of the sacred Scriptures. Junilius says, that he received the substance of it from a learned Persian named Paul, who had been educated at Nisibis, where there was a public seminary, for teaching the knowledge of the Scriptures, conducted in a similar manner with the celebrated catechetical school of Alexandria.

FACUNDUS, bishop of Hermianum, in Africa, who defended the books called the Three Chapters, at the council of Constantinople, in 547, for which he was banished. He wrote some pieces which are extant.

FABIUS FULGENTIUS PLANCIADES, who is sometimes confounded with Fulgentius the saint, flourished about the year 520, and, according to some writers, was bishop of Carthage. He was the author of three books " On Mythology," addressed to a priest, named Catus. They were published in 1599, by Jerome Commelin, together with the mythological treatises of Hygyrus, Julius Firmicus Maternus, and Alberic; and at Amsterdam in 1081, by Munker, in two volumes, 8vo., with the same and other treatises of a similar nature, under the title of "Mythographi Latini." This Fulgentius was also the author of a curious treatise "De Primis Vocabulis Latinis," published in Paris in 1586, 4to., and to him has been attributed a dissertation" On the Allegories of Virgil," addressed to Charicles, a grammarian.

PRIMASIUS, a Catholic bishop, and Scripture commentator of some note in this century, was a native of Africa, and obtained the see of Adrumetum, also known by the name of Justinianopolis, in the province of Byzacene. About the year 550, he was one of a deputation which was sent to Constantinople, on the affairs of the African churches, and he was at that city in 553, when the fifth General Council assembled

there, by order of the emperor Justinian. He refused, however, to take any share in the deliberations of that assembly, though repeatedly invited; and he subscribed to the constitution which Pope Vigilius issued in defence of the Three Chap

ters.

EUSTRATIUS, a presbyter of the church of Constantinople, flourished about the year 578, and was author of "A Treatise concerning the Souls of the Dead," intended to prove that the souls of all men are active after their separation from the body, and that they act differently according to the difference of their merits. He was author also of "The Life of the Patriarch Eutychius," which appears to have been a funeral oration pronounced by Eustratius in the great church at Constantinople, a short time after the death of the subject of it.

AGAPETUS, a deacon of Constantinople. He wrote a letter to Justinian, on the duties of a Christian prince.

THEOPOLITANUS ANASTASIUS, bishop of Antioch. Justin the younger, in the year 570, banished this patriarch, for holding the opinion, that the body of Christ was incapable of suffering even before the resurrection. He remained in exile twenty-three years. In the year 593, under the reign of Mauritius, he was recalled, and restored to his see; he died in the year 599. This bishop has left some sermons and treatises on the Trinity, and other points of faith, of which a Latin translation was published, in 4to. at Ingoldstadt, in 1616; and "On the Annunciation of the Virgin Mary and the Transfiguration of Christ," published in Greek and Latin, in the first volume of Combesis ü Auctairus," folio, Paris, 1648.

ST. COLMAN, the founder of the church and bishopric of Cloyne in Ireland. A well, reputed holy, to the N. W. of Cloyne, is dedicated to him, and is much frequented by the Irish Catholics on the anniversary of the saint, Nov. 24. He died Nov. 4. A. D. 604.

ST. MAUR, a celebrated disciple of St. Benedict. He is said to have been sent by Benedict on a mission to France; and notwithstanding the silence of Bede, Gregory of Tours, &c. there are several documents which prove this, or at least render it very probable. He died about A. D. 584.

LIBERATUS, a deacon of the church of Carthage, flourished about the middle of this century. In the year 534, he was sent to Rome by a council of African bishops held at Carthage for the purpose of consulting with pope John about some dubious points; and he was frequently employed respecting affairs of importance.

JACOB BARADÆUS, or JACOB ZANGALUS, a monk of this century. He was a Syrian by birth, and a disciple of Eutyches and Dyoscorus. He maintained that there is but one nature in Christ. He was ordained bishop of Edessa,