OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE.

burst into the assembly, furious and in arms:the cardinals were stripped, beaten, and tram-pled under foot; and he seized, without pity orrespect, the vicar of Christ by the throat. Ge-lasius was dragged by his hair along the ground,buffeted with blows, wounded with spurs, andbound with an iron chain in the house of hisbrutal tyrant. An insurrection of the peopledelivered their bishop; the rival families oppos-ed the violence of the Frangipani; and Cencio,who sued for pardon, repented of the failure,rather than of the guilt, of his enterprise. Notmany days had elapsed,when the pope was againassaulted at the altar. While his friends andenemies were engaged in a bloody contest, heescaped in his sacerdotal garments. In this un-worthy flight, which excited the compassion ofthe Roman matrons, his attendants were scat-tered or unhorsed; and, in the fields behind thechurch of St. Peter, his successor was foundalone and half-dead with fear and fatigue.—Shaking the dust from his feet, the apostle with-drew from a city in which his dignity was insult-ed and his person was endangered; and the va-nity of sacerdotal ambition is revealed in the in-voluntary confession, that one emperor was moretolerable than twenty. p These examples might

bnndus introiit, inde custode remoto papam per gulam accepit, dls-traxit, pugnis calcibusque percussit, et tanqtiam brutum animal intralimeii ecclesiae acriter calcaribus cruentavit j et latro tantum dominuraper capiHos rt brachia, Jesu bono interim dormiente, detraxit ad do-mum, usque deduxit, inibi catenavit et inclusit.

f Kgo coram Deo et ecclesia dico, si unquam possibile esset, niallemununi iinperatorem quam tot dominos (Vit. Gelas. II. p. 398);

263

CHAP.

LXIX.