VIGILIUS, Pope: b. Rome; d.
Syracuse, 555. During the pontificates of petus I and Sylverius, Vigilius was apocrisiartus (an office nearly corresponding to the later one of papal nuncio) at Constantinople, and having sided with the imperial government against Pope Sylverius, was sent to Rome to procure the imprisonment and exile of Sylverins. Thas being accomplished, Vigilius was proclaimed Pope in 537, but was not aclaiowledged by the entire Church as such till 540, when Sylverius died. It has been said that, according to a promise given to the empress of Constantinople, he wrote in 538 a secret letter to the heads of the Monophysites, in which he approved of their views and condeinned the anti-Monophys ite decisions of Pope Leo I. Modern critics all agree in pronouncing this letter apocryphal; and later (after 540) he refused to issue a de cree in favor of the Monophysites, declaring that he would abide by the decisions of the four cecumenical councils and the decrees of popes Agapetus and Leo. When Justinian in 544 con demned the so-called ((Three Chapter0 (the writings of Theodore of Mopsuestia, of Theo doret against Cyril, and the Epistle of lhas), and the western bishops generally threatened re sistance to this, Vijilius was summoned to Con stantinople (546) and prevailed upon to con demn likewise the ((Three Chapters,'" in a docu ment called (Judicatum) (548) ; saving, how ever, the authority of the council of Chalcedon, which has refrained from condemning them.
As this satisfied neither the opponents nor friends of the ((Three Chapters,') Vigilius called an cecumenical council, the fifth, to settle the dispute. In the eighth session, the (Three Chapters)" were condemned in nearly the same terms used by Pope Vigilius in his (Judicatum.) As a matter of prudence to allow the agita tion occasioned by the controversy to subside, the Pope waited some months before announc ing to the Catholic world that the ((Three Chapters)) had been regularly. condemned by the council. Vigilius then obtamed the emperoes leave to return to Italy, but died at Syracuse on the way back