In the year of Christ 546. The emperor Justinian, at the urging of Theodore, bishop of Caesarea, issued a book against the Three Chapters, and compelled Mennas of Constantinople and the other patriarchs, together with their bishops, to subscribe to their condemnation. He also summoned Vigilius from Rome for the same cause. In the year of Christ 547. Vigilius, having entered the imperial city on the eighth of the Kalends of February, suspended Mennas and the other condemners of the Chapters from communion. Afterward, at the request of the Augusta Theodora, he received Mennas back into communion on the twentieth of June. Justinian in vain applied force to extort the condemnation from Vigilius. In the year of Christ 548.
Vigilius, bent by zeal for peace toward condemning the Chapters, held an assembly of bishops at which Facundus was present, and ordered each one to set forth his opinion in writing. The responses of the bishops, brought to him, he sent into the palace; and on Holy Saturday he himself pronounced a Judgment to Mennas, in which—saving the reverence of the Council of Chalcedon—he condemned Theodore of Mopsuestia together with his dogmas, the letter of Ibas, and the writings of Theodoret, while the Africans, Illyrians, Dalmatians, and others persisted in the defense of the Three Chapters. In the year of Christ 549. The deacons Rusticus and Sebastian, at the beginning of the year, fell away from Vigilius, and, attacking the Judgment, defamed Vigilius throughout the provinces as a betrayer of the Council of Chalcedon.
Concerning which matter, Anastasius, sent by Aurelian of Arles, brought letters to Vigilius on the day before the Ides of July. In the year of Christ 550. Vigilius wrote back to Valentinian, bishop of Scythia, on the fifteenth of the Kalends of April, and to Aurelian of Arles on the Kalends of May, teaching that in his Judgment nothing had been admitted against the Council of Chalcedon. From Rusticus and Sebastian, the authors of the false rumor, he revoked the dignity and ministry of their rank. Furthermore, with Justinian pressing that he should condemn the Chapters absolutely and without mention of the synod, he persuaded that the matter ought to be referred to a general council; and having meanwhile received back the Judgment, which he had made before, with the hands of the other bishops, he henceforth, with the prince consenting, forbade every question concerning the Chapters until the council.
In the year of Christ 551. Justinian, at the instigation of Theodore, set forth edicts for the condemnation of the Chapters against the interdict. Vigilius protested, and pronounced excommunication against those who should give their assent. Wherefore, Justinian being inflamed with anger, Vigilius took refuge in the basilica of Saint Peter in the month of August under the consul Hormisda; whence the praetor, attempting to lead him away by force, was repelled by an uproar of the people. At length, having received an oath through the emperor's legates, he returned to the Placidian house. But again afflicted with many injuries, and assailed by plots, by night he again departed to Chalcedon, to Saint Euphemia, about the Nativity of Christ. In the year of Christ 552. The senators sent by Justinian to recall Vigilius returned with the matter unaccomplished on the fourth of the Kalends of February.
Peter the referendary was also sent separately, once and then again: first with a document full of insults against Vigilius, on the day before the Kalends; then, to rouse him to return, on the day before the Nones. But on the Nones of February, Vigilius wrote an encyclical concerning his calamities, and brought into the light the sentence of deposition against Theodore which he had composed six months earlier. After this, the edicts having been withdrawn by Justinian, and documents of faith and penance having been offered by Mennas, Theodore, and others, he left Chalcedon and returned to Constantinople. In the year of Christ 553. Other professions were issued to Vigilius on the day of Theophany by the patriarchs—Eutychius, who had succeeded the deceased Mennas, Apollinarius, and Domnus. The Fifth General Synod was begun on the fourth of the Nones of May.
Vigilius, refusing to be present at it, in order to set forth his own opinion in writing, sent a Constitutum to Justinian on the day before the Ides of May, in which he resumed the defense of the Three Chapters, and forbade that anything be innovated concerning those matters which had been judged by the Council of Chalcedon. But the rest of the synod condemned the Three Chapters. Vigilius, however, because he shrank from approving the condemnation, was driven into exile. Thence, recalled some years afterward by the efforts of the count Narses, while he was making his way back to the City, he died of disease in Sicily after the consulate of Basil, as Victor notes in his Chronicle, in the seventeenth year—that is, in the year of Christ 558.