The emperor Justinus received the Roman bishop on his arrival as he would have received Saint Peter, gave him audience, and promised that he would do everything that was asked, except that those who had become reconciled and returned to the Catholic faith could by no means be restored to the Arians.See note 1.

But while all this was going on, Symmachus, the head of the senate, whose daughter Boethius had married, was brought from Rome to Ravenna. There the king, fearing that through resentment at the death of his son-in-law,Boethius; see 85–87, above. Symmachus might take some step in opposition to his rule, ordered him to be put to death under a false accusation.

Then Pope Johannes returned from Justinus; Theodoric received him in a hostile spirit, and ordered him to be deemed as one of his enemies; a few days later Johannes died. When the people were marching before his dead body, suddenly one of the crowd was possessed by a devil and fell down; but when they had come, with the coffin in which Johannes was carried, to the place where the stricken man lay, he suddenly got up sound and well and took his place in the front of the funeral procession. When the people and the senators beheld this, they began to take relicsCf. Amm. xxii. 11, 10. from the Pope’s garments. Then the body was escorted out of the city attended by the great rejoicing of the people.