VIGILIO, PAPA. — The turbulent events of his pontificate find their explanation in the conditions of the city, torn between the party of the ruling Goths and that which looked to the Eastern Empire despite its theological disagreements. V. belonged to an aristocratic family and was a deacon when Boniface II designated him as his successor, but he later revoked that designation in the face of the clergy’s discontent (532).
Apocrisarius in Constantinople when Agapitus arrived there, he enjoyed the protection of Theodora, Justinian’s wife, who wished to make him pope, hoping that he would be her accomplice in her machinations on behalf of the Monophysites. Having arrived in Rome with the remains of Pope Agapitus, he found Pope Silverius (v.), elected under the influence of the Gothic king Theodahad. In March 537, the siege of Rome by the new king Vitiges began; Belisarius, who was defending the city in Justinian’s name, immediately wished to rid himself of Silverius, whom he accused of conspiring with the Goths, and drove him from Rome. Vigilius was then elected pontiff and consecrated on 29 March 537. To Theodora, who reminded him of his previous promises, he responded proudly. He shared in all the dangers of the long siege and, when it ended in March 538 with the Goths’ withdrawal, he worked to repair the damage they had inflicted on the suburban basilicas and the cemeteries of the Giordani on the Via Salaria, of Callistus, of SS. Pietro e Marcellino, and others. His replies to the consultations of Profuturus, bishop of Bracara in Lusitania, are extant. On 22 May 545 he created Ausanius bishop of Arles and successor to St. Caesarius, “vicar of the Apostolic See,” and then, in 546, Aurelian; in 544 he attended the reading that the subdeacon Arator gave from his poem on the Acts of the Apostles in the basilica of S. Pietro in Vincoli. The second siege of Rome, undertaken by the Gothic king Totila, had begun in 545 when, on 22 November, V. was compelled by Justinian’s command to leave Rome for Sicily, from where he sought to aid the besieged. On 25 January 547 he reached Constantinople, where the long, exhausting negotiations with the Emperor and then with Three Chapters (v.) awaited him. In 553 he obtained from Justinian the Pragmatic Sanction to reorganize the conditions of Italy after the devastating Gothic wars. Having obtained permission to return to Rome, he died at Syracuse during the journey on 7 June 555.