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The Pope took refuge in the Church of St. Peter, by the palace of Hormisdas. He repeated with greater force his former declaration, entirely deprived Theodore Askidas, and put Mennas and his companions under ban, until they made satisfaction, on the 14th August, 551. At least the sentence was kept ready for publication. He was attended by eleven Italian and two African bishops.
The Pope, after further conferences with bishops present at Constantinople, seventy of whom had not signed the imperial edict, issued, on the 11th April, 548, his Judgment, directed to Mennas, of which all but fragments are lost.
The empress Theodora had tried with all her wiles to set a Monophysite prelate on the Byzantine See. Pope Agapetus had frustrated her plans by deposing Anthimus and consecrating Mennas in his place. But Theodora had not given up her intrigues, and she strove to involve in her net the Roman See itself. In the train of Agapetus at Constantinople was the ambitious deacon Vigilius.
The emperor listened willingly, and issued in the form of a treatise to Mennas a still extant censure of Origen and his writings. He called upon the patriarchs to hold synods upon them. Mennas, in 543, held one in the capital, which issued fifteen anathemas against Origen.
Deputies from Peter, patriarch of Jerusalem, and the orthodox monks journeyed with Pelagius to Constantinople, to present to the emperor an accusation against the Origenists. Pelagius had much influence with Justinian, and he and Mennas procured for the petitioners access to the emperor. They asked him to issue a solemn condemnation of Origen's errors.
How little the patriarch Mennas could there represent the Church's independence is shown by his words to the bishops in the fourth session: "Your charity knows that nothing of what is mooted in the Church should take place contrary to the decision and order of our emperor, zealous for the faith," while of their relation to the Pope he said: "You know that we follow and obey the Apostolic See; those who are in communion with it we hold in communion; those whom it condemns we also condemn". Justinian, irritated by the boldness of the Monophysites, added the sanction of law to the decrees of this council, which deposed men who had occupied patriarchal sees.
The other eastern patriarchs also at first resisted, but finished by complying with the imperial threats, as particularly Ephrem of Antioch. Most of the bishops, accustomed to slavish subjection to their patriarchs, followed their example, and Mennas had to urge the bishops under him by every means to comply.
However, many bishops complained of this pressure to the papal legate Stephen, who pronounced against the edict, which seemed indirectly to impeach the authority of the Fourth Council. He even refused communion with Mennas because he had broken his first promise and given his assent before the Pope had decided upon it.
So things were brought to the condition in which they were before the appearance of the last imperial edict. Vigilius now returned from Chalcedon to Constantinople. Mennas, who died in August, 552, was succeeded by Eutychius. He addressed himself to the Pope on the 6th January, 553, whose name had been restored by Mennas to the first place in the diptychs.
In this synod Mennas presided, and the two Roman deacons, Vigilius and Pelagius, who had been the legates of Pope Agapetus, but whose powers had expired at his death, sat next to him, but only as Italian bishops.
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