Early in
526 he returned to Ravenna to find Theodoric beside himself with
anger. The barbarian who had perfidiously murdered Odoacer his rival,
and most foully tortured the old philosopher Boethius to death, was
not likely to shrink from any outrage that he thought might serve him,
even though his victim were the pope. Symmachus, the father-in-law of
Boethius, a venerable and a saintly man, was barbarously done to death
and Pope John and his colleagues were thrown into prison in Ravenna,
where the pope died on May 18 of that same year, and one hundred and
four days later was followed to the grave by the unhappy Gothic king.
[Illustration: CAPITAL FROM SANTO SPIRITO]
Theodoric had utterly failed in everything he had attempted. His
Romano-Gothic kingdom proved to be a hopeless chimaera, and this
because he had not been able to understand the forces with which he
had to deal. Nor was he capable of learning from experience. Even
after the death of Pope John he countersigned the death warrant of his
kingdom by an edict, issued with the signature of a Jewish treasury
clerk, that all the Catholic churches of Italy should be handed over
to the Arians.
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