Vigilius\u27 Constitutum (May 553) forms the late and somewhat off-beat monument of a coherent pretension that was decisively over by the time of the Pentarchic Promotion. Its appreciation is further complicated by the remembering of his author\u27s palinodies, which can be traced even to the letter of the text itself. Thus the Constitutum still arouses various judgments in modern historiography, since its first publisher, Baronius, rediscovered it in the shelves of the Vatican Apostolic Library. Even if it is composite and poorly original in some of its sections, the Constitutum does not lack either attraction or force and appears as the ultimate act of a free decision claiming to convert the intentions of the emperor and the council. Above all, it records, so to speak, the theologico-ecclesiological testament of a pope who first learnt what it cost to face Justinian without any other protection on earth than the prestige of his seat
