Early Life
He belonged to an aristocratic Roman family; his father Johannes is identified as a consul in the Liber pontificalis, having received that title from the emperor. According to Procopius, his brother Reparatus was one of the senators taken hostage by Witigis, but managed to escape before the Ostrogothic king ordered their slaughter in 537.
Vigilius entered the service of the Roman Church and was ordained a deacon in 531, in which year the Roman clergy agreed to a decree empowering the pope to determine the succession to the Papal See (something theologians now consider invalid). Vigilius was chosen by Pope Boniface II as his successor and presented to the clergy assembled in St. Peter's Basilica. The opposition to such a procedure led Boniface in the following year to withdraw his designation of a successor and to burn the decree respecting it.
Read more about this topic: Pope Vigilius
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“Many a woman shudders ... at the terrible eclipse of those intellectual powers which in early life seemed prophetic of usefulness and happiness, hence the army of martyrs among our married and unmarried women who, not having cultivated a taste for science, art or literature, form a corps of nervous patients who make fortunes for agreeable physicians ...”
—Sarah M. Grimke (1792–1873)