Let us begin by considering four texts that together symbolize both the concrete and the imaginary history of Rome in the seventh century. The first is the account in the Liber pontificalis of the visit of Emperor Constans II to Rome in 663 during the pontificate of Vitalian (657–72), the very pope who sent Theodore to England. Some years earlier Constans had seized and brutalized Pope Martin I because of that pontiff's unbreakable opposition to imperial religious policy and because of his having summoned a Lateran council to proclaim that opposition. Vitalian sought better relations with Constantinople and, immediately after his election, he wrote to Constans and to Patriarch Peter in ambiguous and conciliatory terms. He omitted all mention of the Lateran Council of 649. Constans responded with rich gifts and with a confirmation of the privileges of the Roman see. A few years later the emperor visited Rome. Vitalian received him with all due honours but had to endure three calculated blows. Constans issued a privilege for Maurus of Ravenna that made the archbishop of that city autocephalous, effectively independent of Rome. The emperor also laid harsh tax requirements on southern Italy, Sicily, Sardinia and North Africa. Finally, the emperor plundered the pagan and Christian monuments of Rome, stripping them of their bronze coverings and fittings and leaving them weakened and suitable only for salvage.

The other three texts are itineraries written in Rome in the middle of the seventh century.