ain of little serpents, (Greg. Turon. l. x. c. 1.)]

[Footnote 60: Gregory of Rome (Dialog. l. ii. c. 15) relates a memorable
prediction of St. Benedict. Roma a Gentilibus non exterminabitur sed
tempestatibus, coruscis turbinibus ac terrae motu in semetipsa marces
cet. Such a prophecy melts into true history, and becomes the evidence
of the fact after which it was invented.]

[Footnote 61: Quia in uno se ore cum Jovis laudibus, Christi laudes non
capiunt, et quam grave nefandumque sit episcopis canere quod nec laico
religioso conveniat, ipse considera, (l. ix. ep. 4.) The writings of
Gregory himself attest his innocence of any classic taste or literature]

[Footnote 62: Bayle, (Dictionnaire Critique, tom. ii. 598, 569,) in
a very good article of Gregoire I., has quoted, for the buildings and
statues, Platina in Gregorio I.; for the Palatine library, John of
Salisbury, (de Nugis Curialium, l. ii. c. 26;) and for Livy, Antoninus
of Florence: the oldest of the three lived in the xiith century.]

Like Thebes, or Babylon, or Carthage, the names of Rome might have been
erased from the earth, if the city had not been animated by a vital
principle, which again restored her to honor and dominion. A vague
tradition was embraced, that two Jewish teachers, a tent-maker and a
fisherman, had formerly been executed in the circus of Nero, and at
the end of five hundred years, their genuine or fictitious relics were
adored as the Palladium of Christian Rome. The pilgrims of the East and
West resorted to the holy threshold; but the shrines of the apostles
were guarded by miracles and invisible terrors; and it was not without
fear that the pious Catholic approached the object of his worship.
It was fatal to touch, it was dangerous to behold, the bodies of the
saints; and those who, from the purest motives, presumed to disturb the
repose of the sanctuary, were affrighted by visions, or punished with
sudden death. The unreasonable request of an empress, who wished to
deprive the Romans of their sacred treasure, the head of St. Paul,
was rejected with the deepest abhorrence; and the pope asserted, most
probably with truth, that a linen which had been sanctified in the
neighborhood of his body, or the filings of his chain, which it was
sometimes easy and sometimes impossible to obtain, possessed an equal
degree of miraculous virtue. [63] But the power as well as virtue of the
apostles resided with living energy in the breast of their succes