her who thus addressed him.
"If thou seekest my name," she said, "I am called Cecilia, the
handmaiden of Christ."
"How can I believe this," replied the sleeping Pope, "since it was long
ago reported that the body of this most holy martyr was carried away by
the Lombards?"
The Saint then told him that till this time her body had remained
concealed; but that now he must continue his search, for it pleased God
to reveal it to him; and near her body he would also find other bodies
of saints to be placed with hers in her new-built church. And saying
this, she departed.
Hereupon a new search was begun, and shortly after, "by the favor of
God, we found her in golden garments, and the cloths with which her
sacred blood had been wiped from her wounds we found rolled up and full
of blood at the feet of the blessed virgin."
At the same time, the bodies of Valerian, Tiburtius, and Maximus were
found in a neighboring cemetery, and, together with the relics of Pope
Urban,--as well as the body of St. Cecilia,--were placed under the
high altar of her church.[H] The cypress coffin in which she had been
reverently laid at the time of her death was preserved and set within a
marble sarcophagus. No expense was spared by the devout Paschal to adorn
the church that had been so signally favored. All the Art of the time
(and at that time the arts flourished only in the service of the Church)
was called upon to assist in making the new basilica magnificent. The
mosaics which were set up to adorn the apse and the arch of triumph were
among the best works of the century, and, with colors still brilliant
and design still unimpaired, they hold their place at the present
day, and carry back the thought and the imagination of the beholder a
thousand years into the very heart of this old story. Under the great
mosaic of the apse one may still read the inscription, in the rude Latin
of the century, which tells of Paschal's zeal and Rome's joy, closing
with the line,
"Roma resultat ovans semper ornata per
aevum."
[Footnote H: It is a remarkable fact, to be explained by the believers
in the virtue of relics, that, notwithstanding the body of St. Cecilia
was deposited perfect in her grave, and, as we shall see, was long after
found complete, no less than five heads of St. Cecilia are declared
to exist, or to have existed,--for one has been lost,--in different
churches. One is in the church of the SS. Quattro Coronati, at Rome,
which
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