stated in old guidebooks, but by Andrea Sacchi.
The picture was removed to Paris, with many other masterpieces, at the
time of Napoleon I.; but Canova obtained its restitution in 1815. It
is now preserved in the Vatican Gallery; the copy in mosaic is the
joint work of Alessandro Cocchi and Francesco Castellini.

The history of the pontificate of Gregory has been written and will
shortly be published by my learned friend Professor H. Grisar. No
better or greater subject could be found than this period when the
city, abandoned by the Byzantine emperors, harassed, besieged, starved
by the Lombards, found in her bishops her only chance of salvation.
They never appear to greater advantage than in those eventful times,
when Rome was sinking so low within, when her surroundings were
changed into a lifeless desert. The queen who had ruled the world was
trampled under the feet of her former slaves, and found assistance
and sympathy nowhere. When Alboin overran the peninsula in 568, at the
head of his Lombards, with whom warriors of several other races,
especially Saxons, were intermixed, the emperor Justin could offer no
other help to the Romans than the advice of bribing the Lombard
chiefs, or of calling in the Franks. Barbarians for barbarians!

[Illustration: Statue of S. Gregory the Great.]

"On the death of Pope John III. in 573, Rome was so closely pressed
that it was impossible to send to Constantinople for the confirmation
of Benedict I., who had been elected his successor, and the papal
throne remained vacant for one year. The same appears to have been the
case on the death of Benedict, in 578, when Rome was held in siege by
Zoto, duke of Beneventum, for the Lombard power had been distributed
among thirty-six duchies. The particulars of this siege are unknown,
but it probably lasted two or three years. On withdrawing from Rome
Zoto took and plundered the Benedictine convent on Montecassino. The
monks retired to Rome and established themselves in a convent near the
Lateran, which they named after S. John Baptist, whence the basilica
of Constantine or the Saviour subsequently took its name.... The
misery of the Romans was aggravated by some natural calamities.
Towards the end of 589, several temples and other monuments were
destroyed by the flooding of the Tiber, and the city was afterwards
afflicted by a devastating pestilence.

"To the year 590, which is that of the election of Gregory, is
referred the legend of the