l I. (817-824). Contemporary
documents mention innumerable transferences of bodies. The mosaic
legend of the apse of S. Prassede says that Pope Paschal buried the
bodies of many saints within its walls.[152]

The official catalogue of the remains removed on July 20, 817, which
was compiled by the Pope's notary and engraved on marble, has come
down to us. It speaks of the translation of twenty-three hundred
bodies, most of which were buried under the chapel of S. Zeno, which
Paschal I. had built as a memorial to his mother, Theodora Episcopa.
The legend in the apse of S. Caecilia speaks, likewise, of the
transference to her church of bodies "which had formerly reposed in
crypts" (_quae primum in cryptis pausabant_): among them those of
Caecilia herself, Valerianus, Tiburtius, and Maximus. The finding and
removal of Caecilia's remains from the Catacombs of Callixtus is one of
the most graceful episodes in the life of Paschal I. He describes it
at length in a letter addressed to the people of Rome.

After many unsuccessful attempts to discover the coffin of the saint,
he had come to the conclusion that it must have been stolen by the
Lombards, when they were besieging the city in 755. S. Caecilia,
however, told him in a vision where her grave was; and hurrying to the
catacombs of the Appian Way he at last discovered her crypt and
coffin, together with those of fourteen Popes, from Zephyrinus to
Melchiades. It is only fair to say that the discoveries made in this
very crypt, between 1850 and 1853, confirm the account of Paschal in
its minutest details.

The first half of the ninth century thus marks the final abandonment
of the catacombs, and the cessation of divine worship in their
historical crypts. In later times we find little or no mention of them
in Church annals. When we read of Nicholas I. (858-867) and of Paschal
II. (1099-1118) visiting the cemeteries, we must believe that their
visits were to the basilicas erected over the catacombs, and to their
special crypts, not to the catacombs themselves. In the chronicle of
the monastery of S. Michael ad Mosam we read of a pilgrim of the
eleventh century who obtained relics of saints "from the keeper of a
certain cemetery, in which lamps are always burning." He refers to the
basilica of S. Valentine and the small hypogaeum attached to it
(discovered in 1887), not to catacombs in the true sense of the word.
The very last account referring directly to them dates from the