d had his body exposed to the derision of the
crowd. The chronicler says that 'Italy, Germany, England, Hungary,
Bohemia, Poland, Sicily and Portugal were obedient to the Lord Pope
Urban the Sixth.' He died peacefully, and was buried in Saint Peter's in
a marble sarcophagus.

But when Sixtus the Fifth, who also surprised the cardinals greatly, was
in a fit of haste to finish the dome, the masons, wanting a receptacle
for water, laid hands on Urban's stone coffin, pitched his bones into a
corner, and used the sarcophagus as they pleased, leaving it to serve as
a water-tank for many years afterwards.

In extending the foundations of the church, Paul the Third came upon the
bodies of Maria and Hermania, the two wives of Honorius, the Emperor who
'disestablished' paganism in favour of Christianity. They were sisters,
daughters of Stilicho, and had been buried in their imperial robes, with
many rich objects and feminine trinkets; and they were found intact, as
they had been buried, in the month of February, 1543. Forty pounds of
fine gold were taken from their robes alone, says Baracconi, without
counting all the jewels and trinkets, among which was a very beautiful
lamp, besides a great number of precious stones. The Pope melted down
the gold for the expenses of the building, and set the gems in a tiara,
where, if they could be identified, they certainly exist today--the very
stones worn by empresses of ancient Rome.

Then, as if in retribution, the Pope's own tomb was moved from its
place. Despoiled of two of the four statues which adorned it, the
monument is now in the tribune, and is still one of the best in the
church. A strange and tragic tale is told of it. A Spanish student, it
is said, fell madly in love with the splendid statue of Paul's
sister-in-law, Julia Farnese. He succeeded in hiding himself in the
basilica when it was closed at night, threw himself in a frenzy upon the
marble and was found stone dead beside it in the morning. The ugly
draperies of painted metal which now hide much of the statue owe their
origin to this circumstance. Classical scholars will remember that a
somewhat similar tale is told by Pliny of the Venus of Praxiteles in
Cnidus.

In spite of many assertions to the effect that the bronze statue of
Saint Peter which is venerated in the church was originally an image of
Jupiter Capitolinus, the weight of modern authority and artistic
judgment is to the contrary. The work cannot really be