"Blessed Laurentius, as he lay stretched and burning on the gridiron, said to the impious tyrant, 'The meat is done, make haste hither and eat. As for the treasures of the Church which you seek, the hands of the poor have carried them to a heavenly treasury.'"—Antiphon of St. Laurence.
The funeral of St. Bridget of Sweden took place in this church, July 1373, but after resting here for a year, her body was removed by her son to the monastery of Wastein in Sweden.
Under the second altar on the right are shown the relics of St. Crispin and St. Crispinian, "two holy brothers, who departed from Rome with St. Denis to preach the Gospel in France, where, after the example of St. Paul, they laboured with their hands, being by trade shoemakers. And these good saints made shoes for the poor without fee or reward (for which the angels supplied them with leather), until, denounced as Christians, they suffered martyrdom at Soissons, being, after many tortures, beheaded by the sword (A.D. 300)."[237] The festival of St. Crispin and St. Crispinian is held on October 25, the anniversary of the battle of Agincourt.
"And Crispin Crispian shall ne'er go by,
From this day to the ending of the world,
But we in it shall be remembered."
Shakespeare, Henry V.
Throughout the middle ages the statues of Posidippus and Menander, now in the gallery of statues at the Vatican, were kissed and worshipped in this church under the impression that they represented saints (see Ch. XV.). They were found on this site, which was once occupied by the baths of Olympias, daughter-in-law of Constantine.
The strange name of the church, Pane e Perna, is supposed to have had its origin in a dole of bread and ham once given at the door of the adjacent convent. In the garden belonging to the convent is a mediæval house of c. 1200. The campanile is of 1450.
The small neighbouring Church of S. Lorenzo in Fonte covers the site of the prison of St. Lawrence, and a fountain is shown there as that in which he baptized Vicus Patricius and his daughter Lucilla, whom he miraculously raised from the dead.
Descending the hill below the church—in the valley between the Esquiline and Viminal—we reach at the corner of the street a spot of preëminent historical interest, as that where Servius Tullius was killed, and where Tullia (B.C. 535) drove in her chariot over the dead body of her father. The Vicus Urbius by which the old king had reached the spot is now represented by the Via Urbana; the Vicus Cyprius, by which he was about to ascend to the palace on the hill Cispius, by the Via di Sta. Maria Maggiore.
"Servius-Tullius, après avoir pris le chemin raccourci qui partait du pied de la Velia et allait du côté des Carines, atteignit le Vicus-Cyprius (Via Urbana).
"Parvenu à l'extrémité du Vicus-Cyprius, le roi fut atteint et assassiné par les gens de Tarquin auprès d'un temple de Diane.