[277] St. Venantius was a child martyred at Camerino, under Decius, in 250. Pope Clement X., who had been bishop of Camerino, had a peculiar veneration for this saint.
[278] This figure of the Virgin is of great interest, as introducing the Greek classical type under which she is so often afterwards represented in Latin art.
[279] It was near the Lateran, on the site of the gardens of Plautius Lateranus, that the famous statues of the Niobedes, attributed to Scopus, now at Florence, were found. The fine tomb of the Plautii is a striking object on the road to Tivoli.
[280] See Sta. Pudenziana, ch. x.
[281] These columns are mentioned in the thirteenth century list of Lateran relics, which says that all the relics of the Temple at Jerusalem brought by Titus, were preserved at the Lateran.
[282] There is a curious mosaic portrait of Clement XII. in the Palazzo Corsini.
[283] Sergius III. ob. 911; Agapetus II. ob. 956; John XII. ob. 964; Sylvester II. ob. 1003; John XVIII. ob. 1009; Alexander II. ob. 1073; Pascal II. ob. 1118; Calixtus II. ob. 1124; Honorius II. ob. 1140; Celestine II. ob. 1143; Lucius II. ob. 1145; Anastasius IV. ob. 1154; Alexander III. ob. 1159; Clement III. ob. 1191; Celestine III. ob. 1198; Innocent V. ob. 1276—were buried at St. John Lateran, besides those later popes whose tombs still exist.
[284] "Ces monuments, consacrés par la tradition, n'ont pas été jugés cependant assez authentiques pour être solennellement exposés a la vénération des fidèles."—Gournerie.
[285] Sta. Helena is claimed as an English saint, and all the best authorities allow that she was born in England,—according to Gibbon, at York—according to others, at Colchester, which town bears as its arms a cross between three crowns, in allusion to this claim. Some say that she was an innkeeper's daughter, others that her father was a powerful British prince, Coilus or Coel.
[286] Emp. ii. 43.