“Hit looked forth as a cat,
He called it Neptan.”
This idol had a cap or cover of brass which was one day blown off by the wind, and carried to the church of St. Peter. Then Pope Boniface asked the Emperor Julian to give him the Pantheon, to which that prince consented; and one year, on November 1st, the hatless cat having been removed, the sovereign pontiff consecrated the building, and baptized it St. Mary the Round.
As for relics, there are few objects mentioned in Holy Writ which have not been recovered, and may not be venerated at Rome.[542] The table of the Last Supper is there, as well as Aaron’s rod, fragments of the multiplied loaves and fishes, hay from the stall at Bethlehem, a swaddling-cloth of the infant Jesus, and several other things, some of which are strange enough. Part of these relics are still in the same churches, for instance, at Santa Maria Maggiore,[543] “Seinte Marie the Maiour,” the portrait {387} of the Virgin painted by St. Luke. This is not, however, according to our pilgrim, a picture really made by St. Luke; he was going to do it, and had prepared his colours, when he suddenly found the portrait before him, finished by the hands of angels:
“Seint Luik while he lived in londe,
Wolde have peynted hit with his honde,
And whon he hedde ordeyned so
Alle colours that schulde ther to,
He fond an ymage al a-pert,
Non such ther was middelert,