[Footnote H: It is a remarkable fact, to be explained by the believers in the virtue of relics, that, notwithstanding the body of St. Cecilia was deposited perfect in her grave, and, as we shall see, was long after found complete, no less than five heads of St. Cecilia are declared to exist, or to have existed,—for one has been lost,—in different churches. One is in the church of the SS. Quattro Coronati, at Rome, which possessed it from a very early period; a second is at Paris, a third at Beauvais, a fourth was at Tours, and we have seen the reliquary in which a fifth is preserved in the old cathedral of Torcello.]
And thus once more the body of the virgin was left to repose in peace, once more the devout could offer their prayers to the Saint at the altar consecrated by her presence, and once more the superstitious could increase the number of the miracles wrought by her favor. Through the long period of the fall and depression of Rome, her church continued to be a favorite one with the people of the city, and with the pilgrims to it. From time to time it was repaired and adorned, and in the thirteenth century the walls of its portico were covered with a series of frescoes, representing the events of St. Cecilia's life, and the finding of her body by Paschal. These frescoes—precious as specimens of reawakening Art, and especially precious at Rome, because of the little that was done there at that period—were all, save one, long since destroyed in some "restoration" of the church. The one that was preserved is now within the church, and represents in its two divisions the burial of the Saint by Pope Urban, and her appearance in St. Peter's Church to the sleeping Paschal, whose figure is rendered with amusing naïveté and literalness.
Meanwhile, after the translation of St. Cecilia's body, the catacombs remained much in the same neglected state as before, falling more and more into ruin, but still visited from year to year by the pilgrims, whom even pillage and danger could not keep from Rome. For two centuries,—from the thirteenth to the fifteenth,—scarcely any mention of them is to be found. Petrarch, in his many letters about Rome, dwells often on the sacredness of the soil within the city, in whose crypts and churches so many saints and martyrs lie buried, but hardly refers to the catacombs themselves, and never in such a way as to show that they were an object of interest to him, though a lover of all Roman relics and a faithful worshipper of the saints. It was near the end of the sixteenth century that a happy accident—the falling in of the road outside the Porta Salara—brought to light the streets of the Cemetery of St. Priscilla, and awakened in Antonio Bosio a zeal for the exploration of the catacombs which led him to devote the remainder of his long life to the pursuit, and by study, investigation, and observation, to lay the solid basis of the thorough and comprehensive acquaintance with subterranean Rome which has been extended by the researches of a long line of able scholars down to the present day. But to Bosio the chief honor is due, as the earliest, the most exact, and the most indefatigable of the explorers.
It was during his lifetime that the story of St. Cecilia received a continuation, of which he himself has left us a full account. In the year 1599, Paolo Emilio Sfondrati, Cardinal of the Title of St. Cecilia,[I] undertook a thorough restoration of the old basilica erected by Paschal. He possessed a large collection of relics, and determined that he would place the most precious of them under the high altar. For this purpose the vault containing the sarcophagi in which St. Cecilia and her companions lay must be opened, and on the 20th of October the work was undertaken. Upon breaking through the wall, two sarcophagi of white marble were discovered. The Cardinal was on the spot, and, in the presence of numerous dignitaries of the Church, whom he had sent for as witnesses, he caused the heavy top of the first of these stone coffins to be lifted. Within was seen the chest of cypress-wood in which, according to the old story, the Saint had been originally placed. Sfondrati with his own hands removed the lid, and within the chest was found the body of the virgin, with a silken veil spread over her rich dress, on which could still be seen the stains of blood, while at her feet yet lay the bloody cloths which had been placed there more than thirteen centuries before. She was lying upon her right side, her feet a little drawn up, her arms extended and resting one upon the other, her neck turned so that her head rested upon the left cheek. Her form perfectly preserved, and her attitude of the sweetest virginal grace and modesty, it seemed as if she lay there asleep rather than dead.[J]—The second sarcophagus was found to contain three bodies, which were recognized as being, according to tradition, those of Tiburtius, Valerian, and Maximus.
[Footnote I: The Titoli of Rome correspond nearly to Parishes. They date from an early period in the history of the Church.]
[Footnote J: "Dormientis instar," says Bosio, in his Relatio Inventionis et Repositionis S. Caeciliae et Sociorum. The discovery of the body of the Saint in this perfect state of preservation has, of course, been attributed by many Romanist authors to miraculous interposition. But it is to be accounted for by natural causes. The soil of the catacombs and of Rome is in many parts remarkable for its antiseptic qualities. The Cavaliere de Rossi informed us that he had been present at the opening of an ancient tomb on the Appian Way, in which the body of a young man had been found in a state of entire preservation, fresh almost as on the day of its burial, and with it was a piece of sponge which had apparently been soaked in blood,—for his death had been by violence. In the winter of 1857, two marble sarcophagi were found in one of the passages of the Catacombs of St. Callixtus, in which excavations were then going on, and upon being opened, a body was found in each, in a state, not of entire, but of almost perfect preservation. The skin had become somewhat shrunk, and the flesh was hardened and darkened, but the general form and features were preserved. Possibly these also may have been the bodies of saints. The sarcophagi were kept through the winter in the catacombs where they were found, and their marble lids being removed, covers of glass were fitted to them, so that the bodies might be seen by the visitors to the catacombs. It was a frequent custom, chiefly in the fourth and fifth centuries, to bury the rich in sarcophagi placed within tombs in the catacombs.]
The day advanced as these discoveries were made, and Sfondrati having had a chest of wood hastily lined with silk, and brought to a room in the adjoining convent, which opened into the church, (it is the room at the left, now used for the first reception of novices,) carried the cypress chest with its precious contents to this apartment, and placed it within the new box, which he locked and sealed. Then, taking the key with him, he hastened to go out to Frascati, where Pope Clement VIII. was then staying, to avoid the early autumn airs of Rome. The Pope was in bed with the gout, and gave audience to no one; but when he heard of the great news that Sfondrati had brought, he desired at once to see him, and to hear from him the account of the discovery. "The Pope groaned and grieved that he was not well enough to hasten at once to visit and salute so great a martyr." But it happened that the famous annalist, Cardinal Baronius, was then with the Pope at Frascati, and Clement ordered him to go to Rome forthwith, in his stead, to behold and venerate the body of the Saint. Sfondrati immediately took Baronius in his carriage back to the city, and in the evening they reached the Church of St. Cecilia.[K] Baronius, in the account which he has left of these transactions, expresses in simple words his astonishment and delight at seeing the preservation of the cypress chest, and of the body of the Saint: "When we at length beheld the sacred body, it was then, that, according to the words of David, 'as we had heard, so we saw, in the city of the Lord of Hosts, in the city of our God.'[L] For as we had read that the venerated body of Cecilia had been found and laid away by Paschal the Pope, so we found it." He describes at length the posture of the virgin, who lay like one sleeping, in such modest and noble attitude, that "whoever beheld her was struck with unspeakable reverence, as if the heavenly Spouse stood by as a guard watching his sleeping Bride, warning and threatening: 'Awake not my love till she please.'"[M] The next morning, Baronius performed Mass in the church in memory and honor of St. Cecilia, and the other saints buried near her, and then returned to Frascati to report to the Pope what he had seen. It was resolved to push forward the works on the church with vigor, and to replace the body of the Saint under its altar on her feast-day, the twenty-second of November, with the most solemn pontifical ceremony.
[Footnote K: This account is to be found in the Annals of Baronius, ad annum 821.]
[Footnote L: Psalm xlviii. 8.]
[Footnote M: Song of Solomon, ii. 7.]