Page:The Journal of Classical and Sacred Philology, Volume 1, 1854.djvu/199

 On the Martyrdom and Commemorations of St Hippolytus. 189 ruled some church, and Jerome who endeavoured to learn the name of his see failed wholly to discover it 2. But in the fifth century, upon the road from Rome to Tivoli, in an estate called either by the name of its ancient owner Verus or by that of Cyriaca, a Christian lady who had allowed the catacombs which there belonged to her family to be used for the burial of martyred Christians, there stood, hard by the church of the great St Laurence, a crypt with a chapel and splendid shrine, where St Hippolytus was believed to rest. Thither came upon the Ides of August, the day of the saint's entombment, crowds from Etruria, crowds from Campania, and all with wives and children : the Nolan, the still haughty Capuan, the Picenian, the rough Samnite. From the nearer Alba they came in great processions; from Rome, through the gate in Aurelian's wall, distant but a mile, they came, Plebeians and Patricians, umbonibus cequis, shouldering together, confessing one faith, seeking the patronage of one saint. From sunrise to sun- set the crowds came and went ; they descended to the crypt by zig-zag flights of steps, so steep that the glare of the outer light was lost almost at once ; they passed onward through the long dark galleries of the catacombs, lighted only by shafts sunk through the roof, till they came to the shrine and altar : there they gazed upon that strange picture which we almost seem to gaze on yet, so lively are the words of our eyewitness, on the sharp stones and thorns of the briars crimsoned with the blood of the saint where the wild horses had hurried him; on the dispersed limbs, on the weeping faithful, following every winding way among the rocks, gathering every shred and relic of the sacred body, the white head, the blessed hands, with sponges and with garments wiping clean the blood. The scene never failed to awaken the deepest and most passionate emotions the people kissed the walls lined throughout with silver, they wept upon the ground, the chapel was filled with the voice of prayer and with the fragrance of ointments poured out 3. Two or three centuries elapse, and one of the chiefest states- men and ecclesiastics of the age, prime minister to Pepin and to Charlemagne, the powerful friend through whom Boniface, before 2 Although Chev. Bunsen does say, Vol. I. p. 204. "I have no doubt he could easily have 3 Prudentius. Peristeph. xi. 1 15 found out what place Eusebius meant." 210.