Little more is known of the history of the catacombs during the next two centuries, but that for them it was a period of desolation and desertion.  The Lombard hordes often ravaged and devastated the Campagna up to the very gates of the city, and descended into the underground passages of the cemeteries in search of treasure, of relics, and of shelter.  Paul III., about the middle of the eighth century, took many bones and much ashes from graves yet unrifled, and distributed them to the churches.  He has left a record of the motives that led him to disturb dust that had rested so long in quiet.  “In the lapse of centuries,” he says, “many cemeteries of the holy martyrs and confessors of Christ have been neglected and fallen to decay.  The impious Lombards utterly ruined them,—­and now among the faithful themselves the old piety has been replaced by negligence, which has gone so far that even animals have been allowed to enter them, and cattle have been stalled within them.”  Still, although thus desecrated, the graves of the martyrs continued to be an object of interest to the pilgrims, who, even in these dangerous times, from year to year came to visit the holy places of Rome; and itineraries, describing the localities of the catacombs and of the noted tombs within them, prepared for the guidance of such pilgrims, not later than the beginning of the ninth century, have been preserved to us, and have afforded essential and most important assistance in the recent investigations.[F]

[Footnote F:  Four of these itineraries are known.  One of them is preserved in William of Malmesbury’s Chronicle.  The differences and the correspondences between them have been of almost equal assistance in modern days in the determination of doubtful names and localities.]

About the same time, Pope Paschal I. [A.D. 817-824] greatly interested himself in searching in the catacombs for such bodies of the saints as might yet remain in them, and in transferring these relics to churches and monasteries within the city.  A contemporary inscription, still preserved in the crypt of the ancient church of St. Prassede, (a church which all lovers of Roman legend and art take delight in,) tells of the two thousand three hundred martyrs whose remains Paschal had placed beneath its altars.  Nor was this the only church so richly endowed.  One day, in the year 821, Paschal was praying in the church that stood on the site of the house in which St. Cecilia had suffered martyrdom, and which was dedicated to her honor.  It was now one of the oldest churches in Rome.  Two centuries before, Gregory the Great, St. Gregory, had restored it,—­for it even then stood in need of repairs, and now it was in greater need than ever.  Paschal determined, while praying, that he would rebuild it from its foundations; but with this determination came the desire to find the body of the Saint, that her new church might not want its most precious possession.  It was reported that the Lombards had sought for it and carried it away, and the knowledge of the exact place of the grave, even, was lost.  But Paschal entered vigorously on the search.  He knew that she had been buried in the Cemetery of St. Callixtus, and tradition declared that her sepulchre had been made near the Chamber of the Popes.  There he sought, but his seeking was vain.