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.]