In the Acts of the Martyrdom of St. Alexander, who, according to the story of the Church, was the sixth successor of St. Peter, and who was put to death in the persecution of Trajan, in the year 117, it was said that his body was buried by a Roman lady, Severina, “on her farm, at the seventh milestone from Rome on the Nomentan Way.”  These Acts, however, were regarded as apocryphal, and their statement had drawn but little attention to the locality.  In the spring of 1855, a Roman archaeologist, Signore Guidi, obtained permission from the Propaganda, by whom the land was now held, as a legacy from the last of the Stuarts, the Cardinal York, to make excavations upon it.  Beginning at a short distance from the road, on the right hand, and proceeding carefully, he soon struck upon a flight of steps formed of pieces of broken marble, which, at about fifteen feet below the surface of the ground, ended upon a floor paved with bits of marble, tombstones, and mosaics.  As the work proceeded, it disclosed the walls of an irregular church, that had been constructed, like that of St. Agnes, partially beneath the soil, for the purpose of affording an entrance into adjoining catacombs.  Remains of the altar were found, and portions of the open-work marble screen which had stood before it over the crypt in which the bodies of St. Alexander and one of his fellow-martyrs had been placed.  A part of the inscription on its border was preserved, and read as follows:  ET ALEXANDRO DEDICATUS VOTUM POSUIT CONSECRANTE URSO EPISCOPO,—­“Dedicatus placed this in fulfilment of a vow to ——­ and Alexander, the Bishop Ursus consecrating it.”  The Acts supply the missing name of Eventius,—­an aged priest, who, it was said, had conversed with some of the apostles themselves.  His greater age had at that early and simple time given him the place of honor in the inscription and in men’s memory before the youthful, so-called, Pope Alexander.  Probably this little church had been built in the fourth century, and here a bishop had been appointed to perform the rites within it.

It was a strange and touching discovery, that of this long-buried, rude country-church,—­the very existence of which had been forgotten for more than a thousand years.  On the 3d of May, 1855, the day set apart in the calendar to the honor of the saints to whom it was consecrated, the holy services were once more performed upon the ancient altar of the roofless sanctuary.  The voices of priest and choir sounded through the long silent chapels, while the larks sang their hymns of gladness over the fields above.  On the rough floor, inscriptions, upon which, in the early centuries, the faithful had knelt, were again read by kneeling worshippers.  On one broken slab of marble was the word MARTYR; on another, the two words, SPARAGINA FIDELIS; on another, POST VARIAS CURAS, POST LONGE MONITA VITAE.