Nicholas III. (1277-1281). The impression represents a figure fishing with a rod, which is an early Christian type and quite distinct from later examples which represent two Apostles drawing up their net into a boat.

The next reliquary is an oval box with engraved busts of Christ and of Apostles with their names in Greek, the whole on a groundwork of nielloed vine-scrolls. It also appears to be Byzantine work, perhaps of the thirteenth century, and contains a relic of St. John the Baptist: it has a general resemblance in the style of its ornamentation to the Saracenic metal-work of the same period. The box containing the head of St. Agnes is plain and of rectangular form, with an inscription of Honorius III. (1216-1227) on the cover. The last box of the group is also plain, but with a sliding lid. It contains the relic of the sandals of Christ, and a very beautiful silk textile with the Annunciation, which will be mentioned below. Two other metal boxes were of copper or bronze. The first is an oval box decorated in the Byzantine style of about the twelfth century, with engraved busts of the Evangelists on the sides and the Crucifixion on the top: it contained bones, fragments of textiles, and what is probably the earliest wax Agnus Dei in existence. The second was a plain tinned box, containing two wooden panels with painted figures of St. Peter and St. Paul, unlabelled bones wrapped in an early silk textile representing Samson and the lion, and labelled relics of St. John the Baptist and St. Jerome.

In ivory there is a cylindrical pyxis, pagan work of about the fourth century, with a Bacchic scene in relief, the type being that of the Roman jewel-box which Christians adopted for use as reliquary or pyx; and a flat panel, probably the sliding lid of a box like a Roman money-box, carved with the healing of the blind man in the style of the early sixth century. Among other ivory caskets two are important. The first is probably of the twelfth century, cylindrical, and similar to one preserved in the church of St. Gereon at Cologne. It has a Cufic inscription round the lid, and contains an interesting little rock-crystal vase of oriental fashion, with a pyramidal cover and gold mounts, in which are a hair of St. John the Evangelist and a tooth of St. John the Baptist, with a label of the thirteenth century. The second is a rectangular box of smooth white ivory, painted with a peacock and other birds, and mounted in gilt bronze. It is of the Siculo-Arabian type, known from numerous examples, and well represented at South Kensington. It contains sachets of relics, and its date is the thirteenth century. There are besides about a dozen boxes of cedar and other woods, some painted, others plain, mostly

containing relics; a number of glass phials, and various miscellaneous objects. We must also briefly notice the labels, chiefly of parchment, in which the relics are described, and the pieces of manuscripts in which some of them were wrapped. The descriptions are written in hands of various periods between the sixth and thirteenth centuries, none appearing to be of a later date; and the great majority are in Latin. In one case a fragment of a manuscript of Livy (Book xxxiv. 37), dating from the fifth or sixth century, has been used for labels ; but as a rule such fragments served as wrappers. One is from a musical manuscript of the twelfth or thirteenth century; three others are parts of letters of similar date, two addressed to Pope Gelasius II. There are two fragments of papyrus.

This summary review of the contents of the chest shows that the reliquaries by the style of their art, and the labels by the hands in which they are written, confirm the traditional history of the Sancta Sanctorum. There appears to be nothing, or at any rate nothing of any importance, later in date than the beginning of the fourteenth century. Everything therefore belongs to the years of struggle and adversity when Rome was fighting for her pride of place with enemies without and enemies within-with the Goths and the Lombards beyond her walls, and with the lawless nobles in her streets who feared neither God nor His vicegerent upon earth. The Exarchs came and went; Popes fled from the ungovernable city; there was but an interlude of peace when the Frank held his ægis over the chair of St. Peter. It was inevitable that at such times the arts should eke out a mean existence, and that the Romans should receive from foreign hands the work which they could no longer produce with their own. They borrowed from the Greek immigrants within their gates, from the subjects of the Byzantine Empire, from the Franks, from the Arabs, from anyone able to satisfy their narrow artistic needs. Of the penury and dependence of this long period the treasure of the Sancta Sanctorum affords fresh and confirmatory evidence.

We may now direct attention to those objects which possess peculiar significance for the history of the industrial arts, the two remarkable crosses reproduced in the illustrations, and the figured silk textiles in which many of the relics were wrapped. The crosses are of the highest interest and antiquity, and must henceforward rank with the Cross of Justin in the sacristy of St. Peter's, for it seems probable that both were in existence in the time of Gregory the Great and that one or both may have been carried through the streets of Rome in Pope Stephen's penitential processions when the Lombard Aistulf was threatening

the city. Older than Charlemagne, with whom the mediaval period begins, they come to us as it were from beneath the very foundations of the Middle Ages.

It would appear that the subject of the first Plate, a reliquarycross about ten inches high, and made of gold covered with Gospel scenes in cloisonné enamel, is certainly that mentioned by John the Deacon as cruz de smalto picto, infra quam est crux Domini nostri Jesu Christi; and it is thought that beneath the thick coating of resinous substance which half fills the interior, the relic itself may still lie concealed. The substance is the balsam with which the relic was regularly covered upon the feast of the Exaltation of the Cross; and it is practically certain that this side of the reliquary, now bare and hollow, was once covered by the jewelled plates of gold which formed the principal and uppermost surface. It is not known at what period this part of the cross was abstracted; but it is evident that its high intrinsic value must ultimately have proved its destruction.

The scenes represented in enamel are as follows: on the upper limb, the Annunciation and the Visitation; on the arms, the Journey to Bethlehem and the Adoration of the Magi; on the lower limb the Presentation in the Temple and the Baptism; in the centre, the Nativity. Now, without entering into tedious iconographical details, we may say at once that the style in which these scenes are treated is very early, and only comparable to that seen in the ivory carvings and other monuments of the fifth and sixth centuries, the great majority of which were made or inspired by the Christian East. The scenes show the influence of those Apocryphal Gospels which began to affect Christian art from the fourth century onwards, and afforded to the artists of the day so welcome an addition to their limited stock of subjects. For by introducing events unknown to the canonical books, and by enriching those already accepted with fresh and various episodes, they gave a wider scope to illustration, and lent variety to the simple motives of earlier times. The writers of the Apocryphal books set upon the simple warp of the Gospel story the rich and intricate embroidery so dear to the peoples of the East; signs and wonders accompanied each event; angels intervened at every turn; and with all this the domestic details of the life of the Holy Family were represented with the fidelity of a Dutch picture. In the cross before us we see the effect of this new teaching. The ox and the ass, of which the Evangelists say nothing, look over the back of the crib. Not Joseph, but an angel, leads to Bethlehem the ass upon which Mary sits; another angel stands upon the bank of Jordan ready