Two crypts inside the convent walls served to house the bones of the dead. Their corpses were first laid for two or three years on an iron grating in a cellar; the skull was then transferred to one crypt and the bones to the other. The bones were sorted and added to the piles of corresponding bones, so that the femurs, the tibias, etc., lie piled together. The archbishops’ corpses were, however preserved intact, and, wearing their robes,[203] were placed in mummy coffins. The use of the iron grating and the crypts dates back to the earliest days of the convent, for among the stories collected by Anastasius, one described how two corpses were laid side by side on the grating, but the one, disliking the proximity of the other, repeatedly moved, throwing it out of place, until it was officially adjured not to do so. The convent included a hostel for the aged and for pilgrims, built by a certain Isaurus (_quodam Isauro_). It attracted the attention of Pope Gregory the Great (592-604), who, hearing of it, forwarded to John Climacus, who was superior at the time, woollen coverings and bedding for fifteen beds, together with money wherewith to purchase feather-beds. At the same time he wrote to Father Palladius, to whom he forwarded a cowl or tunic. The Pope had previously written to John Climacus, complimenting him on having reached a harbour of safety while others were tossing on a sea of religious difficulties.[204] He seems to have made a permanent grant to the convent. A pilgrim of 1341 mentioned that the day of St. Gregory was kept at the convent, since he had bestowed on it alms out of the treasury of the Church, by which the number of convent inmates was raised to four hundred. The interest which Pope Gregory took in the convent was probably connected with a pilgrimage made by the Roman patrician lady Rusticiana. In the year 592 she took her daughter, who was ill, to Sinai in the hope of effecting a cure. The husband of the daughter was also of the party. They started from Constantinople and returned sooner than was expected. This we learn from a letter which Rusticiana wrote to Pope Gregory.[205] In Sinai the monk Anastasius recorded the visit of a patrician lady who came with her daughter and wished to consult Father Orontius, “who was so filled with divine fire that he could hold his hand in the flame, and burn incense on the palm of his hand.” On one occasion, however, he lost a finger by burning. But Orontius refused to see the ladies, he sent them some grapes instead. When the demon who was in the daughter, saw the grapes, he cried out: Father Orontius, why do you come here? And he departed out of her (no. 18). It was doubtless the same hermit, in this case called Orontos, who once came into church with his cowl all awry. When his attention was drawn to it, he said that all things being awry in the church, his cowl was in keeping with them. If they would set things straight there, he would see to his cowl.