Where was this solemn function to be performed was Fulvius’s first inquiry. And we cannot but think that the answer will be interesting to the Christian antiquary. Nor can our acquaintance with the ancient Roman Church be complete, without our knowing the favored spot where Pontiff after Pontiff preached, and celebrated the divine mysteries, and held his councils, or those glorious ordinations, which sent forth not only bishops but martyrs to govern other churches, and gave to a St. Laurence his diaconate, or to St. Novatus or St. Timotheus his priesthood. There, too, a Polycarp or Irenæus visited the successor of St. Peter; and thence received their commission the apostles who converted our King Lucius to the faith. The house which the Roman Pontiffs inhabited, and the church in which they officiated till Constantine installed them in the Lateran palace and basilica, the residence and cathedral of the illustrious line of martyr-popes for 300 years, can be no ignoble spot. And that, in tracing it out, we may not be misguided by national or personal prepossession, we will follow a learned living antiquarian, who, intent upon another research, accidentally has put together all the data requisite for our purpose.[117] We have described the house of Agnes’s parents as situated in the _Vicus Patricius_, or the Patrician-street. This had another name, for it was also called the street of the Cornelii, _Vicus Corneliorum_, because in it lived the illustrious family of that name. The centurion whom St. Peter converted[118] belonged to this family; and possibly to him the apostle owed his introduction at Rome to the head of his house, Cornelius Pudens. This senator married Claudia, a noble British lady; and it is singular how the unchaste poet Martial vies with the purest writers when he sings the wedding-song of these two virtuous spouses. It was in their house that St. Peter lived; and his fellow-apostle St. Paul enumerates them among his familiar friends, as well: “Eubulus and Pudens, and Linus and Claudia, [Illustration: St. Pudentiana, St. Priscilla, and St. Praxedes.] and all the brethren salute thee.”[119] From that house, then, went forth the bishops, whom the Prince of the Apostles sent in every direction, to propagate, and die for, the faith of Christ. After the death of Pudens, the house became the property of his children, or grandchildren,[120] two sons and two daughters. The latter are better known, because they have found a place in the general calendar of the Church, and because they have given their names to two of the most illustrious churches of Rome, those of St. Praxedes and St. Pudentiana. It is the latter, which Alban Butler calls “the most ancient church in the world,”[121] that marks at once the Vicus Patricius, and the house of Pudens.