In 817 Pope Paschal ascended the throne, and made it his especial duty to rescue from the Catacombs any holy relics that still remained there. Great was his desire to find the tomb of St. Cecilia; he sought for it long and patiently, and seems to have passed it more than once, owing to its lack of inscription. He had already rebuilt her Church, which had suffered much from time, and decorated it magnificently, but it seemed destined to be deprived of the honour of sheltering all that earth still held of her. In great depression he, with many others, came to the conclusion that her body must have been carried away by the Lombards when Charlemagne drove them out of Italy. And then Cecilia herself re-animated him to the search. He has left us an enchanting description of her visit. On a certain Sunday morning, very, very early, Pope Paschal was sitting in St. Peter’s, near the Tomb of the Apostles, listening entranced to the sweet voices of the Canons, who were singing Lauds, the office with which the Church opens her day before the first gleam of light has come into the East. It was not the St. Peter’s that we know, but the ancient Basilica founded by Constantine and consecrated in the year 326, vast and dark, with heavy Byzantine arches and windows closed by panes of thin Oriental alabaster. The good Pope speaks regretfully of a slight weariness which was creeping over him after the long night’s vigil, and says that, just as the eastern windows became visible squares in the first faint flush of dawn, he was overcome with drowsiness and closed his eyes, so that the soaring music became the music of dreams. Then a luminous vision appeared: a young virgin, adorned as a bride, stood before Paschal, and, after reproaching him with his too easy abandonment of the task he had undertaken, said: “Nevertheless, thou wast so near me that we could have spoken mouth to mouth!” Amazed and agitated, Paschal asked her who she was. She replied, “Cecilia, the servant of Christ.” But the prudent Pontiff, knowing that all visions are not of Heaven, and fearing a snare of the Evil One, said: “How can I believe thee? All men say that the body of the holy Cecilia was carried away by the Lombards.”