Before closing the saint’s coffin, Clement sent for the eminent sculptor, Maderno, and commissioned him to model a statue as like as possible to the fair body that lay there, but forbade him to remove the veil. Maderno hastened to obey, and the statue now in the Church and known by thousands of reproductions all through the artistic world, is an exact portrait of Cecilia, with every detail of pose and garments, as then shown, faithfully represented. Baronius and Bosio, to whom he related them, have minutely chronicled all the circumstances connected with the second finding of her body. CHAPTER XI THE CHURCH UNDER CONSTANTINE Constantine’s Edict—St. Sylvester, the Friend of Constantine—Refuge at Soracte—The Emperor’s Vision—“In Hoc Vinces”—Constantine’s Baptism—The Church Has Peace—Helena’s Basilica—The Blessing of the Golden Rose—Origin of St. Peter’s—The Obelisk from Heliopolis—Testimony of the Dust of the Martyrs—The Place of the Shock of Horses—The Beauty of St. Peter’s—Pilgrims from Britain—Charlemagne, the Blessed. “And the Church had peace!” Those few words are all that are used to describe the overwhelming relief of the world when Constantine caused his great edict to be proclaimed throughout the Empire. “Let none henceforth dare to molest the Christians in the exercise of their religion or in the building of Temples to God.” The frightful persecution under Diocletian, more cruel and bloody than all that had preceded it, had been continued by his successor Galerius,[22] and was still active, still a living menace to the faithful; and, as they had done so often during the past three hundred years, they had to fly to their underground refuges or out into the desert to call upon the rocks and mountains to cover them. St. Melchiades, whom St. Augustine calls “the true son of the Peace of our Lord Jesus Christ,” became Pope in 311 and suffered such great tribulations for the faith in the beginning of his pontificate that the Church reckons him among the martyrs, although he lived to see her triumph, dying only in 313. To him succeeded Sylvester, the great ruler, the friend of Constantine, whose name is so intimately connected with the foundation of the two chief basilicas of Christendom, that of St. John Lateran and that of St. Peter’s.