Church’s Pilgrimage on the Feast of the Apostles—The Seven Commemorative Churches—The Byzantine Basilica of St. Paul—The Apostle’s Tomb—Ostian Way, the Saddest of All Roads—The Tideless Sea—Call of the Unknown, Gorgeous East—Santa Pudentiana, the Site of St. Paul’s First Abiding Place in Rome—Christianity in Early Rome—Priest Pastor’s Story of the Pudens Family—Holy Relics—Story of the Crime of the Vico Scellerato—The Last of the Roman Kings. From things of the recent past let us turn for a moment to follow a pilgrimage which the Church makes during the seven days following the Feast of the Apostles in June and in the course of which she draws our attention to the seven spots in the Eternal City most closely connected with their glorious end. These spots had been for long centuries points of attraction to the Christians who flocked Rome-wards from all over the world at that time of year, but it was not till 1743 that Benedict XIV, Prospero Lambertini of Bologna (and the fifth Pontiff born in that city of learning), laid down the order in which the seven sanctuaries should be publicly honoured.[10] In a bull dated April 1, 1743, Benedict decreed that the various corporations of the hierarchy should take it in turn to honour the Octave of SS. Peter and Paul by proceeding in state to the Church designated for the day when a pontifical Mass was to be celebrated, with the assistance of the whole body of the Pope’s Chair. These seven Churches are so bound up with the last days of our great Fathers in the Faith that in passing from one to another it is possible to realise very vividly the scenes of the tremendous drama enacted in the year of grace 67 during the last days of Heaven’s patience with the tyranny of Nero. Taking them in their order we will leave the Pope, according to his wish, to say his Mass in St. Peter’s on the 30th of June, and follow the Apostolic Vicars, his “Assistants of the Throne,” as they go in state to the Basilica of St. Paul without the Walls. Once that long road skirting the river was the most crowded of the approaches to the city, but that was before the Tiber, having gorged itself to congestion with silt and plunder, had turned aside to find another outlet, when the galleys could still be rowed up within sight of Rome and tumble out their freight of grain or marble or wild beasts on the quays that are deserted to-day. The Ostian Way is the saddest of all roads now; few ever pass over it; there is but one habitation between the city gate and the Basilica, nearly two miles distant. The river rolls, yellow and sullen, to the sea, through flat lowland, reeking with malaria from the swamps, where the fierce black buffaloes still wander at will, and vehemently resent the intrusion of a stranger on their domain.