In the third century, but even more so in the fourth, Christian men and women of all nations visited the places mentioned in the Gospel as having been the scenes of some episode in the life of Jesus Christ, from the stable at Bethlehem to the Calvary of Golgotha. Amongst this host of pilgrims, history has handed down to us the names of St. Hilarius, St. Basilius the Great, and his brother St. Gregory of Nyssa, who wrote a discourse concerning the visitors to Jerusalem; St. Jerome also, with the Scriptures in his hand, made the solemn pilgrimage, accompanied by learned theologians such as the Bishop of Gaza, Porphyrius, and Rufinus of Aquileia, and by several saintly women, Melanie, Paula, Fabiola, Eustochia, who were scarcely less erudite than the doctors. We find the proofs of these early pilgrimages in the inscriptions traced with the point of the stylus, or merely with charcoal, upon the plaster of the walls of the Catacombs at Rome. There are many in the cemetery of St. Calixtus which give expression to pious thoughts, touching prayers, and some interesting events. In the crypt of the old church at Montmartre, where, as there is reason to believe, the martyrdom of St. Denis (Fig. 279) and his companions took place, there were found many similar inscriptions, which would seem to indicate that there, as at Rome, the pilgrims have left traces of their visits. The Catacombs at Rome are full of images of saints, painted in fresco on a groundwork of glass or mosaics in coloured stones; and many of them, some dating from the second and even from the first century of the Church, seem to mark the stations at which the primitive pilgrims halted or knelt or prayed. The memory of any act which has excited admiration, or has impressed itself vividly, long remains indelible in the heart of the people, to which fact must be attributed the origin and long duration of a number of pilgrimages which date from the early ages of Christianity. The commemorative marks of these pilgrimages remained unknown to posterity, until recourse was had to consecrated standards (_signa_), to images, and to amulets which generally bore the monogram of Christ or the sign of the redemption. The cross was never of the shape which it assumed in the fourth century, being rather the cross termed _commissa_ or _patibulata_--in the form of the Greek letter tau (T), which, as tradition tells us, corresponded exactly to the shape of the cross upon which our Lord suffered death. This kind of cross is, in fact, to be seen on amulets or reliquaries of the third century; it was embroidered on garments and engraved upon tombs. The cross was thus the symbol of pilgrimage, as it was afterwards the emblem of the Crusades.