“Fame reports that the pious parents formerly brought back Agnes when the trumpet had resounded the funeral chants; that suddenly the maiden left the bosom of her nurse, and willingly spurned the threats and rage of the cruel tyrant, when he resolved to burn her noble body in the flames; that she overcame her intense fear with her feeble strength, and spread her luxuriant hair over her naked limbs, lest the face of a perishing man might behold the temple of the Lord. O holy one, ever to be honoured by me, sacred ornament of modesty, illustrious martyr, I entreat that you aid the prayers of Damasus.” [317] Jameson, _Sac. and Leg. Art._, p. 381. According to St. Jerome, in the fourth century her fame was in all lands. [318] Here on the Festival of St. Agnes, January 21, is performed the ceremony of blessing two lambs, the emblems of the innocence and of the name--_Agnus_, a lamb--of the child-martyr. From the wool of these lambs are woven the _pallia_, which, after lying on the so-called tomb of St. Peter, are distributed by the pope to the great church dignitaries as emblems of office. [319] “Attendrissement.”--_Les Catacombes de Rome_, tom. ii, p. 52. [320] See Fig. 90. [321] See Fig. 1. [322] This is probably “the trophy on the Vatican,” mentioned by the Roman presbyter Caius, quoted by Eusebius, _Hist. Eccles._, ii, 25. When Heliogabalus made his circus on the Vatican the body was said to have been again transferred to St. Sebastian; but it is impossible to unravel the tangled accounts of the ancient documents. [323] On this spot De Rossi says was discovered in the seventeenth century the sepulchre of the very first bishop after Peter, (?) bearing simply the name LINVS.