[519] The letters B. M., so frequently recurring in sepulchral inscriptions, have no reference to the Virgin Mary. They stand for _Bene Merenti_--To the well-deserving, or _Bonæ Memoriæ_--Of pious memory. [520] Ut ipsa corporis facies simulacrum fuerit mentis, figura probitatis.--_De Virgin._, lib. ii, c. 2. [521] Neque enim novimus faciem Virginis Mariæ.--_De Trin._, c. 8. [522] Aringhi (tom. ii, p. 195) copies a crucifixion from the Catacomb of “Julii Papæ,” in which Mary appears crowned with a nimbus, and bearing, after the Byzantine manner, the label DEI GENETRIX--Mother of God. It was probably painted by a Greek artist of late date. The miraculous images of Mary are too numerous to mention. Among these are the winking Madonna of Rimini; that of St. Peter’s, which shed blood when struck; that of Arezzo, which wept at the profanity of some drunkards; another at Rome, which shed tears at the invasion of the French; stranger still, one at Lucca, which transferred the infant Christ from one arm to the other to preserve him from danger; and one mentioned in the Fablieux of Le Grand, which, when a scaffold broke, stretched forth a painted arm to rescue from death the artist to whom she owed her existence! The practical and undevout curiosity of the Czar Peter of Russia exposed the fraud of one of the weeping Madonnas of the Greek church by the detection of a reservoir of water behind her eyes. In popular legend, also, Mary has often come down from her throne of glory, not to communicate lessons about sin and salvation, but to secure some trivial gain or to recover some lost money. [523] _Peinture_, tom. ii, p. 38. [524] Harduin, iv, 430, A. D. 712. [525] In the church of St. Cecilia at Rome. The homage of the Virgin was now called ὑπερδουλεία--the highest degree of veneration. [526] This legend is first mentioned by Gregory of Tours in the sixth century, (_De Gloria Mart._, lib. i, c. 4,) next by John Damascenus in the eighth century, but is most fully detailed in the _Legenda Aurea_ in the fourteenth. Some of the earlier paintings represent with touching _naiveté_ the translation of the soul of Mary as a new-born infant to heaven, where it is received in the arms of her Divine Son. In later art the assumption is more literally represented, and Mary is received and crowned by the three persons of the Holy Trinity, while angels bear her train. Bodily assumption was also attributed to John the Baptist and Mary Magdalene.