To the period of Damasus belongs the description, by Prudentius, of the shrine of Hippolytus, part of which has been already quoted.[200] “That little chapel,” he continues, “which contains the cast-off garments of his soul, is bright with solid silver. Wealthy hands have put up glistening tablets, smooth and bright as a concave mirror; and, not content with overlaying the entrance with Parian marble, they have lavished large sums of money on the ornamentation of the work.” It was during the period of the labours of Damasus that the revived interest in the Catacombs was so strikingly manifested by the sudden return to the subterranean mode of burial, and that many of the tombs and chapels received their most elaborate adornment.[201] The perversion of a natural instinct, beautiful and praiseworthy in itself, became the root of much evil in after times. Our hearts are irresistibly drawn toward the place where lie the remains of the 125 dear departed in the last long sleep of death. Although we know that only the slumbering dust is there, we love to meditate above their graves, and seem there to hold closer communion with their spirits than elsewhere. Especially would the early Christians be drawn to the tombs of their fathers in the faith, many of whom were also their fathers in the flesh, whose saintly patience or glorious martyrdom had hallowed their memory for evermore. They would naturally be led to adorn and beautify their sepulchres, and in pious devotion to meditate and pray beside their honoured remains. This innocent, and even laudable, practice gradually, and perhaps inevitably, led to abuses. The admiration of the martyr’s faith and patience and heroic spirit gradually intensified into superstitious veneration for his body, blood, bones, ashes, clothes, staff, or any personal relic. Judaism regarded the touching of aught connected with the dead as involving a ceremonial pollution; but Christian ideas invested even the crumbling dust of the martyrs with especial sanctity.