The desire for communion with the holy dead continued throughout successive generations. Multitudes of pilgrims still visited the shrines of the martyrs, and, after the wont of travellers, left traces of their presence in the numerous _graffiti_ which are written on the walls. Some of these are names of classical form, as Leo, Felix, Maximus, Theophilus; others, written in less accessible places, are of 131 later date and of foreign character, Spanish, British, or German, as Ildebrand, Ethelred, Lupo, Bonizo, Joannes. The names are frequently accompanied with the letters _Pb._, or _Presb._, the indication of the ecclesiastical grade of the writer. Many of the loftiest dignitaries in church and state, popes and prelates, princes and nobles, kings and queens, and even some illustrious wearers of the imperial purple, continued to be brought, often from afar, throughout the period of the Middle Ages, to lie in death as near as possible to the hallowed dust of the early martyrs and confessors of the faith. Among them were some stained with blood, who hoped to expiate their crimes by their religious austerities, and to enter paradise through the intercession of the saints near whose remains their bones were laid. Several petty kings of the Anglo-Saxon Heptarchy, some expelled by their subjects or rivals, others flying from the post of duty, muttered their prayers and counted their beads in the crypts of the Catacombs, and were buried in their vicinity. The following are a few of the more illustrious, taken from the list of the Abbé Gaume:[224] Popes Leo I., Gregory I., II., and III., Leo XI.; the Emperor Honorius and Mary his wife, Valentinian and Otho II.; Cedwalla, king of the West-Saxons; Conrad, king of the Mercians; Offa and Ina, Saxon kings, with Eldiburga, wife of the latter; the Empress Agnes, Queen Charlotte of Cyprus, and the Countess Matilda, who so enriched the papal see by her donations. These were buried, not in the Catacombs, but in the basilicas erected over them, which were 132 considered to share their sanctity. Thus, as St. Chrysostom remarks, referring to the tradition concerning the sepulchres of St. Peter and St. Paul, kings laid aside their crowns at the tombs of the fisherman and the tentmaker.[225]