During the intervals of peace the Roman pontiffs endeavoured to restore the Catacombs and re-adorn the martyr shrines, which were still the objects of pious veneration. They were also used during the barbarian invasions, as during the pagan persecutions, as places of refuge. Boniface I., having been for some time concealed in the Catacomb of Felicitas, afterwards elaborately ornamented it. Symmachus and Vigilius were also especially diligent in their care for the Catacombs. The latter restored many of the Damasine epitaphs which had been destroyed.[232] We read also of popes of the sixth and two 137 following centuries restoring the cemeteries and making provision for the celebration of the martyrs’ festivals at their subterranean shrines. The sculpture and frescoes of the period of course exhibited the depraved taste and debased execution of the times. A new element of destruction came now into play. This was the wholesale translation of the bodies of the saints from the Catacombs to the churches of the city, in order to save them from profanation by Astolphus and his sacrilegious Lombards. These pious robbers ransacked and systematically despoiled the ancient cemeteries, and carried off the relics of the martyrs. Pope Stephen III. thereupon published a letter from St. Peter himself menacing with eternal damnation the violators of these hallowed tombs. These spiritual terrors, however, were found insufficient to protect the sacred relics. The work of translation was resumed, and Pope Paul I. records the removal in A. D. 761 of the bodies of over a hundred “martyrs, confessors, and virgins of Christ, with hymns and spiritual songs, into the city of Rome.” He complains also of the neglect into which the Catacombs had fallen. Their deeper recesses were given up to owls and bats, and nearer the entrance the prowling fox or jackal found a covert. There, too, the Campagnian shepherds frequently folded their flocks, and “converted the sacred places into stables and dunghills.” They became, also, the lurking places of thieves and debtors, outlaws and bandits, who took refuge in their tangled labyrinths.