They are become like robbers’ caves, So that only the good are denied entrance; And among altars and saintly statues Every cruel enterprise is planned.[249] During the period of the “Babylonish Captivity,” when the Papal See was removed from the banks of the Tiber to those of the Rhone--from 147 the protection of the fortress of St. Angelo to the castled heights of Avignon--the decay of every thing pertaining to the church in Italy was precipitated. The city of Rome, which depended for its prosperity entirely upon its ecclesiastical pomps and pageants, became impoverished and almost deserted. The Campagna changed to a wilderness, and the entrances to the Catacombs were choked with rubbish or overgrown with tangled thickets and gigantic weeds. Many of these entrances were also walled up by the civic authorities to prevent their becoming the resort of robbers, and for the safety of the inhabitants. During the short and tumultuous career of that strange reformer, Colonna di Rienzi, (1347-1354,) some of the hidden crypts are mentioned as the scene of the plots and counterplots of that troublous time; and, like the sewers and Catacombs of Paris during the Revolution, and the cloacæ of Rome in time of proscription and civil war, they became places of refuge and concealment. On the eve of his massacre Rienzi was urged to seek safety in those ancient sanctuaries of the persecuted church, but he replied, as Nero is said to have done thirteen centuries before, that he would not bury himself alive.[250] With the exception of these rare allusions there is little mention of the Catacombs in the chronicles of the Middle Ages, and they became in course of time virtually unknown. They were not, however, entirely unvisited. The cemetery of Sebastian was never quite forgotten, but was always open to pilgrims; and even in the darkest period there seem 148 to have been some who, inspired by devotion or curiosity, penetrated the most accessible crypts, and left inscribed upon the walls the date of their visit. Thus, in one place we find a record of a bishop of Pisa and his companions who visited the Catacombs early in the fourteenth century. Another _graffito_, with the names of three persons and the date A. D. 1321, reads thus: “Gather together, O Christians, in these caverns, to read the holy books, to sing hymns in honour of the saints and martyrs who, having died in the Lord, lie buried here; to sing psalms for those who are now dying in the faith. There is light in this darkness. There is music in these tombs.”[251]