On one of the graves were found a small silver-gilt coronet, with the date A. D. 1340, and a palm leaf worked in silver. In another crypt are written six names--German, in Latinized form--with a cross after each, and beneath, the date A. D. 1397.[252] They were probably a company of German priests on a pilgrimage to the Eternal City and its sacred shrines. In two or three _cubicula_ in the Catacomb of Callixtus are _graffiti_ recording the visits of certain Franciscan friars in the fifteenth century. Brother Lawrence of Sicily, over date January 17, 1451, records that with twenty others he had come to visit the holy place.[253] In 1467 some Scottish pilgrims,[254] and two years after an abbot of St. Sebastian, with a large party,[255] left records of their visits to this Catacomb. The names of Pomponio Leto and other literati of the Roman Academy have also been found in several of the crypts. These men, however, although the avowed lovers of antiquity,[256] were enthusiastic only 149 in the pursuit of heathen learning, and justly merited the reproach of being more pagan than Christian. With the exception of such infrequent and transient visits, it would appear that this priceless treasury of Christian archæology and legacy of the primitive church to the present age was completely forgotten till it was revealed to the eyes of a wondering world by the explorations of the sixteenth and following century. [195] _Zosimus._ His profession of Christianity provoked the scorn of the apostate Julian.--_Ibid._ Scott compares him to a prodigal who strips an aged parent of the ornaments of her youth in order to decorate a flaunting paramour. But New Rome shared the decline of the mother city, as a graft taken from an old tree partakes of the decay of the parent stem. As the ancient liberties died out, the gorgeous but degrading despotisms of the East usurped their place. The emperors assumed the style and titles of gods. The most unmanly adulation was at length lavished on the slave or herdsman elevated by capricious fortune to the throne of the world. At the time of the princess Anna Comnena this degradation seems to have reached its nadir. “Your Eternity” was the blasphemous epithet of the ephemeral puppet flaunting for a moment in the livery of infamy. “If I may speak and live,” whispered with bated breath the titled slave--Prospathaire, or Acolyte--who stood nearest the throne, shading his eyes with his hands, as if overpowered by the effulgence of the imperial countenance. The rude Latin Crusaders made short work of these lofty titles and this solemn etiquette. [196] _Roma Sotterranea_, pp. 95, 96. During the lifetime of Constantine subterraneous sepultures seem to have been generally prevalent. [197] These were called _martyria_ or _memoriæ_. See Euseb., _Vit. Const._, iii, 48.