An illustration[115] in an eighth-century Gospel preserved at Venice represents a ciborium, like that at S. Sophia. We see four arches on four columns, and from the flat top above rises an octagonal cone. At the four corners stand bowls, and in each bowl is a candle or a representation of one, as the Silentiary describes. Pope Leo III. placed “above the altar of S. Peter four large cups of the purest silver, every one having in its centre a candle of silver-gilt.”[116] The ciborium at S. Sophia described by Paulus may have lasted till 1203; Robert de Clari, writing at this time, says: “Around the altar there are columns of silver, which carry a canopy (_abitacle_) over the altar, made like a tower (_clokier_), which is all of massive silver, and so rich that one cannot estimate its value.” _Crowns, &c._--From the first a crown and dove of gold would have been suspended from the centre of the canopy; such doves are spoken of as being in use in Constantinople during the Council of 536.[117] Theophanes says: “On Easter Day Sophia, the widow of Justin II., and Constantia, the wife of Maurice, gave the Emperor Maurice a crown of exceeding value. When the emperor saw it, he took it to S. Sophia, and hung it above the Holy Table by triple chains of gold and precious stones.”[118] This, Nicephorus Callistus says, was preserved there till the taking of the city by the Latins.[119] According to Buzantios, the emperor Leo IV. and his wife Irene also suspended crowns here. Nicetas speaks of the “crown of the great Constantine, which hung above the Holy Table;” and again of one “John, surnamed Crassus, who rushed into S. Sophia and placed on his head a small crown, one of those which hang round the Holy Table;”[120] and it appears from the account of the Russian pilgrim Anthony, given in the next chapter, that just before the Crusade there were thirty crowns suspended from the ciborium--a beautiful symbolism. The splendid hanging crowns at Monza and in the Cluny Museum show us that these votive crowns were broad circlets of gold incrusted with large uncut rubies and emeralds with borders of pearls, and strings of jewels, and other pendants hanging from the rim. A small enamelled crown for suspension above an altar which is amongst the Constantinople treasures at S. Mark’s is inscribed ΛΕΟΝ ΔΕϹΠ(ΟΤΗϹ); this, according to Labarte, must be Leo VI., who died in 911.[121] _Altar-veils._--Round the four sides of the ciborium were suspended the curtains described in such detail by Paulus. They were all the more wonderful at this time as being silk-woven and not embroidered.[122] The gold thread however seems to have been “laid” on. By the later Greeks those curtains were named tetrabela. They were often of deep red embroidered with gold, and were usually hung on rods going from capital to capital of the ciborium, as some of the illustrations in the _Menologium_ show, though others seem to have been suspended from the curves of the arches.