Light coronae, crosses, or single lamps were favourite gifts to a church, and in these objects S. Sophia probably became much more wealthy as time went on. Michael III., for instance, gave to the church in 867 “a circle (_kuklos_) for lights which they call a polycandelon, as big as any of the others but all of gold weighing sixty pounds. To it was given the first and most holy place.”[190] “A chalice and paten superior to all the others, as well as a polycandelon in the form of a cross with many lamps,” are also mentioned as given by Michael. His successor Basil I., “as there was a danger of the sacred lamps being extinguished for want of oil,” assigned for the use of the church “the tribute called mantea, so that the light might never be quenched.”[191] The Anonymous doubtless exaggerates beyond belief with his 300 polycandela and 6000 lamps all of gold, but the kinds of candelabra he speaks of must have been perfectly well known (p. 140). [Illustration: FIG. 16.--Polycandelon or Disc, for Seventeen Lamps, in the British Museum.] At the end of the twelfth century, Robert de Clari, the knight of Amiens, wrote--“Throughout the church hang one hundred candelabra, and there is not one which does not hang from a silver chain as thick as a man’s arm, and each candelabrum has quite twenty-five lamps or more, and there is not a single candelabrum which is not worth two hundred silver marks.” Benjamin of Tudela mentions “candelabra, lamps, and lanterns, of gold and silver more than any man can name;” and Stephen of Novgorod (1350) speaks of “a multitude immense, innumerable, of lamps.” Of the great brilliance of illumination obtained in the early churches there can be no doubt. Paulinus writes that at his church at Nola the lights were suspended in such profusion that they seemed to float in a sea. An interesting account of the method of lighting followed at the Lateran, illustrated by a plan of the circles, is given by Rohault de Fleury.[192] A Byzantine lamp-holder lately sent to the Louvre from Constantinople is probably almost identical in general form with the “discs” of Paulus. This polycandelon is a broad flat ring of bronze pierced with eight holes for as many lights, and suspended by four chains. It bears a votive inscription which reads, “Lord, remember thee of Thy servant Abraham, son of Constantine.”[193]