The second sarcophagus found by Cardinal Sfondrati in the crypt of the Church of S. Cecilia beneath the high altar, was also opened by him. It was found to contain the bodies of three men, who had clearly suffered violent deaths--two of them had been decapitated, and the third had evidently been beaten to death by a horrible means of torture sometimes used--the “plumbatæ”--leathern or metal thongs loaded with lead; one of these, which evidently had been used in the death-scene of a martyr, was found in a crypt of this cemetery. These three were no doubt the remains of SS. Valerianus (the patrician husband of S. Cecilia), Tiburtius his brother, and the Roman officer Maximus, whose remains, brought no doubt by Pope Paschal I from the Prætextatus Cemetery where we know they had been interred, were deposited by him in the crypt of the Church of S. Cecilia close to the body of the famous martyr with whom they were so closely and gloriously connected. The story of the discovery and certain identification of the original sepulchral chamber of S. Cecilia is vividly told by De Rossi with great detail. It was one of his important “finds.” With the tradition before him--with the clear references in the pilgrim traditions--the great archæologist was sure that somewhere in the immediate vicinity of the sepulchral chamber of the Popes or Bishops of Rome of the third century, must be sought the crypt where S. Cecilia lay for more than six centuries. First he discovered that adjoining the official Papal Crypt was another chamber, evidently of considerable size, in which a luminare[135] had been constructed, but the chamber and the luminare were choked up with earth and ruins. He proceeded to excavate the latter; as the work proceeded, the explorers in the neighbourhood of the chamber came upon the remains of paintings. Lower down, almost on the level of the chamber, these paintings became more numerous and more distinct. The work of digging out went on slowly; more paintings had evidently once decorated that ruined and desolate chamber of death--one of them, a woman richly dressed, obviously represented S. Cecilia. Another of a bishop inscribed with the name of S. Urbanus, the bishop connected with the story of the saint. The paintings were of different dates, some as late as the seventh century. A door which once led into the Papal Crypt was found: remains of much and elaborate decorative work were plainly discerned, work of various ages, belonging some of it to the fifth, sixth, and seventh centuries. In one of the walls of the chamber a large opening had been originally constructed to receive the sarcophagus of the martyr.