A few years ago the late Canon Elisei who has written many interesting pamphlets on the cathedral, obtained permission from the government to clear away the rubble beneath the present church; masses of Roman inscriptions and pieces of sculpture were brought to light, together with part of the primitive church of Bishop Basileo, and the whole of what is known as the Chiesa Ugonia, from the Bishop of that name who built it in 1028. With lighted torches the visitor can descend to the primitive basilica and realise what a peaceful spot had been chosen for this early place of worship, while picturing the Christians as they knelt round the body of their Bishop, the light falling dimly upon them through the narrow Lombard windows. The six columns, with their varied capitals rising straight from the ground without the support of bases, give a somewhat funereal aspect, recalling a crypt rather than a church. The few vestiges of frescoes in the apse--St. Mark and his lion, and St. Costanso, Bishop of Perugia--are said to be, with the paintings in S. Celso at Verona, the oldest in Italy after those in the catacombs at Rome. Ruins of other frescoes, perhaps of the same date, can be traced above the door of the first basilica, together with some stone-work in low relief of vine leaves and grapes, but it is difficult to see them without going behind a column built in total disregard of this lower building. The Roman sarcophagus is still in the apse where the altar once stood, but open and neglected, for the body of St. Rufino now lies beneath the altar of the present cathedral. It is ornamented in rough high relief with the story of Endymion; Diana steps from her chariot towards the sleeping shepherd, Pomona has her arms full of fruit and flowers, and there are nymphs and little gods of love and sleep. "It appeared to us," remarks one prudish chronicler of the church, "the first time we beheld it, that it was indecent to have present before the eyes of the faithful so unseemly a fable; our scruples we however laid aside in remembering that Holy Church is endowed with the power of purging from temples, altars and urns, all pagan abominations, and from superstition to turn them to the true service of God." No such scruples existed during the early times, and there is an amusing story of how the people wishing to place the marble sarcophagus, which had been left at Costano five centuries before, in the Chiesa Ugonia, were prevented by the Bishop who admired it, and had given orders that it should be brought to his palace at Sta. Maria Maggiore. A great tumult arose in the town, but although the people came to blows and the fight was serious on both sides, no blood was shed. A further miracle took place when the Bishop, determined to have his way, sent sixty men down to Costano who were unable to move the sarcophagus which remained as though rooted in the earth; and the event was the more remarkable as seven men