This discovery, which seems wholly improbable, is yet not impossible. If the _arcosolium_ had been hermetically sealed up, the body need not have fallen to dust; and, as a fact, De Rossi did discover, along with Marchi, in 1853, a body in the Via Appia, without the smallest trace of alteration and decay in the bones.[1] Paschal himself relates that he lined the chest with fringed silk, and covered the body with a silk veil. It was then enclosed in a sarcophagus of white marble, and laid under the high altar of the Church of S. Cæcilia in Trastevere. This church has been made out of the old house of S. Cæcilia, and to this day, notwithstanding rebuildings, it bears traces of its origin. Nearly eight hundred years after this translation, Sfondrati, cardinal of S. Cæcilia, being about to carry on material alterations in the basilica, came on the sarcophagus lying in a vault under the altar. It was not alone—another was with it. In the presence of witnesses one of these was opened. It contained a coffin or chest of cypress wood. The Cardinal himself removed the cover. First was seen the costly lining and the silken veil, with which nearly eight centuries before Paschal had covered the body. It was faded, but not decayed, and through the almost transparent texture could be seen the glimmer of the gold of the garments in which the martyr was clad. After a pause of a few minutes, the Cardinal lifted the veil, and revealed the form of the maiden martyr lying in the same position in which she had died on the floor of her father’s hall. Neither Urban nor Paschal had ventured to alter that. She lay there, clothed in a garment woven with gold thread, on which were the stains of blood; and at her feet were the rolls of linen mentioned by Paschal, as found with the body. She was lying on her right side, the arms sunk from the body, her face turned to the ground; the knees slightly bent and drawn together. The attitude was that of one in a deep sleep. On the throat were the marks of the wounds dealt by the clumsy executioner. Thus she had lain, preserved from decay through thirteen centuries. When this discovery was made, Pope Clement VIII. was lying ill at Frascati, but he empowered Cardinal Baronius and Bosio, the explorer of the Catacombs, to examine into the matter; and both of these have left an account of the condition in which the body was found. For five weeks all Rome streamed to the church to see the body; and it was not until S. Cæcilia’s Day that it was again sealed up in its coffin and marble sarcophagus. Cardinal Sfondrati gave a commission to the sculptor Maderna to reproduce the figure of the Virgin Martyr in marble in the attitude in which found, and beneath this is the inscription:—“So I show to you in marble the representation of the most holy Virgin Cæcilia, in the same position in which I myself saw her incorrupt lying in her sepulchre.”