t tells us that the grave
of Leo the Great was in the vestibule below the sacristy. There he lay
"like the keeper of the temple, like a shepherd watching his flock."
But other graves had crowded the place so that it was almost
impossible to single them out, and read their epitaphs. Sergius
therefore ordered the body of his predecessor to be removed to an
oratory, or chapel, in the south transept of the church, and to be
enclosed in a beautiful monument which he adorned with costly marbles,
and with mosaics representing prophets and saints. The monument was
destroyed by Paul V. on Saturday, May 26, 1607.

The remains of Gregory the Great have also been moved several times.
His tombstone must have been worn by the feet of pilgrims, as only
eighteen letters out of many hundred have been preserved to our time.
These were discovered not many years ago, in a dark corner of the
Grotte Vaticane. Two centuries after his death, his successor, Gregory
IV. (827-844), carried his remains inside the church, to an oratory
near the new sacristy, covered the tomb with panels of silver, and the
back wall with golden mosaics. The body remained in this second place
until the pontificate of Enea Silvio Piccolomini, Pius II.
(1458-1464), who, having built a chapel to S. Andrew the apostle,
removed Gregory's coffin to the new altar. The coffin is described as
a _conca aegyptiaca_, an ancient bathing-basin, of porphyry, which was
protected by an iron grating. The chapel, the altar, and the tomb
were again sacrificed to the renovation of the church in the time of
Paul V. On December 28, 1605, the porphyry urn was opened, and the
body of the great man transferred to a cypress case; on the eighth day
of the following January a procession, headed by the college of
cardinals and the aristocracy, accompanied the remains to their fourth
and last resting-place, the Cappella Clementina, built by Clement
VIII., near the entrance to the modern sacristy. There are now two
inscriptions: one on the marble lid, "Here lies Saint Gregory the
Great, first of his name, doctor of the church;" the other on the
cypress case, "Evangelista Pallotta, cardinal of S. Lorenzo in Lucina,
dean of this church, collected in this case the remains of Gregory the
Great, and removed them from the altar of S. Andrew to this new
chapel. Done by order of Paul V., in the first year of his
pontificate, on Sunday, January 8, A. D. 1606." The altarpiece was not
painted by Muziano, as