We went without the walls of the city to visit St. Paul's, to which place it is said the Apostle bore his own head after Nero had caused it to be cut off. The church was founded by the great Constantine; the main roof is supported by 100 vast columns of marble, and the Mosaic work of the great arch is wrought with a very ancient story Aº 440; as is likewise that of the facciata. The gates are brass, made at Constantinopole in 1070, as you may read by those Greek verses engraven on them. The church is near 500 feet long and 258 in breadth, and has five great aisles joined to it, on the basis of one of whose columns is this odd title: "Fl. Eugenius Asellus C. C. Præf. Urbis V. S. I. reparavit." Here they showed us that miraculous Crucifix which they say spake to St. Bridget: and, just before the Ciborio, stand two excellent statues. Here are buried part of the bodies of St. Paul and St. Peter. The pavement is richly interwoven with precious Oriental marbles about the high altar, where are also four excellent paintings, whereof one, representing the stoning of St. Stephen, is by the hand of a Bolognian lady, named Lavinia. The tabernacle on this altar is of excellent architecture, and the[Pg 141] pictures in the Chapel del Sacramento are of Lanfranco. Divers other relics there be also in this venerable church, as a part of St. Anna; the head of the Woman of Samaria; the chain which bound St. Paul, and the eculeus used in tormenting the primitive Christians. The church stands in the Via Ositensis, about a mile from the walls of the city, separated from many buildings near it except the Trie Fontana, to which (leaving our coach) we walked, going over the mountain or little rising, upon which story says a hundred seventy and four thousand Christians had been martyred by Maximianus, Dioclesian, and other bloody tyrants. On this stand St. Vincent's and St. Anastasius; likewise the Church of St. Maria Scala del Cielo, in whose Tribuna is a very fair Mosaic work. The Church of the Trie Fontana (as they are called) is perfectly well built, though but small (whereas that of St. Paul is but Gothic), having a noble cupola in the middle; in this they show the pillar to which St. Paul was bound, when his head was cut off, and from whence it made three prodigious leaps, where there immediately broke out the three remaining fountains, which give denomination to this church. The waters are reported to be medicinal: over each is erected an altar and a chained ladle, for better tasting of the waters. That most excellent picture of St. Peter's Crucifixion is of Guido.