Pelagius II

Her flight to the desert, 121, and note Pelagius, ii.

Their strongest argument was that, about the year 580, the Emperor Tiberius II. had given to St. Gregory, then apocrisarius of Pelagius II. in Constantinople, the head of St. Luke, which was still exhibited and venerated in the Basilica of the Vatican.

Passing the triumphal arch, we enter the early basilica of Pope Pelagius II.

Laurence and Stephen, enclosed in a silver shrine by Pelagius II., a pope so munificent that he had given up his own house as a hospital for aged poor.

The first basilica erected here was built in the end of the sixth century, by Pope Pelagius II., but this was repeatedly enlarged and beautified by succeeding popes, and at length was so much altered in 1216, by Honorius III., that the old basilica became merely the choir or tribune of a larger and more important church.