12 December 1644 – 18 December 1644

I went again to St. Peter's to see the chapels, churches, and grots under the whole church (like our St. Faith's under Paul's), in which lie interred a multitude of Saints, Martyrs, and Popes; among them our countryman, Adrian IV., (Nicholas Brekespere) in a chest of porphyry; Sir J. Chrysostom; Petronella; the heads of St. James minor, St. Luke, St. Sebastian, and our Thomas à Becket; a shoulder of St. Christopher; an arm of Joseph of Arimathea; Longinus; besides 134 more bishops, soldiers, princes, scholars, cardinals, kings, emperors, their wives; too long to particularize. Hence we walked into the cemetery, called Campo Santo, the earth consisting of several ship-loads of mold, transported from Jerusalem, which consumes a carcass in twenty-four hours. To this joins that rare hospital, where once was Nero's circus; the next to this is the Inquisition-house and prison, the inside whereof, I thank God, I was not curious to see. To this joins His Holiness's Horseguards. On Christmas-eve, I went not to bed, being desirous of seeing the many extraordinary ceremonies performed then in their churches, at midnight masses and sermons. I walked from church to church the whole night in admiration at the multitude of scenes and pageantry which the friars had with much industry and craft set out, to catch the devout women and superstitious sort of people, who never parted without dropping some money into a vessel set on purpose; but especially observable was the puppetry in the Church of the Minerva, representing the Nativity. I thence went and heard a sermon at the Apollinare; by which time it was morning. On Christmas-day his Holiness sang mass, the artillery of St. Angelo went off, and all this day was exposed the cradle of our Lord.