336 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts, and Letters. 
cated especially to the observance of the Nativity this pope 
erected the Basilica Liberii, or Basilica Liberiana, which dur¬ 
ing the fifth century became known as Basilica Sanctoe Mar ice, 
and after the ninth century as Sancta Maria Major. 1 Mean¬ 
while, in the time of Pope Theodore (642—649), relics of the 
Prcesepe in which Christ was born had been brought from 
Bethlehem and deposited in the Basilica Liberii, henceforth 
appropriately known by still another name: Sancta Maria ad 
Prcesepe . 2 As a suitable shelter for these relics a chapel 3 was 
built in the right aisle, to the decoration of which Pope Gregory 
III (731—741) later contributed gold figures of Mary and her 
Child. 4 When Pope Sixtus V (1585—1590) built the new 
chapel in the right transept, the old Prcesepe chapel, already 
once restored in the thirteenth century, was moved to a posi¬ 
tion beneath the main altar. 5 
As to the use of the relics themselves in the church of 
Sancta Mkria ad Preesepe we have only meagre information. 
It appears that the venerated boards of wood originally de¬ 
posited in the side-chapel were not encased, as the modern 
fragments are, in a reliquary, but were joined together in the 
form of an actual Prcesepe . 6 This Prcesepe , moreover, was 
the veritable altar upon which the pope appropriately laid the 
consecrated Host (Corpus Christi) when he celebrated his an¬ 
nual Mass in the side-chapel on the Vigil of Christmas. 7 As 
1 See Usener, pp. 275-277. 
2 See id., p. 282. 
3 The chapel is mentioned as oratorium sanctum quod prcesepe 
dicitur in a document of the period 731-741, and as camera prcesepii 
in a document of the period 844-847. See Usener, p. 280. 
4 See Usener, p. 291. 
6 See id., p. 281. 
• See id., pp. 282-283. 
7 In connection with this act of laying the Corpus Christi upon 
the altar, and with the general doctrine altare est prcesepe, one should 
note the association of the dramatic trope Quern quceritis in prcesepe 
with the altar, as shown above’, pp. 306 ff. See also the phrase in 
prcesepio altaris, from Guerricus (quoted below, p. 338, note 1), 
the clause Ubi in latere altaris- maoris erat Prceepium from Gal- 
vano Flamma (quoted below, p. 338), and the gloss Ponitur in 
prcesepio, id est, corpus Christi super altare applied to Luke ii. 7 
(Et reclinavit eum in prcesepio ) in the Glossa Ordinaria of Willifridus 
Strabo of Fulda. (Biblia Sacra cum, Glossa Ordinaria primum quidem 
a Strabo Fuldensi . . . collecta, Vol. Y, Antwerp, 1617, col. 710). 
