Note 262 — Chapter II · EARLY CHRISTIAN AND BYZANTINE-LOMBARDIC STYLES.

The older church has been so altered and ruined by the subsequent rebuildings that it is extremely difficult to make out its history. It seems, however, to have been built originally above the site of an old Mithraic temple, which has recently been cleared out, and probably before the time of Gregory the Great. It was apparently rebuilt, or nearly so, by Adrian I., 772, and burnt by Robert Guiscard, 1084. The upper church seems to have been erected by Paschal, 1099-1118. The question is, to what age do the frescoes found on the walls of the older church belong? Some of the heads and single figures may, I fancy, be anterior even to the time of Adrian; but the bulk of the paintings seem certainly to have been added between his age and 1084, and nearer the latter than the former date. If it had not been entirely ruined in 1084 Paschal would not have so completely obliterated it a century afterwards. A considerable quantity of the materials of the old church were used in the new, which tends further to confuse the chronology.