Rome under Diocletian, a Christian girl in a patrician household, and the catacombs where the persecuted meet. Wiseman was the first Catholic cardinal in England since the Reformation and wrote the novel to show English readers what the early church had actually been; it was translated into a dozen languages. Sixty plates of Roman processions, ruins and prisons by Mantegna and Piranesi give the persecutions and triumphs of the early church their proper setting.