In order to satisfy the many requests made to Rome by churches and religious communities for relics of saints, it had become customary to take from the catacombs of Rome the bodies of unknown personages believed to have been honored as martyrs in the early Church. The sign by which they were to be recognized was a glass vial sealed up in the plaster outside the loculus that contained the body, and bearing traces of a red substance that had been enclosed and was supposed to have been blood. Doubts had arisen as to the correctness of this interpretation and, after careful study, Victor de Buck felt convinced that it was false and that what had been taken for blood was probably the sediment of consecrated wine. The conclusion, together with its premises, was set forth in a dissertation published in 1855 under the title "De phialis rubricatis quibus martyrum romanorum sepulcra dignosci dicuntur". Naturally it raised lively protestations, particularly on the part of those who were responsible for distributing the relics of the saints, the more so, as the cardinal vicar of Rome in 1861 strictly forbade any further transportation of these relics.