... According to legend, when S. Ildefons of Toledo (d. 667) was praying in the church of S. Leocadia, on her festival, in the presence of King Receswinth, the tomb opened of its own accord, and the martyr, rising from it, took the archbishop by the hand and proclaimed in a loud voice, "O Ildefons, by thee the life of Our Lady has been maintained!" alluding to his defence of the immaculate virginity of the Virgin Mary against the heretics who argued that she had become a mother by Joseph of "the brethren of the Lord."  Whilst she was talking, Ildefons, with a prudent eye to relics, got hold of the king's sword with his disengaged hand, and as the virgin martyr was gracefully retiring back into her grave, he snipped off part of her veil, and this fragment is preserved in the church, and receives the most devout homage to this day... (The Lives of the Saints, Baring-Gould, 1877)