rule of the Benedictines; French historian Gaston Letonnelier made a similar approach in 1952 to get the Christian prayer: SAT ORARE POTEN(TIA) ET OPER(A) A ROTA S(ERVANT), which translates as: "Prayer is our strength and will save us from the wheel (of fate?)". In 1935, German art historian believed he discovered the relief the Rose of Sharon gave to Saint Peter for the sin of his denial of Christ, with the anagram PETRO ET REO PATET ROSA SARONA, which translates as "For Peter even guilty the rose of Sharon is open"; academics refuted his interpretation. In 2003, American historian Rose Mary Sheldon listed some of the many diverse sentences that can be produced from anagrams of the square including her favorite: APATOR NERO EST, which would translate as saying that the Roman emperor Nero was the result of a virgin birth. Origin and meaning The origin and meaning of the square has eluded a definitive academic consensus even after more than a century of study. In 1938, British classical historian Donald Atkinson said the square occupied the "mysterious region where religion, superstition, and magic meet, where words, numbers, and letters are believed, if properly combined, to exert power over the processes of nature ...". Even by 2003, American academic Rose Mary Sheldon called it "one of the oldest unsolved word puzzles in the world". In 2018, American ancient classical historian Megan O'Donald still noted that "most interpretations of the ROTAS square have failed to gain consensus due to failings", and, in particular, reconciling the archeological evidence with the square's later adoption as a religious and magical object. Christian symbol Adoption by Christians Irrespective of the theory of its origin, the evidence that the Sator square, particularly in its SATOR-form, became adopted into Christian imagery is not disputed by academics. Academics note the repeated association of Christ with the "sower" (or SATOR), and the words of the Sator square have been discovered in Christian settings even in very early medieval times, including: Jesuit historian Jean Daniélou claimed that the third century Bishop Irenaeus of Lyons (c. A.D 200) knew of the square and had written of "Him who joined the beginning with the end, and is the Lord of both, and has shown forth the plough at the end". Some academics link Irenaeus with creating the association of the five words in the square to the five nails of the cross.