Chronogram?

Random, if interesting, note from a book about rabies.  Rabid: A cultural history of the world's most diabolical virus by Bill Wasik and Monica Murphy New York: Viking, 2012. 

So, in a chapter about Saint Hubert, a saint whose relics were reputed to heal rabies, Wasik and Murphy mention that after the saint's reliquary was stolen, "one enameled display bears a chronogram, or Latin message carrying a date inside it, reading: "ConCVLCaVerVntsanCtIfICatIoneM"--or, "They have spurned that which is most holy," with the numerals spelling out 1568 [when the relics were stolen]."  p. 45