Bede's Ecclesiastical History of EnglandBede, the Venerable, Saint
History
Bede's Ecclesiastical History of England
Bede, the Venerable, Saint
England -- Church history -- 449-1066
“Here was buried Caedwalla, called also Peter, king of the Saxons, on the
twentieth day of April, in the second indiction, aged about thirty years,
in the reign of our most pious lord, the Emperor Justinian,(800) in the
fourth year of his consulship, in the second year of the pontificate of
our Apostolic lord, Pope Sergius.”
When Caedwalla went to Rome, Ini(801) succeeded to the kingdom, being of
the blood royal; and having reigned thirty-seven years over that nation,
he in like manner left his kingdom and committed it to younger men, and
went away to the threshold of the blessed Apostles, at the time when
Gregory(802) was pope, being desirous to spend some part of his pilgrimage
upon earth in the neighbourhood of the holy places, that he might obtain
to be more readily received into the fellowship of the saints in heaven.
This same thing, about that time, was wont to be done most zealously by
many of the English nation, nobles and commons, laity and clergy, men and
women.
Chap. VIII. How, when Archbishop Theodore died, Bertwald succeeded him as
archbishop, and, among many others whom he ordained, he made the learned
Tobias bishop of the church of Rochester. [690 A.D.]
The year after that in which Caedwalla died at Rome, that is, 690 after
the Incarnation of our Lord, Archbishop Theodore, of blessed memory,
departed this life, being old and full of days, for he was eighty-eight
years of age; which number of years he had been wont long before to
foretell to his friends that he should live, the same having been revealed
to him in a dream. He held the bishopric twenty-two years,(803) and was
buried in St. Peter’s church,(804) where all the bodies of the bishops of
Canterbury are buried. Of whom, as well as of his fellows of the same
degree, it may rightly and truly be said, that their bodies are buried in
peace, and their names shall live to all generations. For to say all in
few words, the English Churches gained more spiritual increase while he
was archbishop, than ever before. His character, life, age, and death, are
plainly and manifestly described to all that resort thither, by the
epitaph on his tomb, in thirty-four heroic verses.(805) The first whereof
are these:
“Here in the tomb rests the body of the holy prelate, called now in the
Greek tongue Theodore. Chief pontiff, blest high priest, pure doctrine he
set forth to his disciples.”
The last are as follow:
“For September had reached its nineteenth day, when his spirit went forth
from the prison-bars of the flesh. Mounting in bliss to the gracious
fellowship of the new life, he was united to the angelic citizens in the
heights of Heaven.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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