The rank of Rome(147) as the holy city, reverence for the head of the universal Church, veneration of the apostle Peter, had mounted higher and higher at this time in the West. If St. Peter had already enjoyed, at the period of the Gothic denomination, a worship which impressed the Greeks, his influence now had become more decided, characteristic, and world-wide. It dwelt not so much on his martyrdom, on his high rank as an apostle, but rather on his being the founder of the Roman Church and its see. The invisible saint in heaven was the possessor in title of many domains and patrimonies on earth: the theocratic king of Rome. He had begun to consider its people as his own, he counted upon its political government, which he transmitted like a celestial fief to the Popes his successors. His golden tomb at Rome in a Basilica radiant with gold had gradually become the symbol of the Church and of the salvation which the world received from this his institution. Pilgrims from the furthest lauds now streamed to venerate it. The Anglo-Saxons especially, in the glow of their first conversion, were impelled by a passionate yearning to Rome. At the moment that the East sent its pilgrims to Mecca and Medina, swarms of pious pilgrims from Gaul, Spain, and Britain descended the Alps to cast their eyes upon eternal Rome and prostrate themselves before St. Peter’s tomb, which had become the sanctuary of the West. In the year 689 the young king of Wessex, Cadwalla, excited the greatest admiration. After many battles at home, he sheathed his sword and undertook the long journey to Rome to receive baptism from Pope Sergius himself. There on Easter eve the long-haired barbarian king was seen in the white dress of the illuminated at the porphyry baptismal font of the Lateran, with the wax candle in his hand, and received the name of Peter. He lived but eight days after, and was buried in the atrium of St. Peter’s, with a long inscription, still extant. It said how King Cadwalla, for the love of God, left his throne, his family, his country, all that the valour of his ancestors and his own had gained him, coming far over land and sea as a royal guest to behold Peter, and Peter’s see. He died at thirty years of age, in the reign of the Lord Justinian, in the second year of the pontificate of the apostolic man, Pope Sergius.