The (now lost) epitaph of Cædwalla, 'king of the Saxons' (southern Britain), describes his renunciation of his kingdom and journey to Rome in order to visit the shrine of *Peter (the Apostle, S00036); his baptism there and adoption of 'Peter' as his baptismal name; and his burial soon after at Peter's church, on 20 April 689. Inscribed in Latin at St Peter's, Rome, 689/701; recorded by Bede, writing at Wearmouth-Jarrow (north-east Britain), 731, and in early medieval sylloges of inscriptions.
E05710
Inscriptions - Funerary inscriptions
Epitaph of King Cædwalla, St Peter's basilica, Rome
Culmen opes subolem pollentia regna triumphos
Exuuias proceres moenia castra lares
Quaeque patrum uirtus et quae congesserat ipse
Ceadual armipotens liquit amore dei
5Vt Petrum sedemque Petri rex cerneret hospes
Cuius fonte meras sumeret almus aquas
Splendificumque iubar radianti carperet haustu
Ex quo uiuificus fulgor ubique fluit.
Percipiensque alacer rediuiuae praemia uitae
10Barbaricam rabiem nomen et inde suum
Conuersus conuertit ouans Petrumque uocari
Sergius antistes iussit ut ipse pater
Fonte renascentis quem xpi gratia purgans
Protinus albatum uexit in arce poli.
15Mira fides regis clementia maxima xpi
Cuius consilium nullus adire potest.
Sospes enim ueniens supremo ex orbe Britanni
Per uarias gentes per freta perque uias
Vrbem romuleum uidit templumque uerendum
20Aspexit Petri mystica dona gerens.
Candidus inter oues xpi sociabilis ibit
Corpore nam tumulum mente superna tenet.
Commutasse magis sceptorum insignia credas
Quem regnum xpi promeruisse uides.
Hic depositus est Ceadual qui et Petrus rex Saxonum sub die xii kal. maiarum indict. ii qui uixit an. plus minus xxx imperante domno Iustiniano piissimo aug. an. et cons. iiii pontificante apostolico uiro domno Sergio pp an. ii
Eminence, wealth, lineage, kingdoms, triumphs, spoils, retainers, walls, fortresses and homes; (3) every power of his fathers, and those which he had gathered for himself: warlike Cædwalla did away with them for the love of God, (5) so that this king, as a traveller, might look upon Peter and Peter’s see, take nourishment from the pure waters of his font, (7) and, by drinking, take up that splendid brightness, from which a life-giving brilliance flows everywhere. (10/11) The convert, quick to understand the rewards of a restored life, converted his barbarous rage and then his own name, and the high-priest Sergius declared that he be called Peter, as he himself was the father of the one reborn at the font, whom he purged with the grace of Christ: (14) right away he brought him, clad in white, into the citadel of heaven. (15) Marvel at the faith of the king, and most of all the mercy of Christ, into whose counsel none may enter! (17) Coming unscathed from the furthermost world of Britain, through diverse peoples, across roads and straits, (19/20) he saw the Romulean city, and bearing mystical gifts, set his eyes on the venerable temple of Peter. (21) Shining in white, he will go as a companion among the flock of Christ: for the tomb holds his body, the heavens his soul. (23) Believe that he traded the insignia of power for something greater: you see one who has gained the kingdom of Christ.
Here Cædwalla, also called Peter, king of the Saxons, who lived more or less thirty years, was buried on 20 April, in the second indiction, in the reign of the lord Justinian, most pious Augustus, in his fourth year and consulship; in the second year of the pontificate of the apostolic man, the lord Pope Sergius.
Text: Sharpe 2005, 176-7 (formatting adapted).
Translation: B. Savill.
Cult building - independent (church)
Non Liturgical ActivityBequests, donations, gifts and offerings
Explicit naming a child, or oneself, after a saint
Pilgrimage
Visiting graves and shrines
Burial ad sanctos
Protagonists in Cult and NarrativesEcclesiastics - bishops
Monarchs and their family
Ecclesiastics - Popes
Pagans
Unbaptized Christians
Source
King Cædwalla’s epitaph at St Peter’s basilica, Rome, commissioned by Pope Sergius I (687-701), no longer survives as an original inscription, but has come to us today through three widely circulated, and apparently independent, textual traditions: via its appearance in Bede’s Ecclesiastical History of the English People (completed 731); Paul the Deacon’s History of the Lombards (c. 787 - c. 796); and early medieval sylloges (collections) of epigraphic verses (for this and what follows, see now Sharpe, 2005).Bede’s text is the earliest and apparently most accurate: he himself may have been working from a now-lost sylloge circulating in contemporary Britain. The earliest reference to the epitaph appears, however, in the poem On the Church of Mary Built by Bugga by the West Saxon ecclesiastic Aldhelm (d. 709/10) (E06918). In fact, as a probable kinsman and, plausibly, religious advisor to Cædwalla, Aldhelm may well have accompanied the king to Rome, and have personally taken the responsibility of bringing a copy of the inscription back to Britain (Lapidge, 2007). The original author remains unidentifiable. A widespread modern attribution of the work to Benedict Crispus, bishop of Milan, has been demonstrated by Sharpe to rest on highly dubious sixteenth-century scholarship, and no longer seems sustainable.
Discussion
We know from the early eighth-century accounts of Bede and Stephen of Ripon that Cædwalla (or Ceadwalla) ruled in southern Britain as king of the Gewisse (West Saxons) from around 685, extending his authority over the following years to the South Saxons and the peoples of the Isle of Wight and Kent. Introducing the epitaph, Bede tells us that Cædwalla was baptised in Rome on the Saturday before Easter (10 April), 689 and died, ‘overcome by illness’ (languore correptus) ten days later (Ecclesiastical History, v. 7). Although only surviving in later copies, this inscription serves as the earliest narrative witness to his reign. It also presents the first known example of what would become a peculiarly English trend of kings abdicating their rule in order to make a final pilgrimage to Rome: thus Offa, king of the East Saxons with Cenred, king of the Mercians in 709; Ine, king of the West Saxons in 726; and Burgred, king of the Mercians in 874. More temporary, 'return-journey' pilgrimages were also made by the kings Æthelwulf of the West Saxons (855-6) and Cnut (1027).Cædwalla, however, appears unique among this group in several ways. First and perhaps most striking is his position as a pagan – or, at least, an unbaptized Christian – when he made his pilgrimage. Similarly, his adoption of Peter as a baptismal name also appears exceptional amidst the wider surviving evidence for Anglo-Saxon practice, not only among pilgrim-kings but more generally: the Prosopography of Anglo-Saxon England (http://pase.ac.uk) lists, with the possible exception of two obscure instances of Roman catacomb graffiti from the seventh-to-ninth centuries, no Anglo-Saxons using the name Peter until the 1060s. Perhaps comparable, however, are the name changes undertaken in the near-contemporary visits to Rome of the English missionaries Willibrord (695) and Wynfreth (719), whom slightly later sources tell us adopted, under papal auspices, the names Clement and Boniface respectively.
Lastly, the grandeur of Cædwalla’s ad sanctos burial – apparently in the eastern porticus of St Peter’s basilica – appears unmatched among other Anglo-Saxon kings or pilgrims, and seems to have taken place against the context of a wider development of the Vatican complex as a cult and pilgrimage site during the later seventh century (Thacker, 2014). Whatever impact the king’s epitaph may have had upon English pilgrims or the readers of Bede and the syllogae, however, may not have extended to the Roman populace: we find no mention of Cædwalla in the Liber pontificalis’ entry on Pope Sergius (E01701), and no later medieval references to the inscription or tomb (Sharpe, 2005). How long Cædwalla’s Roman memorial endured beyond the eighth century is not known.
Bibliography
EditionsInscriptiones Christianae Urbis Romae, ed. I.B. de Rossi, 2 vols (Rome, 1857-61, 1888), II, i. 288-9; reprinted in H. Leclercq, ‘Ceadwalla,’ in F. Cabrol and H. Leclercq, eds., Dictionnaire d'archéologie Chrétienne et de liturgie (Paris, 1924-53), ii. 2711-12.
Sharpe, R., ‘King Ceadwalla’s Roman Epitaph,’ in K.O. O’Keefe and A. Orchard, eds., Latin Learning and English Lore: Studies in Anglo-Saxon Literature for Michael Lapidge, 2 vols (Toronto, Buffalo and London, 2005), i. 171-93, at 76-9.
Bede’s Ecclesiastical History of the English People, ed. and trans. B. Colgrave and R.A.B. Mynors (Oxford, 1969), v. 7, pp. 470-73 – with a loose verse translation.
Further Reading
Lapidge, M., ‘The Career of Aldhelm,’ Anglo-Saxon England, 36 (2007), pp. 15-69.
Moore, W.J., The Saxon Pilgrims to Rome and the Schola Saxonum (Fribourg, 1937).
Sharpe, R., ‘King Ceadwalla’s Roman Epitaph,’ in K.O. O’Keeffe and A. Orchard, eds., Latin Learning and English Lore: Studies in Anglo-Saxon Literature for Michael Lapidge, 2 vols (Toronto, Buffalo and London, 2005), i. 171-93.
Thacker, A., ‘Rome: the Pilgrims’ City in the Seventh Century,’ in F. Tinti, ed., England and Rome in the Early Middle Ages: Pilgrimage, Art, and Politics (Turnhout, 2014), pp. 89-139.
Yorke, B., ‘Cædwalla [Ceadwalla] (c. 659-689),’ Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (2004), https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/4323
Benjamin Savill
15/06/2018
| ID | Name | Name in Source | Identity | S00036 | Peter, the Apostle | Petrus | Certain |
|---|
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