In the year after Cadwalla’s death in Rome, that is, the year of our Lord 690, Archbishop Theodore, of blessed memory, died old and full of years at the age of eighty-eight. He had long previously told his friends that he would die at this age, which had been foretold to him in a dream. He had held the archbishopric for twenty-two years, and was buried in the church of Saint Peter, where all the bodies of the Archbishops of Canterbury are buried. It may be said of him, as of all his colleagues in the same dignity, that ‘their bodies are buried in peace, but their name liveth for evermore.’ To summarize briefly, the churches of the English made greater progress during his pontificate than they had ever done before. His epitaph publicly and clearly describes his character, life, age, and death to all who visit his tomb. This consists of thirty-four heroic verses, the first of which run:
Here rests the holy Primate in his tomb –
Great Theodore, a Greek by race and name.
A prince of pontiffs, and a blest high priest
Who taught to all his flock the light of truth.
And the last verses are:
The nineteenth of September was the day
That saw his spirit burst its earthly bonds
Rising in rapture to a newer life
In sweet communion with the saints on high,
Theodore’s successor in the archbishopric was Bertwald, Abbot of the monastery of Reculver, which stands on the north bank at the mouth of the river Genlade. Although he can hardly be compared with his predecessor, he was learned in the Scriptures and well versed in ecclesiastical and monastic affairs. He was elected bishop on the first of July in the year of our Lord 692, when Wictred and Swaebhard were kings of Kent: but he was consecrated the following year on Sunday June the twenty-ninth by Godwin, Metropolitan of Gaul, and occupied his see on Sunday the thirty-first of August. Bertwald consecrated many bishops, including Tobias, a man of wide learning and a scholar of Latin, Greek, and Saxon, who became Bishop of Rochester on the death of Gebmund.