Interea dux regi suggessit. The whole story of the visit to Rome is elaborated. The king, who is Alfred (see supra 78), furnishes gifts: both Athelm and Alfred die nearly at the same time. The writer had plainly identified Athelm with the alderman of Wilts who bore Alfred's gifts to Rome in 887, and died shortly before the king in 898: see A.S. Chron. sub annis. This identification sufficiently explains his statement as to Oda's premature ordination. If we suppose Oda to have lived to be 90, he must have been born in 868, and would have been only 19 when, being already in priest's orders, he accompanied Athelm to Rome.
per sex continuos dies. Athelm's sudden heart-attack is extended into an illness of six days, and he is made to send all his companions on before him with the exception of Oda. The king to whom Oda is introduced on his return is King Alfred, and not, as in the earlier account, the king who, on hearing of the miracle, made him bishop of Wilts (namely, King Athelstan).
80. Scireburnae, nunc autem Sarisburiae. Hermann, bishop of Ramsbury (or Wilts) 1045, and also of Sherborne (or Dorset), removed the see of the united dioceses to Old Sarum c. 1075. Hence the confusion between Wilts and Sherborne, which we have already noted in certain Canterbury copies of charters.
Anno, &c. The story of the restoration of King Athelstan's sword by Bishop Oda at the battle of Brunanburh does not appear in the early sources.
81. Ne pontifex ecclesia sua relicta ad aliam migret. This was an important element in the charges against Pope Formosus half a century earlier; but the controversy seems at that time to have found no echoes in England. In 1122 Eadmer, who had been elected and enthroned as bishop of St Andrews, though not yet consecrated, when urged to resign his claim, declared that this was not possible: the bishops whom he had consulted held 'eum ecclesiam quam canonice electus regendam susceperat nulla ratione iuxta scita canonum indemnatum dimittere posse' (Hist. Nov. iv, p. 299). Similarly, he tells how Hervey, bishop of Bangor, failed to get himself translated either to Lisieux or to Ely, so long as Anselm lived (ibid. iii. 139, Pope Paschal's letter: ( Gualensis episcopi causam sacris omnino canonibus obviare non nescis'; and ibid. iv, p. 211).
Oda's objection is represented as being overcome by the precedents of Mellitus of London and Justus of Rochester; but he could not have been unaware that his immediate predecessors, Athelm and Wulfhelm, had been translated from Wells; apart from these, indeed, the only other precedent was that of Cuthbert, bishop of Hereford in 736, translated to Canterbury in 740.
