[365] Liber Pontificalis, ed. Duchesne, ii. 148; Anastasius in Muratori, SS. III. i. 251; on which see Gregorovius, iii. 149 ff.
[366] u. s. iii. 110.
[367] So Wendover, i. 290, 291 (who makes this unction of Alfred as king at his father’s request, to the exclusion of his elder brothers, one of the main causes of Æthelbald’s revolt); so too a spurious charter, Birch, No. 493; K. C. D. No. 1057.
[368] The eleventh or twelfth cent. Epitome of the Chron. known as MS. F. I may once more protest against the habit of citing this late authority as ‘the Saxon Chronicle,’ without qualification. Mr. Conybeare (u. s. p. 16) goes further, and misrepresents even this poor authority: ‘according to the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle it was on the news of [Æthelbald’s] incestuous union reaching Rome that Leo “hallowed Alfred to king.”’ Æthelbald’s marriage is not mentioned in any MS. of the Chronicle, not even in F.
[369] Gregorovius, iii. 112.
[370] Gesta Regum, i. 109, ii. xxxix.
[371] Lib. Pontif. ii. 111; or Muratori, SS. III. i. 233. For an earlier fire in the same quarter see Chron. 816 and notes. On these foreign ‘schools’ or hostelries at Rome cf. Chron. ii. 69; De’ Rossi, Un Tesoro di monete Anglo Sassoni (1884), pp. 6, 7.
[372] Gregorovius, iii. 87 ff. (a fine description); Ranke, Weltgesch. VI. ii. 1. Compare Alcuin’s fine lines on the state of Rome at the end of the eighth century:
Roma caput mundi, mundi decus, aurea Roma,
Nunc remanet tantum saeua ruina tibi,