Egbert, archbishop of York, recovers the pall. In the year of our Lord 745, Egbert, archbishop «f York, laudably recovered the pall, which had been omitted to be received by eight bishops, from the time of Paulinus the first archbishop of York. Cruelty of the emperor. In the year of our Lord 746, Daniel, bishop of Winchester, ended his days, in the forty-fourth year of his episcopate, and was succeeded by Humfrid. A t this time, the emperor Constantino, giving himself up to magical arts, and to bloody sacrifices and riotous excess, caused numbers of the monks and clergy to be stoned for the true faith; in all which things he had for his abettor the false patriarch of Constantinople, Anastasius, who loved earthly dignity; for which cause the indignation of Heaven came upon the inhabitants of that city, admonishing the impious emperor to restrain his excessive rage, but he refused to amend his course ; therefore there came a pestilence from Sicily and Calabria, where it commenced, and so desolated the royal city that in many houses there was not found a single inhabitant; and such was the violence with Which it attacked Anastasius, that he vomited up, as it were, the excrements of his belly, and died a miserable death. Stars are seen to fall from heaven. In the year of our Lord 747, stars were seen to fall from heaven, insomuch that all who saw them thought the end of the world was at hand. Miracle of St. Benedict. In the year of our Lord 748, the monks of the monastery of Cassino, at the instance of Charlemagne, obtained letters from pope Zacharias to Pepin king of the Franks, commanding the restoration of the body of the most blessed Benedict to its proper place, from whence it had been stolen by the monks of Fleury ; that so the aforesaid servants of God might rejoice in the restitution of their father, and the others be rewarded of God. On reading this letter, the pious king Pepin despatched Remigius, archbishop of Rouen, with VOL. I. L