Page:Archaeologia Volume 13.djvu/359

Rh portico. The word Porticus occurs several times in Bede, Alcuin, Heddius, and other ancient Saxon writers, and is generally translated by the English word Porch, and so misleads us to think it synonymous with Atrium, or Vestibulum, denoting a building withoutside the church, at the entrance into it: whereas this can by no means be agreeable to Bede's meaning; for in his account of king Ethelbert's interment he expresses himself in such terms as will not admit of that sense. He was buried," says Bede, "''in Porticu Sti. Martini intra ecclesiam'' ; which shews that the Porticus was within the church. And likewise in relating the burial of archbishop Theodore, A.D. 690, he fays, he was buried ''in Ecclesiâ Sti. Petri, in quâ omnium Episcoporum Doruveniensium sunt corpora deposita''. In the church of St. Peter, in which all the bodies of the bishops of Canterbury were interred, though he had before said that they were all interred in the north portico, except Theodore and Berctwald, whose bodies were buried in ipsa Ecclesia, in the church itself; because that portico could not conveniently hold any more. To make these several passages in