monastery was still proceeding under reeves of his own selection. But the ‘yellow plague’ which was then devastating Northumbria (Bede, iii. 27) penetrated even to his secluded moorland retreat, and Cedd himself was one of the first victims. He died on 26 Oct. (Flor. Wig. M. H. B. 532 d). His body, at first buried in the churchyard, was afterwards removed to a more magnificent tomb on the right of the high altar of the stone church that took the place of the original wooden building. Ceadda succeeded his brother at Lastingham. Thirty monks of Cedd's earlier foundation at Ithanchester hurried to Lastingham that they might either live or die in the neighbourhood of their ‘father's’ sainted body, and were all, except one boy, cut off by the plague. Next year (665) terror of the plague drove the East Saxons back again to their old gods (Bede, H. E. iii. 30).
A successful missionary and a zealous monk, Cedd was perhaps more at home in his evangelistic wanderings and monastic seclusion than in the work of governing and organising the East-Saxon church. It is remarkable that the copious narrative of his life never speaks of him as bishop of London. Either the great city was Mercian, or at least independent of Essex, or the disciple of Aidan preferred to dwell in seclusion with his monks in the wilds of eastern Essex to fixing his bishop's see in the bustling city. Later writers have put him second to Mellitus in the long catalogue of London bishops (e.g. Flor. Wig. M. H. B. p. 617 b; Will. Malm. Gesta Pontificum, bk. ii.), but Bede only knew him as bishop of the East Saxons. Cedd soon became celebrated among the saints of the old English church. He was the pattern of life and doctrine for his more famous brother. Years afterwards, when Ceadda also ended his saintly career, an Anglian anchorite in an Irish monastery saw in a vision the soul of Cedd descending from heaven in the midst of the angel host to conduct his brother's soul back with him to the celestial kingdom.
[All we know of Cedd comes from Bede's Historia Ecclesiastica Gentis Anglorum, bk. iii. cc. 21, 22, 23, 25, bk. iv. 3. Bede got his information from the monks of Lastingham (Preface to H. E.). Florence of Worcester is sometimes useful in interpreting Bede. William of Malmesbury's Gesta Pontificum, bk. ii., and Capgrave's Legenda Sanctorum Angliæ, fol. 56, give nothing in addition. The Bollandist account, Acta Sanctorum, Januarii, tom. i. p. 373, comes from Bede. It gives Cedd's day as 7 Jan. on the authority of the Martyrologium Anglicanum. Of more recent writings, the article in the Dictionary of Christian Biography and Dr. Bright's chapters of Early English Church History are the fullest.]
CEDMON, Saint. [See Cædmon.]
CELECLERECH, CILIAN, {{sc|Saint) (7th cent.) [See Cilian.]
CELESIA, DOROTHEA (1738–1790), poet and dramatist, daughter of David Mallet, the poet, by his first wife Susanna, was baptised at Chiswick on 11 Oct. 1738 (Memoir of Mallet prefixed to his Ballads and Songs, by F. Dinsdale). As a child she was remarkable for brightness. Thomson, in a letter to Mallet, dated 9 Aug. 1745, speaks of his having met ‘two servants of yours, along with charming little Dolly.’ In early life she was married to Signor Pietro Paolo Celesia, a Genoese patrician, who while residing here as ambassador from 1755 to 1759 had been honoured by admission to the Royal Society and Society of Antiquaries. Mrs. Celesia accompanied her husband on his return to Italy in 1759, and thenceforward resided at Genoa, except for one brief interval in 1784, when Celesia was gazetted minister plenipotentiary to the court of Spain (Woodward and Cates, Encyclop. of Chronology, p. 299). During the summer of 1768 she wrote an adaptation of Voltaire's ‘Tancrède’ and offered it to Garrick, who had been her father's friend and her guest while travelling in Italy (Private Correspondence of Garrick, 1831–2, i. 354, 379, 399, 415). After undergoing some modifications at the hands of Garrick the piece, under the title of ‘Almida,’ was brought out at Drury Lane on 12 Jan. 1771, with a well-written prologue by W. Whitehead, Garrick himself contributing the epilogue. Thanks to Mrs. Barry's inimitable performance as the heroine, aided by some excellent scenery, the play kept the boards for about ten nights, a success far beyond its merits, for while the numbers are uncouth, the plot where it deviates from the original is improbable (Baker, Biographia Dramatica, 1812, i. 97, ii. 20). It was printed the same year with the title ‘Almida, a Tragedy, as it is performed at the Theatre Royal in Drury Lane, by a Lady,’ 8vo, London, 1771. The year following there appeared ‘Indolence, a poem, by the author of Almida,’ 4to, London, 1772, which is commonplace. Mrs. Celesia died at Genoa in September 1790 (Scots Mag. liii. 203). Her husband, who filled several important offices in the legislature of his native city, survived until 12 Jan. 1806.
[Genest's History of the Stage, v. 295–7.]
