later than this, but, according to Ste. Marthe (xiii. 846, 866), before 948, Adalbero, bishop of Metz, induced Cadroe to accept the ruined abbey of St. Clement or St. Felix, near Metz, which its new abbot restored and repeopled from Wassor (cf., however, Mabillon, Ann. iii. 500). The latter abbey Cadroe seems henceforward to have ruled by the aid of a prior, paying it visits from time to time. In 948 Cadroe is said to have been made abbot of St. Symphorien at Metz (Ste. Marthe, xiii. 846). Among the list of Cadroe's friends we find many of the most distinguished men of the age, e.g. Adalbero and his brother Frederic, duke of Lorraine from 959 (Frodoard and Sigebert, ap. Pertz, ii. 402, 404, viii. 511); John, abbot of Gorzia (whose life Cadroe had saved from the effects of undue abstinence), Otto's ambassador to the Saracens at Cordova; Theodoric, cousin to Otto I and bishop of Metz (964–84), who ‘venerated Cadroe as a father, knowing him to have the spirit of counsel;’ Agenoald, the famous abbot of Gorzia (ob. c. 968); Anstey, abbot of St. Arnulf, at Ghent (946–60); and Helvidis, abbess of St. Peter's, near Metz, ‘whose like,’ to use Cadroe's own phrase, ‘he had never found among the persons of her sex.’
Shortly before Cadroe's death Adelheid, the widow of Otto I, reached Neheristein on her way to Italy, and sent to Metz to invite Cadroe to visit her. This request the saint, who already felt that death was at hand, reluctantly obeyed, and stayed with the ex-empress for some six days. As he was returning a fever seized him, and he died before he could reach his home at Metz, where he was buried in his own church of St. Felix. At this time, as his contemporary biographer tells us, he had already overpassed the seventieth year of his age, and the thirtieth of his pilgrimage. Ste. Marthe (xiii. 866) says more precisely that he died in 978, after a rule of thirty-two years, at the age of seventy-eight or seventy-nine, but without giving any authority for his statement. The ‘Wassor Chronicle,’ a compilation of the twelfth or thirteenth century, makes him die in the year 998 (ap. D'Achéry, Spicilegium, vii. 543–4). A careful comparison of all the data at our disposal will make it very evident that 940–2 were the years of his pilgrimage from Abernethy to Winchester. We know that Cadroe started in the reign of Constantine, i.e. probably before 943 A.D. (Skene, i. 360); while the mention of Donald, king of Cumberland, helps to fix his visit in this country before 945 A.D. (A.-S. C.) Again, Eric Bloody Axe seems to have been settled in Yorkshire somewhere between the years 937 and 941 (Laing, i. 315, &c.; Rog. Wend. i. 396; A.-S. C. sub 941); for Eric's second reign in Northumberland was not till some years later (Simeon of Durham, sub 949). Again, on reaching Winchester, Egmund (Edmund, from October 940–6) was reigning, while Otto (Odo) was already archbishop of Canterbury, to which office he was appointed 942 A.D. (Stubbs, Register). Hence it is evident that Cadroe can hardly have reached Peronne much before 943 A.D. This date will allow three years for his stay at St. Michael's and Fleury previous to his appointment to Wassor in 946. Reckoning thirty years from this we arrive at the year 976, which may be considered as the approximate date of his death. At all events it is certain from contemporary authority that he stood by the deathbed of John, abbot of Gorzia, who died 973A.D. (‘Vita Johannis,’ ap. Mabillon, A. SS. B. vii. 365, 366, 379, Ann. Bened. iii. 621). On the other hand, it is evident that he did not survive Theodoric of Metz, who died 983 or 984 A.D. (Sigebert, ap. Pertz, iv. 482). These considerations at once dispose of the Bollandist theory which would identify Adelheid's visit to Italy, alluded to above, with a journey mentioned by Dithmar, and by him assigned to the year 988 (Dithmar, ap. Pertz, iii. 767, where, however, we read 984, and not 988 A.D.)
