Abstract. Bishop Langton left money to have a special shrine made in Paris and to be placed in front of his Lady Chapel. The shrine, c. 1307, consisted of a jewelled stone plinth on which was a model of a church, probably the cathedral, in silver and gold. There might have been a gilded, wooden coped roof to raise up and reveal the shrine. Many small statues surrounded the shrine. It was almost certainly the most sumptuous medieval art, but was desecrated in 1538 with Reformation. A new shrine has been added to the retrochoir and is said to contain one bone of Chad.
At least six shrines for Chad have been described in incomplete form. The first was the original grave site in the nave area described by Bede and later covered with a shrine chest of which the 'Lichfield Angel' is part of the left end. The second was a reliquary chapel which can only loosely be connected with Chad's relics. The third is 'Langton's shrine' in the retroquire and facing the shrine (Lady) chapel at the east end. Then there were three portable shrines, one with a gilded skull, another with his right arm bones and a third with bones in a rectangular box.
Langton's Shrine
Drawing by Revd William Stukeley (1687 – 1765) of stonework believed to
have been part of Chad’s shrine. It was possibly done on his travels through
the north Midlands in 1725.[5]
Isolated stone kept in the cathedral. Might have come from a shrine.
The shrine of St Chad until November 2022.
There were three altars to Chad by the 14th-century. Masses were said at the 'saint's altar in the nave', Bishop Stretton equipped an altar by Langton's shrine in 1378, and at some unknown time an altar was completed in what is now St Chad's Head Chapel.
Langton's shrine was plundered in 1538 as part of the Reformation. There is an account by William Stukeley, 1715, of the defaced St Chad's tomb being stored in St Peter's Chapel.[6] This might have been the room above the vestibule and now part of the cathedral library, but could also be the retrochoir where it stood originally. It is not known what happened to the remains which considering its importance is a mystery. Losing something of this size and weight, no matter how degraded, is very odd.The spot where the shrine stood was possibly the place where a Paget monument was raised in 1577 to the memory of William, Lord Paget of Beaudesert, died 1563, his eldest son and heir Henry, died 1568, and their respective wives. It was destroyed during the Civil War sieges.
The new shrine has a container for one bone and stands below a chandelier of candles in an oval shape. It bears no relationship to Langton’s shrine.
St Chad’s new shrine.
Only three medieval mosaic pavements survive; two in Westminster abbey at the shrine of St Edward the Confessor and one in Canterbury cathedral for the shrine of St Thomas Becket. The Cosmati pavements added to the splendour of the shrines and at Westminster Abbey the tomb of Henry III. Canterbury’s pavement of cut and shaped stone dates from c. 1182–4 and now lies in front of the shrine of Becket in the Trinity Chapel located here in 1220. This pavement could have been the inspiration for Westminster’s Cosmatesque mosaics in the 1260s.[7] It is possible Langton would also have wanted a similar pavement in the retrochoir floor.
Lichfield’s ‘cosmati’. This is Henry Moore’s monument organised by G.
Gilbert Scott, 1876, for the archdeacon of Stafford. The cosmati-like
decoration contains green, red, white, blue, black and ochre stones.[8]
[1] He left landed property in eleven counties. Many of the properties were large houses.
[2] Includes a Bishop’s
palace on the east wall and also at Eccleshall, strengthened battlements around
the Close, the upper west front and towers of the cathedral and much more.
[3] R. N. Swanson, ‘Extracts
from a Fifteenth-Century Lichfield Chapter Act Book’, in A Medieval Miscellany
(being SHC, 4th series, XX, 2004), 129–70 (at 142–3).
[4] D. Lepine, ‘Glorius
Confessor: The cult of St Chad at Lichfield Cathedral during the Middle Ages’. SAHS
transactions, (2021), 35.
[5] W. Stukeley. ‘Itinerarium Curiosum: or an account of the antiquities and remarkable curiosities in nature and art observed in travels through Great Britain’. (London: 1776).
[6] An account supposed to be written by W. Stukeley around 1715 now lost. It is known from a manuscript entitled ‘Commonplace book of collections for Staffordshire History by S. Pegge dated about 1757 and now MS 302 in the William Salt Library, 243–247. It was recorded again by N. J. Tringham, ‘An early eighteenth-century description of Lichfield Cathedral’, South Staffordshire Archaeological and Historical Society Transactions, (1988), 28, 55–63. T. Cox, Survey of the ancient and present state of Great Britain, (London: 1738), 254, repeats the assertion the defaced Langton’s shrine plinth was kept in St Peter’s Chapel after the Civil War restoration. On Gale’s groundplan of the Cathedral, 1720, St Peter’s chapel is the retroquire, the location where the plinth shrine always stood.
[7] W. Rodwell, ‘Cosmati at Canterbury Cathedral? Current Archaeology, (April 2023), 397, 46–51.
[8] G. T. Noszlopy and F. Waterhouse, Public sculpture of Staffordshire and the Black Country. (Liverpool: 2005), 229.
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