Langton's shrine

Summary.  Bishop Langton funded a sumptuous shrine to house Chad’s relics, c. 1307-8. This medieval artwork was desecrated in the Reformation, 1538.

      At least five shrines for Chad have been described. 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. 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 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. The last is the current shrine in the retrochoir.

  Langton’s shrine

Bishop Walter de Langton,1296–1321, was the wealthiest of all the medieval bishops of Lichfield.[1] He left in his will funds to complete the Lady Chapel  and probably made provision for the completion of the cathedral.[2] Around 1303, money recorded as £2120, was given to Paris goldsmiths to make a stone monument for Chad’s new shrine in the retroquire.[3] It could have been in place by 1307- 8, later dates have been given; which was before the Lady Chapel was built. This rich monument would be equal in splendour with the Crown of Thorns shrine at Sainte-Chapelle, Edward’s tomb in Westminster Abbey and Becket’s shrine, 1220 – 1538, at Canterbury. It must have been the most sumptuous monument. In one year, the shrine brought in £400 income from pilgrims.

 

Recreated Chad’s shrine much based on Becket’s shrine. If similar, pulleys lifted a wooden chest canopy upwards to expose the casket on an elaborate plinth. It was decorated with 6 rubies, 5 sapphires, 15 large emeralds, 16 pearls and many small stones. Some jewels were set in an image of Chad. It is unclear which relics were kept in the casket, and which were still in St Chad’s Head Chapel. Pilgrims would have left many valuable offerings around the shrine, such as rings, brooches and necklaces. Permission for the image was given from The Centre for the study of Christianity and Culture, University of York, 2018.

     There is an incomplete description of this stone and metal shrine. An inventory of 1445[4] described a large rectangular jewel-encrusted gilt reliquary in the shape of a church, presumably the cathedral. The bell tower was surmounted with an enamelled gilded crucifix. It had cockle shells on its roof, with figures of saints, St Chad, Mary and probably Michael, on the sides. St Chad was richly adorned with jewels including a jewelled gold clasp with an image of the Angelic Salutation and a gold brooch with an image of the lamb of God. There were two large crystal stones and a block of crystal, a gilded ring and seven collars. The figure of the Virgin was decorated with nine pearls, three rubies, and a sapphire. A statue of St Katherine was listed. A gilded collar or necklace with a pendant portrait of St John the Evangelist was mentioned together with a pendant with images of swans. The west face had a gold clasp with an enamelled falcon surrounded by eight clusters of pearls, each with a diamond. The whole shrine might have had a hood that could be raised and lowered with a chain, much like Thomas Becket’s shrine. Langton’s shrine was almost as lavish as Henry III’s shrine for Edward the Confessor, had similarities to shrines at Rouen, Nivelles and Beverley and would have out shone most; it is undoubtedly a lost masterpiece of medieval religious art.[5] Lepine linked the shrine with a 'golden age of translation and remodelling,' 1270-1350 for such saints as Richard at Chichester, Hugh at Lincoln, William at York, Alban at St Albans and Erkenwald at St Pauls.

Drawing by Revd William Stukeley, 1687–1765, of stonework some say to have been part of Chad’s shrine.  The drawing was possibly done on Stukeley’s travels through the north Midlands in 1725.[6]

 

Isolated stone kept in the cathedral. It might have come from a shrine.

 

It is likely Langton’s shrine was not in place in the retroquire until May 1360 with the building of the Lady Chapel and then the remodelling of the choir. Where it stood before then is unknown, but one guess is the well decorated arcade in the south aisle where there is a trinity fresco on the wall. Its final place where there is now a portable shrine to Chad was the work of Bishop Stretton in 1378.

The shrine to St Chad until November 2022.

St Chad’s new shrine. Shrine cabinet housing a feretory containing an encolpium.

Reformation, 1534.

In 1536, Richard Layton and Thomas Leigh visited the cathedral to find ‘superstitious’ items that needed to be removed according to the edicts from Henry VIII. They stated, pilgrimage is held to St Chad and inevitably anything to do with this would have to be removed as part of the Reformation of churches.

It is presumed Chad's shrine was plundered in 1538 in a way conducted in other cathedrals. Thomas Becket’s shrine at Canterbury was degraded from August 11 to 19, 1538, and gold and silver removed sufficient to fill 26 waggons. There is no recorded date when this happened at Lichfield in 1538 and the manner of desecration is unknown. Lepine⁵ thought gold and precious jewels were removed. Wharton[7] stated Bishop Roland Lee successfully petitioned the king to keep part of the shrine for the use of the cathedral. H.E. Savage[8] presumed the structural feretory was saved, but the accumulated treasures were removed. There is an account by William Stukeley, 1715, of the defaced St Chad's tomb being stored in St Peter's Chapel.[9] This might have been the room above the vestibule and now part of the cathedral library, but more likely was 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 unfortunate. 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 current shrine has a container for one, very degraded, small bone and stands below a chandelier of candles in an oval shape. It bears no relationship to Langton’s shrine.

 Speculation on Langton’s retrochoir floor?

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 at Westminster Abbey and 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.[10] 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.[11]

 

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[1] He left landed property in eleven counties.

[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] A Lichfield Muniment Inventory of 1345 estimated the value at £2000.

[4] 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).

[5] D. Lepine, ‘Glorius Confessor: The cult of St Chad at Lichfield Cathedral during the Middle Ages’. SAHS transactions, (2021), 33–5 and 51.

[6] 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).

[7] H. Wharton, Anglia Sacra, (1691), I, 457-8.

[8]  H. E. Savage, The Cathedral and the Chapter 1530–1553. Unpub. articled in the cathedral library, (1927), 8.

[9] 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.

[10] W. Rodwell, ‘Cosmati at Canterbury Cathedral? Current Archaeology, (April 2023), 397, 46–51.

[11] G. T. Noszlopy and F. Waterhouse, Public sculpture of Staffordshire and the Black Country. (Liverpool: 2005), 229.