Chad's grave-the evidence

Summary. A 2003 archaeological excavation at the east end of the nave revealed the foundation to a shrine tower and within it a grave. Eight reasons are given for believing this was Chad’s grave. It should be marked.

 Context

King Wulfhere gained overlordship of Mercia c. 657-9, possibly by paying tribute to King Oswiu of Northumbria.[1] He then assisted in appointing the third and fourth bishops of Mercia, who came from the north, and most likely built their timber church in the vicinity, perhaps, along the Trent washlands.[2] Bishop Wilfrid, acting as bishop of Mercia, and Wulfhere, between 667 and 669, fixed a new site for a mother church-cathedral beside a stream on a Mercian mudstone slope for the fifth bishop of Mercia (Chad). They called the location Licitfelda, meaning the approved field. Bede 17–19 years later, confirmed the event.[3] See the posts, ‘Wilfrid, creator of the first cathedral’ and ‘Reasons why Lichfield (Licitfelda) had approval’. Bede recorded when Chad died in 672 two churches were present.[4] See the post, ‘Understanding Chad’s grave site’. This is the documentary evidence for two churches, St Peters and St Marys at Lichfield by at the year 672 when Chad was buried at Licetfelda.

Bede stated Wilfrid became the Bishop of the Middle Angles, ?690–692.[5] Then, with Bishop Headda of Lichfield, c. 691 x 716–27, a close relationship with Mercia continued and lasted for eleven years, between 691/2 to 703.^[6] Almost certainly Wilfrid encouraged the cult of Chad, its pilgrimage and Licetfelda as a sacred landscape. This was repeated with Cuthbert at Lindisfarne and in time with Wilfrid at Ripon. Major ecclesiastical centres had noted saints in special shrines.

 

Archaeological evidence

          In 2003, an octagonal hole, 7.5m wide, was dug in the floor at the east end of the nave to install a rising platform.[7] A foundation for a building c. 7 m wide north-south[8] and possibly the same length east-west was found. The walls mostly a metre thick suggested the building was relatively tall.[9] The east end had a tongue of natural clay and this was thought to have been steps into the shrine. Inside was a sunken, possibly lined, pit, 0.8m deep, c. 2m wide and slightly longer[10]; clearly a burial pit or hypogeum (underground tomb). Alternatives, such as a baptistry, were ultimately dismissed.[11]  Rodwell published the outcome of the dig for the cathedral library and later in a magazine.[12] Since the dig there have been implausible suggestions on whether the chamber was much longer and it attached to a church 20m away.[13] Bunce[14] has concluded local burial practices of saint’s graves between c. 600 and 850 in Britain and Ireland explain the variation in the types of shrines including unique Insular shrines. This might be a grave with Insular features.

 

Reconstructed diagram of the shrine tower enclosing the sunken chamber and showing how it was offset to the north. Only the left half of the shrine tower foundation (brown) was uncovered. Only three-quarters of the left side of the pit was excavated.

 

 

Photograph of the excavation area and the grave (outlined in red). Foundation wall is outlined in blue. The midline of the chamber is in yellow.

 

 

 Position of the grave in the current cathedral, 3.5m from the north pillar of the second bay.

The size and shape resembled shrine towers known in Ireland and dated 8th to 9th-century. Such buildings were well under 12m square and usually had a west-facing door.[15] Carver said they were narrow and tall, employed megalithic construction for the walls, enclosed a single room rarely larger than 6 x 4m and had a single western door with an east window.[16] A somewhat similar layout occurred for the Hexham and Ripon crypts.[17]

St Kevin's shrine tower at Glendalough, County Wicklow, Ireland.

 

Reasons for accepting this was Chad’s burial site.

1.     Every aspect suggests a shrine tower built to house the grave of someone special.[18] The shrine resembled those, at least 4, in Ireland[19] each dedicated to hold the remains of a saint. The archaeologist suggested burial offset to the north in a small room 5m square had some resemblance to Christ’s tomb chamber (2.5m long, 1.2m wide and 2.5m high) reconfigured in Constantine’s church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem (which was different from the original rock tomb). The cobbled stone floor suggests many attended the grave. The possible east end door is characteristic for such monuments.

 

Adomnan’s 7th-century drawing of the church of the Holy Sepulchre.

 

2.     Bede recorded Chad’s relics were within a ‘wooden house’, on (ibidem) the original grave.[20] It is entirely plausible the wooden house was exchanged later with a stone sepulchre-chest, see the post ‘Chad’s relics.’ Within the grave and close by were found three pieces of stonework which fitted together to make what is now called ‘The Lichfield Angel’. The head of the angel Gabriel is very similar to the head of King Offa on his coins suggesting he ordered the new shrine chest. Its fine painted detail and being best stone from Ancaster, Lincolnshire, suggests wealth typical of Offa and his archbishopric. The style of Gabriel, especially his Romanesque tunic, closely resembles the incised Gabriel on the left end of Cuthbert’s wooden coffin buried and now exhibited in Durham Cathedral. This equates Offa’s shrine chest for Chad with the shrine and coffin of Cuthbert. See the post, ‘Lichfield Angel.’

3.     A substantial socketed, sandstone block was found next to the sunken chamber and could have been the base to a standing cross.[21] Alternatively, it could have supported an eternal flame from an oil lamp; this has been noted elsewhere with saintly burials such as with Brigid at Kildare in 5th century. Leviticus 6 v13 states "The fire shall ever be burning upon the altar; it shall never go out." It was clearly an extra to the grave and a marker of some kind.

4.     Of the 22 people, some were priests, found above the shrine tower foundation in the 2003 excavation, some had requested burial near St Chad. For example. William Berford who died in 1450 requested burial near his uncle, Dean Stretton, and St Chad. The sunken chamber was not cut by later graves.[22] Rodwell noted broken fragments of incised floor slabs with indents of Purbeck marble and bluestone to show the high status of burials. This was a special grave site. It seems that even in medieval times there was an understanding where Chad was buried and this was largely forgotten, or ignored, until the discoveries of 2003.

5.     It makes sense that when the current cathedral was built the remains of Chad were removed from the nave area to be housed in St Peter’s Head Chapel on the south side of the choir. The nave then became an open area for the attendance of worshippers kept separate from the main church to the east of the crossing. Pilgrims and penitents could be ushered from the south door, along the south choir aisle to St Peter’s Head Chapel and then returned to the doorway. This explains the medieval practice of exhibiting relics, not graves, and why the grave was empty of bones in 2003.

6.     The sunken chamber had been infilled with soil and rubble and a tiled floor laid across. On top was a board, possibly a coffin lid, and on this was a little twisted skeleton of an aged man. He was thought to have been a pilgrim and the depth of burial suggested 15th century. Across his pelvis and legs was a tree branch around 3cm thick thought to have been his staff. By his right side of his thigh was the remains of a large round pouch or scrip and around his waist was a hint of a leather belt. It is either an odd coincidence or a deliberate burial of perhaps a distinguished pilgrim on top of Chad’s grave. No other pilgrim has been found.

7.     The grave is positioned in the centre of the current cathedral and close to the centre of the Close and therefore the middle of the 7th century settlement. If the layout of the monasterium was a series of rings as seen in Irish-Celtic monasteries and thought to be at Iona, see the post ‘A sacred layout for the first cathedral,’ then it is central to the site.

8.     A recent review of features seen in the excavation has supported the notion this was an early grave.[23] Rodwell[24] in 2006 wrote, “We now have fair reason to believe we have found the secondary burial place, that is after translation,[25] of St Chad.” No one has disputed this.

     Surprisingly, the location of the grave has not been marked or noted in the cathedral and visitors sometimes remark on this. Instead, pilgrims have finished their journey with prayers at the shrine at the east end of the cathedral. It would be fitting to have a portable cross or eternal candle above the site of the grave. There is no other ecclesiastical centre in England where the grave site of the patron saint is unmarked. This is important if it is thought significant to establish the cult in the way it was. Crook expressed it as, early Christian writers (in Roman times) knew the devout visited holy graves because in a mysterious way they believed the saint, though dead in body, continued to maintain contact with the earthly sphere through the physical remains that they had left behind.[]26The bones (and grave) provided a channel of communication between earth and heaven. The grave provided a source of spiritual power, such as healing infirmities.

[1] No battle or skirmish is known. Three ealdormen proclaimed Wulfhere king of the Mercians. See F. M. Stenton, Anglo-Saxon England, (Oxford: 1989), 84. Perhaps, Christian King Oswiu had an arrangement with Christian King Wulfhere.

[2] The cathedral seems fond of stating a church on the site since the year 700, but in fact there must have been a church on or close by in 659 and certainly one by 669. That is, over 1350 years ago.

[3] Historia Ecclesiastica Gentis Anglorum. The ecclesiastical history of the English People, 731. Bede listed this work as Historiam ecclesiasticam nostræ insulæ ac gentis in libris V, which translates to, The ecclesiastical history of our island and nation in five books.

[4] Ibid, Book 4 chapter 3.

[5] HE Book 4, chapter 23. This is often stated to be centred on Leicester, but there is no evidence for a see at Leicester before 737. It is unclear why Bede confined Wilfrid’s activity to the Middle Angles in the early 690s. See A. Thacker, ‘Wilfrid, his cult and his biographer.’ Wilfrid Abbot, Bishop, Saint. Papers from the 1300th Anniversary Conference, ed. N. J. Higham. (Donington, 2013), 8.

[6] M. Capper, ‘Prelates and politics: Wilfrid, Oundle and the Middle Angles’. Wilfrid Abbot, Bishop, Saint. Papers from the 1300th Anniversary Conference, ed. N. J. Higham. (Donington, 2013), 262.

[7] A four-lobed shaped area of floor, 38 m², can be raised 300 mm in two stages to form a platform for the altar table to be higher and seen from the end of the nave. The eight-tonne floor uses six electrically operated, precision, screw jacks, not hydraulics. The perimeter stone is 170 mm thick, but the inner stone is only 20 mm thick. Manchester Cathedral copied the mechanism.

[8] Drawing shows a width of c .6.7 metres (22 feet or 1.5 short perches), see W. Rodwell, ‘Archaeological excavation in the nave of Lichfield Cathedral’. (Unpublished report held in Lichfield Cathedral Library, 2003), 15.

[9] A modern term for such a building is a shrine chapel. However, a shrine in Medieval Latin was called a cappella, which translated to chapele and by the 13th-century became a chapel. The word is therefore relatively recent. It is not known what the shrine tower might have been called.

[10] A squarish grave was not thought to be unusual, especially if it was a crypt-shaped chamber like that at Repton.

[11] No lead lining was found. Often baptism used a large lead pot. The river south of the cathedral was probably more likely to be used for baptism,

[12] W. Rodwell, Archaeological excavation in the nave of Lichfield Cathedral. Lichfield, Unpub. report in Lichfield Cathedral Library. (2003). Also W. Rodwell, Revealing the history of the Cathedral. 4. Archaeology of the Nave Sanctuary. 67th Annual Report to the Friends of Lichfield Cathedral held in Lichfield Cathedral Library. (2004). Also W. Rodwell, ‘The forgotten cathedral.’ Current Archaeology, (2006), 18, 1 (205), 9–17.

[13] Rodwell thought the distance between the choir foundations and the nave foundations, c. 20m, was considerable and belonged to two separate buildings in an east-west alignment.[13] Sargent repeated the notion of one long church with the sepulchral of Chad at the west end and the altar of St Peter at the east end.[13] There is a difficulty with the alignment and the length of this church. Also implausible is the housing of a saint’s shrine at the west end of a church in the 7th-century; elsewhere the saint was buried in a porticus on the side of the nave and near the altar.

[14] M. Bunce, Shrines and special graves in Britain and Ireland c.600-850, (2022). PhD thesis University of Oxford.

[15] T. Ó Carragáin, ‘The architectural setting of the cult of relics in early medieval Ireland’ The J. of the Royal Soc. of Antiquaries of Ireland, 133 (2003) 66.

[16] M. Carver, Formative Britain. An archaeology of Britain, fifth to eleventh century A.D. (London and New York, 2019), 569. Carver cites Iona (beneath St Columba’s House), Tighlagheany (Co. Galway), Teach Molaise (on Inishmurray) and St Columb’s (Co Meath) as examples, p. 570.

[17] R. N. Bailey, ‘St Wilfrid – a European Anglo-Saxon’ Wilfrid Abbot, Bishop, Saint. Papers from the 1300th Anniversary Conferences, ed. N. J. Higham (Donington, 2013), 122.

[18] Rodwell, ‘Lichfield Cathedral. Archaeology of the Sanctuary’, 4.

[19] Possibly also Patrick’s chapel at Heysham on the Morecambe coast.

[20] Were the dimensions those of Christ’s tomb chamber at Jerusalem, namely, 2.5m long, 1.2m wide and 2.5m high?

[21] Rodwell conjectured it was one of four uprights with a canopy on top, but this is very speculative. Finding one post-hole cannot justify claiming a canopy needing several supporting columns.

[22] Around half of the 22 graves found were 13th to 15th-century. The youngest grave was 1810.

[23] A. Sargent, Lichfield and the Lands of St Chad: creating community in Early Medieval Mercia (Hatfield, 2020), 117.

[24] See note 10, Rodwell (2006), 13

[25] Bede is clear the ‘constructa’ or wooden house was ‘ibidem’ on the same spot as the grave. Some Latinists of Bede have mis-translated this description. His relics would not have been taken into St Peter’s church, unless the church had a side chamber and Chad was a minor saint.

[26] J. Crook, English Medieval Shrines. (Woodbridge: 2011), 5.