Chad's bone relics

Summary. Chad’s bones, from the end of the 7th-century, were in a ‘wooden house’ on his grave. They were in a dedicated chapel by the 13th-century in separate reliquaries. In the 14th-century they were in a sumptuous shrine. All bones were removed at Reformation.

     Archaeology over five days under the floor at the east end of the nave in 2003 revealed Chad’s grave dug in 672.[1] His relics were translated by being placed on his grave (ibidem), and inside a small, wooden house (a constructa described as a domuncula feretrum),[2] which eventually was housed inside a shrine tower.[3]

Moore manuscript passage, Historia Ecclesiastica page 156, fol. 74v and translation. The translation follows the new explication explained in the post. ‘Chad’s burial’.

AI rendition of a ‘little wooden house’ in a shrine tower.

The grave was near the church of St Mary and on the site of the main church of St Peters. The wooden house was most likely replaced by a stone chest box during Offa’s reign, late 8th-century, and part of the stonework is the Lichfield Angel. It is assumed the relics were at this nave location until the tenth, eleventh or possibly as late as the twelfth-century.

Chad’s grave and shrine chapel photographed in 2003. The description is from Rodwell 2004. The foundation was mortared, but an adjacent wall was not. T. ó Carragáin believes the shrine chapels in Ireland were the earliest mortared buildings.[4]

 

During excavation a King Edgar silver penny was found within a pit. This suggested Chad’s relics were being accessed, perhaps relocated, perhaps kept in a new shrine, during or after this king’s reign in the 10th-century.[5]

 

King Edgar silver penny. Obverse has +EADGAR RE around a small cross pattée within an inner circle. Reverse has INGEL-RI for the moneyer Ingelrics based at Derby. He minted coins showing a rosette and with MO in the field which means money, coin or die and is a feature of Mercian mints. Little is known on this moneyer which makes it unusual. Thanks to Dane Kurth of wildwinds.com.

 

It is presumed the relics, now considered to be of a major saint in England, were moved from the nave when the cathedral was built early in the 13th century.[6] Willis suggested they were moved to a chapel behind the high altar; a translation seen in other cathedrals.[7] An endowment in 1176 for six shillings was given for a light to be kept burning at the saint’s shrine.[8] This could have been at Chad’s grave site in the nave, in a chapel behind the high altar, or possibly in an early chapel on the south side of the choir, see the post ‘Two early chapels’. Moving the relics from the middle of the cathedral to the east end has been explained by allowing pilgrimage without disturbing worship. The nave was a point of assembly for pilgrims who had entered the cathedral by the south door. They were then escorted along the south choir aisle to access the relics in St Chad’s Chapel and then later a shrine in the retrochoir by the Lady Chapel without disturbing the opus dei in the choir and presbytery.[9] The justification for moving Chad's relics, bones in a portable reliquary box, from the nave to a dedicated chapel nearer the high altar is based on the presumption of having a shrine within the inner church near the high altar. It is in line with practice seen elsewhere,[10] but it is unclear whether, or when, it happened.[11]

Layout of the cathedral showing the four locations of Chad’s relics,

 

Sometime, c. 1230,  the relics were moved to a suite of secure rooms added to the south side of the choir.[12] There is no evidence that the shrine was moved in either 1148 or 1296 as suggested in the entry for Chad in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.[13] This relocation is simply based on what happened to relics in other cathedrals.[14] Therefore, the best interpretation is the relics were probably in St Chad’s Head Chapel for a comparatively short time before being ultimately being placed in Langton’s shrine facing the Lady Chapel by at the latest 1378.[15] This shrine was sumptuous and cost Langton over £2K in 1303.

AI recreated Chad’s shrine much based on Becket’s shrine. If similar, pulleys lifted a pitched, wooden chest canopy upwards to expose the casket on an elaborate oblong plinth. On the plinth was a model church, presumably the cathedral. 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, if relics were still in St Chad’s Head Chapel. It is presumed there was an aperture to view the relics. Pilgrims would have left many valuable offerings around the shrine, such as rings, brooches and necklaces. Permission given from The Centre for the study of Christianity and Culture, University of York, 2018.

Another AI rendition of how Bishop Langton’s shrine for Chad might have looked.

A sacrist’s roll for 1335 revealed the relics had been divided into at least three parts;[16] it is not known when this division occurred. The roll described ‘a certain portable shrine’ which was taken far afield in search of offerings. Bells were rung when it left and when it returned to the cathedral. [17]  

His skull, now thought to be lined in gold, was in a painted, church-shaped, wooden box, called a chef, with a jewelled mitre above. It was kept in the Chapel of St Chad, late 14th-century.[18] This is not to be confused with a separate altar to St Chad concerned with the memory of Chad.[19]

 

AI Chad's skull reliquary in St Chad's Head Chapel

 

Head reliquaries also occurred at Canterbury (St Swithun, Blaise, Fursa and Austroberht), Lincoln (St Ursula), Chichester (St Richard), York (St Thomas and Hugh), Worcester (St Oswald and Wulfstan) and Perranzabuloe (St Piran). At Lichfield there was a special shrine keeper for Chad's relics, attested in 1481.[20] Alongside the head was the right arm encased in a silver-gilt reliquary shaped as a hand and arm with the fingers placed to give a blessing.

AI gen. arm reliquary being used to bless the sick

 

An inventory of artefacts held by the cathedral,1445, was lost, but an extract exists.[21] It lists an arm reliquary weighing 4.5 lbs. Some bones were in a portable box shrine encrusted with jewels, and kept in the sacristy. This could have been the reliquary used in the liturgy, displayed in processions and sometimes taken around the diocese to raise funds. It would enhance the liturgy on principal feast days, such as for the Virgin Mary, and on Chad’s death day of March 2nd. Possibly, some bones were kept by the high altar. Chad’s grave site was also venerated by pilgrims and there are citations in the years 1325, 1426 and 1450 of requested burial or prayer next to the tomb of St Chad. If this was Chad’s grave, it shows the location was known in the 15th-century and subsequently forgotten until re-found in 2003.

AI gen. of a priest holding Chad’s skull from St Chad’s Head gallery to show pilgrims below in the south choir aisle. It is uncertain whether this ever happened.

Reformation, 1534, proscribed the use of relics. Chad's shrine was destroyed, presumably soon after Becket’s shrine was dismantled in August 1538. Although the gold and precious jewels at Langton’s shrine near the Lady Chapel were removed (most likely Chad’s gold skull as well?), Bishop Lee petitioned the king to keep part of the shrine for the cathedral’s use. Despite this, some bones were lost. When it became apparent the relics held by the cathedral were to be destroyed, Arthur Dudley, a cathedral prebendary, secretly removed[22] the bones and left them with two nieces in his family, in Russells Hall, Dudley.[23] 

A priest securing the casket of Chad’s relics. Reconstructed from a window in St Chad’s Cathedral, Birmingham.

It is said the two sisters became afraid of holding onto proscribed relics when soldiers were hunting Catholic Priests in the area. They entrusted the bones to near neighbours Henry and William Hodgetts (Hodsheeds or Hoodsheeds[24]), Catholic recusants of High Arcal Farm in Woodsetton, Sedgley, Dudley. William died in 1649 and his widow gave some relics back to his brother Henry.[25] Just before Henry died in 1651, he gave some bones to the Jesuit priest, Peter Turner, who was administering the Last Rites.[26] It is thought the brothers had given bones to their wider family and in time were lost. On Peter’s death the remaining fragments, together with a written description, were given to a royalist and recusant member of the Leveson family in Willenhall. In 1658, a soldier’s raid on the Leveson house resulted in the loss of some of the bones. Why only some are taken is a mystery; it suggests the bone collection had been split up again and were held in different reliquaries. The remaining bones and paperwork were added in 1665 to a new casket with a dome lid, covered in red velvet and with silver hinges and locks. By c.1667, they were at a house called Boscobel owned by the Fitzherbert’s family. In 1667, a visitor from St Omer, France, was given ‘a particle of St Chad’s relics.’[27] There is a reference that some bones were taken to Flanders in 1669, and by 1671 were in Liège. By the mid-18th century, they were in the hands of Basil Fitzherbert of Swynnerton Hall, near Stoke-on-Trent, for safe-keeping. Basil died in 1797 and in time the family moved back to Aston Hall, near Stone, and left the casket in its closed chapel. There is a story that a key was found in Swynnerton Hall with a label stating the relics of Chad were now at Aston Hall. On investigation the key opened a chest in which lay six bones. In 1837, the chapel was reopened by Benjamin Hulme and he discovered a casket underneath the altar containing six bones wrapped in silk with the paperwork stating what they were.

AI rendition of finding 6 bones in a casket in 1837.

 

The bones were taken to Oscott, Birmingham, for examination. After careful consideration a report was sent to Rome where Pope Gregory XVI confirmed that these were the bones of St Chad and instructed, they be enshrined in the new cathedral in Birmingham. They were placed in a shrine designed by Pugin above the High Altar on the day of consecration on 21 June 1841.[28] The high altar reliquary contained a box with five incomplete bones. A sixth bone was housed in a separate reliquary displayed on the altar of St Edward’s side-chapel.

In 1995, Archbishop Couve de Murville arranged for a fresh examination of the bones by the University of Oxford Archaeology Unit.[29] The report concluded that one bone was 8th or 9th-century, but the other five were all of the middle 7th-century. Cut marks on the bones were evident and there was much degradation. The viability of DNA analysis was explored, but considered impracticable. Two of the bones were left leg femurs. It was thought a left femur; two tibiae and part of a humerus belonged to one body. The church holds it is reasonably certain that at least one and possibly three of the bones were those of Chad. In 1997, a Decree required the bones should be kept together and venerated collectively. However, one bone in November 2022 was returned to the cathedral and is now kept in a reordered shrine.

New shrine of Chad

 

It has been claimed some more bones were held by the Jesuits (Society of Jesus) and eventually archived at Stonyhurst College, Clitheroe, Lancashire.

 

Why were Chad’s relics so important?

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 they had left behind.[30] The bones and grave provided a channel of communication between earth and heaven. The grave provided a source of spiritual power, such as healing infirmities.

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[1] W. Rodwell, ‘Revealing the history of the Cathedral. 4. Archaeology of the Nave Sanctuary’, (Friends of Lichfield Cathedral, 67th Annual Report: 2004) 25.

[2] According to Bede, Book 4, Chapter 3 of his history book – Historia Ecclesiastica Gentis Anglorum, (731). Presumably the translation was around 30 years after burial which means at the end of the century.

[3] W. Rodwell (2004), See note 1. Three-quarters of the shrine tower was revealed.

[4] T, Ó Carragáin, 'The architectural setting of the cult of relics in early medieval Ireland', The Journal of the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland, (2003),150.

[5] D. Lepine, ‘Glorius Confessor: The cult of St Chad at Lichfield Cathedral during the Middle Ages’. SAHS transactions, (2021), 52, 31. Lepine conjectured “towards the end of the 10th century, for reasons not understood, the shrine over Chad’s grave was deliberately dismantled, buried and replaced by a new shrine on the same site, but if so, nothing is known about the replacement”

[6] Ibid.  Lepine (2021) wrote with the building of the current nave the shrine was incorporated into the present cathedral building. Unfortunately, he placed this change of the shrine in the time of Bishop Limesey (1085–1117) and this is without any evidence and contrary to the accepted dating of when the second cathedral was built. It also ignores the suggestion of the shrine being moved to a chapel behind the high altar

[7] R. Willis, ‘On foundations of early buildings recently discovered in Lichfield Cathedral. The Archaeological J. (1861), 18, 1–24. See also W. Rodwell, ‘The Development of the Choir’, in Maddison (ed.), Archaeology and Architecture at Lichfield, 17–35.

[8] See note 5. Lepine thought the light shone in the nave by Chad’s grave site.

[9] F. B, Bond, English Church Architecture, (1913), 83.

[10] Lepine (2021), 31. See note 4. He quotes the following shrines moved to be near the high altar, St Richard at Chichester in 1276, St Hugh at Lincoln in 1280, St William at York in 1284, St Alban at St Albans between 1302 and 1308, and St Erkenwald at St Paul’s between 1313 and 1326.

[11] A. R. Dufty, ‘Lichfield Cathedral’, Archaeology J. (1963), 120. 294 suggested the shrine might have been moved by Bishop Roger de Northburgh, 1322-58, to a sepulchre south of the high altar.

[12] Ibid, Lepine (2021) rightly noted the surviving written sources of the 11th to 13th-centuries and the account of this period in the cathedral chronicle make no mention of any translation or remodelling of Chad’s shrine in this period.

[13] H. E. Savage (ed) The Great Register of Lichfield Cathedral known as Magnum Registrum Album. (being SHC, 3rd series, 1924), no. 740.

[14] For example, the relocation is reminiscent of the earlier movement of Thomas Becket’s relics at Canterbury. Becket’s tomb was originally located in the eastern part of the western crypt, then as part of the rebuilding programme after a fire, it was relocated to the centre of the eastern crypt. Finally, his remains were moved to a new shrine in the Trinity Chapel on 7 July 1220.

[15] Bodl. MS. Ashmole 794, f. 173v.

[16] D. H. Farmer, ‘Ceadda (d. 672)’ ODNB, online ed. ref/odnb/4970 (accessed 18 November 2019); D. H. Farmer, Oxford Dictionary of Saints (Oxford, 1979), 75. No source is clearly cited by Farmer but it seems to have come from R. Hyett Warner, Life and Legends of St Chad, Bishop of Lichfield (669–72) (London and Cambridge, n.d.), 129–30. Thanks to D. Lepine for this full reference. The division of Chad’s relics is also referenced in J. C. Cox, Collections for a History of Staffordshire, (1886), 6, part 2, appendix 1, 199.

[17] The Sacrist’s Roll refers to ‘quodam feretro portabili’ some portable feretrum (shrine). Ringing bells was mentioned in a statute of 1190. There are references to various bones of St Chad being at churches around the country.

[18] Lepine (2021) stated this was probably a gilt bust reliquary, described in the 1445 inventory as ‘gilded and well decorated with various precious stones’, including collars and other gold jewels weighing 256 ounces, and made up of two parts which could be divided. Accompanying it was a ‘precious’ mitre which was hung above it.

[19] B. Nilson, Cathedral shrines of Medieval England, (Woodbridge: 1998) 56.

[20] J. Hewitt, ‘The Keeper of St Chad’s Head Chapel in Lichfield Cathedral and other matters concerning that Minster in the Fifteenth century. Archaeology Journal, (1876), 33, 72-3.

[21] 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). The extracts were copied by Revd. E. Williams, a Shropshire antiquary.

[22] Often the story is dramatized with removal of the bones in the middle of the night.

[23] According to a document written by a Jesuit priest in mid-17th century.

[24] J. Hewitt, (1876), 33, 72–82.see note 20..

[25] It is said the two brothers handed bones to members of their family and in time they were lost.

[26] H. Foley, Records of the English province of the Society of Jesus: historic facts illustrative of the labours and sufferings of its members in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. (London: 1875) iii, 794-97.

[27] Ibid 797, “On a loose paper was written an attestation of Father Richard Foster, Rector of St. Omer’s, dated January 20, 1667, at St. Omer’s, stating that being a Visitor of the Residence of St. Chad he took out of the box of St. Chad’s relics, in the house of a certain noble Catholic, a particle of St. Chad’s relics, and gave it to the Father Director of the English Sodality, to be exposed to public veneration, if the Bishop of St. Omer should think proper.”

[28] This account of Chad’s relics was given by Hewitt, see note 20.

[29] A. Boyle, ‘The bones of the Anglo-Saxon bishop and saint, Chad’. Church Archaeology (1998), 2, 35–8

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