Chad's grave-the evidence

 Summary. Excavation at the east end of the nave, 2003, revealed the foundation of a shrine chapel and within it was a grave. Eight reasons are given for believing this was Chad’s grave.

 Context

King Wulfhere gained overlordship of Mercia c. 657-9, possibly by paying tribute to King Oswiu of Northumbria.[1] He appointed the third and fourth bishops of Mercia, who came from the north. They most likely built their timber churches, perhaps along the Trent washlands where there were large settlements.[2] Bishop Wilfrid, acting as the bishop of Mercia, together with Wulfhere, between 667 and 669, fixed a site for a mother church-cathedral beside a stream on a Mercian mudstone slope.[3] They called the location Licitfelda, meaning the approved field. Bede 17–19 years later, confirmed the event.[4] Chad of Lastingham, Yorkshire, newly made a bishop for the second time in the Roman church agreed to be the fifth bishop of Mercia. Bede recorded when Chad died in 672 two churches were present;[5] St Peters and St Marys. He also stated Wilfrid became the Bishop of the Middle Angles, ?690–692,[6] and 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.^[7] Almost certainly Wilfrid encouraged the cult of Chad, its pilgrimage and Licetfelda as a sacred landscape.[8] A similar arrangement was repeated with Cuthbert at Lindisfarne and in time with Wilfrid at Ripon. Each diocese had a major saint and a shrine and at Lichfield the sacred landscape was early.

Imagined layout of the sacred landscape

 

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.[9] A foundation for a building was found (described later) and inside the foundation was a sunken, possibly lined, pit, 0.8m deep, c. 2m wide and slightly longer[10]; clearly a burial pit. A baptistry was considered, but then disregarded.[11]  Rodwell published the outcome of the dig for the cathedral library and later its significance in a magazine.[12] He concluded the pit was a grave with Insular features. 

Reconstructed diagram of the shrine foundation 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. The chapel foundation wall is outlined in red. 

 

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

 

 

Reasons for believing this was Chad’s grave.   

1.     Every aspect suggests a shrine chapel was built to house the grave of someone special.[13] One grave (there were 3 internments) inside a building indicate it was a significant relic. Similar arrangements, many in Ireland and a few in England, point to a shrine for a saint sympathetic to the traditions of the Celtic church.    

2.     Bede recorded Chad’s relics were within a ‘wooden house’, on (ibidem) the original grave.[14] It is entirely plausible the wooden house was later replaced with a stone sepulchre-chest. 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 on King Offa’s coins (Romanesque) 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 now exhibited in Durham Cathedral. It infers linkage between the chest for Chad and the coffin for Cuthbert. 

 Michael (left) and Gabriel on Cuthberts coffin.

  Lichfield Angel showing the archangel Gabriel in the same pose.  

     

      3.     A substantial socketed, sandstone block was found next to the sunken chamber and could have been the base to a standing cross.[15] 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.  

AI rendition of a shrine chest in a shrine chapel with an eternal flame and the Lichfield Angel superimposed. The chest is against the north wall.

 

      4.     Of the 22 people, some were priests, found in the 2003 excavated area, 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 had never been cut by later graves.[16] Rodwell noted¹³ broken fragments of incised floor slabs with indents of Purbeck marble and bluestone to show the high status of burials. This was an acclaimed grave site. It appears that even in medieval times there was an understanding where Chad was buried, but 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 and pilgrims kept separate from the main church to the east of the crossing. Visitors 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 illustrates the late-medieval practice of exhibiting relics, not graves, and housing them in elaborate shrines.     

        6. The sunken chamber had been infilled with soil and rubble and a loose 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. 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. He was thought to have been a pilgrim and the depth of burial suggested 15th-century. 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. 

                        AI rendition of a pilgrim’s skeleton on Chad’s grave. 

        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 mynster was a series of rings as seen in Irish-Celtic monasteries and also thought to be at Iona, it is the centre of the site. The cathedral is built on the site of the original cathedral-church.  

          8.   A recent review of features seen in the excavation has supported the notion this was an early grave.[17] Rodwell[18] in 2006, wrote, “We now have fair reason to believe we have found the secondary burial place, that is after translation,[19] of St Chad.” No one has disputed this. It resembles the crypt at Repton and is of the same time.

 Why a shrine?

Crook wrote early Christian writers in Roman times knew the devout visited holy graves because in a mysterious way they believed the saint, his corporeal relics, continued to maintain contact with the earthly sphere through the physical remains that they had left behind.[20] The bones (and grave) provided a channel of communication between earth and heaven.

 Conjecture on the oratory-shrine

Venerating relics appears to have started in the 6th-century onwards, and this included the corporeal remains of saints. To begin with an above ground shrine might have consisted of corner-posts with slabs slotted between them. Later small stone rooms were built often having hipped roofs to imitate a chapel. Crook has linked the shrine to that at Jouarre Abbey, northern France, which connects with St Columbanus and his Celtic mission, c. 630.[21] The shrines could have an opening through which the devout could touch the saintly remains.[22] It is thought some shrine-chapels were originally the saint’s oratory, that is, their private chapel which then became their gravesite.

The best examples are found in Ireland. [23]^, [24] St Declan was a very early missionary, 350-450, and is thought to have had an oratory at Ardmore, Co. Waterford. It is assumed he was buried in his oratory and today there is a repaired building, originally 8th-century, on this site which is 5.6 x 2.7m and with walls 3.1m high. The west side had a door with a heavy lintel and the east wall has a window sculpted from one stone. A large sandstone block forms the base and in the southeast corner there is a hollow said to have been the saint’s grave. The walls were mortared like most shrines on the south and east coast of Ireland.[25] 

St Declan’s oratory at Ardmore, Co. Waterford, as it appears today. Thanks to Wikimedia.

 

Ó Carragain[26] and Carver²² concluded shrine buildings 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. A somewhat similar layout occurred for the Hexham and Ripon crypts.[27] 

Archetypal shrine chapel-oratory

           So, was the foundation found in the nave floor in 2003 an oratory and shrine for Chad? The foundation was c. 7 m wide north-south,[28] possibly the same length east-west, and 5m square internally. The walls were mortared and mostly a metre, or more, thick and suggested the building was relatively tall.[29] The east end had a tongue of natural clay thought to have been steps into the building. There have been implausible suggestions on whether the chamber was much longer and it attached to a church 20m away.[30]

The early 8th-century crypt at Repton is internally about 5m square and 3m high. Originally it was thought to be 2m below ground and 1m above. Date and size are similar to the Lichfield foundation.

An earlier cell?

Rodwell¹³ found immediately to the west of the oratory-chapel foundation the walls to an earlier cell. Walls, around 1m thick, projected around 3.6m to the west and were 5.2m wide. They consisted of rough sandstone blocks, not mortared, but with small stones in the gaps. Was this an earlier shrine?

 Endnote

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 new 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. All the archaeology was destroyed when the rising platform was installed.

[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] Described in the biography of Bishop Wilfrid written by a monk at Ripon called Stephanus and published 712–3. Title was Victa Sancti Wilfridi I. Episcopi Eboracensis. It has been translated by B. Colgrave The life of Bishop Wilfrid by Eddius Stephanus (Cambridge: 1985). “He knew of a place in the kingdom of Wulfhere, King of the Mercians, his faithful friend which had been granted to him at Lichfield, and was suitable as an episcopal see either for himself, or for any other to whom he might wish to give it.”

[4] 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.

[5] Ibid, Book 4 chapter 3.

[6] 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.

[7] 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.

[8] See the post, ’A sacred landscape’.

[9] 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.

[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, ‘Lichfield Cathedral. Archaeology of the Sanctuary’, (2004), 4.

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

[15] 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.

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

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

[18] See note 12, Rodwell (2006), 13

[19] 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. In the 16th-century this translation was commemorated on Rogation Sunday.

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

[21] Ibid, 64.

[22] L. Laing and J. Laing, Celtic Britain and Ireland: Art and Society (London,1995), 112.

[23] 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. Iniscealtra church, Co Clare has walls 2.5m thick and internally measures 5.5 x 4.4m.

[24] Possibly also Patrick’s chapel at Heysham on the Morecambe coast. This was 8 x 2.7m in size.

[25] On the southwest peninsulae the churches were dry-stoned.

[26] 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.

[27] 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.

[28] 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.

[29] 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.

[30] 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.[30] 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.[30] 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.