Chad died on March 2 in the year 672
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.
[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.