Lichfield Cathedral

Visit Lichfield Cathedral

300 years ago Lichfield stood at the centre of the Kingdom of Mercia. When Chad was made Bishop of Mercia in 669 he moved his See from Repton to Lichfield, which may already have been a holy site since there is a legend that Christians were martyred there under the Roman Emperor Diocletian! When Chad died in 672 pilgrims began to come to his shrine, and in 700, Bishop Hedda built a new church to house his bones. Starting in 1085 and continuing through the twelfth century this Saxon church was replaced by a Norman Cathedral, and this in turn by the Gothic Cathedral begun in 1195.

Pilgrimage to the shrine of Chad continued throughout this period, the Cathedral was expanded by the addition of a Lady Chapel, and there were perhaps as many as twenty altars around the Cathedral by 1500. All this changed at the reformation, and the Cathedral was severely damaged during the Civil War being under seige three times.

Bishop Hacket restored the Cathedral in the 1660s, and William Wyatt made substantial changes to its ordering in the eighteenth century, but it was Sir George Gilbert Scott, Cathedral Architect from 1855-1878, who was responsible for its successful restoration to Medieval splendour.

Today, Lichfield Cathedral still stands at the heart of the Diocese and is a focus for the regular worship of God, the life of a thriving community, the work of God in the wider world, and for pilgrimage. The great building shows all the signs of its long history of a Christian community serving God and the world, now moving confidently into the twenty-first century.

The Lichfield Angel

In the summer of 2003, archaeological work in the nave of the Cathedral was undertaken prior to the installation of a retractable platform. Little or nothing was known about the archaeology of the nave although it was generally thought that the Anglo-Saxon Cathedral must have been located west of the Church of St Mary, evidence for which exists under the choir. Dr Warwick Rodwell, the Cathedral Archaeologist, undertook the excavation and the results were extraordinary.

Shrine of St Chad?

Evidence of the Anglo-Saxon Cathedral was found, the north and south lines of the Norman nave were confirmed (the second of the three Cathedrals on the site) and a number of burials were uncovered. But most significantly at the east end of the site a sunken chamber was discovered with the subsequent embellishment of a canopy marking its honour and reverence. Such a structure suggested a shrine or grave and the position and the description accorded with the description by Bede that leads us to believe that this is the original position of the shrine of St Chad, built by Hedda early in the 8th Century.

Furthermore, recovered from the excavation were three fragments of an Anglo-Saxon sculptured limestone panel. The pieces together form a half of one side of a hollowed limestone block. The carving depicts an angel, his right hand raised in blessing and the left bearing a foliate sceptre. The decoration is of the highest quality with excellently preserved Anglo Saxon surface pigment. The figure of the angel is red and the feathered wings coloured red with white tips. The background seems to be pure white. Almost certainly the figure is that of the Archangel Gabriel and speculation leads us to believe that this is one half of an Annunciation scene – the other part, possibly still beneath the floor, being the Blessed Virgin Mary.

A Remarkable Survival

Professor Rosemary Cramp and Jane Hawkes describe the Angel as "a remarkable survival of European importance when considered in the context of Early Medieval sculpture. Technically the quality and assurance of the carving is outstanding and one is able to appreciate this fully because of the lack of weathering and the unusual survival of so much surface pigment." They continue: " this carving is crucially important for the light it throws on the chronology of Anglo Saxon sculpture ... panels of single or paired standing figures of angels or saints, or rows of the apostles with Mary and Christ under floriated arcades, are a feature of Mercian carvings which have usually been dated c800 and associated with the aspirations of King Offa to rival the artistic achievements of the Carolingian world".

The Angel was publicly unveiled in the Cathedral in February 2006 and was on display for a month before returning to Birmingham Museum and Art Galleries for further research. This research work and possible conservation will take up to eighteen months. It is then intended to return the Lichfield Angel for permanent exhibition in the Cathedral.

The St Chad Gospels

The St Chad Gospels (also known as the Lichfield Gospels, the Book of Chad, the St Teilo Gospels, and numerous variations on these) is an eighth century Gospel Book housed in Lichfield Cathedral. There are 236 surviving folios, eight of which are illuminated. Another four contain framed text. The manuscript is also important because it includes, as marginalia, some of the earliest known examples of written Welsh.

The manuscript was rebound in 1962 by Roger Powell. At that time it was discovered that in the rebinding of 1862 the manuscript had been cut into single leaves and that the pages had been trimmed during the rebinding of 1707.

Text and Script

The manuscript contains the Gospels of Matthew and Mark, and the early part of the Gospel of Luke. A second volume disappeared about the time of the English Civil War. The text is written in a single column and is based on the Vulgate. The manuscript has almost 2000 variances from the Vulgate, almost a third of which it shares with the Hereford Gospels. There are fewer variations in the text which agree with the Macregal Gospels and the Book of Armagh, 370 agree with the Book of Kells and 62 with the Lindisfarne Gospels.

The script is predominantly Insular majuscule but has some uncial characteristics and is thus called semi-uncial. There was a single scribe. The script forms strong links between the Lichfield manuscript and Northumbrian, Iona, and Irish manuscripts.

The manuscript has two evangelist portraits (St Mark and St Luke), a carpet page, initial pages for Mathew ("Lib"), Mark (initium), and Luke (Quoniam), a Chi Rho monogram page, and a page with the Four evangelist symbols. The Genealogy of Christ is framed (3 pages) and the last page is framed.

Marginalia

There are eight marginal inscriptions written in Latin and Old Welsh, which are some of the earliest written Welsh extant. The first records, in Latin, the gift of the manuscript "to God on the altar of St Teilo" by a man named Gelhi, who, according to the inscription, had bought the manuscript for the price of his best horse from Cingal. The 'altar of St Teilo" has in the past been associated with the monastery at Llandaff. However, it has been determined that the third, fourth and sixth marginal inscriptions refer to lands with fifteen miles of Llandeilo Fawr. It is, therefore, now thought that the book was given not to Llandaff but to the church at Llandeilo.

The second marginal inscription is of some interest as it contains a unique example of early Welsh prose, which records the details of the resolution of a land dispute. The first two inscriptions have been dated to the mid ninth century. The third through eight inscriptions date from the ninth and tenth centuries. The Latin and Welsh marginalia were edited by J. Gwenogvryn Evans, with John Rhys in their 1893 edition of the Book of Llan Dav.

Provenance

The origin of the manuscript is controversial. It is not known who wrote the manuscript, for whom it was written or where it was written. Paleographic and stylistic similarities link it to Northumbria and Iona. Links to the Hereford Gospels suggest a Mercian origin. Some, especially those in Wales, have argued that the manuscript was written in Wales. On the other hand, since the discovery of the Lichfield Angel in 2003, an increasing number of scholars has been persuaded that the Gospels originated in Lichfield, as the pigmentation of the two artefacts is too similar to be coincidental.

Although it is not known how the book came to be in Lichfield, it may have been there as early as the late tenth century and was almost certainly there by the early eleventh century. The opening folio contains a faded signature reading Wynsige presul which probably refers to the Wynsige who was Bishop of Lichfield from circa 963 to 972-5. Folio four contains a reference to Leofric who was bishop from 1020 to 1026.

Wherever it originated and however it came to Lichfield, it has, except for a brief period during the English Civil War, been at Lichfield since the eleventh century. In 1646, during the Civil War, Lichfield Cathedral was sacked and the library looted. This is probably when the second volume of the Gospels was lost. Precentor Walter Higgins is credited with saving the remaining volume. They were given to Frances, Duchess of Somerset, who returned them in 1672 or 1673. They have remained at the Cathedral ever since. They were put on public display in 1982. The bishops of Lichfield still swear allegiance to the crown on The St Chad Gospels.