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Biography

Short Description

Saint Chad, known in Old English as Ceadda, was a seventh-century Northumbrian monk and bishop whose career is recorded principally by the Venerable Bede in Book IV of the Ecclesiastical History of the English People. He belonged to a family of four brothers—Cedd, Cynebil, Caelin, and Chad—all of whom became priests, an unusual concentration of clerical vocation that Bede himself remarked upon. Chad's early formation took place at the island monastery of Lindisfarne under the Irish bishop Saint Aidan, whose Celtic monastic spirituality and missionary methods deeply marked him. In keeping with the custom of many Northumbrian churchmen of the mid-seventh century, Chad later spent time in Ireland, probably at a monastery such as Rath Melsigi, pursuing further study and the ascetic life.

Upon the death of his brother Cedd from the plague in 664 at the monastery of Lastingham, which Cedd had founded in the kingdom of Deira, Chad was chosen to succeed him as abbot. That same year, after the Synod of Whitby had decided in favor of Roman rather than Celtic Easter dating and tonsure, King Oswiu of Northumbria required a bishop for his people. Wilfrid of Ripon had been selected and had gone to Gaul to receive consecration from a properly Roman hierarchy, but his prolonged absence led Oswiu to have Chad consecrated instead as bishop of the Northumbrians, with his seat at York. The consecrators were Wine, the bishop of the West Saxons, and two British bishops whose own consecrations derived from the Celtic churches of the west; the rite therefore lacked the full Roman canonical form that the party of Wilfrid and later Theodore would demand.

When Wilfrid at last returned and Theodore of Tarsus, the newly arrived Greek archbishop of Canterbury, undertook a visitation of the English church in 669, Theodore declared Chad's consecration defective. Chad's response became legendary: he immediately offered to resign the see and to return to Lastingham as a simple monk, saying that he had never thought himself worthy of the office. Theodore, struck by this humility, completed whatever was lacking in Chad's orders according to Roman practice and restored him to Lastingham. Not long afterward King Wulfhere of Mercia asked Theodore for a bishop. Theodore appointed Chad to the large Mercian diocese, which also included Lindsey. Chad fixed his episcopal residence at Lichfield and there gathered a small community of seven or eight brethren with whom he lived in monastic simplicity.

As bishop of the Mercians Chad continued the itinerant, austere style he had learned from Aidan. He insisted on making his pastoral journeys on foot rather than on horseback, until Theodore, considering this unbecoming for a bishop of so extensive a territory, himself lifted Chad onto a horse. Bede portrays him as a man of deep prayer, especially given to prayer during storms, which he interpreted as signs of the divine majesty and of the last judgment, an attitude Bede links to Chad's Irish training. He preached, baptized, and administered his diocese for only about two and a half years, yet he left a lasting impression of holiness and pastoral care.

Chad died of plague on 2 March 672. Bede relates that a monk named Owini, working near the oratory, heard the sound of joyful singing descending from heaven and then returning; Chad afterward explained that the heavenly company had come to summon him and that his brother Cedd had been among them. He urged his brethren to keep the monastic rule and to prepare for death. He was first buried in the church of Saint Mary at Lichfield; later his body was translated to the church of Saint Peter on the same site, the predecessor of the present Lichfield Cathedral. Miracles of healing were reported at his tomb, and his cult spread throughout Mercia and beyond. His feast day is 2 March. In later centuries he became associated as patron with Lichfield and with the Catholic Archdiocese of Birmingham, whose cathedral is dedicated to him. Chad is remembered as a saint who combined Celtic monastic humility with acceptance of Roman ecclesiastical order, and as one of the principal apostles of the Mercian kingdom.

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