Celtic and Old English Saints 4 May =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= * St. Ethelred of Bardney * St. Chad of Lichfield =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
St. Ethelred of Bardney, King and Monk --------------------------------------------------------- Died 716. Ethelred, king of Mercia, abdicated to become a monk at Bardney, where he was later elected abbot (Benedictines). Saint Ethelred is depicted as an abbot with royal regalia at his feet. He is venerated at Leominster (Roeder). Translation of St. Chad of Lichfield --------------------------------------------------------- The Venerable Bede says that in his day the tomb of St.Chad was in the form of a small wooden house, with an aperture at the side, through which the faithful might put their hands and obtain dust, which, mixed with water, was used as a cure for both sick humans and animals. In 700 Bishop Headda built a church to contain the tomb, and as the stream of pilgrims continued after the Conquest, a Norman church was constructed in the twelfth century. This second church, however, lasted only about a hundred years before it was replaced by the present Gothic Cathedral, which had a larger East End, including a Lady Chapel, to facilitate the flow of pilgrims. Walter de Langton, who became bishop of Lichfield in 1296, had a marble shrine erected behind the High Altar. Some of the saint's bones were kept in a portable shrine, called a feretory, his head was venerated in the Chapel of St.Chad's Head and other relics were displayed from the gallery in the South Choir Aisle. Numerous miracles were attributed to St.Chad's relics. The earliest is recorded by the Venerable Bede, who recounts that a mentally deranged vagrant took shelter in the church where the saint was buried and left it the next morning restored to sanity. These evidences of his sanctity did not save his shrine from spoliation at the Reformation. At first Bishop Robert Lee persuaded King Henry VIII to allow the tomb to remain undisturbed, but it was not long before the lure of the gold and gems were too much for the king's officers and it was broken up. It is possible that St.Chad's relics still lie behind the altar at Lichfield, but a certain prebend Dudley took away four pieces of bone for safe keeping, and these were treasured by recusants until the consecration of the Roman Catholic Cathedral at Birmingham. In 1841 they were enshrined there above the High Altar. The Feast of the Translation of St.Chad is observed in the Midlands on the Thursday after the Fourth Sunday after Easter (Bowen, Wall). St. Chad's church, Lichfield http://www.saintchads.org.uk/home.htm Sources: ======== Benedictine Monks of St. Augustine Abbey, Ramsgate. (1947). The Book of Saints. NY: Macmillan. Bowen, Paul. When We Were One: A Yearbook of the Saints of the British Isles Complied from Ancient Calendars. Roeder, Helen. (1955). Saints and Their Attributes. Chicago: Henry Regnery Company. Wall, J. C. (1905). Shrines of British Saints Methuen & Co. For All the Saints: http://www.saintpatrickdc.org/ss/ss-index.htm These Lives are archived at: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/celt-saints ¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤ ------------------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/celt-saints/ <*> Your email settings: Individual Email | Traditional <*> To change settings online go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/celt-saints/join (Yahoo! ID required) <*> To change settings via email: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
