Chad of Lichfield
A.D. 672
Feast Day: March 2

Shirley Toulson’s book, The Celtic Year, lists many saints who are not themselves Celts. In most every case, as in St. Chad, the saints are Saxons, a people for whom many of the Celts of Britain  harbored a deep animosity. The Saxon, Angle and Jute tribal groups overran most of what is now modern day England (Angle-land), confining the British Celts to the southwest (Cornwall) and western (Wales) extremities. The reluctance of the Celtic Christians to evangelize the pagan Saxons was used by Bede to explain the massacre of hundreds of British monks by Saxon armies as Gods judgment on the British church.

Bede himself held the Celtic saints in high regard in terms of humility, holiness and zeal for the Gospel. His reasons for rejecting their leadership may seem trivial to us, yet behind those reasons  lay issues of power, structure and authority. The Celtic tonsure was taken from ancient druidic practice and was found nowhere else in Christendom. The Celtic method of determining the date of Easter was inherited from the less  organized practice of the continental church in the days before the fall of Rome. The Roman church had later revised its method of calculation, but the changes had not reached the isolation of Britain and Ireland. The Celts ordained bishops according to their own formularies and generally did not require the Roman minimum of three bishops to consecrate a new one.

Yet far more threatening to the urban, highly structured continental church imported by St. Augustine was the tribal nature of the Celtic churches. The hierarchy of the Celtic communities was the  hierarchy of clan life. While there were numerous instances of rivalry and even warfare between Celtic communities, no one community claimed supreme authority over others. The continental structure, taken from the orderliness of Roman bureaucracy, valued uniformity in the name of unity. Celtic practices and structure posed a threat to the uniformity that Augustine sought to impose on the church in Britain. Chads humble response to the results of this conflict impressed Bede deeply and is one of the reasons why Chad is remembered and revered to this day.

Chad was one of four brothers trained by Aidan on Lindisfarne. Chads brother Cedd had been sent by King Oswy of Northumbria to evangelize the kingdom of Mercia. Shortly after beginning this mission Cedd had been  called to the kingdom of the East Saxons. During his work there he founded many communities including one at Lastingham where Chad became abbot at Cedds death.

Bede describes Chads life in the same glowing terms used for Chads mentor, Aidan. After the Synod of Whitby Cedd and Chad conformed to the practices of the continental church. However, Cedd died shortly afterward and Chad was elected Abbot. During that time Wilfred, the chief spokesman for the Roman practice at Whitby, had been chosen bishop of York and went to France to be consecrated by Agilbert, the bishop of Paris.  The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church reports that Wilfred went to France specifically to avoid being consecrated by Celtic bishops. According to Bede, Agilbert summoned twelve bishops to join him at the royal court at Compigne where he consecrated Wilfred with great splendor. However, Wilfred lingered some time in such grand company and King Oswy, impatient for an active leader for the church, sent Chad to Canterbury to be ordained bishop of  York by Archbishop Deusdedit. When Chad arrived he discovered that the archbishop had recently died and so went on to Bishop Wini, a Briton, who consecrated him. When Wilfred finally returned he was not best pleased to find  Chad in his place at York and retired to Ripon where he had been abbot.

Wilfred was not content to rest there and appealed to the new Archbishop of Canterbury, Theodore, to restore him to York. Theodore declared that Chad had been irregularly consecrated and ordered him to abdicate. Chad did so, remarking: If you consider my consecration as bishop to have been irregular, I willingly resign the office, for I have never thought myself worthy of it. Although unworthy, I accepted it solely under  obedience. Chad returned to Lastingham, but that same year Archbishop Theodore reordained him bishop according to continental practice and appointed him as bishop to the kingdom of Mercia. Chad established his See at Lichfield  where he remained until his death.

Like his teacher, Chad preferred walking to riding. Again, this may seem a trivial issue to us, but it represented a deep commitment to the common people. Horses were the privilege of the nobility, a sign of wealth and position. Aidans tradition of humility and simplicity found little sympathy in the continental church for it failed to maintain the dignity and honor of a ruling bishop. Archbishop Theodore would not hear  Chads protestations and went so far as to physically place him on a horse in order to travel around the kingdom.

Unfortunately, it was the style of Wilfred and not of Chad that eventually triumphed in the church. Wilfred, ever conscious of his prerogatives, spent his life in constant conflict with archbishops and  kings, appealing to Rome whenever he failed to get his way. Ironically one period of exile drove him to Lichfield where he spent some time as successor to Chad. Wilfred devoted his life to the suppression of Celtic Christianity in England, leaving the church poorer by his efforts. It is the likes of Chad to whom we may look today for a better way of leadership in the Body of Christ.