Saint Chad was born in the 620s, probably near Bamburgh in the northern Anglian kingdom of Northumbria’s upper coast. His family may have come from old Celtic Christian aristocratic stock. The Anglian population were adopting Christianity and both they and the British Celts were increasingly integrated. Chad’s name – Cædda in old English – may be short for Cædmon, meaning battle-horse in Brittonic, suggesting his family’s military prowess.

When Saint Oswald became king of Northumbria in 634, he invited Saint Aidan, a disciple of Saint Columba of Iona, to come over from the Western Isles and found a monastery on Celtic lines as a centre of learning and missionary work among the Northumbrians. Chad and his three brothers became Aidan’s students at Lindisfarne. Here Chad became skilled in arts, letters, study of the Scriptures, languages, and the theology of the Church Fathers. When Aidan died in 651, Chad went to the Anglo-Saxon monastery at Rath Melsigi in Leinster, for further training as a monk and as a future teacher on the move. Here he learned more about monasticism from the Irish monks and consulted the treasured books in their libraries. Friends noted his strict observance of monastic life, his prayerful inner calm, and his deep learning from the Scriptures.

He was possibly ordained a priest while in Ireland. On his return to Northumbria in 652 or 653, his younger brother Cælin (also a priest now) introduced him to the son of King Oswald, Æthelwald, who gave them land at Lastingham in the north Yorkshire moors to establish another scholarly and monastic community like those at Lindisfarne and Rath Melsigi. They were joined by Saint Cedd, their much older brother, who became the first abbot, and also a fourth brother, Cynibil, who built the first wooden monastery.

The photo above shows the current Church of St Mary, Lastingham. Whilst the first monastery church in Lastingham was almost certainly wooden, it is known that a stone church was built on this site in 725.  However, the earliest parts of the current church, including the crypt, date from 1078.

Cedd was soon sent by the new king of Northumbria, Oswy, to establish the Church among the Middle Angles of Mercia. He was then moved to the kingdom of the East Saxons in London and Essex, where he founded more churches and monasteries, and was soon ordained as the bishop. Meanwhile at Lastingham the work of worship, prayer and education continued in Chad’s hands, while Cedd continued his roving mission work in Northumbria, Mercia and Essex.

In 664, King Oswy called a council at Whitby, the monastery of both monks and nuns of which Saint Hild was abbess, to settle the question of what method to use for calculating the date of Easter – whether the system still used at Iona, or the more scientific new computation spreading across Europe from Alexandria in Egypt. Two dates of Easter were being observed, even in the king’s own household, and he wanted a common celebration. Cedd was by now the best-known Church leader in England. Conversant in Latin, the different Anglo-Saxon dialects, and the Gaelic and Brittonic languages, his interpretation skills enabled agreement on the revised system. The Synod marked a turning point in the early history of the English Church, in the period when it was looking less to the monastic customs and networks of Iona and Ireland, and more to the organisation and practice of the rest of Europe. Cedd and Chad, although trained in Celtic monasteries, were sympathetic to embracing the new direction.

Cedd went back to his East Saxon diocese before returning to his base at Lastingham (see photo of St Mary’s, Lastingham above). Unfortunately, he had contracted the bubonic plague then sweeping all round Europe and died in 665. Chad succeeded him as abbot of the monastery, thus becoming head of a first “St Chad’s College.” One of Chad’s students at Lastingham, Trumbert, later moved to the renowned monastery of Jarrow-Monkwearmouth, where in turn he was tutor to Saint Bede, before becoming Bishop of Hexham. The photo above shows the statue of St Chad in the Chapel at St Chad’s College.

Following the Synod of Whitby, the bishop of the Northumbrians, St Colman, resigned in 664 out of disagreement with the outcome. In his stead, King Oswy appointed Saint Wilfrid, the high-powered abbot of Ripon and a zealous advocate of the new rules. At the time, there was a vacancy in the archbishopric of Canterbury and no other bishops in England who were following the new agreed settlement. So, he went to find bishops in Gaul whom he could recognise and, while he was there, to undertake further studies and preparations. When he returned in about 666, he found that king Oswy had lost patience and appointed Chad in his stead. Under protest, Wilfrid returned to his monastery in Ripon, as a base from which to continue his general mission work across the border in Mercia. Meanwhile, Chad also needed to go in search of bishops to ordain him, and was consecrated by Bishop Wini of the West Saxons and two Brittonic bishops from the west country or Wales.

Three years later, in 669, Saint Theodore of Tarsus arrived as the new archbishop of Canterbury, with a brief from the Pope to re-organise the Church among the English on a single footing. With him came an old friend of Wilfrid’s, Saint Benedict Biscop, who would later go on to found the monastery of Jarrow-Monkwearmouth. Theodore judged that Chad’s election and consecration were not licit and deposed him. Saint Wilfrid was thus able to take possession of his bishopric of the Northumbrians. Chad accepted the decision without complaint and, otherwise like Wilfrid three years earlier, returned to his monastery.

So impressed was Theodore with Saint Chad’s good grace in stepping down that he regularised his consecration as a bishop. Before the year was over, Theodore asked him to be the new bishop of the Middle Angles, the Mercians, and the people of Lindsey. Thanks to the foundations laid by St Cedd, Chad consolidated the Church by founding churches and monasteries across the Midlands and the North of England, from Poulton-le-Fylde to Shrewsbury, Lichfield to Leamington, and Lincolnshire to Yorkshire. Today over 30 churches still bear his name. His most important foundation was his new monastic base at Lichfield. Here was his hermitage beside the still extant pool he used for baptising new Christians; and, close by the modern St Chad’s church at Stowe, is the site of the monastery for the monks that he brought with him from Lastingham – a second “St Chad’s College”.

Chad’s impact in the Midlands was considerable, even though he was bishop for only two and a half years before he died on March 2nd 672. He was immediately venerated as a saint by his monks, as well as the people whom he had inspired, baptised, taught and cared for with such devotion. His remains were laid in a place of veneration in St Mary’s Church, whose successor is the present-day Lichfield Cathedral. Lichfield Cathedral commissioned sculptor Peter Walker, to create a major new public sculpture of Lichfield’s patron saint. Photos of the sculpture, which is made of bronze and stands 3 metres tall outside Lichfield Cathedral, are shown here.

In 1538, however, Henry VIII destroyed the shrine during the Reformation.  Fortunately, St Chad’s remains were removed and saved first. They were then secretly guarded by generations of Catholics, until in the 17th century some were entrusted to a Jesuit priest and taken for safe-keeping to France. In the 19th century the five remaining bones were brought back to Mercia and enshrined in St Chad’s Catholic Cathedral in Birmingham.

In 2022, in a generous sign of ecumenical friendship, one of the bones that had been treasured by the Catholic community for centuries was offered to Lichfield Anglican Cathedral, to be honoured in a new shrine there, as at Birmingham. The photo here shows the new reliquary in Lichfield Cathedral.

Thus St Chad returned to the last place of learning he founded in his lifetime. He remains, 1350 years on, an inspiration to virtue, unstinting service, sacred scholarship and education, as well as to any who study together for the love of wisdom, as at St Chad’s College in Durham, in his old native land of Northumbria.