Meetings with Remarkable Forgeries (British History)

[Wile E. Coyote]

If someone posts up an example of a Corinthian column from an Anglo Saxon church, then Wiley has wasted a coupla hours on nothing.

[Wile E. Coyote]

[Hatty]

[Wile E. Coyote]

The Lichfield Angel

Folks have already had a go at this, so I thought, I would just record my own thoughts.

[Mick Harper]

For those who haven't read Meetings with Remarkable Forgeries, the significance of the angel was that it bears a striking resemblance to one depicted in the Lichfield Gospels which had to be in Wales at the appropriate time in order to have the earliest examples of written Welsh in its margins.

[Wile E. Coyote]

The ortho account of Chad's death and relics (maybe.. it's unclear to Wiley)

Chad died in 672, and was buried.

Bishop Hedda, his successor, consecrated the first cathedral in Lichfield on his burial site in 700.

Chad's remains seem originally to have been at a Church of Saint Mary, but were then translated to a "funerary church" dedicated to St Peter in 700.

The assumption is that both of these churches (must have been close together...) were on the site later to become the cathedral at Lichfield.

Nothing survives of either church apart from a decorated cross-shaft set into the foundations on the north side of the nave.

According to Bede, 731, Chad was venerated as a saint immediately after his death, and his relics were translated to a new shrine.

Bede described the saint's shrine as a wooden coffin in the shape of a little house, with an aperture in its side through which pilgrims could put their hands to take out some of the dust.

However (bit unsure about this), by the 14th Century the cult had developed in a novel way, you could not just vist Chad's tomb in the nave, but also visit his skull, kept in a special Chad Head Chapel.

The saint's head was kept at first in a painted wooden box in 1345, but was then later encased in a gilt reliquary, possibly in the form of a mask or a complete head which could be opened up to reveal the relic of Chad's skull (a Jack In The Box arrangement). Thirdly, there were also relics of the saint in a portable shrine. It was made in the form of a model church with transepts and a bell tower, possibly a model of the cathedral itself. (like a Dolls House) It too was adorned with statues, one of St. Chad stood on the face of one of the transepts, with a gold statue of St. Catherine above, and a statue of the Virgin Mary stood on the face of the other transept.

The reliquaries were destroyed in 1538 in the general attack on pilgrimage shrines. However some parts of Chad get smuggled away and end up in Birmingham.

It seems to Wiley remakably similar to Hereford and Wells (A/S retrospective effigies) but they have very cleverly uppped the Pilgrims experience.

[Mick Harper]

If you try to picture it all happening in the 700's it's not difficult to see how everything is back projected. The most interesting part is Bede. My assumption is that Bede is a sort of compendium put together by (sometimes competing) pilgrimage centres in, say, the thirteenth century. It is different to, or a development from, the gospel book industry which is more about establishing ownership of real estate and tax breaks.

I try to picture it all myself in pp 40-9 of Forgeries. Chad himself flits in and out of various books.

[Wile E. Coyote]