The Lives of the Saints, Volume 03 (of 16): MarchBaring-Gould, S. (Sabine)
Religion
The Lives of the Saints, Volume 03 (of 16): March
Baring-Gould, S. (Sabine)
Christian saints
Visiting Northumbria, he charged Chad with not being duly consecrated.
The saint replied with great humility, "If thou knowest that I have
not duly received the episcopate, I willingly resign the office, for I
never thought myself worthy of it; but, though unworthy, I consented to
undertake it for obedience sake." Theodore hearing his humble answer,
said that he should not resign the episcopate, but he himself completed
his ordination again after the Roman manner. He probably advised
Chad to resign his see to Wilfrid, for we next hear of our saint in
retirement at Lastingham.
In 669, Jaruman, bishop of the Mercians, died. King Wulfhere asked
Theodore to send them a bishop. The archbishop did not wish to
consecrate a fresh one, so he begged King Oswy to let Chad, who was
then at Lastingham, be their bishop. Theodore knowing that it was
Chad's custom to go about the work of the gospel on foot, rather than
on horseback, bade our saint ride whenever he had a long journey to
perform, but, finding Chad unwilling to comply, the archbishop with his
own hands lifted him on horseback, for he thought him a holy man, and
obliged him to ride wherever he had need to go.
Though Chad was bishop of Lindisfarne for so short a time, he left
his mark on the affections of the people, for we find that at least
one chantry was dedicated in his name at York Minster. Soon after
his election to the bishopric of the Mercians, he set out for Repton
in Derbyshire, where Diuma, the first bishop of the Mercians, had
established his see.
Whether our saint desired a more central position for the episcopal
see, or was influenced by the wish to do honour to a spot enriched with
the blood of martyrs, Bede does not tell us, but Chad established the
Mercian see at Lichfield, then called Licetfield, or the Field of the
Dead, where one thousand British Christians are said to have been put
to death.
His new diocese was not much less in extent than that of Northumbria.
It comprised seventeen counties, and stretched from the banks of the
Severn to the shores of the German Ocean. Theodore, years afterwards,
detached from it the sees of Worcester, Leicester, Lindesey (in
Lincolnshire), and Hereford. Though it was far beyond the power of one
man to administer it effectually, yet Bede witnesses that "Chad took
care to administer the same with great rectitude of life, according to
the example of the ancients. King Wulfhere also gave him land of fifty
families to build a monastery at the place called Ad Barve, _i.e._, 'At
the wood,' in the province of Lindesey, wherein monks of the regular
life instituted by him continue to this day." "Ad Barve" is conjectured
by Smith, of Durham, to be Barton-on-Humber, where there is still
standing a very ancient church, admitted by Rickman to be partly Saxon,
dedicated to S. Peter.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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