“The Gospel of Chad”

 by Andrew Sullivan

[published in The New Republic, 11 December 2000; also available online.]

         If you’ve been waiting to find some guiding metaphor or overarching analogy to lend clarity to our current electoral mess, you’re finally in luck. Or, rather, your prayers have been answered. The heavenly respondent to our plight, I humbly submit, is a not entirely famous but now thoroughly relevant member of the holy choir. Yes, there’s a Saint Chad. And he was quite explicit on the question of dimpled ballots.

        OK, I made up that last bit, but I haven’t made up Saint Chad himself or the relevance his story holds for our pregnant times. A reader alerted me to the saint’s existence after looking up “chad” in the Encyclopedia Britannica.  Chad, it turns out, lived in the wild and woolly half-Christianized England of the seventh century, and his life story is preserved in the laconic Latin of the Venerable Bede’s Ecclesiastical History of the English People.  Remarkably, the critical moment in Chad’s ascent to sanctity was his response to a fiercely contested dispute over which of two equally qualified and consecrated candidates, Chad or Wilfrid, would assume the mighty title of bishop of York. In what seems to have been a mix-up of truly Palm Beach proportions, the two men were appointed simultaneously—one in England and one in France—for the same bishopric. And one of them had to take the high road and concede.

       But I get ahead of myself. Chad came from an established family in the ecclesiastical power structure of pre-medieval England. One of his brothers, Cedd, had been bishop of the East Saxons. When Cedd died of the plague, Chad took over his monastery and, by all accounts, was a big monastic hit—so big, in fact, that in the year 664 King Oswiu of Northumbria sent Chad to Canterbury to be consecrated bishop of York. The only problem was that King Alhfrith, Oswiu’s son, had other ideas. Alhfrith, in a custom quite common for the era, shared the kingship of Northumbria with his father; but, unlike his father and Chad, who were representatives of a semi-indigenous Celtic Christianity, Alhfrith was an ally of the more modern Roman wing of the English church. Alhfrith had had a Romeeducated tutor in things sacred, named Wilfrid. And, before Oswiu decided to tap Chad, Alhfrith had already sent Wilfrid to France to be consecrated bishop of York in a suitably grand and Roman ceremony. Two joint kings, in other words, appointed two rival bishops. 

        To make matters worse, there were some irregularities in Chad’s appointment as bishop. When he showed up in Canterbury, on Oswiu’s bidding, Chad found that the old archbishop had died, and there was no one there to consecrate him. So he schlepped back across the country (and I mean schlepped—Chad observed his order’s rules of poverty and went everywhere on foot) to the kingdom of the West Saxons, where he was finally invested by Bishop Wine and two Celtic bishops of whom Rome did not entirely approve. And so, for a short time, the ancient Brits had two equally consecrated bishops of York. Even then, this dual consecration was highly unusual. The Oxford editors of my copy of Bede note:

 It is not easy to understand why Oswiu appointed Chad, apparently in Wilfrid’s place; it may have been connected with his quarrel with his son, Alhfrith, who was Wilfrid’s patron. It may be that [Chad] was appointed to assist rather than replace Wilfrid. But his consecration, carried out by Wine, a bishop who was later accused of simony, and two unorthodox British bishops, could certainly not have been considered satisfactory by the Roman party. 

       When Wilfrid arrived back in England, then, Chad was left hanging (sorry, couldn’t resist). Wilfrid’s investiture was far more official than Chad’s, though both had perfectly good claims to be the rightful bishop of York. Alas, there was no archbishop of Canterbury to resolve the dispute until one Theodore was appointed in 668--some* four years* after the dual consecration.  (And you thought four weeks was a long time to wait!) Theodore was a Romanist, and, once appointed, he soon set about putting the British church in order. According to Bede, Theodore

made it clear to Bishop Chad that his consecration had not been regular, whereupon [Chad] humbly replied, “If you believe that my consecration was irregular, I gladly resign from the office; indeed I never believed myself to be worthy of it. But I consented to receive it, however unworthy, in obedience to the commands I received.” When Theodore heard his humble reply, he said that he ought not to give up his office; but he completed his consecration a second time after the Catholic manner.

       Despite Theodore’s generous gesture of recertification, Chad insisted on letting Wilfrid take his place and retired to his monastery. Wilfrid—I don’t know whether anyone ever called him “W.”—was therefore triumphant. He “was administering the see of the church of York and of all the Northumbrians and Picts, as far as Oswiu’s power extended.” But the story wasn’t over yet. When a new vacancy emerged a short time afterward—the bishopric of Mercia—Theodore, still impressed with Chad’s grace and statesmanship after the York mess, gave the post to Chad, and, according to Bede, he served “in great holiness of life.” You can still visit the site of Chad’s episcopal seat in Lichfield in the Midlands. His humility extended to refusing even to make the long journey to be consecrated on horseback. Theodore had to physically lift Chad up, Bede says, and put him on a horse, “since he knew him to be a man of great sanctity.”

       Chad’s tenure as bishop of Mercia was a highly successful one, though it lasted only two and a half years before the plague claimed him as well.  According to Bede, Chad was buried in “a wooden coffin in the shape of a little house, having an aperture in its side, through which those who visit it out of devotion can insert their hands and take out a little of the dust.” The dust, mixed with water, was said to cure the sick.

        We also know what happened to Wilfrid. Under a subsequent storm of scandal, he was ejected from his bishopric by political and religious rivals, exiled, lost at sea, and shipwrecked among what Bede calls barbarians. Wilfrid only clawed his way back to his bishopric many years later, with the pope’s help. He died soon after his restoration, and his epitaph included the phrase “Long time in tempests tossed.”

        As for Chad, history has treated him far more kindly. He made his saintly reputation not by seizing office but by relinquishing it gladly when asked. He is still revered in the English Midlands and is known colloquially, according to my old English history professor at Oxford, as the patron saint of lost causes.

 ANDREW SULLIVAN is a senior editor at The New Republic.

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