The Staffordshire Hoard

I was fortunate enough, this morning, to be among the first visitors at the Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery to view a sample of pieces from the extraordinary treasure trove of Anglo-Saxon gold, news of which broke yesterday.

The national media has been full of this story today. On the 5th of July this year, a local man (Mr Herbert), using a £2.50 metal detector bought at a car-boot sale, struck gold on a friend's farm (Johnson's Farm near Burntwood). He'd been an amateur treasurer hunter for years, teased by his friends for chasing pennies. The find will turn him and the landowner into millionaires.

If, as is being reported today, their friendship has run into difficulties as a result, it will be no great surprise. Huge wealth, suddenly acquired, has a way of souring relationships. And yet, huge wealth, unexpectedly discovered, also remains a powerful metaphor for spiritual enlightenment. Mr Herbert's story calls to mind one of Jesus' parables. It's in Matthew's Gospel, chapter 13: 'The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field, which someone found and hid. Then in his joy he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field'.

After a few days, Mr Herbert reported the find to the proper authorities, who have now concluded a professional excavation of the site. They have been able to record the find and have conducted the kind of investigations which will enable scholars to interpret it -- the results of which are expected to transform our understanding of Anglo-Saxon England, and especially of the kingdom of Mercia (as this part of the world was known in the 7th-8th centuries). There's plenty which remains a mystery: who assembled the hoard and buried it and why?

In all, the hoard comprises more than 1500 pieces. Almost all are gold (about 5kg in all) or silver (about 2.5kg), and most appear to be parts of military equipment (sword-hilts and scabbards, and helmet clasps and checkplates etc), suggesting that this was war booty, probably taken from a battle involving royalty. Up close, the pieces (all of them small, some of them tiny) are spectacular: intricately decorated with celtic patterns and superbly crafted.

There are some Christian items: a few crosses (were they carried into battle as standards?), and a strip of gold (pictured) inscribed with some words from Psalm 68: 'Rise up O Lord, and may thy enemies be dispersed and those who hate thee be driven from thy face'. Presumably, some 7th century warrior carried that biblical text into battle, as a symbol of the support of the Christian God which he imagined himself to have.

For most Christians, it is acutely troubling that the God revealed by Jesus Christ to be a God of love has been pressed into service in this way, as a tribal-god in warfare. In the light of Jesus, there are many other verses in the Psalms which seem to speak much more fully of the nature of God: 'The Lord is gracious and merciful', for example, 'slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love'. That's Psalm 145.

For those of us in Lichfield, and perhaps especially for those of us associated with the Cathedral, the find is tremendously exciting. For one thing, Johnson's Farm is only 5 miles away. For another, the find seems to date from exactly the period which gave rise to our Cathedral. The indications are that the trove was buried in about 700. That's just the time the first Cathedral on this site was dedicated, as a place of hospitality to pilgrims visiting the shrine of St Chad -- who had died just a generation earlier in 672. The Cathedral has two great artefacts already, which date from about that time: the Chad Gospels (an illuminated manuscript only a little younger than the Lindisfarne Gospels and considerably older than the Book of Kells), and the Lichfield Angel (a limestone carving thought to be part of the original tombchest for the bones of St Chad, at his first shrine).

There must be some association between the Staffordshire Hoard and Lichfield Cathedral: the trove was buried within sight of the three spires. At the very least, we can expect some renewed interest in the decoration of our Gospel book and some further consolidation of the emerging consensus that Mercia was a centre of considerable wealth and culture during the 8th-9th centuries.

Happy Birthday, Sam

Today is an important day in Lichfield: we are marking the 300th anniversary of the birth of the city's most famous son, Samuel Johnson.

Johnson is best known for his compilation of the first truly comprehensive English Dictionary. It was published in 1755, after a decade of work. For each word, he offers an etymology (where the word comes from), a definition (what the word means) and then some examples of the use of the word in literature. It was an extraordinary achievement, and all the better for the flashes of humour to be found in it. To take only the most obvious examples: he defines oats, for example, as a cereal 'which in England is generally given to horses, but in Scotland supports the people'. A patron (he himself having had traumatic personal experience of patronage in the production of the dictionary) he suggests is 'commonly a wretch, who supports with insolence and is paid with flattery'. As for a 'lexicographer' (ie, a compiler of dictionaries) -- he describes him self-deprecatingly as 'a harmless drudge, that busies himself in tracing the original and detailing the signification of words'.

He was a devout Christian believer -- but one who (to judge from the tone of his prayers in particular) struggled with a profound sense of his own unworthiness. It doesn't sound as if he ever achieved much sense of assurance that he was accepted and loved by God. But his faith was nevertheless lively and sincere. Here is the very last of his recorded prayers:
Almighty and most merciful Father, grant that my hope and confidence may be in Jesu’s merits and thy mercy. Confirm my faith, stablish my hope, enlarge my charity, pardon my offences, and receive me at my death to everlasting happiness; for the sake of Jesus Christ. Amen

Our celebration of the anniversary began last Sunday, when BBC Radio 4's 'Sunday Worship' was broadcast live from Lichfield Cathedral -- an act of worship in which our Cathedral Chamber Choir sang a setting of that prayer, and in which my colleague Wealands Bell, the Canon Precentor, delivered a fine homily combining some glimpses into Johnson's life and faith with some reflections on the following day's feast of Holy Cross. A recording of the service is available for two more days on iPlayer at http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b006qnds.

The celebrations continue this weekend. Tonight there is a 'son et lumiere' in the city Market Square, with images projected (I believe) onto the exterior walls of the Samuel Johnson Birthplace Museum. Tomorrow, in addition to the annual wreath laying and cake-cutting (also in the Market Place, at his statue) at midday, and the Johnson Dinner in the evening, there is a small commemoration at 3.30pm at Speakers' Corner, Lichfield: there will be a brief costume drama by Intimate Theatre, followed by some short speeches by (among others) the President of the Johnson Society. On Sunday, the Bishop of London will preach at a special evensong in the Cathedral at 3.30pm, in the presence of members of the Johnson Society.

Johnson had numerous character flaws, of which he himself was all too well aware. But a capacity to celebrate the good things in life was not one of them, and we will be attempting to do him justice this weekend!