It will, of course, be allowed that during the sixth, seventh, and eighth centuries, different saints were held in especial honour in different countries. For instance, not long after the arrival of the Roman missionaries in England, various churches and monasteries,—at Canterbury, Lindisfarne, Bamborough, Lichfield, Weremouth, and Jarrow, and the capital city of the Picts,—were wholly or partially named after St. Peter. When Naitan, King of the Picts, was about to build his church, he sought the assistance of the Abbot of Weremouth, a strong supporter of Roman observances, and "promised to dedicate the same in honour of St. Peter," and to follow the custom of the Roman church, in certain matters, which the subjects of his kingdom had protested against, for more than a hundred years.
Now, on the occasion of Queen Bertha's leaving France, she was accompanied to England by a bishop of her native country, named Luidhard; and when it is remembered that they settled in Kent, amongst heathens of great superstition,—an example of which is recorded on the part of her own husband,—it is natural to suppose they would, in some public manner, seek the especial protection of the popular saint of France; and that saint was Martin. For so profound was the popular veneration which the Franks at one period offered to the power of Saint Martin, that they even computed ordinary occurrences and national events, by an era which commenced with the year of his death.[[3]]
It is therefore very probable that the public act of reverence just alluded to, consisted in a new dedication of the repaired church, by adding to the ancient name that of St. Martin.
That a practice of altering the names of sacred edifices in this manner was common at the date under consideration, cannot be questioned. For example, Bishop Aidan, about the year 652, built a church in the island of Lindisfarne, the name of which is now unknown. This structure, however, having been destroyed by a fire, his successor, Finan, erected another on the same site, and apparently of the same name. But when a second fire destroyed this church also, in some five and twenty or thirty years, "a larger church" was erected on the old site, and gratefully "dedicated in honour of St. Peter," by Theodore of Roman appointment, "the first archbishop whom all the English church obeyed." (Bede, iii. 17. and 25., and iv. 2.) Here, then, a new name was given to a church on the site of a former one of different appellation; and in Lichfield, we have two examples of similar alterations in the names of churches; one St. Chad's Church, Stow, and the other, the cathedral. On the site of the former, according to Bede, Bishop Chad built a St. Mary's Church, hard by which he was buried; "but afterwards, when the church of the most holy prince of the apostles, Peter, was built, his bones were translated into it." (Ecc. History, iv. 3.) That is to say, when Chad was canonised, his remains were removed to the site of the present cathedral, as relics over which the principal church of the Mercian kingdom was to be erected.
Throughout the various documents relating to this church, which are preserved in Dugdale's Monasticon, vol. iii. pp. 219-255, Savoy edition,
the cathedral is generally styled the church of St. Mary and St. Chad. And again, on a recently discovered seal of the dean and chapter, engraved some two hundred years after Stephen's reign, the inscription is this:
"S' DECANI ET CAPL'I ECCLE'IE SCE MARIE ET SCI CEDDE LYCHFELD' AD CAS."[[4]]
But in a grant from King Stephen to Bishop Roger de Clinton, who commenced the present fabric, it is simply styled ecclesia Sancti Ceddæ de Lichfield; and in the year 1341 a document was addressed Decano et Capitulo ecclesiæ Sancti Ceddæ Lych', as may be learned from the Fœdera, vol. ii. p. 2.
We thus perceive, that the original name of Lichfield Cathedral has been dropped for centuries, and so has that of the church which Bishop Chad built in honour of the Virgin Mary at Stow; for this Church has, for a long time, been known only by the name of Stow Church, or by that of St. Chad's, Stow.
And in this manner, I fancy, may be reconciled the different names of Saviour's, or St. Saviour's, Canterbury, and St. Martin's, Canterbury; both alluding to the same church, THE MOTHER CHURCH of Saxon England.