Page:The Saxon Cathedral at Canterbury and The Saxon Saints Buried Therein.djvu/97

ST. ODO Salvation was celebrated. This was evidently the upper chapel in the north transept, dedicated to St. Blaise. At this time the choir occupied the eastern part of the nave and the transept. This is proved by a story related by Edmer that, in his time, it happened that one of the elder brethren of the Church, Alfwin the Sacrist, on the night of the festival of St. Wilfrid (October 12) was resting in a certain lofty place in the church outside the choir and before the altar of St. Blaise, above which the relics of the Blessed Wilfrid were deposited in a shrine; there as he lay between sleeping and waking he saw the choir filled with light, and angelic persons performing the service, and beheld those whose duty it was to read or sing, ascend the cochlea or winding stair (still in the north-west corner of the transept) and ask a blessing before the altar and body of the blessed man, which done, they straightway descended, returned to the choir and resumed the usual office of the church with all solemnity.

It seems that the body of St. Odo and his tomb were saved from the fire of 1067; and it is implied that they rested on the upper vault of the north transept. In about fifty years they were again translated, for in the time of St. Anselm, who had succeeded Lanfranc in 1093, the choir of the latter was taken down by Prior Ernulf (1096–1107) and rebuilt on a much larger scale. The new church was dedicated in 1130 and its eastern rectangular chapel, dedicated to the Holy Trinity, was built out beyond the ambulatory surrounding the choir. The body of Odo, covered by his tomb, was placed on the south side of the altar of the Holy Trinity in this chapel, and that of St. Wilfrid on the north; to the west of them were subsequently placed the bodies of Lanfranc and Theobald respectively.

It was at this altar that St. Thomas of Canterbury was afterwards wont to say his Mass, and it was thither he was proceeding for Vespers with his familia on the evening of his martyrdom.

During the terrible fire of 1174 when the choir of St. Anselm was gutted, the relics and bodies of the Archbishops were removed from their chests, and the coffins from their tombs, and deposited for safety near the altar of the Holy Cross in the nave, but the bones of St. Odo and St. Wilfrid were placed temporarily beneath the shrines of St. Dunstan and St. Alphage, which were on either side of the High Altar. 59