plantagenet world, c.1170-c.

1220
the cult of st thomas becket in the
Thomas Becket - the archbishop of Canterbury cut down in his own cathedral
just after Christmas 1170 - stands amongst the most renowned royal ministers,
churchmen, and saints of the Middle Ages. He inspired the work of medieval
writers and artists, and remains a compelling subject for historians today. Yet many
of the political, religious, and cultural repercussions of his murder and subsequent
canonisation remain to be explored in detail.

This book examines the development of the cult and the impact of the legacy of
Saint Thomas within the Plantagenet orbit of the late twelfth and early thirteenth
centuries - the "Empire" assembled by King Henry II, defended by his son King
Richard the Lionheart, and lost by King John. Traditional textual and archival
sources, such as miracle collections, charters, and royal and papal letters, are used
in conjunction with the material culture inspired by the cult, to emphasise the
wide-ranging impact of the murder and of the cult's emergence in the century
following the martyrdom. From the archiepiscopal church at Canterbury, to
writers and religious houses across the Plantagenet lands, to the courts of
Henry II, his children, and the bishops of the Angevin world, individuals and
communities adapted and responded to one of the most extraordinary religious
phenomena of the age.

dr paul webster is currently Lecturer in Medieval History and Project Manager

of the Exploring the Past adult learners progression pathway at Cardiff University;
dr marie-pierre gelin is a Teaching Fellow in the History Department at
University College London.

contributors: Colette Bowie, Elma Brenner, José Manuel Cerda, Anne J. Duggan,
Marie-Pierre Gelin, Alyce A. Jordan, Michael Staunton, Paul Webster.

Marie-Pierre Gelin the cult of st thomas becket

Paul Webster
edited by in the plantagenet world,
Cover image: Pilgrim badge of the second half of the fourteenth
century, showing the martyrdom of St Thomas Becket by four
knights, witnessed by Edward Grim. Excavated from the Thames
c.1170-c.1220
foreshore at Dowgate, London. Neish Collection of British Pewter,
SBT 1996-44/910. Photo courtesy of The Neish Collection of British
Pewter at The Stirling Smith Art Gallery and Museum.

COVER DESIGN: LIRON GILENBERG | WWW.IRONICITALICS.COM

edited by
Paul Webster
an imprint of Boydell & Brewer Ltd
PO Box 9, Woodbridge, Suffolk IP12 3DF and Marie-Pierre Gelin
668 Mt Hope Ave, Rochester NY 14620, USA
www.boydellandbrewer.com
 The Cult of St Thomas Becket
in the Plantagenet World,
c.1170–c.1220

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2276 (Boydell - St Thomas Becket).indd 2 20/09/2016 8:46 pm
 The Cult of St Thomas Becket
in the Plantagenet World,
c.1170–c.1220

Edited by

Paul Webster and Marie-Pierre Gelin

the boydell press

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 © Contributors 2016

All Rights Reserved. Except as permitted under current legislation

no part of this work may be photocopied, stored in a retrieval system,
published, performed in public, adapted, broadcast,
transmitted, recorded or reproduced in any form or by any means,
without the prior permission of the copyright owner

First published 2016

The Boydell Press, Woodbridge

ISBN 978 1 78327 161 0

The Boydell Press is an imprint of Boydell & Brewer Ltd

PO Box 9, Woodbridge, Suffolk IP12 3DF, UK
and of Boydell & Brewer Inc.
668 Mt Hope Avenue, Rochester, NY 14620–2731, USA
website: www.boydellandbrewer.com

A catalogue record for this book is available

from the British Library

The publisher has no responsibility for the continued existence or accuracy of URLs for
external or third-party internet websites referred to in this book, and does not guarantee that
any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate

This publication is printed on acid-free paper

Typeset by BBR, Sheffield

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 Contents

List of Illustrations vii

List of Contributors ix
Preface x
Acknowledgements xv
List of Abbreviations xvi
1. Introduction. The Cult of St Thomas Becket:
An Historiographical Pilgrimage 1
Paul Webster
2. Becket is Dead! Long Live St Thomas 25
Anne J. Duggan
3. The Cult of St Thomas in the Liturgy and Iconography of
Christ Church, Canterbury53
Marie-Pierre Gelin
4. Thomas Becket and Leprosy in Normandy 81
Elma Brenner
5. Thomas Becket in the Chronicles 95
Michael Staunton
6. Matilda, Duchess of Saxony (1168–89) and the Cult of
Thomas Becket: A Legacy of Appropriation113
Colette Bowie
7. Leonor Plantagenet and the Cult of Thomas Becket in Castile 133
José Manuel Cerda
8. Crown Versus Church After Becket: King John, St Thomas
and the Interdict 147
Paul Webster

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 C ONTENTS

9. The St Thomas Becket Windows at Angers and Coutances:

Devotion, Subversion and the Scottish Connection171
Alyce A. Jordan

Bibliography 208
Index 238

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 Illustrations

3.1 Thomas Becket preaching a sermon. Sens, St Etienne

Cathedral, c.1210, Bay 23, panel 5. Courtesy of the Musées de
Sens – J. P. Elie  69
3.2 The Martyrdom of Thomas Becket. Chartres, Notre-Dame
Cathedral, c.1210–20, Bay 18, panels 22–23. Courtesy of
Dr Stuart Whatling  70
3.3 Alphege killed by the Danes. Canterbury, Christ Church
Cathedral, c.1180, Window Nt. IX, 5. © Crown Copyright. HE  73
3.4 St Dunstan frees King Eadwig’s soul from the devil. Canterbury,
Christ Church Cathedral, c.1180, Window Nt. XI, 1.
© Crown Copyright. HE  75
3.5 Apparition of St Thomas. Canterbury, Christ Church Cathedral,
c.1213–20, Window n. IV, 4. © Crown Copyright. HE  76
9.1 Life of St Thomas Becket, Coutances, Notre-Dame
Cathedral, c.1230–40, Bay 217, left lancet. (Photo courtesy of
Denis Krieger)  176
9.2 Life of St Thomas Becket, Coutances, Notre-Dame Cathedral,
c.1230–40: detail, Thomas converses with Henry II; Thomas
leaves France for England. (Photo courtesy of Denis Krieger)  177
9.3 Life of St Thomas Becket, Angers, Cathedral of St-Maurice,
c.1230–35, Bay 108a, left lancet. © Centre André Chastel
(UMR 8150), Cl. C. Gumiel  180
9.4 Life of St Thomas Becket, Angers, Cathedral of St-Maurice,
c.1230–35: detail, the murderers of St Thomas Becket on
horseback; the murderers of St Thomas Becket sail across the
Channel; heraldry of the Beaumont family, viscounts of Maine.
© Centre André Chastel (UMR 8150), Cl. C. Gumiel  181

vii

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 ILLUSTRATIONS

9.5 Life of St Thomas Becket, Angers, Cathedral of St-Maurice,

c.1230–35: detail, the coronation of Henry the Young King
or Young King Henry refuses to meet with Thomas?; Thomas
converses with Henry II; entombment (or translation?) of
Thomas Becket. © Centre André Chastel (UMR 8150),
Cl. C. Gumiel  183
9.6 St Thomas Becket ship-shaped ampulla, c.1250, drawing of
obverse, Museum of London. © Museum of London  190
9.7 St Thomas Becket ampulla, c.1200–50, obverse, St Thomas
flanked by knights. British Museum, #1921,0216.62.
© Trustees of the British Museum  197
9.8 Seal of Richard de Beaumont, viscount of Maine, c.1240.
E. Hucher, ‘Monuments funéraires et sigillographiques
des Vicomtes de Beaumont au Maine’, Revue historique et
archéologique du Maine, 11 (1882), 319–408, at 358  198

The editors, contributors and publishers are grateful to all the institutions and
persons listed for permission to reproduce the materials in which they hold
copyright. Every effort has been made to trace the copyright holders; apologies
are offered for any omission, and the publishers will be pleased to add any
necessary acknowledgement in subsequent editions.

viii

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 Contributors

Dr Colette Bowie received her doctorate from the University of Glasgow, UK,
in 2011. She is a member of the Royal Studies Network and co-founder of the
Leverhulme Trust funded Angevin World Project. Colette lives and works in
Glasgow.

Dr Elma Brenner is Specialist in Medieval and Early Modern Medicine at the

Wellcome Library, London, UK.

Dr José Manuel Cerda is Associate Professor of History and Director of the

Centre for Medieval Studies at Universidad Gabriela Mistral, Chile.

Professor Anne J. Duggan is Emeritus Professor of Medieval History at King’s

College London, UK.

Dr Marie-Pierre Gelin is a Teaching Fellow in the Department of History at

University College London, UK.

Dr Alyce A. Jordan is Professor of Art History, Department of Comparative

Cultural Studies, Northern Arizona University, USA.

Professor Michael Staunton is Associate Professor in the School of History,

University College Dublin, Ireland.

Dr Paul Webster is Lecturer in Medieval History and Project Manager for the
Exploring the Past adult learners’ progression pathway at Cardiff University,
UK, in the Cardiff School of History, Archaeology and Religion.

ix

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 Preface

Thomas Becket is undoubtedly one of the best known and most written-about
figures in the Middle Ages. Yet many of the political, religious and cultural
repercussions of his murder, and subsequent canonisation, on the world he left
behind remain to be explored in detail. Following Paul Webster’s introductory
exploration of existing historiography of the cult of St Thomas Becket, the
main focus of this volume lies in the study of the emergence and development
of the Becket phenomenon within the world from which it had been created.
Anne J. Duggan’s chapter highlights the way in which the creation and
expansion of the cult of St Thomas are often relegated to the relative obscurity
of liturgical or cultural history. In redressing the balance, Duggan examines the
transformation of the murdered archbishop’s status from that of victim to that
of the most widely-revered medieval saint. Her article investigates the cult in
the Plantagenet world and goes on to set it within the wider medieval context,
considering evidence ranging from the period that followed the martyrdom
down to the Reformation and beyond. In providing such broad focus, this
contribution examines trends to which the other papers return in their
discussion of the cult and of perceptions of St Thomas in the century following
his martyrdom. Notably, these include the liturgical Becket and the efforts by
the Plantagenet dynasty to build links with the religious phenomenon which
Henry II had inadvertently created.
The volume then turns to aspects of the development of the cult, the
reaction of religious communities to the popularity of the martyr and the
impact of the conflict preceding Thomas Becket’s death on the posthumous
absorption of his cult into the life of monastic and hospital foundations in the
Plantagenet lands. Chapters by Marie-Pierre Gelin and Elma Brenner focus on
ways in which this could take place, examining different categories of religious
house and the place which St Thomas occupied within them. Gelin focuses
on the early development of the cult at its ‘host’ community at Canterbury, in
terms of the integration of St Thomas into the iconography of the cathedral.
Here, the monks took advantage of the opportunities presented in the
aftermath of the devastating fire that swept through the cathedral in 1174,
rebuilding the entire eastern end to house and celebrate the martyr’s relics. The
new saint took his place at the heart of the liturgy at Christ Church, but there
was also a sense in which the Becket cult was integrated with those of saints
who had been the focus of devotional activity at Canterbury prior to 1170,

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 PREFACE

in particular the Anglo-Saxon archbishop-saints Dunstan and Alphege. The

campaign drew on the portrayal of Thomas Becket in the emerging accounts
of his life, death and miracles, and asserted his place as part of the spiritual
genealogy of the cathedral, whilst in turn revitalising the cults of those of his
predecessors numbered amongst the saints. By emphasising, indeed sometimes
creating, links between the recent martyr and his archiepiscopal antecedents,
the Christ Church hagiographers and liturgists inserted St Thomas within the
spiritual genealogy of Canterbury Cathedral and claimed him as an integral
part of the prestigious history and identity of their church.
A further aspect of the growth of the cult amongst religious communities
was the increasing number dedicated to St Thomas. Here, new perspectives can
be offered through consideration of the association between Becket and leper
hospitals. Elma Brenner takes those of the duchy of Normandy as her focus.
She considers in particular Mont-aux-Malades, outside Rouen, re-dedicated to
Becket by Henry II in c.1174, but already associated with Thomas through the
archbishop’s friendship with the community’s first prior. Here, and elsewhere
in Normandy, the image of St Thomas advanced in sources such as the miracle
collections can be contrasted with the development of the cult on the ground.
The sources depict Becket as a healer – indeed as a saint who boasted of
his ability in this field. Yet leprosy was not seen as curable. However, lepers
were seen as chosen by God to suffer on earth and be saved, linking them
to Christ and to martyrs, amongst whom Becket was a recent and clearly
popular example. In explaining how Norman leper hospitals harnessed the
cult to attract support from the rich, this article continues the theme of the
integration of Saint Thomas into medieval society. It explores the impact on
Anglo-Norman royal, aristocratic and urban benefaction in territory which,
prior to 1204, lay at the heart of the Plantagenet world. Furthermore, the
contribution examines the opportunities for those who had supported Henry II
to use benefaction to adapt and respond to the changed religious landscape
generated by the martyrdom.
Focus on the early development of the cult amongst religious communities
linked to the king and archbishop highlights a number of issues which can be
explored through further examination of the rapidly evolving cult. Existing
studies have focused on the wide range of works – lives, collections of miracles,
liturgies – composed immediately after the archbishop’s death and in the
ensuing decades. New perspectives can be offered through consideration of
the broader range of historical writing penned in the generation following the
events of December 1170, a period often seen as a golden age in the work of
English chroniclers. These form the focus of the study by Michael Staunton,
who examines how the legacy of the dispute and the image of the saint were
applied in work written in the late twelfth and early thirteenth centuries,
primarily in England. An account of the murder was central for any English
chronicler, with many writers relating the archbishop’s fate and legacy to their

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 PREFACE

own concerns. Thus, the Becket dispute might be considered in relation to the
Great Rebellion (1173–74), in debate about what the Church had obtained in
relation to the issues for which Thomas had died, or in describing the regular
and ongoing disputes waged by the monks of Christ Church, Canterbury.
Examples from the narrative sources are used to present an alternative view
of the Becket dispute and the man himself from that found in the posthumous
Lives. The name of St Thomas could be evoked both for and against kings and
ecclesiastics, perhaps resulting in the blunting of his impact as an example.
In examining the early development of the cult of St Thomas amongst
religious communities and in different types of source material, the first four
chapters also highlight the question of how the Plantagenet ruling family
reacted to the emergence and development of the cult. The potential danger
posed by St Thomas Becket, as a political saint, was not lost on the Plantagenet
kings. This was true almost from the moment that Henry II knew that Becket
was dead; certainly from the point when he realised that a posthumous cult
was fast developing around the murdered archbishop, both nationally and
internationally. Having realised that he must make a public expiation for
his perceived guilt, Henry sought an association with the cult which allowed
him to claim that the martyr was in effect his spiritual friend. This extended
to Plantagenet involvement beyond the frontiers of the Angevin ‘empire’,
encouraged by the daughters of Henry II and Eleanor of Aquitaine through
the marriage alliances of which they were part. These themes are developed
further in the second half of this volume. Chapters by Colette Bowie and José
Manuel Cerda shed new light, respectively, on the role of Henry’s daughters,
Matilda and Eleanor (known frequently by her Castilian appellation Leonor),
in the transmission of the cult of St Thomas.
Bowie considers Matilda, whose marriage to Henry the Lion, duke of Saxony
and Bavaria, in 1168, was followed after 1170 by the rapid development of the
Becket cult in Saxony in particular. The article asks why Matilda was involved
in devotion to a figure who had caused her father so many problems whilst alive
and whose death had done so much harm to Henry II’s international standing.
Just as Henry II quickly realised the need to establish an Angevin royal associ-
ation with St Thomas, so too Matilda could promote Becket to show filial
devotion and as a dynastic statement of appropriation. The depiction of the
saint amongst Matilda’s protectors, in an illumination showing the coronation
of the duke and his wife in the Gmunden Gospels, commissioned by Henry the
Lion and Matilda, suggests the latter’s influence. The attachment was perhaps
strengthened during the couple’s exile in England and Normandy between
1182 and 1185, but also reflects the strong sense of dynastic identity which
Henry II’s daughter brought with her to Saxony. This is also demonstrated by
Matilda’s devotion to her Anglo-Saxon royal ancestors, notably St Oswald
(603/604–642, king of Northumbria). The usage to which Oswald’s cult had
been put, indeed, suggests a model for the appropriation of devotion in which

xii

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 PREFACE

Henry II and his daughter Matilda engaged. Bowie goes on to explore the place
of the cult of St Thomas at Brunswick, where Henry II’s daughter and her
husband established a permanent ducal residence. At the city’s cathedral, wall-
paintings of the life and death of Archbishop Becket took their place alongside
the community’s other patron saints (John the Baptist and Blaise). Although
these do not date to the lifetimes of Henry the Lion and Matilda, they were
probably commissioned by their son, Henry of Brunswick, who took respon-
sibility for commemorating the parents whose preferences he had inherited
in terms of patronage of the cult of the saints. As Bowie shows, this included
a prominent role for St Thomas Becket, and from its beginnings in Saxony
in the late twelfth and early thirteenth centuries, the cult had spread across
Germany as a whole by the fifteenth.
José Manuel Cerda’s focus is on Leonor, second daughter of Henry II
and Eleanor of Aquitaine, and on her role in the transmission of the cult of
St Thomas to the kingdom of Castile. Leonor’s arrival in the Iberian kingdom
in 1170 came only weeks before Becket’s murder. Cerda examines the way in
which altars and churches dedicated to the martyr appeared in Iberia in the
decades that followed. These provide some of the earliest testimony to the
cult of Thomas Becket outside England. The article highlights that, whilst
evidence relating to Leonor’s role is scanty and sometimes difficult, there are
sufficient indications in the period from the 1170s to the early 1200s to suggest
that she and her entourage fostered the emergence of devotion to Becket at a
series of locations.
Yet whilst, in Bowie’s words, ‘Becket was in effect becoming a patron saint
of the Angevin family’, tensions between the crown and the Church could
easily jeopardise Plantagenet efforts to neutralise their association with the
martyrdom. Returning to the English context, Paul Webster highlights how,
in the early 1200s, King John emulated Henry II and Richard I in sustaining a
pattern of royal religious activity linked to St Thomas. However, John’s reign
is as memorable as that of his father for its period of sustained dispute between
king and Church. As the first prolonged example of such controversy since the
martyrdom, the conflict over the election of Stephen Langton as archbishop
of Canterbury provides an opportunity to understand the knock-on effects
of the emergence of the cult and the legacy of the dispute that preceded it.
Comparison of the sources for the two crises – in particular royal, archiepis-
copal and papal letters – reveals that, like Henry II, John was not prepared
to let the Church stand in the way of perceived royal rights. Yet Thomas was
something of a ‘ghost of Christmas past’, seen as a martyr for the freedom of
the Church, whose fate had influenced the portrayal of kings. Both John and
Pope Innocent III invoked Becket in their arguments, and the papacy adopted
a similar approach to the early thirteenth-century king as Thomas Becket had
taken towards Henry II.
Where Webster’s paper considers the impact of St Thomas on upheaval

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 PREFACE

within the kingdom of England, the final chapter explores the legacy of the
cult in France, with particular focus on the lands assembled by Henry II but
lost by John in 1204. Alyce Jordan focuses on the political and genealogical
statements which could be made using Becket iconography in the period
following the Capetian conquest of Plantagenet Anjou and Normandy,
examining the evidence of stained-glass windows, which provide some of the
earliest depictions of Thomas’s life in public art outside Canterbury. At Angers,
the St Thomas window commissioned by Bishop Guillaume de Beaumont can
be seen as a statement, indeed celebration, of his family’s connections to the
English and Scottish thrones: ‘a subtly transgressive response to the French
conquest’. The unconventional imagery contained within the stained glass
points not only to religious devotion to Becket, but also to the contested
political loyalties and regional identities of the ‘empire’ forged by Henry II.
Similar trends can be seen elsewhere. Bishop Hugh de Moreville’s Thomas
Becket window at Coutances contains numerous features linking it with
England and the Anglo-Norman Tosny family. Overall, the chapter provides
evidence for lingering loyalty to the Plantagenets and suggests that the legacy
of St Thomas was intertwined with the reaction to the severing of cross-
channel connections in the generation forced to adapt to King John’s terri-
torial losses of 1204.
Overall, this book examines aspects of the development of the cult and
the impact of the legacy of Saint Thomas. Its principal focus lies within the
Plantagenet world – the ‘empire’ assembled by King Henry II, defended by
his son, King Richard the Lionheart, and lost by King John. In particular, the
articles explore the religious and political ramifications of the emergence of the
cult of St Thomas before, during and after the changes brought about by King
Philip II’s takeover of large parts of the Plantagenet inheritance in the early
thirteenth century. The collection integrates the use of traditional textual
and archival sources, such as miracle collections, charters and royal and papal
letters, with studies of the material culture inspired by the cult. Adopting a
broadly chronological plan, it emphasises the wide-ranging impact of the
murder and of the emergence of the cult of St Thomas on the Plantagenet
orbit in the century following the martyrdom.

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 Acknowledgements

Our first debt of gratitude is to the organisers of the International Medieval

Congress, University of Leeds, UK, for accepting and hosting the sessions from
which many of the articles presented here have evolved, and for providing
the forum for our discussions. We would like to extend our thanks to all who
participated in those sessions or who have been involved in the project at
various stages of its development, not least those whose work has since been
published or is forthcoming elsewhere: Haki Antonsson, Rachel Koopmans,
Sara Lutan-Hassner, Fanny Madeline, Leidulf Melve, Gesine Oppitz-Trotman,
Catherine Royer-Hemet, and Sheila Sweetinburgh.
Particular thanks are also due to Anne J. Duggan and Michael Staunton,
who participated in and chaired the sessions, who first suggested to the editors
that they should collaborate in developing the papers as a published volume
on the Becket cult, and who have since contributed a wealth of useful advice.
Meanwhile, in Cardiff, Helen Nicholson has patiently enquired after progress
for longer than she perhaps expected, whilst offering her thoughts on the book
proposal and about how to manage the editing process at moments when doubt
set in. Also in Cardiff, Dave Wyatt’s support enabled time to be found for work
on the introduction without detriment to the ‘day job’.
Finally, we would like to thank Caroline Palmer and the team at The
Boydell Press for patiently waiting for the volume to be completed, and for
skilfully seeing it through to its completion. In addition, we thank our contrib-
utors, without whom this collection would not, of course, have been possible.
This book has been long in the making – long enough for at least one of the
editors regularly to refer to its subject as Tom. It has witnessed several hold-ups,
ranging from births to jury service to the vicissitudes of the early career world
of twenty-first century academia. So, to our contributors: we thank you for
your patience and your willingness to collaborate in developing a book on the
cult of the Angevin nemesis, St Thomas Becket.

Cardiff and Toronto, in the octave of the feast of

St Thomas the Martyr of Canterbury, December 2015.

xv

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 Abbreviations
AVIII J. González, El Reino de Castilla durante el reinado de
Alfonso VIII, 3 vols (Madrid, 1960)
Barlow F. Barlow, Thomas Becket (London, 1986; repr. London,
2000)
Bartlett, Saints R. Bartlett, Why Can the Dead Do Such Great Things?
Saints and Worshippers from the Martyrs to the Reformation
(Princeton, NJ, and Oxford, 2013)
BL British Library
Borenius, T. Borenius, St Thomas Becket in Art (London, 1932; repr.
Becket in Art Port Washington, NY, 1970)
BP Miracula Miracula S. Thomae Cantuariensis, auctore Benedicto, abbate
Petriburgensi, MTB, ii, 21–281
Cavero, Tomás Becket G. Cavero Domínguez (coord), Tomás Becket y la Península
Ibérica (1170–1230) (León, 2013)
Caviness, Windows M. H. Caviness, The Windows of Christ Church Cathedral,
of Christ Church Canterbury, Corpus Vitrearum Medii Aevi: Great Britain,
2 (Oxford, 1981)
CCM Cahiers de Civilisation Médiévale
Chronicles, ed. Chronicles of the Reigns of Stephen, Henry II, and Richard I,
Howlett ed. R. Howlett, RS 82, 4 vols (London, 1884–89)
CTB The Correspondence of Thomas Becket, Archbishop of
Canterbury 1162–1170, ed. and trans. A. J. Duggan, OMT,
2 vols (Oxford, 2000)
Diceto Radulfi de Diceto Decani Lundoniensis Opera Historica: The
Historical Works of Master Ralph de Diceto, Dean of London,
ed. W. Stubbs, RS 68, 2 vols (London, 1876)
Duggan, ‘Cult’ A. J. Duggan, ‘The Cult of St Thomas Becket in the
Thirteenth Century’, in St Thomas Cantilupe, Bishop of
Hereford: Essays in his Honour, ed. M. Jancey (Hereford,
1982), 21–44; repr. with the same pagination in Duggan,
Friends, Networks, no. IX

xvi

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 ABBREVIATIONS

Duggan, ‘Diplomacy’ A. J. Duggan, ‘Diplomacy, Status, and Conscience:

Henry II’s Penance for Becket’s Murder’, in Forschungen
zur Reichs-, Papst- und Landesgeschichte: Peter Herde zum
65. Geburtstag von Freunden, Schülern und Kollegen darge-
bracht, ed. K. Borchardt and E. Bünz, 2 vols (Stuttgart,
1998), vol. I, 265–90; repr. with the same pagination in
Duggan, Friends, Networks, no. VII
Duggan, Friends, A. J. Duggan, Thomas Becket: Friends, Networks, Texts, and
Networks Cult (Aldershot, 2007)
Duggan, Thomas A. [J.] Duggan, Thomas Becket (London, 2004)
Becket
EHR English Historical Review
Finucane R. C. Finucane, Miracles and Pilgrims: Popular Beliefs in
Medieval England (London, Melbourne and Toronto, 1977)
Gameson, ‘Early R. Gameson, ‘The Early Imagery of Thomas Becket’, in
Imagery’ Pilgrimage: The English Experience from Becket to Bunyan,
ed. C. Morris and P. Roberts (Cambridge, 2002), 46–89
Gervase Gervase of Canterbury, Opera Historica, ed. W. Stubbs, RS
73, 2 vols (London, 1879–80)
HMSO Her/His Majesty’s Stationery Office
Howden, Chronica Roger of Howden, Chronica Magistri Rogeri de Houedene,
ed. W. Stubbs, RS 51, 4 vols (London, 1868–71)
Howden, Gesta [Roger of Howden], Gesta Regis Henrici Secundi Benedicti
Abbatis: The Chronicle of the Reigns of Henry II and
Richard I, 1169–1192, known commonly under the name
of Benedict of Peterborough, ed. W. Stubbs, RS 49, 2 vols
(London, 1867)
JEH Journal of Ecclesiastical History
Jordan Fantosme, Jordan Fantosme’s Chronicle, ed. and trans. R. C. Johnston
ed. Johnston (Oxford, 1981)
Lives of Thomas The Lives of Thomas Becket, ed. and trans. M. Staunton
Becket (Manchester, 2001)
MGH SS Monumenta Germaniae Historica: Scriptores
MTB Materials for the History of Thomas Becket, Archbishop of
Canterbury, ed. J. C. Robertson and J. B. Sheppard, RS 67,
7 vols (London, 1875–85)
Nilgen U. Nilgen, ‘Thomas Becket en Normandie’, in Les saints
dans la Normandie médiévale, ed. P. Bouet and F. Neveux
(Caen, 2000), 189–204

xvii

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 ABBREVIATIONS

Nilson B. Nilson, Cathedral Shrines of Medieval England

(Woodbridge, 1998)
NMT Nelson’s Medieval Texts
ODNB Oxford Dictionary of National Biography
OMT Oxford Medieval Texts
PL Patrologiae cursus completus: series Latina, ed. J.-P. Migne,
221 vols (Paris, 1841–64)
PRS Pipe Roll Society
Recueil des historiens Recueil des historiens des Gaules et de la France, ed.
M. Bouquet et al., new edn, directed by L. Delisle, 19 vols
(Paris, 1869–80)
RS Rolls Series
SCH Studies in Church History
Sédières Thomas Becket: Actes du Colloque International de Sédières,
ed. R. Foreville (Paris, 1975)
Slocum, ‘Marriage’ K. B. Slocum, ‘Angevin Marriage Diplomacy and the
Early Dissemination of the Cult of Thomas Becket’,
Medieval Perspectives, 14 (1999), 214–28
Slocum, Liturgies K. B. Slocum, Liturgies in Honour of Thomas Becket
(Toronto, 2004)
Vincent, ‘Langton’ N. Vincent, ‘Stephen Langton, Archbishop of
Canterbury’, in Étienne Langton, Prédicateur, Bibliste,
Théologien, ed. L.-J. Bataillon, N. Bériou, G. Dahan and
R. Quinto (Turnhout, 2010), 51–123
Vincent, ‘Murderers’ N. Vincent, ‘The Murderers of Thomas Becket’, in
Bischofsmord im Mittelalter: Murder of Bishops, ed. N. Fryde
and D. Reitz (Göttingen, 2003), 211–72
Webb D. Webb, Pilgrimage in Medieval England (London and
New York, 2000)

xviii

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 1.

Introduction. The Cult of St Thomas Becket:

An Historiographical Pilgrimage

PAUL WEBSTER

On 29 December 1170, Thomas Becket, archbishop of Canterbury, was

murdered in his own cathedral by four knights who apparently believed they
were acting on the wishes of King Henry II. A controversial figure in life, news
of the circumstances of Becket’s death sent shockwaves through England,
the Plantagenet world and medieval Europe as a whole. In 1173, the London
merchant’s son, whose meteoric rise had taken him through the household
of Archbishop Theobald to the chancellorship of England and on to the
archbishopric and well-documented stand-off with the king, was officially
recognised as a saint. By the end of 1174, Henry II had twice performed public
penance for his part in what was popularly deemed to be martyrdom.1 In 1220,
the relics were moved to a magnificent shrine in the Trinity Chapel, where
they remained until the sixteenth century. Today, a candle still marks the site
once occupied by one of the foremost shrines in Western Christendom, one
that rivalled Rome and Compostela as the centre of one of the most popular
cults of the medieval Church.
Historians of Thomas Becket have naturally focused on the crisis in
relations between crown and Church in which he was so prominent. His
twentieth- and early twenty-first-century biographers tended to devote some
attention to the aftermath of the murder, focusing for example on the swift
occurrence of miracles and the way in which this turned his burial place into a
centre of pilgrimage. ‘Canterbury became almost overnight the Lourdes of its
world’, although the events that had taken place within the cathedral meant
that the church itself was in effect closed for almost a year after Becket’s death.
By popular demand, however, from Easter 1171 visitors were allowed to see the
tomb, at which point the monks Benedict, and later William, were delegated
to record details of cures reported there. All this suggests that the emergence
of the cult was a popular rather than a monk-led movement in its first days and

1 For an overview of Thomas Becket’s life, see F. Barlow, ‘Becket, Thomas (1120?–1170)’,
ODNB (Oxford, 2004) [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/27201, accessed 22 July 2015].

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 PAUL WEBSTER

weeks.2 The biographies go on to outline the reaction of Henry II, the papal
response, the penances imposed on the murderers, the settlement at Avranches
and its confirmation at Caen in 1172, the canonisation in 1173, the Great
Rebellion (1173–74) and the king’s penitential pilgrimage to Canterbury
in 1174. They also discuss the impact on royal policy towards the Church
in England, and briefly touch upon the spread of the cult across Europe and
its destruction in England by Henry VIII.3 Anne J. Duggan offers a detailed
consideration of the evolution of the image of Thomas Becket between 1171
and 1900.4 Beyond this, modern biographers tend to say far less about the
evolution of Becket’s career as a saint.5
Outside the genre of biography, others have focused on the impact
of Thomas’s death, on the portrayal of his life and martyrdom, and the
construction of the image of a saint, considering the sources written during and
after his lifetime which shed light on his actions and attitude. Thus, Anne J.
Duggan has conducted exhaustive research on Becket’s letters, whilst Michael
Staunton has written an in-depth study of the Lives of St Thomas, which
were penned within two decades of the archbishop’s death (and in seven cases
within four years of the murder). As Staunton notes, the ‘success of the cult is
reflected in the number of Lives and the speed with which they were written’.6
Historians have also focused on collections of Becket’s miracles, developing
further analysis of the ‘spate of almost instant hagiographical writing’ which,
as Frank Barlow notes, ‘was unprecedented’. The collections compiled by
Benedict of Peterborough and William of Canterbury gathered more than four
hundred examples of miracles.7 Benedict’s work ‘had the largest circulation

2 For the quotation, D. Knowles, Thomas Becket (London, 1970), 150. See also Duggan, Thomas
Becket, 216–17; M. Staunton, Thomas Becket and his Biographers (Woodbridge, 2006), 8–9;
Finucane, 122–3; A. J. Duggan, ‘Canterbury: The Becket Effect’, in Canterbury: A Medieval City,
ed. C. Royer-Hemet (Newcastle-upon-Tyne, 2010), 67–91, at 70–71; M.-P. Gelin, ‘The Citizens
of Canterbury and the Cult of St Thomas Becket’, in Canterbury: A Medieval City, ed. C. Royer-
Hemet (Newcastle-upon-Tyne, 2010), 93–118, at 100–102.
3 For example, Knowles, Thomas Becket, 150–55; Barlow, 251–75; Duggan, Thomas Becket,
214–23.
4 Duggan, Thomas Becket, 224–52.
5 Although Duggan offers instructive lists of further reading on the cult, on the liturgical
Becket, on miracles and pilgrimage at Canterbury, on St Thomas in art and on Becket in
literature: Duggan, Thomas Becket, 314–16. See also her article below, chapter 2.
6 A. [J.] Duggan, Thomas Becket: A Textual History of his Letters (Oxford, 1980); CTB; Staunton,
Becket and his Biographers, passim and for the quotation see 11; Lives of Thomas Becket.
7 Barlow, 2; Duggan, Thomas Becket, 218; Staunton, Becket and his Biographers, 9, 49–55;
Finucane, 125–6. See also: D. Lett, ‘Deux hagiographes, un saint et un roi: conformisme et
créativité dans les deux recueils de miracula de Thomas Becket’, in Auctor & Auctoritas: Invention
et conformisme dans l’écriture médiévale. Actes du colloque de Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines (14–16 juin
1999), ed. M. Zimmermann (Paris, 2001), 200–16; R. Koopmans, Wonderful to Relate: Miracle
Stories and Miracle Collecting in High Medieval England (Philadelphia, PA, 2011), esp. 125–200,
211–24.

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 THE CULT OF ST THOMAS BECKET

of any shrine collection of the age’, whilst William’s effort was dedicated to
Henry II. Nicholas Vincent argues that the letter that prefaced the latter
collection can be dated to the late 1180s, at a time when the collection, in
large part written some time before this date, was being made ready for wider
circulation. Vincent suggests that the letter was added because of a planned
translation of the saint’s relics in 1186, which ultimately did not take place.
The dedicatory letter presents an interesting symbol of the process of recon-
ciliation between Church and crown, with the question of how the miracle
accounts confronted the king with the implication that he was complicit in,
and in effect guilty of, the murder, addressed in the work of Gesine Oppitz-
Trotman.8 In addition to historians’ focus on Benedict and William’s work,
further contributions have illuminated the role of other major figures in the
dispute: Becket’s friends and followers, partisans of Henry II, and those who
sought, largely unsuccessfully, to look for the middle ground.9
Meanwhile, historians have also sought to explain the popular development
of the cult in medieval Europe, identifying a range of important themes.
As Staunton notes, ‘one of the reasons for Thomas’s broad appeal as a saint
is that he meant different things to different people. Each could take from
his memory and his image what they sought, whether it was the miracle-
worker, the martyr, the champion of the Church or a combination of these.’10
Naturally, the significance of the Becket phenomenon at Canterbury itself is
a prominent feature of analysis of the cult, with the evidence that pilgrims

8 Koopmans, Wonderful to Relate, 114, and see also 139–58 for discussion of the dating of the two
collections. For Vincent’s arguments (which he acknowledges differ from those of Koopmans):
N. Vincent, ‘William of Canterbury and Benedict of Peterborough: The Manuscripts, Date and
Context of the Becket Miracle Collections’, in Hagiographie, idéologie et politique au Moyen Âge
en Occident: Actes du colloque international du Centre d’Études supérieures de Civilisation médiévale
de Poitiers 11–14 septembre 2008, ed. E. Bozóky (Turnhout, 2012), 347–87, and esp. 376–87 for
the dating of William’s collection and its prefatory letter. On approaches to the king’s complicity:
G. Oppitz-Trotman, ‘Penance, Mercy and Saintly Authority in the Miracles of St Thomas
Becket’, in Saints and Sanctity, ed. P. D. Clarke and T. Claydon, SCH 47 (Woodbridge, 2011),
136–47.
9 Seen, for example, in a range of published letter collections: The Letters of John of Salisbury,
Volume I: The Early Letters 1153–1161, ed. and trans. W. J. Millor and H. E. Butler, NMT
(London, 1955), reissued OMT (Oxford, 1986); The Letters of John of Salisbury, Volume II: The
Later Letters 1163–1180, ed. and trans. W. J. Millor and C. N. L. Brooke, OMT (Oxford, 1979);
The Letters of Peter of Celle, ed. and trans. J. Haseldine, OMT (Oxford, 2001); A. Morey and
C. N. L. Brooke, Gilbert Foliot and his Letters (Cambridge, 1965); The Letters and Charters of Gilbert
Foliot, Abbot of Gloucester (1139–48), Bishop of Hereford (1148–63) and London (1163–87), ed.
A. Morey and C. N. L. Brooke (Cambridge, 1967); The Letters of Arnulf of Lisieux, ed. F. Barlow,
Camden Third Series, 61 (London, 1939). In 2014, a conference took place at Corpus Christi
College, Cambridge, entitled Herbert of Bosham: A Medieval Polymath.
10 Staunton, Becket and his Biographers, 216. See also Duggan, Thomas Becket, 224–69.

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 PAUL WEBSTER

flocked to the shrine leading one historian to describe the cathedral as ‘the
English Delphi’.11 In the late twelfth century, down to the translation master-
minded by Archbishop Stephen Langton in 1220, this would have been to
the tomb in the crypt of Canterbury Cathedral. Thereafter, its primary focus
was the magnificent new shrine, perhaps plated with solid gold and certainly
adorned with a host of precious stones and jewels, at the heart of the Trinity
Chapel, constructed immediately above the site of the crypt tomb and on the
site where Thomas was supposed first to have celebrated Mass.12 In a sense,
the Trinity Chapel could itself be seen as a giant architectural reliquary for the
saint whose shrine it housed.13
As the cult developed in the first fifty years between the martyrdom and
the translation of the principal relics to their new shrine, art and iconography
played an increasingly important role in defining the pilgrimage experience at
Canterbury.14 A range of locations in the cathedral formed part of the pilgrim
route as it developed both before and after the 1220 translation. This came to
include the site of the martyrdom, the crypt tomb, the principal shrine itself,
and the chapel known as the Corona, housing ‘Becket’s crown’, the shrine of
that part of his head removed by his murderers.15 Ben Nilson has traced the
flow of income the cathedral gained from its prize relics, arguing that the claim

11 For the quotation, Finucane, 164. On Canterbury, see most recently Duggan, ‘Canterbury:
The Becket Effect’; Gelin, ‘The Citizens of Canterbury’. In terms of pilgrimage and the shrine at
Canterbury, the cult of St Thomas is central to: Nilson; Webb. See also the opening to Finucane,
9–10.
12 Nilson, 37–8, 64, 71–2; J. Crook, English Medieval Shrines (Woodbridge, 2011), 195–7,
213–18. Various descriptions of the tomb and shrine are noted and discussed in: S. Blick,
‘Reconstructing the Shrine of St Thomas Becket, Canterbury Cathedral’, in Art and Architecture
of Late Medieval English Pilgrimage in Northern Europe and the British Isles, ed. S. Blick and
R. Tekippe, 2 vols (Leiden, 2005), i, 405–41, at 408–12; S. Lamia, ‘The Cross and the Crown:
Decoration and Accommodation for England’s Premier Saints’, in Decorations for the Holy Dead:
Visual Embellishments on Tombs and Shrines of Saints, ed. S. Lamia and E. Valdez del Álamo
(Turnhout, 2002), 39–56. Lamia compares sources depicting Becket’s tomb and shrine with those
depicting that of St Edward the Confessor. See also Gameson, ‘Early Imagery’, 46–7.
13 Gameson, ‘Early Imagery’, 83; A. F. Harris, ‘Pilgrimage, Performance, and Stained Glass at
Canterbury Cathedral’, in Art and Architecture of Late Medieval English Pilgrimage in Northern
Europe and the British Isles, ed. S. Blick and R. Tekippe (Leiden, 2005), 243–81, at 266;
M.-P. Gelin, Lumen ad revelationem gentium: Iconographie et liturgie à Christ Church, Canterbury
1175–1220 (Turnhout, 2006), 179–80; M. H. Caviness, ‘A Lost Cycle of Canterbury Paintings of
1200’, Antiquaries Journal, 54 (1974), 66–74.
14 Gameson, ‘Early Imagery’, 46–9. The process of constructing such a pilgrimage experience is
charted in detail in Harris, ‘Pilgrimage’.
15 Nilson, 54, and on the cathedral’s pilgrim route, see also 97–8; Webb, 78–9; Crook, English
Medieval Shrines, 218–19; Harris, ‘Pilgrimage’, 270–72; Gelin, Lumen ad revelationem gentium,
160–70. On allegory, symbolism, continental influences and the planning of the cathedral
buildings linked to providing a memorial to Becket: P. Binski, Becket’s Crown: Art and Imagination
in Gothic England 1170–1300 (New Haven, CT, and London, 2004), esp. 3–27; M. F. Hearn,
‘Canterbury Cathedral and the Cult of Becket’, Art Bulletin, 76 (1994), 19–54.

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 THE CULT OF ST THOMAS BECKET

that Canterbury hosted more than a hundred thousand pilgrims for special
events, such as the jubilees of St Thomas, is probably not a wild over-estimate.
Meanwhile, sources such as the Customary of Becket’s shrine, compiled in
1428, enable the historian to trace the daily pattern of activity that surrounded
the shrine. The 1220 translation, and the jubilee that Archbishop Langton
established alongside it, have been seen as crucial in securing the long-term
continuity of the cult, whilst evidence such as Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales
reveals the enduring popularity and broad social appeal of pilgrimage to
Canterbury. Although the income the monks accrued from the shrines of
St Thomas fell into decline in the later Middle Ages, in the decades following
the martyrdom, after the 1220 translation, and in the fourteenth century, it
was at astonishingly high levels. Periods of decline were sometimes reversed in
jubilee years and the period that followed, although there was a sustained dip
after the jubilee of 1420.16
Meanwhile, the archbishops of Canterbury adopted imagery of the
martyrdom on their seals, usually on the counter-seal used as an added means
of strengthening the authenticity of documents. An image of Becket’s death
was first included on such counter-seals by Hubert Walter (archbishop of
Canterbury 1193–1205). Potentially inspired by some of the earliest manuscript
images to depict the martyrdom, the iconography of Hubert’s seal was accom-
panied by the evocative words ‘Martir quod stillat primatis ab ore sigillat’ (‘The
martyr seals what issues from the mouth of the primate’). Most of his successors
followed suit in including an image of the murder, drawing on various icono-
graphic traditions, with increasingly elaborate architectural settings, and
accompanied by words invoking the example provided by St Thomas. This
was the case down to the reign of Henry VII, although William Courtenay
(archbishop of Canterbury 1381–96) provides an exception, whilst Thomas
Arundel (archbishop of Canterbury 1397–1414) set a new trend by choosing the
martyrdom as the image for his great seal (or seal of dignity). The archbishops
of Henry VII’s reign (John Morton and Henry Deane) did not use Becket
iconography on their seals, but William Warham (archbishop of Canterbury
1503–32) did, on the seal of his prerogative court. The later years of Warham’s
archiepiscopate played out against the backdrop of the furore surrounding
Henry VIII’s first divorce, in which the archbishop invoked the example of
St Thomas’s opposition to Henry II. Warham’s successor, Thomas Cranmer
(archbishop of Canterbury 1533–56), initially followed the example set by the

16 Duggan, Thomas Becket, 235; Nilson, 113–17, 147–54, 168–70, 180, 211–15 (table 2), 234
(graphs 1 and 2); Finucane, 193; D. H. Turner, ‘The Customary of the Shrine of St Thomas
of Canterbury’, Canterbury Cathedral Chronicle, 70 (1976), 16–22; Bartlett, Saints, 259–61, 432;
Harris, ‘Pilgrimage’, 254. On the jubilees, R. Foreville, Le jubilé de saint Thomas Becket: Du XIIIe
au XVe siècle (1220–1470). Étude et documents, Bibliothèque générale de l’École pratique des
hautes-études, VIe section (Paris, 1958).

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 PAUL WEBSTER

bulk of his predecessors, but at the height of the Reformation (c.1538), his
official seals were re-cut, discarding imagery linked to the martyrdom in favour
of a depiction of the death of Christ. Even then, Becket’s demise made a brief
reappearance in Mary Tudor’s reign, during the archiepiscopate of Cardinal
Reginald Pole (archbishop of Canterbury 1555–58).17
The host of pilgrims flocking to the shrine took home badges or ampullae
depicting significant moments in Thomas Becket’s career as archbishop, or
images of the structure they had visited in Canterbury Cathedral. This itself
spawned a flourishing industry in Canterbury, one of the many ways in which
the city could benefit from the economic opportunities presented by the
cult.18 In terms of the subsequent survival of pilgrim badges, particularly large
numbers have been recovered in London by archaeologists and the Society
of Thames Mudlarks, with further finds recorded by the Portable Antiquities
Scheme ranging across the United Kingdom. The frequency of their discovery
in London perhaps reflects the close association between the city and the saint,
who had been born there and who was believed to be the special protector
of Londoners. It is also testimony to the large number of badges sold by the
vendors of pilgrimage souvenirs at Canterbury. The badges depicted a range
of scenes related to Becket’s life and death, including the events leading up to
the martyrdom. Where these were commemorated by specific feasts – such as
that marking Becket’s return from exile (or Regressio) – badges were produced
to mark the occasion. Naturally, these depictions also focused heavily on the
murder itself and its perpetrators (sometimes identified in inscriptions) and
their swords, or showed Thomas’s soul being transported to heaven by angels.
Alternatively, they adopted an image such as the saint’s head, clad in his archi-
episcopal mitre, or portrayed the saint standing or enthroned, clad in his robes
of office.19 In an interesting modern twist, much of this material is becoming
available in new forms, including online and animation.20

17 K. B. Slocum, ‘Martir quod Stillat Primatis ab Ore Sigillat: Sealed with the Blood of Becket’,
Journal of the British Archaeological Association, 165 (2012), 61–88. See also Binski, Becket’s Crown,
132–4; T. Borenius, ‘The Iconography of St Thomas of Canterbury’, Archaeologia, 79 (1929),
29–54, at 44–5 and plate xvi; Borenius, Becket in Art, 74–5 and plates xxvii–xxviii.
18 Duggan, ‘Canterbury: The Becket Effect’, 81–8. See also Gelin, ‘The Citizens of Canterbury’.
19 Bartlett, Saints, 441–2. Various examples are discussed and illustrated in: Age of Chivalry: Art
in Plantagenet England 1200–1400, Royal Academy of Arts Exhibition Catalogue, ed. J. Alexander
and P. Binski (London, 1987), 218–22 (catalogue nos. 43–63). For a more detailed study, see:
B. Spencer, Pilgrim Souvenirs and Secular Badges, Medieval Finds from Excavations in London, 7,
new edn (Woodbridge, 2010, first published London, 1998), 37–133 (catalogue nos. 1–137). A
range of similar examples to those discussed in this and the following paragraph are to be found
in B. Spencer, Salisbury and South Wiltshire Museum. Medieval Catalogue, Part 2: Pilgrim Souvenirs
and Secular Badges (Salisbury, 1990), 16–24 (catalogue nos. 8–34), 70–73 (figs 12–39); Borenius,
Becket in Art, 28–9, 76–7.
20 In addition to the works noted above, the Museum of London’s holdings can also be viewed
online: [http://collections.museumoflondon.org.uk/online/search/#!/results?terms=pilgrim%20

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 THE CULT OF ST THOMAS BECKET

Some took this a stage further, with the ampullae themselves shaped in
the form of the saint as archbishop, holding his cross-staff and (or) a maniple
and giving a blessing, on board a ship returning to England or on horseback.
Badges are even to be found which depict Becket standing on the back of
a peacock! A more straightforward feature worth noting is that a number
of badges preserve images of the saint’s tomb or shrine, either the principal
shrine or the head shrine at Canterbury.21 Indeed, Sarah Blick has argued that
the surviving badges are the ‘only picture expressly created to reproduce the
shrine’, and provide an impression of the shrine as it might have looked to
the fourteenth-century observer. They give a more accurate impression than
stained-glass images (which portray either an idealised shrine, a fanciful recon-
struction perhaps based on a pilgrim’s account, or a structure earlier than
1220) or documentary efforts to picture the shrine produced in the centuries
following the Reformation. Whilst the badges ‘cannot be viewed as untouched
photographs of the past’, nonetheless their creators ‘were trying to convey
something of the original’, to be sold as mementoes for those keen to preserve
the memory of their pilgrimage. By extension, this evidence suggests that by
the fourteenth century, the shrine bore an effigy of the saint, with a refur-
bishment in the Decorated Style having taken place in around 1300.22
The shrine keepers also kept up a roaring trade in ‘St Thomas’s water’, selling
ampullae containing what was said to be a droplet of Becket’s blood.23 This had
been carefully gathered up by the monks within hours of the martyrdom and

badge%20Thomas%20Becket, accessed 3 October 2015]. A project is currently underway at

the British Museum to provide online images of the pilgrim badges held in their collections,
to be made accessible via: The British Museum Collection Online [http://www.britishmuseum.org/
research/collection_online/search.aspx, accessed 3 October 2015]. For an interactive 3-D image
of a mould for a pilgrim badge, visit; https://sketchfab.com/models/707caa9c575c4c7cb981e305d
ac61bdb [accessed 3 October 2015]. A search for pilgrim badges linked to Thomas Becket in the
database of the Portable Antiquities Scheme also returns over thirty surviving examples: [https://
finds.org.uk/database/search/results/objecttype/PILGRIM+BADGE/description/thomas+becket,
accessed 3 October 2015]. Meanwhile, work based on the pilgrim badges housed at the Museum
of London is discussed in M. Jeater, ‘Animating Thomas Becket’, Museum of London Blog [http://
blog.museumoflondon.org.uk/animating-thomas-becket/, accessed 3 October 2015]. My thanks
to Lloyd de Beer, Amy Jeffs and Anna Wells for correspondence which drew my attention to
these resources.
21 Spencer, Pilgrim Souvenirs, 49–50 (catalogue no. 6c), 72–6 (catalogue nos. 26–30), 78–89
(catalogue nos. 34–54), 99–120 (catalogue nos. 73–119).
22 Blick, ‘Reconstructing the Shrine of St Thomas’, 405–41, with the quotations at 419, 422–3,
and discussion of the possible effigy at 433–6.
23 A. A. Jordan, ‘The “Water of Thomas Becket”: Water as Medium, Metaphor and Relic’,
in The Nature and Function of Water, Baths, Bathing and Hygiene from Antiquity through the
Renaissance, ed. C. Kosso and A. Scott (Leiden, 2009), 479–500; P. A. Sigal, ‘Naissance et
premier développement d’un vinage exceptionnel: l’eau de saint Thomas’, CCM, 44 (2001),
35–44. The water is also noted in Duggan, Thomas Becket, 215, 234; Finucane, 163; Bartlett,
Saints, 441; Webb, 49; Barlow, 265–7.

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 PAUL WEBSTER

played a key part in the early miracles that did so much to stir the cult into life.
One in five of the miracles recorded by Benedict of Peterborough and William
of Canterbury were attributed to the use of Becket’s healing water.24 Henry II
even drank some of it on his famous penitential visit to Canterbury Cathedral
in 1174. Each ampulla could be seen, in a sense, as ‘a perambulatory shrine’,
and some came to bear mottos alluding to the saint’s prowess as a healer:
‘St Thomas is the best healer of the virtuous sick’. Others depicted the healing
miracles themselves. Spencer argues that ‘thanks to the generosity of countless
pilgrims, Canterbury water was soon deposited in practically every church
throughout the land, ready for use in emergencies as a thaumaturgic remedy’.25
Slocum adds that ‘it was the vision of the saint as healer which contributed
the most significant component to the development of the legend of Thomas
Becket’.26 The use of blood in this form, even that of a martyr, was arguably
controversial, given the centrality of the blood of Christ to the ceremony of
the Mass. In Becket’s case, dilution provided the solution, and as with so much
of the evidence for the depiction of the cult, writers and other sources (for
instance the stained glass of the Trinity Chapel at Canterbury) embraced and
celebrated the phenomenon: the Lamb of Canterbury took his place in the
world of the Lamb of God.27 Later, the blood of Becket would contribute to the
cult’s downfall. Suspicion of pilgrimage mementoes such as those involving
the ‘water of St Thomas’ provided Tudor critics with the ammunition to take
the first steps towards the destruction of the shrine.28
The accounts of Becket’s miracles reveal how the cult spread from
Canterbury, first into Kent, then to London, then further afield.29 As it
did so, numerous locations became associated with the saint as the sites of
miracles, the homes of relics (Carlisle Cathedral came to hold a sword said
to have been used to martyr Becket), or through the dedication of a church.
Having been born in London, Thomas came to be seen as a protector of the
city, with a vision of 1241 seeing him as the destroyer of new walls at the

24 Jordan, ‘Water of Thomas Becket’, 484.

25 Spencer, Pilgrim Souvenirs, 38, and for examples of surviving ampullae, see also 40–63
(catalogue nos. 1–18).
26 K. B. Slocum, ‘Optimus Egrorum Medicus Fit Thoma Bonorum: Images of Saint Thomas
Becket as Healer’, in Death, Sickness and Health in Medieval Society and Culture, ed. S. J. Ridyard,
Sewanee Mediaeval Studies, 10 (Sewanee, TN, 2000), 173–80, at 173. For discussion of the
development of the image of Becket as a doctor, in particular in the miracle collection of William
of Canterbury, see Koopmans, Wonderful to Relate, 193–8.
27 Slocum, ‘Optimus Egrorum Medicus’, 173–80; Jordan, ‘Water of Thomas Becket’, 482–3,
489–97; Koopmans, Wonderful to Relate, 34–6; Gelin, Lumen ad revelationem gentium, 270–77;
Barlow, 264–7; S. Blick, ‘Comparing Pilgrim Souvenirs and Trinity Chapel Windows at Canterbury
Cathedral: An Exploration of Context, Copying and the Recovery of Lost Stained Glass’, Mirator
(September, 2001) [http://www.glossa.fi/mirator/index_en.html, accessed 16 July 2016], 1–27.
28 Slocum, ‘Martir quod Stillat Primatis ab Ore Sigillat’, 76.
29 Duggan, ‘Canterbury: The Becket Effect’, 71–4.

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 THE CULT OF ST THOMAS BECKET

Tower of London, a portent proven accurate, according to the chronicler

Matthew Paris, when the structure subsequently collapsed.30 Although John
Crook sounds a note of caution, citing an increased interest in local saints
in the 1150s and ’60s, historians have highlighted the impact of the Becket
phenomenon on other churches and religious communities, both in the years
after 1170, and following the translation of 1220. Those that housed the relics
of other major saints were at times keen to emphasise that their relics were still
an effective focus for the devotions of the faithful seeking intercession. Thus,
miracles linked to the hand of St James the Great, preserved at Reading Abbey,
emphasised how visions of the saint informed the sick that they would only be
cured at Reading, not elsewhere.31 At other houses, new saints were in essence
created, as in the case of St Amphibalus at St Albans, a legendary priest said
to have been hidden by the abbey’s eponymous saint. Meanwhile, evidence
relating to the cults of St Frideswide of Oxford and St Cuthbert of Durham,
amongst others, shows similar traits to events at Reading, with emphasis on
the local saint’s effectiveness where the more popular cult at Canterbury (and
various other holy sites) had failed the individual intercessor. In some cases,
release from various forms of suffering was achieved by seeking the combined
intercession of the saints.32 Not all such efforts met with lasting success. If the
writing of the Historia Selebiensis Monasterii was intended to create a direct
rival – in the form of Selby’s prized relic of the finger of St Germanus – for
the northern saints John of Beverley and Cuthbert of Durham, or even ‘a
northern answer to Thomas Becket’, then the returns were limited. However,
the impetus provided by the developing cult at Canterbury should not be
discounted.33 In addition, events such as the translation of 1220 could provide
the spur to seek recognition of a local saint, as in the case of William of York,
canonised in 1226.34
Beyond Canterbury, the spread of the cult within medieval Europe has also
been traced. News of both martyrdom and miracles spread rapidly, for instance

30 Webb, 51–2, 165.

31 Crook, English Medieval Shrines, 170–91, although see also 213, where Crook observes that
in the wake of the translation of St Thomas’s bones in 1220, ‘a large number of other local saints
were also enshrined, or re-enshrined’; Nilson, 123. The popularity of Canterbury, however, clearly
caused tensions within communities, as evidence from Reading also testifies: Webb, 48–9, 57.
The interrelationship between the Becket cult and devotion to the hand of St James at Reading
will be considered in forthcoming work to be published by Rachel Koopmans.
32 Webb, 52–60; Crook, English Medieval Shrines, 187, 204–11.
33 Historia Selebiensis Monasterii: The History of the Monastery of Selby, ed. and trans. J. Burton
with L. Lockyer, OMT (Oxford, 2013), xciii–xciv; J. Burton, ‘Selby Abbey and its Twelfth-
Century Historian’, in Learning and Literacy in Medieval England and Abroad, ed. S. Rees-Jones
(Turnhout, 2003), 49–68, esp. 66–8. Rachel Koopmans also argues that existing trends in miracle
collecting were consolidated and accelerated by the Becket cult, in particular through the work
of Benedict of Peterborough: Koopmans, Wonderful to Relate, 7, 114–15, 134–6.
34 Crook, English Medieval Shrines, 246–7.

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 PAUL WEBSTER

along trade routes between the kingdom of England and the Rhineland, and
on the Third Crusade, to the point where St Thomas ‘was venerated with
varying degrees of solemnity throughout the Latin Church’, from Iceland to
the eastern Mediterranean. As Anne J. Duggan notes, the saint became patron
of a range of bodies: brewers in London, coopers in Venice, law students in
Bologna, and of the English hospice in Rome.35 The breadth of devotion
should not be taken for granted simply because of the events of Becket’s death.
Other bishops and archbishops murdered in this period did not achieve much
beyond local renown. Thomas the saint, however, was able to take advantage
of the networks in which Thomas the man had been involved in the course
of his career. The friends and contacts he had made from his student days
onwards were involved, variously taking action to spread the word before
Henry II could gain acceptance of his own version of events, or later helping
to disseminate texts, founding houses in his honour and distributing relics
to new homes overseas. The monks of Canterbury Cathedral also gave away
relics, either to pilgrims coming to Canterbury, or whilst on their travels
within Europe, as evidence for a visit to the abbey of St-Bénigne, Dijon, in
1190, attests. The religious orders with which Becket had been associated, in
particular the Cistercians, with whom he had resided in exile at the abbey of
Pontigny, played an important part in disseminating texts recounting his life
and miracles.36 Historians have also highlighted the number of French pilgrims
coming to Canterbury, in particular from the northern regions.37 One of the
most prolific and important twentieth-century contributions to the study of
Thomas Becket was made by Raymonde Foreville, through several works on
the development of the cult, especially in France, and through organising and
publishing the proceedings of the 1973 Becket conference held at Sédières
(département de la Corrèze, France).38 The development and endurance of
the cult in France, in particular in Normandy, continues to inspire important

35 Duggan, Thomas Becket, 233–4, 236; Duggan, ‘Canterbury: The Becket Effect’, 76–7, 89.
For an overview of the European expansion of the cult, see A. J. Duggan, ‘Religious Networks
in Action: The European Expansion of the Cult of St Thomas of Canterbury’, in International
Religious Networks, ed. J. Gregory and H. McLeod, SCH Subsidia, 14 (Woodbridge, 2012), 20–43.
36 Duggan, ‘Religious Networks’. For relics taken abroad from Canterbury by pilgrims or by the
monks themselves: Duggan, ‘Canterbury: The Becket Effect’, 74; Gameson, ‘Early Imagery’, 49;
H. E. J. Cowdrey, ‘An Early Record at Dijon of the Export of Becket’s Relics’, Bulletin of the
Institute of Historical Research, 54 (1981), 251–3.
37 Finucane, 163.
38 R. Foreville, ‘Le Culte de saint Thomas Becket en Normandie: Enquête sur les sanctuaires
anciennement placés sous le vocable du martyr de Canterbury’, in Sédières, 135–52; H. Martin,
‘Le culte de saint Thomas Becket dans les diocèses de la province de Tours’, in Sédières, 153–8;
J. Becquet, ‘Les sanctuaires dédiés à saint Thomas de Cantorbéry en Limousin’, in Sédières,
159–61; R. Foreville, ‘Le culte de saint Thomas Becket en France: Bilan provisoire des
recherches’, in Sédières, 163–87; R. Foreville, ‘La diffusion du culte de Thomas Becket dans la
France de l’Ouest avant la fin du XIIe siècle’, CCM, 19 (1976), 347–69, repr. with the same

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 THE CULT OF ST THOMAS BECKET

research.39 Meanwhile, devotion to St Thomas in particular regions or

countries has also been the focus of detailed individual studies.40
In turn, consideration of different thematic contexts in which the cult can
be studied has added a rich and varied range of source materials to the portfolio
available to the historian. The use of Becket as a model for medieval sermon
writers has been established. The saint’s feast days – in particular that of his
martyrdom (29 December), and from 1220 that of his translation (7 July) –
provided points in the calendar at which sermons drawing on perceptions of
the cause he had espoused, and the example of his martyrdom, would have been
preached. Phyllis B. Roberts has collected more than 180 surviving examples
of Becket sermons, dating from the 1170s to c.1400. She argues that the early
examples were an important tool in the spread of the cult, playing a significant
role in the wider oral transmission of devotion to Becket. Preaching, and the
related evidence of notes and outlines prepared by its practitioners in the
thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, also helped to sustain interest in St Thomas,
in particular amongst university and clerical audiences, with preachers spanning
the religious orders across Europe. Noting the potential influence of the reform of
the clergy promoted by the Fourth Lateran Council of 1215, Roberts highlights
how the personal piety and devotion of Becket the archbishop were emphasised,
along with the way in which his defence of the freedoms of the Church led to
his martyrdom. St Thomas was constructed as a good shepherd (bonus pastor),
prepared to give his life to protect his sheep. He was also portrayed as a model
in terms of his largesse to the poor, and an example to the churchmen of the
day. As Rachel Koopmans notes, surviving sermons very rarely make more than
passing reference to the saint’s miracles. Legend might, however, be referenced,
for instance the tale that Becket’s father Gilbert had married a Saracen princess
(who then converted).41 Most importantly, the sermons ‘were crucial to creating

pagination in R. Foreville, Thomas Becket dans la tradition historique et hagiographique (London,

1981), no. X.
39 See the contributions in this volume by Elma Brenner (chapter 4) and Alyce A. Jordan
(chapter 9). Dr Jordan is also currently working on a project entitled ‘Remembering Thomas
Becket in Normandy’, examining sites that have both medieval and later imagery devoted to
St Thomas in the same church, and exploring the ways in which nineteenth- and twentieth-
century Becket imagery ‘converses’ with its medieval counterparts.
40 See, for example, the articles collected in part 3 of Duggan, Friends, Networks. A further
useful list of relevant works is supplied in Duggan, Thomas Becket, 314. For recent work on the
cult in the Iberian Peninsula, see G. Cavero Domínguez (coord), Tomás Becket y la Península
Ibérica (1170–1230) (León, 2013); F. Galván Freile, ‘Culto e Iconografía de Tomás de Canterbury
en la Península Ibérica (1173–1300)’, in Hagiografia peninsular en els segles medievals, ed. F. Español
and F. Fité (Lleida, 2008), 197–216. I owe these references on the cult in Spain to the work of
José Manuel Cerda (chapter 7) in this volume.
41 P. B. Roberts, ‘Thomas Becket: The Construction and Deconstruction of a Saint from the
Middle Ages to the Reformation’, in Models of Holiness in Medieval Sermons, ed. B. C. M. Kienzle
(Louvain-la-Neuve, 1996), 1–22 at 1–12; P. B. Roberts, Thomas Becket in the Medieval Latin

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 PAUL WEBSTER

and sustaining’ St Thomas’s place as ‘a vivid and compelling symbol of the

Church’s resistance to temporal authority’.42
Becket also inspired a wide range of liturgy, incorporated into the rite for
daily services (more frequently than the Mass) and surviving in a variety of
sources such as breviaries and antiphonals.43 The canonisation prompted the
need for a ritual for the first feast day (29 December 1173), a task which fell
to Benedict of Peterborough. Further liturgical works were created to mark the
anniversary of Thomas’s return to England (the Regressio), and for the feast
inaugurated by the translation of 1220.44 As with the Lives and accounts of
Becket’s miracles, liturgical texts followed the cult in its swift spread across
Europe.45 The authors of Becket liturgy pursued a variety of approaches in
constructing their image of the saint. Some focused on the apparent transfor-
mation brought about by the chancellor’s elevation to the role of archbishop,
with others making reference to St Thomas as a good shepherd, to the martyr’s
adherence to the principles he had determined to defend, or to the parallels
between Becket and Christ. Others simply adopted the ritual used for offices in
the name of other saints.46 Particular attributes could be highlighted, notably
Thomas’s perceived posthumous abilities as a healer. The link between Becket
and water was emphasised here, whether in terms of the miraculous powers of

Preaching Tradition: An Inventory of Sermons about Thomas Becket c. 1170–c. 1400 (The Hague,
1992), with an overview of the evidence and its content at 9–45; Koopmans, Wonderful to Relate,
132–3. See also P. B. Roberts, ‘Archbishop Stephen Langton and his Preaching on Thomas
Becket in 1220’, in De Ore Domini: Preacher and Word in the Middle Ages, ed. T. L. Amos, E. A.
Green, and B. M. Kienzle (Kalmazoo, MI, 1989), 75–92.
42 Roberts, Thomas Becket in the Medieval Latin Preaching Tradition, 43.
43 S. Reames, ‘Liturgical Offices for the Cult of St Thomas Becket’, in Medieval Hagiography: An
Anthology, ed. T. [F.] Head (New York, 2000), 561–93; S. L. Reames, ‘The Remaking of a Saint:
Stephen Langton and the Liturgical Office for Becket’s Translation’, Hagiographica, 7 (2000),
17–34; Slocum, Liturgies. See also: D. Stevens, ‘Music in Honour of St Thomas of Canterbury’,
The Musical Quarterly, 56 (1970), 311–48; D. Stevens, ‘Thomas Becket et la musique médiévale’,
in Sédières, 277–84; A. Hughes, ‘Chants in the Rhymed Office of St Thomas of Canterbury’,
Early Music, 16 (1988), 185–201.
44 Duggan, Thomas Becket, 230. For the office for the feast day that marked the martyrdom,
29 December: Slocum, Liturgies, 135–238; Reames, ‘Liturgical Offices’, 561–2, 565–78. For the
office for the feast of the translation of St Thomas, 7 July: Slocum, Liturgies, 239–317; Reames,
‘Liturgical Offices’, 578–91. On the integration of the liturgy into the life and fabric of Canterbury
Cathedral: Gelin, Lumen ad revelationem gentium.
45 Hughes, ‘Chants’, 185; K. B. Slocum, ‘The Making, Remaking and Unmaking of the Cult of
Thomas Becket’, Hagiographica, 7 (2000), 3–16, at 11–12. See also, for example, A. J. Duggan,
‘A Becket Office at Stavelot: London, BL, MS Addit. 16964’, in Omnia disce: Medieval Studies in
Memory of Leonard Boyle, O.P., ed. eadem, J. Greatrex, and B. Bolton (Aldershot, 2005), 161–82;
repr. with the same pagination in Duggan, Friends, Networks, no. XI. An instructive list of hymns,
sequences, and rhymed offices in honour of the saint, including their place of origin, is offered in
Stevens, ‘Music in Honour of St Thomas’, 346–8.
46 Slocum, Liturgies, 4–8. See also the contrasting examples highlighted in Bartlett, Saints, 114,
117.

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 THE CULT OF ST THOMAS BECKET

‘St Thomas’s water’, or in his propensity for saving the drowned or aiding those
in peril at sea. The office celebrated on the anniversary of the 1220 translation
referred to children and adults saved from drowning.47
‘Having been martyred, Becket became an icon.’48 Historians of medieval
art remain indebted to the work of Tancred Borenius, in the 1920s and ’30s,
who collected evidence of surviving imagery of the saint from across Europe
and sought to identify trends in the development of the iconography of
St Thomas from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance.49 Meanwhile, historians
have noted how, in England, ‘every church in the land probably had an image
or picture of St Thomas’ prior to the Reformation, whilst numerous churches
in England and Europe carried the saint’s name in their dedication.50 More
broadly, ‘the visual arts made their most important contribution to the cult
of Becket through quantity not quality’.51 The appeal of the cult is shown in
the glass, paintings, sculpture, monumental brasses, carved wooden panels
and alabasters installed in churches across medieval Europe, including the
kingdom of England but also ranging from Iceland to the Mediterranean, as
well as in manuscript illuminations and later woodcuts.52 In the case of the
manuscripts, prominent examples include the Queen Mary Psalter, and the
so-called ‘Becket Leaves’ – a surviving thirteenth-century illustrated verse life
of the saint.53

47 Slocum, Liturgies, 7, 200–201, 205, 221–2, 257–62, 268–9, 276–7, 284–6, 288, 290–93,
298, 303, 309–10; Slocum, ‘Optimus Egrorum Medicus’, 177–9; Reames, ‘Liturgical Offices’, 579,
587–8, 590–91; Jordan, ‘Water of Thomas Becket’, 485–7.
48 Duggan, Thomas Becket, 232.
49 Borenius, ‘Iconography’; T. Borenius, ‘Addenda to the Iconography of St Thomas of
Canterbury’, Archaeologia, 81 (1931), 19–32; Borenius, Becket in Art; T. Borenius, ‘Some Further
Aspects of the Iconography of St Thomas of Canterbury’, Archaeologia, 83 (1933), 171–86.
50 Spencer, Salisbury and South Wiltshire Museum. Medieval Catalogue, Part 2, 16; Foreville, ‘Le
culte de saint Thomas Becket en Normandie’, 135. See also: Martin, ‘Le culte de saint Thomas
Becket dans les diocèses de la province de Tours’; Becquet, ‘Les sanctuaires dédiés à saint Thomas
de Cantorbéry en Limousin’; Foreville, ‘Le culte de saint Thomas Becket en France’. A map
of Becket dedications in the German empire is included in Die romanische Neumarktkirche zu
Merseburg und ihr Patron Thomas Becket von Canterbury, publ. by the Förderkreis Museum, Schloss
Merseburg (Merseburg, 2014), 159, a reference I owe to Professor Anne J. Duggan.
51 Gameson, ‘Early Imagery’, 85.
52 In addition to the works by Borenius noted above, see: A. Larue, ‘Enquête sur l’iconographie
et le mobilier de Thomas Becket en Normandie’, in Sédières, 211–19; C. Brisac, ‘Thomas Becket
dans la vitrail français au début du XIIIe siècle’, in Sédières, 221–31; M.-M. Gauthier, ‘Le meurtre
dans la cathédrale, thème iconographique médiéval’, in Sédières, 248–53; P. A. Newton, ‘Some
New Material for the Study of the Iconography of St Thomas Becket’, in Sédières, 255–63;
U. Nilgen, ‘The Manipulated Memory: Thomas Becket in Legend and Art’, in Memory and
Oblivion: Proceedings of the XXIXth International Congress of the History of Art held in Amsterdam,
1–7 September 1996, ed. W. Reinink and J. Stumpel (Dordrecht, 1999), 765–72.
53 Borenius, ‘Iconography’, 36, 50–51, plate xii, and plate xxi; Borenius, Becket in Art, 40–42
and plates x–xii; J. Backhouse and C. de Hamel, The Becket Leaves (London, 1988); J. C.
Dickinson, ‘Some Medieval English Representations of St Thomas Becket in France’, in Sédières,

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 PAUL WEBSTER

Modern studies have added to the range of examples of iconography of

St Thomas and to our knowledge of the types of object which presented
depictions of the saint or his shrine. This covers themes such as the image
of Becket in medieval stained glass. Here, attention has again focused on
Canterbury and the glass of the Trinity Chapel, installed after 1182 and possibly
before the translation of 1220. Caviness tentatively proposes that these windows
were installed in the early years of John’s reign, and in the period following the
monks’ return to their cathedral following their exile between 1207 and 1213.
A unique series of scenes from the miracles of St Thomas now fills seven of
these windows, and it is likely that these were originally accompanied by two
windows, at the start of the sequence, depicting Becket’s life. Where pilgrims
had previously read or more probably heard accounts of the miracles, perhaps
in the course of their tour of the cathedral precincts, here those miracles and
their message were displayed in vivid and colourful detail, whilst (after 1220)
the visitor also gazed upon the shrine. Thanks to the architectural reconfigura-
tions begun under William the Englishman, the raised area which accommo-
dated the shrine (from 1220 to the Reformation) was located so that the viewer
could see the lower scenes of the stained glass at eye-level. Where text was used
in the windows, it was not necessarily meant to be read and understood, but to
lend authority to what was depicted around it, in the way that the display of
holy texts might aid devotional guidance to the laity during services. Overall,
the windows reinforced the value of travelling to seek intercession from Thomas
and encouraged ‘the worshippers to envision the saint in their own space’. They
provided plentiful examples of how pilgrims should act and presented Thomas’s
story as ‘the contemporary climax to the long story of the Church’.54
Elsewhere, historians have highlighted the depictions of the saint in
glass surviving in a range of English and European churches, including York
Minster (and other churches in York), great French cathedrals such as Angers,
Chartres, Coutances, Lisieux and Sens, and a host of other churches.55 In

265–71, at 266–8. For the Queen Mary Psalter: London, BL, Royal MS 2 B vii, fols 288v–298v
[digitised at http://www.bl.uk/manuscripts/FullDisplay.aspx?ref=Royal_MS_2_b_vii, accessed 12
September 2015]. The psalter is also discussed in the essay (chapter 2) by Anne J. Duggan in this
volume. Further examples are discussed in Gameson, ‘Early Imagery’, 50, 64, 65 (plate 8), 67;
Newton, ‘Some New Material’, 255.
54 Caviness, Windows of Christ Church, esp. 157–214, 313–14 and plates 109–160, 219–20
(figs 238–366a, 592–3); Gelin, Lumen ad revelationem gentium; Harris, ‘Pilgrimage’, 243–81 (with
the quotation at 255); Gameson, ‘Early Imagery’, 72, 74–5, 76–7 (plates 15–16), 81 (for the
quotation), 82 (plate 18), 83, 86 (plate 19), 87, 88 (plate 20). See also M. H. Caviness, The Early
Stained Glass of Canterbury Cathedral circa 1175–1220 (Princeton, NJ, 1977).
55 Borenius, ‘Iconography’, 37–8; Borenius, Becket in Art, 32, 33, 44–8 and plates xiii–xiv;
Borenius, ‘Some Further Aspects’, 183–4 and plate li (fig. 1); Newton, ‘Some New Material’,
257–9. Note that Caviness dismisses Borenius’s identification of some of the fragments of glass
from York as depicting Becket miracles: Caviness, Windows of Christ Church, 159 n. 4. On Becket
in stained glass, see also M.-P. Gelin, ‘Heroes and Traitors: The Life of Thomas Becket in French

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 THE CULT OF ST THOMAS BECKET

some cases, such as Chartres, where John of Salisbury became bishop from
1176 until his death in 1180, and Sens, where Herbert of Bosham resided until
1184, this can be linked to the influence of some of Becket’s closest followers.56
In addition, Catherine Brisac identifies a brief flourishing of St Thomas as a
subject for window makers in France in the 1220s and 1230s, perhaps sparked
by the translation of 1220, linked to cathedrals associated with the former
archbishop’s struggle with Henry II or to the former Plantagenet lands. These
windows also provided an opportunity to present a more complete narrative of
events involving the saint than many other types of iconography, whether in
terms of his life and his miracles, or in the opportunity to juxtapose him with
other major saints, and with Christ himself, to set the Becket cult in the wider
context of salvation history, as part of a narrative of defence of the Church or
an appeal for pastoral and clerical reform.57
Meanwhile churches across Europe housed elaborate reliquaries, some of
the most beautiful including a series of caskets manufactured by the master
enamel makers of Limoges in the late twelfth and early thirteenth centuries.
Some fifty-two surviving examples depict the martyrdom of St Thomas, with
the number of murderers varying from two to four, and some distinctive in
showing one of the murderers armed with an axe.58 Their owners came from
across Europe and, whilst the caskets are now highly-prized collector’s items

Stained-Glass Windows’, Vidimus, 14 (2008) [http://vidimus.org/issues/issue-14/feature/, accessed

17 December 2015]; Larue, ‘Enquête sur l’iconographie et le mobilier de Thomas Becket en
Normandie’, 212, 217; Brisac, ‘Thomas Becket dans la vitrail français’, with descriptions of the
cathedral windows at 224–31; Gameson, ‘Early Imagery’, 67, 69–70 (plates 11–12), 71–2, 73–4
(plates 13–14). The windows at Angers and Coutances are the subject of the article by Alyce A.
Jordan in this volume (chapter 9).
56 D. Luscombe, ‘Salisbury, John of (late 1110s–1180)’, ODNB (Oxford, 2004; online edn,
2011) [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/14849, accessed 17 December 2015]; Gelin,
‘Heroes and Traitors’.
57 Brisac, ‘Thomas Becket dans la vitrail français’, 223; Gameson, ‘Early Imagery’, 78; Gelin,
‘Heroes and Traitors’; A. A. Jordan, ‘Rhetoric and Reform: The St Thomas Becket Window of
Sens Cathedral’, in The Four Modes of Seeing: Approaches to Medieval Imagery in Honor of Madeline
Harrison Caviness, ed. E. Staudinger Lane, E. Carson Pastan and E. M. Shortell (Farnham, 2009),
547–64.
58 S. Caudron, ‘Les châsses de Thomas Becket en émail de Limoges’, in Sédières, 233–41;
S. Caudron, ‘Thomas Becket et l’Œuvre de Limoges’, in Valérie et Thomas Becket: De l’influence des
princes Plantagenêt dans l’Œuvre de Limoges, ed. V. Notin et al. (Limoges, 1999), 56–68; J.-F. Boyer
et al., ‘Catalogue des œuvres exposées’, in Valérie et Thomas Becket: De l’influence des princes
Plantagenêt dans l’Œuvre de Limoges, ed. V. Notin et al. (Limoges, 1999), 69–131, at 100–31 (nos.
15–30); Bartlett, Saints, 267; Borenius, ‘Iconography’, 48–50, plate xix and plate xx; Borenius,
‘Addenda to the Iconography of St Thomas’, 28–9 and plate xxii fig. 3; Borenius, Becket in Art,
84–92 and plates xxxiii–xxxvi; Borenius, ‘Some Further Aspects’, 176–7 and plate xlvi; S. Lutan-
Hassner, Thomas Becket and the Plantagenets: Atonement Through Art (Leiden, 2015), chapter 5.
See also M. Yvernault, ‘Reading History in Enamel: The Journey of Thomas Becket’s Experience
from Canterbury to Limoges’, in Canterbury: A Medieval City, ed. C. Royer-Hemet (Newcastle-
upon-Tyne, 2010), 137–59.

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(if not housed in major churches or the leading world museums), Simone
Caudron has argued that they moved very little prior to the nineteenth
century, allowing us to identify the likely or possible home of just under half
the surviving examples, following their manufacture in Limoges. Those that
survive in England were preserved by Catholic families after the Reformation.
Amongst these, one was commissioned by Benedict, the monk of Canterbury
who witnessed the murder in 1170, became one of the first custodians of
Becket’s tomb, authored one of the earliest miracle collections and went on
to become abbot of Peterborough. Others, Caudron suggests, hailed from
Canterbury, Chester, Durham, Hereford and Worksop. Across Europe, survival
is similarly dependent on having avoided the destruction of the Reformation,
and that of the various European revolutions and religious, civil and interna-
tional wars. Nevertheless, Caudron attempts attributions for reliquaries (with
varying levels of conviction) to eight locations in France, five in Italy, two in
Germany and one each in Spain, the Netherlands and Sweden. The surviving
reliquaries from Spain, both linked to the cathedral of Palencia, could have
been commissioned by King Alfonso VIII of Castile and his wife Eleanor
(Leonor), daughter of Henry II and Eleanor of Aquitaine.59
In addition, high-status churchmen incorporated images of the saint and
his martyrdom into vestments and the associated artefacts of religious services.
These include the so-called ‘Thomas Becket mitres’, depicting the murder
and in some cases associating Thomas with other martyrs, St Stephen and
St Lawrence. Caroline Vogt’s discussion of these mitres sees them ‘as a refined
medium of episcopal self-fashioning’. Surviving examples can be found from
the Cistercian monastery of Seligenthal near Landshut (Bavaria, Germany),
from the cathedral at Sens and the sisters of Nôtre-Dame in Namur (France),
the latter thought once to have been owned by Cardinal-Bishop Jacques
de Vitry. Two further mitres were found upon the excavation of the graves
of Archbishop Bernat d’Olivalla in Tarragona Cathedral (Spain) and of
Archbishop Dom Gonçalo Pereira in Braga Cathedral (Portugal). All five were
created in the late-twelfth or earlier thirteenth century in the style known as
opus anglicanum, perhaps originating from a workshop at Canterbury itself. A
further ‘Becket mitre’ hails from Anagni Cathedral (Italy). Vogt highlights the
significance of a bishop’s head, seen especially in the ritual of his consecration,

59 S. Caudron, ‘La diffusion des chasses de saint Thomas Becket dans l’Europe médiévale’, in
L’Œuvre de Limoges et sa diffusion: Trésors, objets, collections, ed. D. Gaborit-Chopin and F. Sandron
(Rennes, 2011), 23–41. See also Gauthier, ‘Le meurtre dans la cathédrale’. On Benedict: E. King,
‘Benedict (c. 1135–1193)’, ODNB (Oxford, 2004) [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/2081,
accessed 4 November 2015]. Richard Gameson notes that some reliquaries, notably those housed
in the Italian locations of Lucca Cathedral, the church of San Giovanni in Laterano, Rome, and
Anagni Cathedral, are still in their original homes, although he is more cautious than Caudron
as to the extent to which origins can be identified for other surviving examples: Gameson, ‘Early
Imagery’, 48–9 and n. 12, 50–51.

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signifying his role as Christ’s vicar on earth. The depiction of the hand of God,
descending from the point of the mitres, points first to the martyr, but also,
by extension, to the wearer, the bishop himself.60 Perhaps this stood as an
example to the wearer, but also as a reminder to the viewer of the bishop’s duty
to protect his flock and defend the Church. Becket iconography can also be
found in carved ivory adornments for churches, such as liturgical combs used
on the hair of churchmen celebrating masses and performing roles in other
services, as well as on plaques and diptychs.61
Historians have also considered different aspects of the enduring popularity
of the cult, not least the way in which Becket retained political significance.
In 1929, Josiah Cox Russell described St Thomas as the ‘first and greatest’ of
‘the noteworthy series of contemporary anti-royal leaders who were honoured,
partially at least, as saints’. ‘In the person of Becket’, Russell added, ‘resistance
to the king had been canonised’.62 Later churchmen, for example Thomas’s
successors at Canterbury, Stephen Langton, Edmund Rich and Robert
Winchelsey, either cultivated the image or were seen in terms of being Becket’s
heirs in the struggle with the crown for the freedom of the Church.63
Meanwhile, such ‘political sainthood’ can also be seen in the posthumous
cults of a number of leading laymen who died in opposition to the ruler of their
day.64 In the case of Simon de Montfort, the sources incorporated accounts

60 C. Vogt, ‘Episcopal Self-Fashioning: The Thomas Becket Mitres’, in Iconography of Liturgical

Textiles in the Middle Ages, ed. E. Wetter (Riggisberg, 2010), 117–28; C. T. Little, ‘The Road to
Glory: New Early Images of Thomas Becket’s Life’, in Reading Medieval Images: The Art Historian
and the Object, ed. E. Sears and T. K. Thomas (Ann Arbor, MI, 2002), 201–11 at 210. See also
Borenius, ‘Iconography’, 47 and plate xviii fig. 5; Borenius, Becket in Art, 83–4; Gameson, ‘Early
Imagery’, 57 (plate 3), 58 (plate 4).
61 Little, ‘The Road to Glory’, 205–10; Borenius, ‘Iconography’, 47 and plate xviii; Borenius,
Becket in Art, 24–5; Gameson, ‘Early Imagery’, 56 (plate 2).
62 J. C. Russell, ‘The Canonisation of Opposition to the King in Angevin England’, in
Anniversary Essays in Medieval History by Students of Charles Homer Haskins, ed. C. H. Taylor
(Boston, MA, 1929), 279–90 at 279–81.
63 See Russell, ‘Canonisation of Opposition’, 282. For more recent studies of Stephen Langton
and Edmund Rich: Vincent, ‘Langton’; C. H. Lawrence, St Edmund of Abingdon: A Study in
Hagiography and History (Oxford, 1960); J. Creamer, ‘St Edmund of Abingdon and Henry III in
the Shadow of Thomas Becket’, in Thirteenth Century England XIV: Proceedings of the Aberystwyth
and Lampeter Conference 2011, ed. J. Burton, P. Schofield, and B. Weiler (Woodbridge, 2013),
129–39; Binski, Becket’s Crown, 129–38. On Winchelsey: J. H. Denton, ‘Winchelsey, Robert
(c. 1240–1313)’, ODNB (Oxford, 2004; online edn, 2008) [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/
article/29713, accessed 11 August 2015].
64 For an overview: Bartlett, Saints, 180–82; Webb, 165–79. This has become a rich field of
historical study in recent years, as shown by: T. J. Heffernan, ‘“God hathe schewed ffor him many
grete miracules”: Political Canonization and the Miracula of Simon de Montfort’, in Art and
Context in Late Medieval English Narrative: Essays in Honour of Robert Worth Frank, Jr., ed. R. R.
Edwards (Cambridge, 1994), 177–91; J. R. Maddicott, ‘Follower, Leader, Pilgrim, Saint: Robert
de Vere, Earl of Oxford, at the Shrine of Simon de Montfort, 1273’, EHR, 99 (1994), 641–53;
D. Piroyansky, ‘Bloody Miracles of a Political Martyr: The Case of Thomas Earl of Lancaster’, in

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of visions of St Thomas, or comparisons with Becket, to bolster the case for

sanctity for a nobleman who died in opposition to the crown.65 Contemporary
chroniclers of Thomas of Lancaster depicted the archbishop as a father figure
to his namesake, the earl. Both wrought posthumous cures through their
blood (though in Lancaster’s case the blood flowed from the tomb, rather than
having been gathered up following the ‘saint’s’ execution). Surviving wall-
paintings show the martyrdom of the two Thomases together.66 A number of
bishops associated with lay reformers such as de Montfort, or with opposition
to royal encroachments on perceived freedoms of the Church, could also be
seen in this category, including Robert Grosseteste, Thomas Cantilupe and
Richard of Wyche.67 In the fourteenth century, Richard Scrope, archbishop
of York, attracted posthumous veneration through the dubious distinction
of being the first English bishop to suffer judicial execution, having joined
with Percy’s rebellion, in the process creating associations that allow him to
be construed as a political saint who died for his opposition to the crown.
Parallels with Becket were drawn, and Scrope was portrayed as St Thomas’s
brother in the struggle against royal authority. Like Canterbury’s martyr, he
also gained a reputation for protecting followers in trouble on or in water. In
the context of the turbulence of the Wars of the Roses, Scrope could be seen
as a Yorkist martyr, with the cult of Henry VI as a Lancastrian counterpoint.
Here, however, there is evidence that the popularity of Thomas Becket was on
the wane, with Henry VI’s miracles deemed more efficacious, in particular that
involving the cure of a baby who had choked after swallowing a Canterbury
pilgrim badge!68
The dangers of St Thomas Becket’s potential as a political saint were not

Signs, Wonders, Miracles: Representations of Divine Power in the Life of the Church, ed. K. Cooper
and J. Gregory, SCH, 41 (Woodbridge, 2005), 228–38; D. Piroyansky, Martyrs in the Making:
Political Martyrdom in Late Medieval England (Basingstoke, 2008); J. M. Theilmann, ‘Political
Canonization and Political Symbolism in Medieval England’, Journal of British Studies, 29
(1990), 241–66; C. Valente, ‘Simon de Montfort, Earl of Leicester, and the Utility of Sanctity in
Thirteenth-Century England’, Journal of Medieval History, 21 (1995), 27–49; S. Walker, ‘Political
Saints in Later Medieval England’, in The McFarlane Legacy: Studies in Later Medieval Politics and
Society, ed. R. H. Britnell and A. J. Pollard (Stroud, 1995), 77–106.
65 ‘The Lament of Simon de Montfort’, ed. T. Wright, The Political Songs of England, From
the Reign of John to that of Edward II, Camden Society, Old Series, 6 (London, 1839), 125–7, at
125–6; Heffernan, ‘“God hath schewed ffor him many grete miracules”’, 180.
66 ‘The Office of St Thomas of Lancaster’, ed. T. Wright, The Political Songs of England, From the
Reign of John to that of Edward II, Camden Society, Old Series, 6 (London, 1839), 268–72, at 268;
Piroyansky, ‘Bloody Miracles of a Political Martyr’, 230–31; Piroyansky, Martyrs in the Making,
32, 35.
67 Webb, 165–6.
68 P. McNiven, ‘Scrope, Richard (c. 1350–1405)’, ODNB (Oxford, 2004; online edn, 2008)
[http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/24964, accessed 5 Nov 2015]; Piroyansky, Martyrs in the
Making, 49–73 (on Scrope), and see esp. 62, 70–71, although Piroyansky notes that Scrope’s
followers were not necessarily trying to create ‘a new, northern Becket’, 74–98 (on Henry VI),

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lost on the Plantagenet kings, from Henry II onwards. Royal cults such as that
of Edward the Confessor have been seen as a response, alongside (from the
mid-fourteenth century), the rather unlikely sounding cult of Edward II.69 Be
that as it may, the crown could also develop ties with saints such as Thomas.
Henry II – having realised that he must make a public expiation for his
perceived guilt – sought an association with the cult which allowed him to
claim that the martyr was in effect his spiritual friend.70 His successors followed
suit.71 Historians have also recognised the way in which this trend extended
into Europe. Here, marriages played a crucial role, in particular those of the
daughters of Henry II and Eleanor of Aquitaine – Matilda, Eleanor and Joanna
– and that of their daughter-in-law, Margaret (wife first of Henry the Young
King then of King Bela III of Hungary).72 Kay Brainerd Slocum argues that
‘the female Plantagenets had a serious and well-defined political goal; they
were determined to demonstrate to the world that the archbishop had forgiven
his old enemy Henry II, and they wished to proclaim that their family was
now firmly under the protection of the Canterbury martyr’.73 An important
reconsideration of the evidence here has been presented by Colette Bowie,
who argues that in the case of Joanna, at least, the evidence is inconclusive.
More positive conclusions can, however, be reached for Henry II’s other
daughters, providing the evidence is approached with care, whilst in the case
of Margaret of France, devotion to St Thomas shown following her marriage to
King Bela III of Hungary can be seen as an act of filial devotion to her father,
Louis VII of France, himself closely involved in some of the prominent events
of Becket’s life, and in the invocation of his saintly intercession.74 Overall,
royal involvement with the cult of Canterbury’s martyr is indicative of what
Robert Bartlett describes as the ‘radically depoliticising effect’ of martyrdom,

esp. 79; J. W. McKenna, ‘Popular Canonisation as Political Propaganda: The Cult of Archbishop
Scrope’, Speculum, 45 (1970), 608–23; Webb, 176–9.
69 For discussion of the cult of Edward the Confessor as part of a royal response to the
‘antipodean rivalry which existed between Crown and Cross in England’, see Lamia, ‘The Cross
and the Crown’, 49. On the cult of Edward II: Webb, 172; Piroyansky, Martyrs in the Making,
100–104.
70 A. J. Duggan, ‘Ne in dubium: The Official Record of Henry II’s Reconciliation at Avranches,
21 May 1172’, EHR, 115 (2000), 643–58; Duggan, ‘Diplomacy’; T. K. Keefe, ‘Shrine Time: King
Henry II’s Visits to Thomas Becket’s Tomb’, Haskins Society Journal, 11 (2003), 115–22.
71 Discussed in relation to Henry II’s successors as king in the contributions by Anne J. Duggan
(chapter 2) and Paul Webster (chapter 8) below. Also discussed in Lutan-Hassner, Thomas Becket,
chapter 3. For Henry III, see also Binski, Becket’s Crown, 138–46.
72 E. Jamison, ‘The Alliance of England and Sicily in the Second Half of the 12th Century’,
Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, 6 (1943), 20–32, at 23–9; Slocum, ‘Marriage’;
Lutan-Hassner, Thomas Becket, chapter 4.
73 Slocum, ‘Marriage’, 217.
74 C. Bowie, The Daughters of Henry II and Eleanor of Aquitaine (Turnhout, 2014), 141–72.

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‘with the blood of murdered kings, princes and bishops offering a unifying
centre, around which former enemies could muster’. Bartlett sees St Thomas as
a ‘spectacular example’ of this phenomenon, whilst Danna Piroyansky argues
that the cult succeeded ‘because Becket’s sanctity was extended to his former
enemies as well, offering patronage and protection to all the English people; it
promoted ideas of repentance, remission and reconciliation’.75
In the later Middle Ages, whilst there were perhaps fewer pilgrims to
Canterbury than in the peak years of the late-twelfth and thirteenth centuries,
and there was a decline in the income recorded at the shrine of St Thomas, this
may have reflected a world in which newer cults began to seem more effective.
Criticism of, or doubt about Becket seem not to have been prevalent before the
sixteenth century, although the Lollards ‘nursed a particular resentment’ for
the saint.76 Even this was not always put forward with consistency. Surprisingly,
given the apparent enthusiasm with which his followers denounced Becket, it
seems that one sermon by John Wyclif, attacking clerical greed, used Thomas
as a positive example to the clergy.77 A more usual pattern of devotion is
suggested, however, in the way in which fifteenth-century boatmen on the
Thames doffed their caps to an image of the saint incorporated into the tower
(known as the Lollards’ Tower because of those said to have been imprisoned
there) of the archiepiscopal residence, Lambeth Palace.78 Veneration of the
saint by late medieval kings continued a tradition begun by their Angevin
predecessors, as seen by Henry VII’s gift to the shrine of a silver gilt statue
portraying the king at prayer.79 The evidence of early sixteenth-century stained
glass surviving at York, depicting scenes from the legend surrounding Becket’s
parents and from the life of the saint himself, suggests enduring devotion on
the eve of the Reformation. This is reinforced by the evidence of late medieval
altar-dedications, wills and surviving chantry records.80 In this context, Rachel

75 Bartlett, Saints, 182–3; Piroyansky, Martyrs in the Making, 13.

76 Bartlett, Saints, 595; Webb, 242–3; E. Duffy, The Stripping of the Altars: Traditional Religion
in England c. 1400–c. 1580 (New Haven, CT, and London, 1992), 195–6; Finucane, 210–11;
P. Roberts, ‘Politics, Drama and the Cult of Thomas Becket in the Sixteenth Century’, in
Pilgrimage: The English Experience from Becket to Bunyan, ed. C. Morris and P. Roberts (Cambridge,
2002), 199–237, at 201.
77 Roberts, Thomas Becket in the Medieval Latin Preaching Tradition, 140 (sermon 86). For the
range of views of St Thomas more usually associated with those identified as Lollards: J. F. Davis,
‘Lollards, Reformers and St Thomas of Canterbury’, University of Birmingham Historical Journal, 9
(1963), 1–15.
78 Spencer, Pilgrim Souvenirs, 117; P. B. Roberts, ‘The Unmaking of a Saint: The Suppression of
the Cult of St Thomas of Canterbury’, Hagiographica, 7 (2000), 35–46, at 35.
79 R. E. Scully, ‘The Unmaking of a Saint: Thomas Becket and the English Reformation’,
Catholic Historical Review, 84 (2000), 579–602, at 585.
80 The series of thirteen scenes is dated by Rachel Koopmans to c.1525 or possibly the 1530s.
They are now housed in the church of St Michael-le-Belfrey and in the chapter house of York
Minister: Newton, ‘Some New Material’, 258–9; R. Koopmans, ‘Early Sixteenth-Century Stained

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Koopmans suggests that future research might usefully focus on the evidence
of church fabric as a ‘route into the question of the strength and visibility of
Becket’s cult … in the years before the English Reformation’.81
Henry VIII, despite having visited the shrine in 1520 with the emperor,
Charles V, eventually allowed himself to be convinced that the archbishop was
no saint but a treacherous rebel. Whilst he remained a believer in the inter-
cession of saints as a means of saving the soul until well into the 1530s, he was
ultimately persuaded to order the eradication of the cult of St Thomas.82 In the
ensuing anti-Becket propaganda, Thomas Cromwell promoted the notion that
the archbishop’s death was his own fault, because he had fallen into dispute
not with the king but with the archbishop of York. The likes of William
Tyndale, John Bale and John Foxe cast Becket in the light of anti-papal
rhetoric, and did so with gusto.83 Meanwhile, the Henrician reformers oversaw
the destruction of almost all that stood in Becket’s name in Canterbury
Cathedral, with the notable exception of the stained glass in the Trinity
Chapel. Whether the bones themselves were unceremoniously thrown away
(perhaps even burnt), or in some way concealed, their whereabouts are no
longer known. The Reformation also witnessed a wider effort to strike Becket’s
image from churches and his name from the liturgy.84 Peter Roberts observes
that ‘the attack … was added at the last moment’, but adds that this should
not be construed as evidence of reluctance on the part of Henry VIII, given
the king’s presence at Canterbury at the time when the shrine was demol-
ished.85 Historians note that the evidence of surviving manuscripts provides

Glass at St Michael-le-Belfrey and the Commemoration of Thomas Becket in Late Medieval

York’, Speculum, 80 (2014), 1040–1100, with dating discussed at 1049.
81 Koopmans, ‘Early Sixteenth-Century Stained Glass’, 1099.
82 On the Reformation and post-Reformation Becket, see Roberts, ‘Politics, Drama and the
Cult of Thomas Becket’; Scully, ‘The Unmaking of a Saint’; V. Houliston, ‘St Thomas Becket
in the Propaganda of the English Counter-Reformation’, Renaissance Studies, 7 (1993), 43–70;
Roberts, ‘The Unmaking of a Saint’. In addition to what follows, see also the discussion in Anne
J. Duggan’s essay below, chapter 2.
83 Roberts, ‘Thomas Becket: The Construction and Deconstruction of a Saint’, 13–14; Roberts,
‘The Unmaking of a Saint’; Houliston, ‘St Thomas Becket’, 44–6; Roberts, ‘Politics, Drama, and
the Cult of Thomas Becket’, 222–6.
84 Finucane, 201, 210–12; Bartlett, Saints, 87; Slocum, ‘Martir quod Stillat Primatis ab Ore Sigillat’,
74; Roberts, ‘Thomas Becket: The Construction and Deconstruction of a Saint’, 17–19; Gelin,
Lumen ad revelationem gentium, 154–5; Scully, ‘The Unmaking of a Saint’, 593–7. On the fate of
Becket’s bones: J. Butler, The Quest for Becket’s Bones: The Mystery of the Relics of St Thomas of
Canterbury (New Haven, CT, and London, 1995); T. F. Mayer, ‘Becket’s Bones Burnt! Cardinal
Pole and the Invention and Dissemination of an Atrocity’, in Martyrs and Martyrdom in England,
c. 1400–1700, ed. T. S. Freeman and T. F. Mayer (Woodbridge, 2007), 126–43. On the wider eradi-
cation of the shrines of the saints in England: Nilson, 191–3; Webb, 250–61, with Becket’s shrine
discussed at 259–60; Crook, English Medieval Shrines, 289–303, with Becket’s shrine discussed at 300.
85 Roberts, ‘Politics, Drama, and the Cult of Thomas Becket’, 215–16, 226–7 (including the
quotation at 227).

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dozens of examples of how such erasures actually took place. Contrasting

opinions have been put forward. Paul Binski describes ‘a massive level of
systematic destruction which erased St Thomas’s image from the domain of
English visual culture with Stalinist zeal’. On the other hand, Eamon Duffy
notes evidence that service books were ‘reformed half-heartedly’, adding that
images in churches were craftily adapted so that what once had appeared to be
St Thomas was now a different saint.86 In one such image, Borenius suggests,
the disguise was effected by turning Becket from holy man to holy woman.87
Cardinal Pole promoted efforts to revive the cult under Mary and was himself
buried in the saint’s chapel at Canterbury Cathedral, following his death in
1558. Perhaps tellingly, however, although St Thomas was restored to the
calendar of saints, the Marian regime did not attempt to resurrect the shrine,
and records survive which show that not everyone was content to see images
of the saint restored to churches. The Henrician efforts to expunge the cult
continued as part of the Elizabethan settlement of the Church.88 In this new
religious world, Becket did not die a martyr’s death, but as ‘a stubborn man
against his king’.89
Whether the Tudor efforts were entirely successful is open to question.
Although writers like John Foxe ‘constructed the image of Becket the
character actor, which surfaces from time to time in modern historiography’,
equally St Thomas became a symbol for English Catholics persevering in
their faith and for their European supporters. Surviving medallions depict
Thomas Becket on one side and Thomas More on the other. Recusant writers
in England penned works in Becket’s defence. He remained a focus for the
devotions of the Jesuit missionaries setting out to play their part in the mainte-
nance of the Catholic faith in England.90 His intercession was also anticipated
in support of the Catholic king of England, James II, and his queen, Mary

86 Duffy, Stripping of the Altars, 418–20, and see also plates 131–2, for examples of a defaced
painting and lightly crossed-through manuscripts; Binski, Becket’s Crown, 165. See also:
D. MacCulloch, Thomas Cranmer (New Haven, CT, and London, 1996), 227–9; Borenius, Becket
in Art, 23, 109–10; Roberts, ‘Politics, Drama, and the Cult of Thomas Becket’, 204 (fig. 30, a
defaced manuscript of a life of St Thomas which once belonged to Archbishop Cranmer), 228–9,
231–3; S. J. Biggs, ‘Erasing Becket’, British Library Medieval Manuscripts Blog [http://britishlibrary.
typepad.co.uk/digitisedmanuscripts/2011/09/erasing-becket.html, accessed 31 December 2015];
Scully, ‘The Unmaking of a Saint’, 597.
87 Borenius, ‘Some Further Aspects’, 182 and plate L (fig. 3).
88 Slocum, ‘Martir quod Stillat Primatis ab Ore Sigillat’, 81–4; Finucane, 213–14; Borenius,
Becket in Art, 111; Roberts, ‘Politics, Drama, and the Cult of Thomas Becket’, 233–5; Houliston,
‘St Thomas Becket’, 44; Roberts, ‘Thomas Becket: The Construction and Deconstruction of a
Saint’, 19; Scully, ‘The Unmaking of a Saint’, 599–600.
89 Slocum, ‘Martir quod Stillat Primatis ab Ore Sigillat’, 84; Duggan, Thomas Becket, 239; both
quoting Foxe’s ‘Book of Martyrs’.
90 Borenius, Becket in Art, 30–31; Duggan, Thomas Becket, 239–42 with the quotation at 240;
Houliston, ‘St Thomas Becket’, 49–70; Roberts, ‘Politics, Drama, and the Cult of Thomas

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of Modena, following the revolution of 1688.91 Thus, there was a place for
St Thomas in the era of the Counter-Reformation.
In more recent centuries, debate and opinion regarded Thomas and his
cult have been played out against the backdrop of the differing opinions of
‘High Church’ Anglicans and their opponents, laced with spirited rivalry and
disagreement amongst a number of the antiquarians involved in the discovery
and editing of some of the principle sources in the nineteenth century.92 There
has also been what might be described as something of a literary and theatre-
based cult of Henry II’s nemesis.93 Tennyson wrote a play, Becket, although this
failed to find a theatre that would perform it. T. S. Eliot published Murder in
the Cathedral in 1935, and the French playwright Jean Anouilh produced his
Becket, ou l’honneur de Dieu in 1959.94 The events of 1170 are also recalled in
the 1964 film Becket, an adaptation of Anouilh’s work, starring Richard Burton
in the role of the archbishop.95 The actor Robert Speaight, who played Thomas
in a stage version of Eliot’s work, performing the role more than a thousand
times in Britain and North America, was inspired to write a biography of the
saint ‘for the ordinary reader’.96 Even in the twenty-first century, the events
at Canterbury in December 1170 have inspired the writing of opera, with the
performance King staged in the cathedral in 2006.97
From the theatre of politics and religion in the late twelfth century, through

Becket’, 235–7; Scully, ‘The Unmaking of a Saint’, 600. See also Anne J. Duggan’s essay below,
chapter 2.
91 Borenius, ‘Addenda to the Iconography of St Thomas’, 30–31.
92 See Vincent, ‘William of Canterbury and Benedict of Peterborough’, 349–56, 364. Anglican
attitudes to St Thomas in the 1970s and ’80s are discussed in Scully, ‘The Unmaking of a Saint’,
601.
93 The following examples present just a few of very many. A survey of St Thomas’s place in
drama and literature from the Reformation to the 1960s is presented in H. Nordahl and J. W.
Dietrichson, Menneske, Myte, Motiv: Erkebiskop Thomas Becket i histoirie og diktning (Oslo, 1980),
148–307, with an English summary at 313–19 (esp. 315–19). See also J.-M. Grassin, ‘Le mythe
littéraire de Thomas Becket a l’époque moderne’, in Sédières, 285–97, including at 290–91 a list
of literature, theatre and, from the 1920s onward, films, depicting Thomas, penned and produced
between the 1530s and 1970.
94 Barlow, ‘Becket, Thomas’; Duggan, Thomas Becket, 1. Also discussed in Nordahl and
Dietrichson, Menneske, Myte, Motiv, 208–24, 265–92.
95 ‘Becket (1964)’, Internet Movie Database [http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0057877/, accessed 24
July 2015]; Duggan,Thomas Becket, 1.
96 R. Speaight, Thomas Becket, 2nd edn (London, 1949). On Speaight: P. Johnson, ‘Speaight,
Robert William (1904–1976)’, ODNB (Oxford, 2004; online edn, 2011) [http://www.oxforddnb.
com/view/article/31704, accessed 24 July 2015]. My thanks to Peter Jackson Eastwood, whose
dissertation research prompted questions that led me to this information.
97 The making of this opera is discussed by M. Church, ‘The Shocking Death of Thomas Becket
is Brought to Life in Opera’, The Independent, Tuesday 28 February 2006 [http://www.independent.
co.uk/the-shocking-death-of-thomas-becket-is-brought-to-life-in-an-opera-6108168.html,
accessed 16 July 2016]. The work is also mentioned in Duggan, Thomas Becket, viii (preface), and
see also ibid. 1, where Duggan notes the earlier existence of Becket-themed opera, in the form of

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his substantial cultural impact in the medieval world, to his place in modern
day literature, on the stage and on screen, Thomas Becket – archbishop, martyr
and saint – has proved himself an enduring figure. In 1931, the art historian
Tancred Borenius observed that, ‘Some day, perhaps, a book will be written
dealing exhaustively with the subject of the cult of St Thomas Becket from
all its aspects: and there can be no doubt that it would be a most important
contribution towards the study and interpretation of medieval civilization.’98
As this chapter has shown, a wide range of important studies have illumi-
nated numerous aspects of the cult and its presentation in the decades since
Borenius wrote. It is now improbable that a single volume could adequately
encompass the diverse range of material in which we discern evidence of the
cult and its influence across the Middle Ages and beyond. Here, the objective
is to examine the development and impact of the cult in the first half-century
of its existence. As will be seen, the available sources, and the impact of the
cult, are considerable, seen in evidence ranging from miracle collections and
chronicles to charters and letters, and from stained-glass windows to sculpture
and illuminated manuscripts. Taken together, these shed new light on the
Becket phenomenon within the world from which it had been created. As
we approach the eight-hundredth anniversary of the translation of the saint’s
relics to their dominant position within the cathedral church at Canterbury,
which owes so much to the cult of St Thomas, the essays in this volume seek
to contribute to the appreciation of the enduring significance of one of the
most notable figures of the medieval world.

the 1958 piece L’assassinio nella cattedrale, composed by Ildebrando Pizzetti and based on a trans-
lation of Eliot’s play.
98 Borenius, Becket in Art, x.

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 2.

Becket is Dead! Long Live St Thomas

ANNE J. DUGGAN

As Hugh of Horsea (nicknamed Mauclerc) scraped Becket’s brains out on the

paving stones in the north transept of Canterbury Cathedral on the fifth day
of Christmas (29 December) 1170, he shouted to the barons who had just
cut the archbishop of Canterbury down in his own cathedral, ‘Let’s get out of
here, knights, this one won’t get up again.’1 At that point, he can have had
no inkling of what the future was to hold for his four baronial colleagues,2
the king in whose name they claimed to have acted and, of course, for the
disparaged victim. Despite King Henry’s best efforts to smother the story
and assume the guise of injured innocence,3 the raw news was carried by an
unknown messenger not only to the French royal court, but also to William
aux blanchesmains, archbishop of Sens. The intelligence reached the French
archbishop in time for him to summon a council of his province for Sunday,
24 January 1171, so that an appropriate response could be made. So it was
that the details of Becket’s murder were proclaimed before an assembly of
bishops and abbots from the heartland of the French monarchy,4 and through
them the news would have circulated rapidly through the various monastic

1 ‘Abeamus hinc, milites, iste ulterius non resurget’: Edward Grim, MTB, ii, 438. Benedict of
Peterborough, who was present in the cathedral, recorded it differently (MTB, ii, 13): ‘Mortuus
est, quantocius eamus hinc’; and so did Anonymous I (‘Roger of Pontigny’), who was not
present (MTB, iv, 77): ‘Eamus, mortuus est enim proditor’. For the other descriptions, without
the reported speech, see William of Canterbury, Miracula (MTB, i, 135), John of Salisbury, Vita
(MTB, ii, 320), William Fitz Stephen, Vita (MTB, iii, 142), and Anonymous II (‘the Lambeth
Anonymous’, MTB, iv, 142).
2 Vincent, ‘Murderers’, 211–72.
3 See the letters to the pope from Arnulf of Lisieux and King Henry, Cum apud regem and Ob rever-
entiam, MTB, vii, 438–9 no. 738, and 440 no. 739; cf. Duggan, ‘Diplomacy’, 266–71. Henry sent an
impressive embassy to present his case: two bishops (Roger of Worcester and Giles of Évreux), one
abbot (Richard, abbot of Le Valasse in Normandy), two archdeacons (Reginald of Salisbury and R.,
either Robert of Lisieux or Robert of Arden), one dean (Robert of Neufbourg, dean of Évreux), two
royal clerks (Richard Barre and Master Henry of Northampton) and an unnamed Templar.
4 The province of Sens comprised seven dioceses: Auxerre, Chartres, Meaux, Nevers, Orléans,
Paris and Troyes, with numerous important priories and monasteries. William’s report (below,
n. 6) named four abbots: St-Denis (dioc. Paris), OSB; St-Germain-des-Prés (dioc. Paris), OSA;

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 ANNE J. DUGGAN

and episcopal networks with which they were connected. Equally impor-
tantly, William of Sens executed the mandate of October 1170, in which Pope
Alexander III ordered the imposition of an interdict on Henry II’s continental
lands (‘in tota terra ejus cismarina’) if the king failed to make good his under-
taking at Fréteval to restore the archbishop’s estates as they had been before
his departure.5 Normandy escaped the ban because, as Archbishop William
explained to the pope, his colleague, Rotrou of Rouen, refused to impose the
sentence in his own Norman province.6
William’s report, together with a personal letter and a dossier of protests
from the French court, was then carried by two of Becket’s clerks (Alexander
of Wales and Gunther of Winchester) all the way through France to the papal
court in Tusculum (Frascati), no doubt broadcasting the news to every town,
bishopric and abbey through which they passed.7 The letters they carried
all conveyed much the same message, but Louis VII’s short communication
summed up the consensus with pithy clarity. It called on Alexander III ‘to
unsheathe the sword of St Peter’ to avenge ‘the martyr of Canterbury’, whose
‘blood cries out for the universal Church, wailing aloud for vengeance, not
only for itself but for the whole Church’. Louis had heard that ‘God’s grace
is being revealed through miracles’ at the tomb,8 and he urged the pope to
believe the account of the abominable deed related by the bearers of the
letter. The envoys reached Tusculum before King Henry’s embassy, and
their testimony, supported by the protests from France and also by Becket’s
last letter to the pope (c.5 December 1170), detailing the difficulties he was
encountering in England,9 ensured that the royal envoys received a hostile
reception.10 Sweeping aside the excuses made on Henry II’s behalf, Alexander
excommunicated the murderers and, although he was dissuaded from inter-
dicting the English kingdom, he imposed a personal interdict on King Henry
himself, which denied him entry to a church until he had made satisfaction.11

Pontigny (dioc. Auxerre), O.Cist.; and the unidentified ‘Wallacensis’, possibly Le Val-Secret
(dioc. Soissons, prov. Reims), Premon.
5 MTB, vii, 376–7 no. 710 (dated Anagni, 9 October 1170), at 377, to Archbishops William of
Sens and Rotrou of Rouen. A further letter, MTB, vii, 383–4 no. 715 (Segni, 13 October 1170),
mandated the prelates in Henry’s continental lands (per terram regis Anglie cismarinam) to obey
such an interdict if it were imposed.
6 MTB, vii, 440–43 no. 740, at 443; Rotrou’s notification is ibid., 445–6 no. 742.
7 Vestro apostolatui and Inter scribendum haec (William of Sens): MTB, vii, 440–43, 429–33 nos.
740 and 735; Ab humanae pietatis (Louis VII) and Vestrae placuit majestati (Theobald of Blois):
MTB, vii, 428–9 and 433–5 nos. 734 and 736.
8 MTB, vii, 428–9 no. 734, at 428: ‘denudetur gladius Petri in ultionem Cantuariensis
martyris, quia sanguis ejus pro universali clamat ecclesia, non tam sibi, quam universae ecclesiae
conquerens de vindicta … ad tumulum agonistae … divina in miraculis revelatur gratia’.
9 Quam iustis: CTB, ii, 1344–55 no. 326 (MTB, vii, no. 723).
10 See their reports: Noverit vestra and Qui fuerint: MTB, vii, 471–8 nos. 750–51.
11 Ibid., no. 751, at 477–8; Duggan, ‘Diplomacy’, 270–71.

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 BECKET IS DEAD! LONG LIVE ST THOMAS

Not very much later, but certainly after Easter 1171, John of Salisbury sent a
circular letter (Ex insperato) to friends and contacts in France, which described
the murder and the beginning of the miracles at the tomb and rhetorically asked
whether Thomas should be prayed for or to.12 This important letter was certainly
circulated through Abbot Peter of Celle’s extensive friendship network, which
extended throughout France and into the Scandinavian kingdoms,13 and it was
also probably broadcast through Poitou and perhaps Aquitaine by Bishop John
of Poitiers, another known recipient, who had been one of Becket’s colleagues
in Theobald’s household, and had remained a friend.14
The impact of this letter can scarcely be overestimated. Not only did it
circulate widely through France and the Nordic lands, but recipients seized
upon it as an authentic account of martyrdom. Evidence of its adaptation as a
passio survives in lectionaries from Cîteaux, Clermont-Ferrand, Marchiennes
and Reims, for example, and in the ancient monasteries of Moissac and
St-Martial-de-Limoges it was divided into eight lections for liturgical reading.15
A year or so later (1171–72), John himself expanded the core of the letter
into his own passio and it, too, circulated across the network of monastic and
episcopal churches, before being incorporated into monastic lectionaries from
Jumièges and Lyre (Normandy) to Paris, Clairvaux, Pontigny (France and
Burgundy) and Heiligenkreuz (Austria).16 Meanwhile, the Canterbury monks
presented their own petition for Becket’s canonisation and Pope Alexander
commissioned the two legates who were entrusted with the task of recon-
ciling King Henry to investigate the claims that miracles were occurring at his

12 The Letters of John of Salisbury, Volume II: The Later Letters 1163–1180, ed. and trans.
W. J. Millor and C. N. L. Brooke, OMT (Oxford, 1979), 724–38 no. 305 (cf. MTB, vii, 462–70
no. 748). The arguments of K. Bollermann and C. J. Nederman, ‘John of Salisbury and Thomas
Becket’, in A Companion to John of Salisbury, ed. C. Grellard and F. Lachaud, Brill’s Companions
to the Christian Tradition, 57 (Leiden, 2015), 63–104, at 84, that Ex insperato was written
‘between October 1171 and April 1172’ are not convincing.
13 Stylum scribendi: The Letters of Peter of Celle, ed. and trans. J. Haseldine, OMT (Oxford,
2001), 658–63 no. 171, at 662–3.
14 For a fuller discussion of the role of international networks, see A. J. Duggan, ‘Religious
Networks in Action: the European Expansion of the Cult of St Thomas of Canterbury’, in
International Religious Networks, ed. J. Gregory and H. McLeod, SCH Subsidia, 14 (Woodbridge,
2012), 20–43.
15 Dijon, Bibl. mun. MSS 574, fols 115v–116v and 646, fols 274r–276v (Cîteaux); Clermont-
Ferrand, Bibl. mun. MS 148, fol. 255; Douai, Bibl. mun. MS 838, fol. 196 (Marchiennes); Reims,
Bibl. mun. MS 502, fols 7r–10r (St-Rémi); Paris, BnF. MSS lat. 2098, fols 159v–163v (Moissac)
and lat. 5347, fols 144r–145r + 162r–164r (St-Martial-de-Limoges).
16 Rouen, Bibl. mun. MS U. 24 (cat. 1402), 140r–147r (Jumièges); Évreux, Bibl. de la Ville,
MS lat. 10, fols 1r–7r (Lyre); Paris, Bibl. de l’Arsenal, MS 938, fols 9r–16 (St-Victor); Paris, Bibl.
Ste-Geneviève, MS cc.l in quarto 19 (cat. 1370), fols 63r–70r (Ste-Geneviève); Montpellier,
Bibliothèque inter-universitaire, section médecine (formerly École de Médecine), cod. 2, fols
1ra–5rb (Clairvaux); London, BL, MS Egerton 2818 (formerly Phillipps 10227), fols 71ra–78vb
(Pontigny); Heiligenkreuz, Stiftsbibliothek, Cod. 209, fols 75vb–84vb and 213, fols 88r–99r.

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 ANNE J. DUGGAN

tomb.17 They submitted a favourable report, supported by a dossier of miracles

(perhaps Benedict of Peterborough’s Book I),18 following which the pope
declared that Thomas was a saint and martyr (Segni, 21 February 1173) and
ordered the universal celebration of his feast in letters dated from 12 March
onwards.19 Allowing around six weeks for the letters to reach Canterbury, the
monks had more than six months to prepare for the celebration of the martyr’s
feast on 29 December 1173, the third anniversary of his murder.

The Liturgical Becket

There are good reasons to argue that the principal responsibility for composing
the text and music for the feast was committed to the monk Benedict, who
had been recording the miracles attributed to Becket’s intercession since
mid-1171.20 This monk, who was successively prior of Canterbury (1175–77)

17 Decretales ineditae saeculi XII, ed. and revised S. Chodorow and C. Duggan, Monumenta Iuris
Canonici Series B: Corpus Collectionum, 4 (Vatican City, 1982), 61–2 no. 36, Dilecti filii nostri,
to Albert, Cardinal Priest of S. Lorenzo in Lucina and Theodwin, Cardinal Priest of S. Vitale,
probably autumn 1171.
18 Below, at nn. 20 and 21.
19 MTB, vii, 545–6: ‘Nos autem, considerata gloria meritorum quibus in vita sua magnanimiter
claruit, et de miraculis ejus non solum communi et celebri fama, sed etiam dilectorum filiorum
nostrorum Alberti titulo Sancti Laurentii in Lucina, et Theodwini, titulo Sancti Vitalis, presby-
terorum cardinalium, … testimonio certitudinem plenam habentes …’ (from Gaudendum est,
addressed to Christ Church, Canterbury, 12 March 1173); cf. ibid., 547–8: ‘auditis innumeris
et magnis miraculis quae jugiter per sancti illius viri merita fieri universitas narrat fidelium, et
super his, non sine magno gaudio, per dilectos filios nostros Albertum … et Theoduinum … qui
eadem miracula tanto perspicacius didicerunt …’ (from Redolet Anglia, addressed to the clergy
and people of England, 12 March 1173); and ibid., 549–50: ‘et sub nomine ipsius multa quotidie
miraculorum signa non cessat operari … praesertim commonitione … Alberti … et Theodini
… qui exinde veritatem plenius investigaverant et visu et auditu cognoverant …’ (from Qui vice
beati Petri, addressed to various recipients in Western Europe, March 1173). For the canonisation
process, see R. Foreville, ‘Alexandre III et la canonisation des Saints’, in Miscellanea Rolando
Bandinelli: Papa Alessandro III, ed. F. Liotta (Siena, 1986), 217–36 at 230–32.
20 BP, Miracula, 21–281. For the transmission of Benedict’s ‘great book’ to continental Europe,
see A. J. Duggan, ‘The Lorvão Transcription of Benedict of Peterborough’s Liber miraculorum beati
Thome: Lisbon, cod. Alcobaça CCXC/143’, Scriptorium, 51 (1997), 51–68 and eadem, ‘The Santa
Cruz Transcription of Benedict of Peterborough’s Liber miraculorum beati Thome: Porto, BPM,
cod. Santa Cruz 143’, Mediaevalia. Textos e estudos, 20 (Porto, 2001), 27–55; both repr. with the
same pagination in Duggan, Friends, Networks, nos XII and XIII. See also, P. Lenz, ‘Construire
un recueil de miracles: les Miracula sancti Thomae Cantuariensis de Benoît de Peterborough’
(unpublished Ph.D. thesis, University of Geneva, 2003). Benedict’s ‘Great Book of Miracles’
was joined by another, compiled from mid-1172 by his confrère William of Canterbury, Miracula
S. Thomae Cantuariensis, auctore Willelmo, monacho Cantuariensis, MTB, i, 137–546. The compo-
sition, dating and relationship between the collections is discussed in R. Koopmans, Wonderful to
Relate: Miracle Stories and Miracle Collecting in High Medieval England (Philadelphia, PA, 2011),
125–200, esp. 139–58. For a summary analysis of the miracles, see ibid., 205–10; cf. R. Foreville,

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 BECKET IS DEAD! LONG LIVE ST THOMAS

and abbot of Peterborough (1177–93),21 made extensive use of John of

Salisbury’s Vita to compose the twelve lections for the great night office
(Matins) which formed the core of the monastic celebration of the feast. The
result was a minor rhetorical masterpiece, expressing both the horror of the
sacrilege and the glorious triumph of the martyr through death. The circum-
stances of the ‘murder in the cathedral’ provided a fertile range of image and
symbol: the place, before an altar in the principal church in England as monks
were preparing to chant Vespers; the season, on the fifth day of Christmas,
following the feasts of St Stephen and the Holy Innocents, the first martyrs of
the Christian Church; the victim, primate of England; the agents, servants of
one of the most powerful monarchs in Christendom; and the cause, defence of
the honour and dignity of the Church. The outrage in the cathedral was all the
more horrifying because it was carried out by Christian knights in the name of
a Christian king: the priest slain by members of his own flock in the sacred
place of sacrifice. All this, and more, was captured in Benedict’s lections.
At the heart of the passio is the murder itself, succinctly described in graphic
and memorable detail:22

On the fifth day of the Lord’s Nativity there came to Canterbury four courtiers,
men of distinguished birth, forsooth, but notorious for their misdeeds. […] The
devil’s henchmen, in mail, pursued him from behind with drawn swords. […]
The ravening wolves threw themselves upon the pious pastor, degenerate sons
against their own father, most pitiless executioners against the Lord’s anointed:

‘Les “Miracula S. Thomae Cantuariensis”’, in Actes du 97e Congrès National des Sociétés Savants,
Nantes 1972, Section de Philologie et d’histoire jusqu’à 1610 (Paris, 1979), 443–68.
21 D. Knowles, C. N. L. Brooke, and V. C. M. London (eds), The Heads of Religious Houses:
England and Wales 940–1216 (Cambridge, 1972; repr. 2001), 34, 61.
22 No copy of the original Canterbury liturgy survives, having fallen victim to the Henrician
decree (below, at n. 128), but the great breviary compiled for Salisbury in the early thirteenth
century transmits a ‘secular’ variant, where Becket’s murder is described in Lectio V: Breviarium
ad usum insignis ecclesiae Sarum, ed. F. Proctor and C. Wordsworth, 3 vols (Cambridge, 1879–86),
i (1882), ccxlv–cclx, at cclii–ccliii: ‘Quinto uero Dominicae nativitatis die, veniunt Cantuariarm
aulici quatuor, viri quidem praeclari genere, sed malefactis famosi. […] Sequuntur a tergo gladiis
extractis Sathanae satellites loricati, armatorum manu multa sequente. […] Irruentes igitur
in pastorem pium lupi rapaces, in patrem proprium degeneres filii, in hostiam Christi crudel-
issimi lictores: consecratam capitis coronam funestis gladiis amputaverunt, et christum Domini
solotenus precipitantes, cerebrum cum sanguine (quod dictu quoque horrendum est) per
pavimentum crudelissime sparserunt. Sic itaque granum frumenti oppressit palea, sic vineae
custos in vinea, dux in castris, in caulis pastor, cultor in area caesus est: sic iustus ab iniustis
occisus domum luteam caelesti palatio commutauit.’ For the full Sarum liturgy, with the music
and disappointing translations, see Slocum, Liturgies, 209–22; cf. S. Reames, ‘Liturgical Offices
for the Cult of St Thomas Becket’, in Medieval Hagiography: An Anthology, ed. T. [F.] Head
(New York, 2000), 561–93. For a splendid discussion of the transmission and significance of the
Translation Office, see S. Reames, ‘Reconstructing and Interpreting a Thirteenth-Century Office
for the Translation of Thomas Becket’, Speculum, 80 (2005), 118–70.

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 ANNE J. DUGGAN

they cut off the consecrated crown of his head with their bloody swords and,
casting the Lord’s anointed onto the ground, they most callously scattered his
brains and blood upon the pavement – a thing most terrible, even to say. Thus
did the chaff overwhelm the grain of corn; thus was slain the vine-keeper in the
vineyard, the leader in the camp, the shepherd in the fold, the labourer on the
threshing-floor; thus the just man, murdered by the unjust, exchanged a house
of clay for a heavenly palace. [trans. AJD]

These words fixed an unforgettable image in the minds of all who heard
or read them. By the mid-thirteenth century, they had found their way into
the Old Norse Thómas Saga Erkibyskups.23 Further, the new St Thomas was set
firmly in the tradition of biblical martyrs, like Zachariah (Zechariah), who was
stoned to death in the court of the Temple on the orders of King Jehoash (Joas)
of Judah, for condemning those, including the king, who ‘had transgressed the
commandment of the Lord’.24 Thomas became ‘another Abel’, whose blood
forever cried out to heaven:25

For the voice of the blood spilt, the cry of the brains scattered by the bloody
swords of the devil’s henchmen filled both earth and heaven with reverberating
clamour. […] The earth trembled and was shaken by the cry of this blood, and
the powers of heaven, too, were so moved that as if in vengeance for the spilling
of innocent blood, people rose up against people and kingdom against kingdom
– rather, the realm was divided against itself, and fearful sights and great signs
appeared from the sky. [trans. AJD]

These powerful images were amplified in the sequence of antiphons and

responsories composed to adorn the lections and psalms in the office (historia).26

23 Thómas Saga Erkibyskups: A Life of Archbishop Thomas Becket in Icelandic, with English trans-
lation, notes and glossary, ed. and trans. E. Magnússon, RS 65, 2 vols (London, 1875–84), i,
544–5. Cf. A. J. Duggan, ‘Eystein, Thomas Becket, and the Wider Christian World’, in Eystein
Erlendsson: erkebiskop, politiker og kirkebygger, ed. K. Bjørlykke, Øystein Ekroll, et al. (Trondheim,
2012) 26–43, at 32. Note, however, that the Saga compilers used Quadrilogus II, and did not
transmit the Saracen legend.
24 2 Chronicles (Paralipomenon), 24: 20–21.
25 Genesis, 4: 8–10; Breviarium … Sarum, i, cclvii–cclviii, Lections VIII and IX: ‘Vox enim
sanguinis effusi, vox cerebri funestorum satellitum gladiis dispersi, et mundum simul et celum
celebri clamore complevit. […] Acclamore [recte A clamore] namque sanguinis hujus commota
est et contremuit terra, sed et virtutes caelorum motae sunt, adeo ut quasi in ultionem sanguinis
innocentis surgeret gens contra gentem, et regnum adversum regnum, immo ut regnum in
seipsum fieret divisum: terroresque de caelo et signa magna fierent.’ The description echoes
Christ’s prophecy of the last days in Luke, 21: 10–11: ‘Surget gens contra gentem, et regnum
adversus regnum … terroresque de caelo, et signa magna erunt.’
26 The monastic cursus of antiphons and responsories has been reconstructed from twenty-five
manuscripts and early printed books in Analecta Hymnica medii aevi, ed. C. Blume, G. Dreves,
and H. M. Bannister, 55 vols (Leipzig, 1886–1922), xiii, 238–42. For the music, see D. Stevens,

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 BECKET IS DEAD! LONG LIVE ST THOMAS

The seventh responsory in the monastic cursus (Mundi florem), for example,
interwove biblical images with the notion of outrage giving way to triumph:27

R. Rachel, bewailing
the flower of the world crushed by the world,
has now ceased to lament.
As Thomas, cut down,
is given up for burial,
a new Abel succeeds the old.
V. The voice of the blood, the voice of the scattered brain,
fills heaven with resounding clamour. [trans. AJD]

The biblical Rachel, mother of the Joseph who was sold into slavery in
Egypt by his brothers,28 here personifies the English Church, whose lamen-
tation for Becket’s murder – crushed by ‘the world’, meaning the secular power
– is cut short by the realisation that his death makes him an Abel for his
own time: the symbol of justice cut down by the unjust. In writing this verse,
Benedict may have had in mind Peter Abelard’s hymn on the Holy Innocents,
Est in Rama vox audita (‘A voice was heard in Rama’), which in turn echoed
St Matthew’s poignant quotation of Jeremiah’s prophecy: ‘Vox in Rama audita
est ploratus et ululatus multus Rachel plorans filios suos’ (‘A voice was heard
in Rama, grievously weeping and wailing, Rachel lamenting for her sons’),29
where Rachel personified Israel weeping for its slaughtered children. Exactly
two hundred years later, Thomas Brinton, the reforming bishop of Rochester,
quoted the same responsory verbatim in a sermon preached at Rochester on
St Thomas’s feast, 29 December 1373.30 The multi-layered image of justice

‘Music in Honour of St Thomas of Canterbury’, The Musical Quarterly, 56 (1970), 311–38; idem,
‘Thomas Becket et la musique médiévale’, in Sédières, 277–84; A. Hughes, ‘Chants in the Rhymed
Office of St Thomas of Canterbury’, Early Music, 16 (1988), 185–201; idem, ‘Rhymed Offices’,
Dictionary of the Middle Ages, x (New York, 1989), 367, 370–71; idem, ‘British Rhymed Offices: A
Catalogue and Commentary’, in Music in the Medieval English Liturgy, ed. S. Rankin and D. Hiley
(Oxford, 1993), 239–84, at 258, 262, 275–8. The liturgical meaning of historia is explored by
R. Jonsson, Historia: Études sur la genèse des offices versifiés, Studia Latina Stockholmiensis, 15
(Stockholm, 1968), esp. 1–17. One of the earliest surviving witnesses to the office, with musical
notation, is Edinburgh, University Library, MS 123, fols 155v–158r, ?originally from Metz
(Meticuriensis). Inexplicably, not used by Slocum.
27 Breviarium … Sarum, i, ccliii, Responsory 5 = no. 7 in the monastic cursus (Analecta Hymnica,
xiii, 239, 2nd nocturn, no. 3): Mundi florem a mundo conteri, | Rachel plorans jam cessa conqueri. |
Thomas caesus dum datur funeri: | novus Abel succedit veteri. Versus. Vox cruoris, vox sparsi cerebri:
| caelum replet clamore celebri.
28 Genesis 30: 22–4, 37, 39–50; 37: 1–36, etc.
29 Matthew 2: 18; cf. Jeremiah 30 [31]: 15.
30 The Sermons of Thomas Brinton (1373–1389), ed. Sr M. Aquinas Devlin, 2 vols, Camden
Third Series, 85–6 (London, 1954), i, 122.

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 ANNE J. DUGGAN

betrayed and innocence destroyed was completed by St John’s parable of the

Good Shepherd who lays down his life for his sheep – an image amplified by
the opening of St Gregory’s homily on the gospel text.31
In his liturgy for St Thomas’s feast, Benedict of Canterbury constructed a
particularly potent image of the martyred archbishop; and it was this image
that was carried across the whole of Europe, to Trondheim in Norway, where
it was incorporated into the Ordo Nidrosiensis before the end of the twelfth
century;32 to the papal court, where it was imbedded in the celebration
of the new martyr’s day;33 and from the papal court it was received by the
Franciscans and Dominicans as they constructed their own distinctive liturgies
in the early thirteenth century. Benedict’s Thomas Office thus became one
of the most widely-distributed rhymed offices of the Middle Ages, ‘found in
manuscripts from Finland to Hungary at least until the sixteenth century’,34
each region or religious order adapting the material to its own requirements.
Where Nidaros adopted a remarkably faithful version of Benedict’s liturgy, the
cathedrals of Strängnäs and Linköping in the Swedish province of Uppsala
received the rhymed chants and the readings from St John and Gregory I, but
substituted a composite passio, based on extracts from Edward Grim’s Vita35
and the Passio Anon. IV (which they may have taken from the York liturgy),36
for Benedict’s.37 The Cluniacs at Lewes (Sussex) used the rhymed antiphons

31 Breviarium … Sarum, i, cclv: John 10: 11–16; Gregory I, Homily XIV (PL, lxxvi, 1127).
32 Ordo Nidrosiensis ecclesiae, ed. L. Gjerløw, Libri liturgici provinciae Nidrosiensis mediae aevi,
2 (Oslo, 1968), 162–3; Antiphonarium Nidrosiensis ecclesiae, ed. eadem, Libri liturgici … aevi,
3 (Oslo, 1979), 99–100. It is probable that he was depicted among the array of saints on the
west front of Trondheim Cathedral: Duggan, ‘Eystein, Thomas Becket, and the Wider Christian
World’, 32–3.
33 The Ordinal of the Papal Court from Innocent III to Boniface VIII and Related Documents, ed.
S. J. P. Van Dijk, completed by J. H. Walker, Spicilegium Friburgense, 22 (Fribourg, 1975), 28,
56, 84; ibid., 87–483, ‘Ordinal of the Roman Church compiled during the reign of Innocent III
1213–6’, at 132, ‘[In festo sancti Thome martiris.] Ad matitudinum et alias horas omnia dicantur
de uno martire, preter lectiones et oratio[nem]. Leguntur ad matitudinum lectio[nes] de passione
eius, s[c]ilicet Gloriosi martiris (= Benedict’s passio)’. In 1209, Innocent III recalled to the monk
William from Andres (Pas-de-Calais), that he had lodged at Andres when, as a Parisian student,
he had gone on pilgrimage to St Thomas (MGH SS, xxiv, 738). For MS evidence, see Biblioteca
Apostolica Vaticana, Cod. Sancti Petri in Vaticano, C 107, fols 77va–79rb (full text, in nine
lections); A 7, fols 38ra–vb (abbreviated, in six lections, supplemented by three readings from
Leo I); Cod. Vat. lat. 1276, fols 74r–76r (full text, not divided).
34 Hughes, ‘Rhymed Offices’, 367, 370–71. For the copy made at the imperial monastery of
Stavelot-Malmedy, see A. J. Duggan, ‘A Becket Office at Stavelot: London, BL, MS Addit.
16964’, in Omnia disce: Medieval Studies in Memory of Leonard Boyle, O.P., ed. eadem, J. Greatrex,
and B. Bolton (Aldershot, 2005), 161–82, at 164; repr. with the same pagination in Duggan,
Friends, Networks, no. XI.
35 MTB, ii, 353–450.
36 Below, nn. 39 and 40.
37 Breviarium Strengense: London, BL, MS Addit. 40,146 (pre 1220?), fols 125ra–126rb;
Breviarium Lincopense, ed. K. Peters, Laurentius Peti Sällskapets Urkundsserie (Lund, 1951),

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 BECKET IS DEAD! LONG LIVE ST THOMAS

and responsories, but reduced Benedict’s passio to eight very short snippets,
followed by the Good Shepherd gospel and Gregory’s commentary, which
together supplied the remaining four readings necessary for a monastic
office.38 The great cathedral at York39 adopted an abbreviated version of an
anonymous passio,40 combined with the Canterbury chants; Hereford used a
much condensed version of the Canterbury text for Lections 1–6 and retained
the ‘Good Shepherd’ gospel and the opening of Gregory I’s homily for Lection
7, as well the Canterbury antiphons and responsories, but substituted further
extracts from Gregory for Lections 8 and 9;41 the Benedictine Hyde Abbey,
near Winchester, used a twelve-lection passio based on John of Salisbury’s Vita,
combined with the Gospel reading, ‘Si quis uult post me’ (Luke 9: 23–6) and
chants from the Common Office for a single martyr.42 It is a matter of some
interest that the text held by the figure of the enthroned Christ in Henry the
Lion’s Gospels, cited below, is a variant of Luke 9. 23: QUI VVLT VENIRE
POST ME. ABNEGET SEMETIPSV[M]. ET TOLLAT CRVCEM SUAM.
In monastic churches there were three levels of celebration: the full
repertoire described above, identified in calendars as an office of twelve
readings (xii. l); an intermediate office with only three readings (iii. l); and a
simple memoria, a commemorative prayer, often the one used as the collect of
the St Thomas Mass:43

v/2/i 235–9. Strängnäs also sent a small offering to Canterbury from 1200 to 1271: A. Lindblom,
Björsätersmålningarna: The Legends of St Thomas Becket and of the Holy Cross Painted in a Swedish
Church, Arkeologiska monografier, 38 (Stockholm, 1953), 28–55 (English summary, 77–9), at
52–3 and 78–9.
38 V. Leroquais, Le Bréviaire-Missel du prieuré clunisien de Lewes (Paris, 1935), 4 [Cambridge,
Fitzwilliam Museum, MS 369, fols 105r–107r]; cf. Slocum Liturgies, 167–208, for the full texts
and music (the translations, esp. that of Fragrat virtus, 194, are very poor).
39 Breviarium ad usum insignis ecclesie Eboracensis, ed. S. W. Lawley, 2 vols, Surtees Society, 71
and 75 (London, 1880–82), i, 120–27, but Slocum, Liturgies, 226–33, is much better (apart from
serious translation errors).
40 Biblioteca Hagiographica Latina antiquae et mediae Aetatis, ed. Socii Bollandini, [i] A-I and [ii]
K-Z (Brussels, 1898 and 1900–1901), [ii] 1189 no. 8209; MTB, iv, 186–95, ‘Passio Anon. IV’,
incipit ‘Hodie, fratres’; Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Bodl. 509, fols 15r–20r, a twelfth-century
manuscript from the Cistercian monastery of Combe in Warwickshire: see A. [J.] Duggan, Thomas
Becket: A Textual History of his Letters (Oxford, 1980), 25–6, 34; cf. London, BL, MS Addit.
38112 (Phillips 4173), fols 1–3, s. XII, from Tongerlo (O. Premon.), nr Antwerp, dioc. Cambrai.
41 The Hereford Breviary, ed. W. H. Frere and L. E. G. Brown, 2 vols (London, 1904), i, 165–70;
cf. Slocum, Liturgies, 223–5.
42 The Monastic Breviary of Hyde Abbey, Winchester (Oxford Bodl. Library, MSS Rawlinson
liturg. E.1 and Gough liturg. 8), ed. J. B. L. Tolhurst, Henry Bradshaw Society, 69–71, 76, 4 vols
(London, 1932–33, 1938), i, fols 27v–29r. This edition should be used in preference to Slocum,
Liturgies, 233–8, which introduces misreadings and confusions: e.g. the utterly confused text of
the well-known oratio ‘Deus pro cuius ecclesia’ (below, at n. 43), which inexplicably combines
the opening words of the prayer with Hyde’s Lection 1, producing complete nonsense.
43 Breviarium … Sarum, i, ccxlvi; The Sarum Missal, ed. J. Wickham Legg (Oxford,
1916), 71; cf. the Bamberg Breviary, Breviarium Eberhardi Cantoris, ed. E. K. Farrenkopf,

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Deus pro cuius ecclesia gloriosus pontifex ac martir Thomas gladiis impiorum
occubuit, presta quesumus ut omnes qui eius implorat auxilium pie petitionis sue
salutarem consequantur effectum.
(O God, for whose Church the glorious bishop and martyr Thomas fell by the
swords of wicked men, grant, we beseech thee, that all who implore his aid may
achieve the salutary outcome of their fervent prayer.) [trans. AJD]

The non-monastic (secular) churches had a similar range, between a full

office of nine readings (ix. l),44 an intermediate office with three (iii. l), and
the cursory memoria. The choice, made by the local bishop, archbishop, abbot
or prior, indicated the significance attached to the saint in the liturgical life of
the particular church.45
Such solemn liturgies reflected the official outlook of the church or
monastery where they were celebrated, but the personal devotion of the élite
laity is recorded in the Books of Hours commissioned in their thousands
through the later Middle Ages.46 Although broadly following the liturgical
customs of the owner’s region, such books were tailored to his or her particular
devotion. The so-called Nuremberg Hours, for example, made at the end
of the thirteenth century for a French princess,47 is a striking example of
the genre.48 It contains a finely executed three-lection office of St Thomas,
ultimately dependent on the Canterbury/Sarum liturgy,49 which opens with a
richly illuminated initial D50 containing a dramatic miniature of the murder.

Liturgie-Wissenschaftliche Quellen und Forschungen, 50–51 (Münster, 1969), 114: ‘De sancto
Thoma archiepiscopo de Kandelberc in vesperis in matutinis et in missa dicitur tantum Oratio.
Require in missale libro’; ibid., 18–22, 115: ‘De sancto Thoma archiepiscopo de Kandelberch in
vesperis in matutinis et in missa dicitur tantum hec Or[atio], Deus pro cuius ecclesia.’ The same
incipit is added to the Second Vespers of Holy Innocents (28 December), ibid., 40, with the note,
‘Hec oratio etiam dicitur in matutino et in missa’.
44 See, for example, Linköping Breviary: Breviarium Lincopense, v/2/1, 235–9 and the breviary
associated with Strängnäs (prov. Uppsala), London, BL, MS Addit. 40146, fols 125ra–126rb:
nine short readings, combining elements from the Canterbury-Sarum and York liturgies, with the
Canterbury chants.
45 V. Leroquais, Les Bréviaires manuscrits des bibliothèques publiques de France, 6 vols (Paris, 1934),
passim; idem, Les Psautiers manuscrits latins des bibliothèques publiques de France, 3 vols (Mâcon,
1940–41), passim; idem, Les Sacramentaires et les missels manuscrits des bibliothèques publiques de
France (Paris, 1924), passim.
46 J. Harthan, Books of Hours and their Owners (London, 1977; repr. 1982).
47 Perhaps Margaret, sister of Philip IV of France, who married Edward I at Canterbury in 1299.
The history of the MS is obscure, however, and it may have been brought to England not by
Margaret but by Princess Catherine (daughter of Charles VI), who married Henry V in 1420.
48 Nürnberg, Stadtbibliothek, MS Solgr 4.4o: Les Heures de Nuremberg, ed. E. Simmons (Paris,
1994), 117–18, for the Office of St Thomas.
49 Nürnberg, Stadtbibliothek, MS Solgr 4.4o, fols 139v–153v.
50 For ‘Domine, labia mea aperies’ (Psalm 50 (51): 17), which opens the Office of Matins: ‘O
Lord, open my lips’.

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 BECKET IS DEAD! LONG LIVE ST THOMAS

On a field of gold, Thomas, in the centre of the picture, kneels before an altar
on the right, beside which stands a cleric holding a processional cross, while
the foremost of the four armed men crowding in behind Becket’s back slashes
into the crown of the martyr’s head with his sword and simultaneously cuts the
arm of the cleric.51 Books like these, precious objects in their own right, as well
as Breviaries and Psalters, became major channels for the transmission of the
pictorial imagery of the martyrdom.52
Even without receiving the Canterbury/Sarum Office, the feast of
St Thomas could be celebrated by the simple device of adapting the existing
Common office for a martyr or martyr bishop. All that was necessary was the
insertion of the name ‘Thomas’ and either integrating readings from one of the
shorter passiones into the Matins office or having them read in chapter or in
the refectory.53 This is what was done by the Cistercians, who were celebrating
the feast of St Thomas from 1173.54 A note about the office of St Thomas made
in the monastery of Vauclair (a daughter of Clairvaux, founded in 1134) in the
1170s, recording General Chapter resolutions, reads simply: ‘De sancto Thoma.
Inuitatorium. Regem sempiternum coronauit Thomam’, with musical notation
(neumes) inserted above coronauit Thomam.55 This was enough to show that

51 Nürnberg, Stadtbibliothek, MS Solgr 4.4o, fol. 139v: Les Heures de Nuremberg, plate 37. The
narrative source was probably Edward Grim (MTB, ii, 437): ‘et metuens nefandus miles [Reginald
Fitz Urse] ne raperetur a populo, et vivus evaderet, insiliit in eum subito et summitate corone
quam sancti chrismatis unctio dicaverat Deo abrasa, agnum Deo immolandum vulneravit in
capite, eodem ictu praeciso brachio hec referentis;’ but cf. Anonymous I (Roger of Pontigny),
MTB, iv, 77: ‘accessit Rainaldus et percussit eum ex obliquo fortiter in capite, amputavitque
summitatem corone ejus, pileumque dejecit. Lapsus est ensis supra laeuam scapulam, inciditque
omnia uestimenta illius usque ad nudum. Magister uero Edwardus, qui juxta virum Dei stabat,
videns ictum imminere, jecit brachium econtra quasi eum protecturus; quod fere penitus
abscissum est.’
52 See for example, the bottom margin of fol. 51r of the Luttrell Psalter, 1320–40 (London, BL,
MS Addit. 42130). Nine of the fifty scenes of ‘gothic’ altars illustrated in P. Dearmer, Fifty Pictures
of Gothic Altars (London, 1910), depict the martyrdom: plates 8, 9, 23, 24, 30, 32 (defaced), 35,
40 and 44 (a woodcut from William Caxton’s printing of Jacobus de Voragine’s Golden Legend).
For the early imagery, see Gameson, ‘Early Imagery’, 46–89.
53 John of Salisbury’s Ex insperato and Passio were so used: see above, at nn. 15 and 16.
54 S. K. Langenbahn, ‘“de cerebro Thomae Cantuariensis”. Zur Geschichte und Hagiologie der
Himmeroder Thomas Becket-Reliquie von 1178’, in 875 Jahre Findung des Klosterortes Himmerod,
ed. B. Fromme (Mainz, 2010), 55–91, at 60–61 and n. 19; cf. Twelfth-Century Statutes from the
Cistercian General Chapter: Latin Text with English Notes and Commentary, ed. C. Waddell, Cîteaux,
Studia et Documenta, 12 (Brecht, 2002), 125. This date supersedes the generally accepted date
of 1185 established by J.-M. Canivez: Statuta capitulorum generalium ordinis Cisterciensis ab anno
1116 ad annum 1786. Tomus I. Ab anno 1116 ad annum 1220, ed, J.-M. Canivez (Louvain, 1933),
102, 144, and followed in S. R. Marosszéki, ‘Les origines du Chant Cistercien: Recherches sur les
réformes du plain-chant cistercien au XIIe siècle’, Analecta Sacri Ordinis Cisterciensis, 8 (1952),
1–179, at 42–3, et passim.
55 J. Leclercq, ‘Épitres d’Alexandre III sur les Cisterciens’, Revue Bénédictine, 64 (1954), 68–82,
at 75 n. 4, citing Laon, Bibl. mun. MS 471, fol. 93v. I am grateful to Professor Nicholas Vincent

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 ANNE J. DUGGAN

the new feast was to be observed with a full office of twelve readings, based
on the existing common office. The name of the new martyr was added to
the opening verse so that it would read: ‘Regem sempiternum pronis mentibus
adoremus. Qui martirem suum digne pro meritis coronauit Thomam’, and the
neumes indicated how the chant was to be adjusted to accommodate the
martyr’s name. Simultaneously, an existing Mass was adapted to celebrate the
new martyr.56

King Henry’s Penance

Much of the power of the original Canterbury office derives from its immediacy.
Composed through the summer and autumn of 1173, it took shape while
Henry II’s ‘Angevin Empire’ was being convulsed by the 1173–74 rebellion.
This involved his three eldest sons (Henry, Richard and Geoffrey), supported
by his wife, Queen Eleanor, in league with Louis VII of France and an array
of the sundry disaffected (William the Lion, king of Scots, Counts Philip of
Flanders and Baldwin of Boulogne, some of the Breton nobility and the earls
of Norfolk, Leicester, Chester and Derby). It was not difficult to interpret this
wholly unexpected conflagration as divine vengeance for Becket’s murder, a
sacrilege for which many held the king morally responsible.57 Henry II was not
helped by the way in which his penance at Avranches (May 1172) had been
smothered in legal and diplomatic niceties.58 The outcome of the rebellion was
unknown when Benedict composed the liturgy and his apocalyptic imagery
captured the popular mood at the end of 1173: ‘people’ did rise up ‘against
people’ and ‘kingdom against kingdom’, and ‘the realm was divided against
itself’.59
The Great Rebellion clearly changed the king’s attitude to the now-canonised
saint.60 Instead of making straight for London when he returned from
Normandy to Southampton on 8 July 1174 to confront the rebellious English
earls and simultaneous invasions from Scotland and Flanders, he turned aside
to travel to Canterbury to make personal reparation for his involvement in

for giving me this reference and to Dr Herwig Weigl of Vienna for sending a scan of the article to
a snow-bound London in December 2010.
56 See, for example, the MSS from Rievaulx, Morimondo (dioc. Milan), and a Cistercian house
in France: London, BL, MSS Addit. 46203 (Rievaulx), fols 75v–80v; Addit. 39759 (Morimondo),
fol. 61rb; and Addit. 57531 (France), fols 29va–vb; cf. D. Choisselet and P. Vernet, Les ecclesi-
astica officia cisterciens du XIIème siècle, La Documentation Cistercienne, 22 (Reiningue, 1989),
74–5.
57 Gervase, ii, 81 (Gesta regum).
58 Duggan, ‘Diplomacy, Status, and Conscience’, 272–8.
59 Above, at n. 25.
60 Argued in Duggan, ‘Diplomacy’, 278–85.

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 BECKET IS DEAD! LONG LIVE ST THOMAS

Becket’s murder. As described by an eye-witness (William of Canterbury) soon

after the event,61 he dismounted at Harbledown,62 two miles to the north of the
city, walked to the chapel of St Dunstan, outside the walls, where he removed
his shoes and outer garments, then walked barefoot through the West Gate to
the tomb in the crypt. There the bishop of London (Gilbert Foliot), speaking
in the king’s name, acknowledged his guilt, and Henry submitted to penitential
discipline, placed four marks of gold and a silk cloth on the tomb, granted £40
a year to the monastery in perpetuity,63 promised to build a monastery in the
martyr’s honour and received absolution. Then he spent the night (12–13 July
1174) in prayer before the tomb, attended Mass the following morning, and
carried relics (lipsana) with him as a token of his pilgrimage when he set out
for London. There, on 17 July, he received the welcome news that the king
of Scots had been captured near Alnwick (Northumberland) on the very day
(13 July) on which he had completed his penance at Canterbury. Like many
a lesser Canterbury pilgrim whose prayer was heard, the king had cause to be
grateful to the martyr.64

61 William of Canterbury, Miracula, vi, 93, ‘De adventu regis ad tumulum martyris Thomae’:
MTB, i, 487–9.
62 A leprosarium on a little hill to the north of Canterbury: D. Knowles and R. N. Hadcock,
Medieval Religious Houses in England and Wales (London, 1971), 312, 322. His grant of an
annual 20 marks (£13 6s 8d) from royal incomes in Canterbury was formalised in a charter at
Westminster issued 14 x 18 July 1174. Although it was said to be an interim grant, until the
king made alternative arrangements, he never did. It was paid throughout the Middle Ages, and
continues to be paid by the City of Canterbury to the alms-house which replaced the lepro-
sarium at the Reformation: Henry II, Acta no. 1230 (cited from the draft electronic version of
N. Vincent’s forthcoming edition of the Charters of Henry II, for which I warmly thank Professor
Vincent); W. Dugdale, Monasticon Anglicanum, rev. edn by J. Caley, H. Ellis and B. Bandinel,
6 vols in 8 (London, 1817–30; repr. 1846), vi/2, 654; W. Urry, ‘Two Notes on Guernes de
Pont-Sainte-Maxence: Vie de St Thomas’, Archaeologia Cantiana, 66 (1953), 92–7 at 97; idem,
Canterbury under the Angevin Kings (London, 1967), 434.
63 Henry II, Acta, no. 462, issued at Westminster 14 x 18 July 1174: Canterbury Cathedral
Library, Chartae Antiquae B337; endorsed: carta noua H(enrici) ii. de xl. libr(atis) terre quas dedit
ecclesie et sancto Th(ome) (s. xii/xiii.); and numerous copies and extracts. Its key directive stated:
‘Sciatis me dedisse in perpetuam elemosinam et presenti carta confirmasse Deo et beato Thome
et ecclesie sancte Trinitatis Cant’ quindecim libratas redditus in Berchesores [Barksore] et in
Hokes [Hook], et in Aisse et in Rissendona [Rushenden] et xxv. libratas redditus in Lesdona
[Leysdown], ita quod due predicte portiones xl. libratas reddituum faciant.’ Aisse is East or West
Ashe, Isle of Sheppey. It was probably this charter that William of Canterbury had in mind, but
two separate grants were involved, the first for 25 libratis, and the second for 15 libratis: Duggan,
‘Diplomacy’, 280–81.
64 Jordan Fantosme, ed. Johnston, 148 (lines 2011–12); Chronique de la Guerre entre les Anglois
et les Ecossais en 1173 et 1174, in Chronicles, ed. Howlett, iii, 370 (lines 2017–18). Also discussed
in the essay by Colette Bowie in this volume (chapter 6). Cf. Ralph de Diceto (Diss): Diceto, i,
383–5; William of Newburgh, Historia Rerum Anglicanum in Chronicles, ed. Howlett, i, 187–9;
Gervase, i, 248–9. For the enigmatic Jordan, who may have had Winchester connections,

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 ANNE J. DUGGAN

‘Dunc’, dit li reis Henris, ‘Deus en eit mercié,

E saint Thomas martyr et tuz les sainz Dé.’
(‘Then,’ says King Henry, ‘God be thanked for it,
And St Thomas the Martyr and all God’s saints.’)

The king’s relief at hearing that news would have been augmented by the
intelligence that a planned invasion led by his eldest son (against which he
had warned the people of Canterbury on his departure from the city, advising
that they take refuge ‘beyond the Medway’)65 had failed, because bad weather
had dispersed the Young King’s fleet near Gravelines. The result of these two
coincidental events was the virtual collapse of the English segment of the
rebellion, as one after another its leaders surrendered their castles and made
their peace.66 Within the month, Henry was able to return to Normandy
to mop up the remaining opposition there, safe in the knowledge that his
authority was secure in England. Ralph de Diceto (Diss), the dean of St Paul’s
in London, summed up the situation in these words:67

Sic igitur in articulo temporis, per intercessionem sanctissimi Thomae martyris,

rex pater, per omnia regni sui confinia potentissimus, viio idus Augusti navem
ascendit apud Porcestre, ducens secum regem Scottorum, comitem Leircestrensem,
comitem Cestrensem, Hugonem de Castello, quos habebat in vinculis.
(So, just in time, the father king, most powerful within the confines of his
kingdom through the intercession of St Thomas the Martyr, on 7 August 1174
boarded ship at Portchester, taking with him the king of Scots, the earl of
Leicester, the earl of Chester and Hugh de Castello, [all of] whom he held in
chains.) [trans. AJD]

However one interprets Henry II’s reactions – and I have seen a king forced
by general, not to say popular opinion, and political events to make his peace
with the martyr – there is no doubt that he made substantial penitential
payments: £30,000 to the Holy Land;68 £40 per annum to Christ Church,
Canterbury; and £13 6s 8d per annum to the leper-house at Harbledown.

see M. Strickland, ‘Fantosme, Jordan (fl. 1170–1180)’, ODNB (Oxford, 2004) [http://www.
oxforddnb.com/view/article/48310, accessed 20 November 2010].
65 William of Canterbury, MTB, i, 489.
66 E.g. Earl Hugh of Norfolk, William, Earl Ferrers, and Roger de Mowbray. Even Bishop Hugh
of Durham, who had not rebelled but had not attempted to prevent the Scottish invasions either,
deemed discretion the better part of valour and surrendered Durham, Norham and Northallerton:
Howden, Chronica, ii, 64–5.
67 Diceto, i, 383–5 at 385; cf. Robert of Torigni, Chronica, in Chronicles, ed. Howlett, iv, 264–5;
Howden, Gesta, i, 72; Howden, Chronica, ii, 61–3; Continuation of Sigebert of Gembloux, MGH SS,
vi, 414, ‘Que res [Canterbury penance] ei, ut credimus, victoriam contulit.’
68 H. E. Mayer, ‘Henry II of England and the Holy Land’, EHR, 97 (1982), 721–39.

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More significant as an index of his private sentiments is the fact that, with
the single exception of 1188,69 he repeated the Canterbury pilgrimage every
time he returned to England from his overseas territories. He was thus seen
to join the public veneration of the new martyr, to whom many attributed his
triumph in the rebellion.70 Warren and Barlow saw the Canterbury penance of
1174 as merely a public relations operation to deprive the rebels of their totem
and align the new St Thomas firmly with the monarchy,71 but that exclu-
sively political interpretation ignores his recurrent visits to Canterbury and
the extent of his penitential actions.72 The ascription to King Henry of real
repentance, made at the time by Jordan Fantosme, may be closer to the truth
than historians like to think.73

‘Seint Thomas,’ dist li reis, ‘guardez-mei mun reaume.

A vus me rent culpable dunt li autre unt le blasme’.
(‘St Thomas’, said the king, ‘guard my realm for me.
To you I declare myself guilty of that for which others have the blame’.)

The original voices of outrage had been such that King Henry had sought
to repair his reputation by the intervention in Ireland (1171–72), which was
justified as beneficial to the Irish Church and people,74 before accepting the
penances imposed by two papal legates at Avranches in 1172.75 Although
Henry considered that the concessions which he made as part of the settlement

69 When the interdict imposed by the monks had closed the cathedral to divine service:
Duggan, ‘Diplomacy’, 280–83.
70 Jordan Fantosme, ed. Johnston, 140 (lines 1905–7); Chronique, ed. Howlett, 362 (lines
1911–13). Peter of Blois to Archbishop Walter of Palermo in late 1179–80: MTB, vii, 575; Herbert
of Bosham, Liber Melorum (a supplement to the Vita Sancti Thome), MTB, iii, 544–8; Howden,
Gesta, i, 72; Howden, Chronica, ii, 61–3; Diceto, i, 385; Robert of Torigni, Chronica, 264–5.
71 W. L. Warren, Henry II (London, 1973), 135; Barlow, 269–70.
72 For further expressions of his penance, see Elma Brenner’s essay in this volume, chapter 4.
73 Jordan Fantosme, ed. Johnston, 120 (lines 1599–1600); Chronique, ed. Howlett, 336–8 (lines
1605–6); also discussed in the essays by Michael Staunton (chapter 5), Colette Bowie (chapter
6) and José Manuel Cerda (chapter 7) in this volume. Cf. Jordan Fantosme, ed. Johnston, 142
(lines 1912–14); Chronique, ed. Howlett, 362 (lines 1918–20): ‘Li reis iert veirement al martir
saint Thomas, | U il se rendit cupable, pechiere, e las, | E prist la penitence.’ (The king was
truly reconciled to St Thomas, | and to him he confessed his guilt, his sin, and his sorrow, | and
underwent the penance imposed upon him.)
74 J. A. Watt, The Church and the Two Nations in Medieval Ireland (Cambridge, 1970), 36–8;
M. T. Flanagan, ‘Henry II, the Council of Cashel and the Irish Bishops’, Peritia: Journal of the
Medieval Academy of Ireland, 10 (1996), 184–211; A. J. Duggan, ‘The Making of a Myth: Giraldus
Cambrensis, Laudabiliter, and Henry II’s Lordship of Ireland’, Studies in Medieval and Renaissance
History, Third Series, 4 (2007), 107–68, at 157–8.
75 Duggan, ‘Diplomacy’, 272–8; eadem, ‘Ne in dubium: The Official Record of Henry II’s
Reconciliation at Avranches (21 May, 1172)’, EHR, 115 (2000) 643–58; repr. with the same
pagination in eadem, Friends, Networks, no. VIII.

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 ANNE J. DUGGAN

were ‘few or none’ (‘aut paucas aut nullas’),76 this ‘compromise’ of Avranches
represented the first political reverse in Henry’s reign and marked the beginning
of negotiations which resulted in an important concession on clerical
immunity, agreed with Cardinal Hugh Pierleone in 1175–76. Historians are
divided in their assessment of what Henry lost by these agreements, but they
were more than had been conceded in the seven years’ dispute with Thomas:
right of appeal to the papacy and confirmation of clerical immunity from
secular judgment in criminal matters (except for treason and breaches of the
forest law).77 Both were to remain in force until the Henrician Reformation
and ‘benefit of clergy’ survived in a much modified form until 1827.78 Although
highly critical of Becket in many ways, Frank Barlow conceded that:79

things were never quite the same again, whether in the English Church or
in Latin Christendom at large. … Through his stand against Henry and his
martyrdom, [Thomas] brought the archaic English customs to the notice of the
Pope and cardinals and all canon lawyers and had succeeded in getting them
scrutinised, debated and in part abolished or reformed.

The Plantagenet Patron

Whether for personal or for political reasons, the man whom many – perhaps
most – contemporaries held morally responsible for Becket’s murder joined the
ranks of the devotees who flocked to the martyr’s tomb in a manner not dissimilar
to theirs: a penitent seeking forgiveness; a petitioner seeking divine favour. Nor
was he the only member of his family to invoke the name of St Thomas.
The younger King Henry, whose coronation in flagrant defiance of
Canterbury’s rights in 1170 initiated the final act of the Becket drama, visited
the tomb in 1172, even before the canonisation,80 and he claimed in a letter to
Alexander III that his rebellion was motivated by anger for Becket’s unavenged
murder – ‘for that sacred blood was crying out to us’ (‘clamabat enim sacer ille
ad nos sanguis’)81 – as well as by opposition to his father’s ecclesiastical policy.
‘To extend the renown of our tutor, the glorious martyr St Thomas, formerly
archbishop of Canterbury’,82 he even went so far as to promise to abolish the

76 In a letter to Bishop Bartholomew of Exeter: MTB, vii, 518–19 no. 773, at 519.
77 Duggan, Thomas Becket, 222–3.
78 Abolished by statute: 7 and 8 George IV, c. 28, §6: The Statutes of the United Kingdom of Great
Britain and Ireland, 7 & 8 George IV, 1827, ed. G. K. Richards (London, 1827), 166.
79 Barlow, 274.
80 Lansdowne Anonymous, third fragment, MTB, iv, 178–9.
81 Recueil des historiens, xvi, 643–8 no. 66, at 644.
82 Recueil des historiens, xvi, 643–8 no. 66, at 645: ‘Ad amplificandam gloriam gloriosi martyris
alumni nostri, sancti videlict Thomae quondam Cantuariensis antistitis’.

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 BECKET IS DEAD! LONG LIVE ST THOMAS

‘leges iniquas’ for which Becket had been exiled.83 Whether the young Henry
would have kept the promise or not is a matter for speculation, since the
rebellion failed in 1174 and he died in 1183, six years before his father.
There is less uncertainty about his brother Richard’s public devotion to
St Thomas, however. On the eve of his departure on the Third Crusade in 1189,
King Richard held a council at Canterbury on 27 November. There, accom-
panied by Queen Eleanor, he reconciled the monks of Canterbury with their
archbishop, Baldwin, in a great ecclesiastical gathering, which included three
archbishops (Canterbury, Rouen, Dublin), nine bishops, five named abbots, ‘et
alii abbates et priores multi’. He made peace with King William of Scotland,
releasing him from his liege homage84 and restoring the fortresses of Roxburgh
and Berwick in return for 10,000 marks, before commending himself and his
enterprise to the martyr’s favour.85 Arriving on 27 November, he departed for
Dover on 5 December: and it is likely that he attended the feast of the ‘return
of St Thomas’, which was celebrated at Canterbury on 2 December – and which
later generated two pilgrim badges: Thomas on horseback; and Thomas arriving
by boat at Sandwich.86 During the crusade, he contributed to the maintenance
of a chapel and cemetery founded at Acre by William, chaplain of the chronicler
Ralph de Diceto (Diss), dean of St Paul’s in London,87 from which descended the
military order of St Thomas of Acre (Acon) in the 1220s;88 and on his release
from imprisonment in Germany, accompanied by Queen Eleanor, he returned to
give thanks at Becket’s tomb on 13 March 1194.89 Even King John visited the

83 Constitutions of Clarendon: MTB, v, 71–83, no. 45.

84 Chronicle of Melrose: Chronica de Mailros, e codice unico in bibliotheca Cottoniana servato, ed.
J. Stevenson, Bannatyne Club, 49 (Edinburgh, 1835), 98.
85 Howden, Gesta, ii, 97–9, 102; Howden, Chronica, iii, 23–7; Diceto, ii, 72; Gervase, i, 474.
86 Recorded in the ‘Burnt Breviary’ in Canterbury Cathedral Library, Addit. MS 6. It was also
celebrated at Arbroath: English Benedictine Calendars After AD 1100, ed. F. Wormald, Henry
Bradshaw Society 77 (London, 1939), i, 65 n. 2; cf. ibid., 79, for Canterbury. For the badges, see
B. Spencer, Pilgrim Souvenirs and Secular Badges, Medieval Finds from Excavations in London, 7
(London, 1998), 79–89 fig. 34–6, 36a (ship); fig. 37–54a (Thomas on horseback).
87 Diceto, ii, 80–81. William became the first prior of the foundation, which served not only
the spiritual needs of crusaders, but cared for the poor, the wounded and the dying, and provided
Christian burial in the cemetery.
88 A. J. Forey, ‘The Military Order of St Thomas of Acre’, EHR, 92 (1977), 481–503, esp.
481, 487, 489. A priory of St Thomas of Canterbury existed in Acre itself before Alexander III’s
death, last mentioned in 1212 (Papsturkunden für Kirchen im Heiligen Lande, ed. R. Hiestand,
Vorarbeiten zum oriens pontificius, 3, Abhandlungen … Göttingen, phil.-hist. Klasse, 3rd Ser.,
136 [Göttingen, 1985], 394 no. 199), but its later history is shrouded in mystery. For the place
of the London house in the ceremonial history of the City of London, see Liber Albus: The
White Book of the City of London, trans. H. T. Riley (London, 1861), 23–5 and 27; cf. Forey,
‘The Military Order’, 502–3 and A. J. Duggan, ‘Canterbury: The Becket Effect’, in Canterbury: A
Medieval City, ed. C. Royer-Hemet (Newcastle-upon-Tyne, 2010), 67–91, at 76.
89 Gervase, i, 524; Diceto, ii, 80–81. Afterwards, he visited Bury St Edmunds, on his way north
to Nottingham, which was holding out for Richard’s brother John.

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 ANNE J. DUGGAN

tomb at least three times, on the third of which (1202) he and his new queen,
Isabella, were re-crowned on Easter Sunday (25 March) by Archbishop Hubert
Walter.90 Robertson speculated that the custom of the Wardens of the Cinque
Ports sending to the tomb of St Thomas the coronation canopy, which they held
over the heads of the king and queen during coronation ceremonies, may have
been begun on this occasion.91
By the time of John’s death (1216), the trend of royal veneration of the
English martyr was firmly set. Henry III continued the family tradition, despite
his life-long commitment to St Edward the Confessor. The translation of
St Thomas’s relics from their crypt tomb to the heart of the Trinity Chapel in
the main cathedral at Canterbury was one of the most splendid state occasions
of Henry’s reign.92 It was attended by dignitaries from across Europe,93 in
addition to the young king himself, who accompanied the precious relic,94
and he assigned taxes due from Christ Church to maintain four great candles
permanently around the shrine.95 Thereafter, the day of the translation (7
July) was celebrated as a second feast with its own special liturgy. Moreover,

90 Howden, Chronica, iv, 160; Diceto, ii, 172. This was John’s third, and Isabella’s second
coronation: Gervase, ii, 93 (Gesta regum); Matthew Paris, Chronica Majora, ed. H. R. Luard, RS
57, 7 vols (London, 1872–83), ii, 467, 475. For further discussion of John’s relationship with the
cult, see the essay by Paul Webster (chapter 8) in this volume.
91 W. A. Scott Robertson, The Crypt of Canterbury Cathedral: Its Architecture, its History and its
Frescoes (London, 1880), 41.
92 On the political significance, see R. Eales, ‘The Political Setting of the Becket Translation of
1220’, in Martyrs and Martyrologies, ed. D. Wood, SCH, 30 (Oxford, 1993), 127–39.
93 Possibly three from Hungary: the bishop of Csanád (his attendance reported in a letter from
Honorius III on 20 December 1220: A. Theiner, Vetera Monumenta historica Hungariam sacram
illustrantia, i [Rome, 1859], 26 no 44: ‘Ex insinuatione Venerabilis fratris … Canadiensis Episcopi
nobis innotuit, quod cum ipse in reditu peregrinationis sue a translatione corporis beati Thome
Martyris Cantuariensis per Papiensem transierirt civitatem’), Alexander of Várad (now Oradea),
also mentioned in the papal letter, and Archbishop John of Esztergom: L. Solymosi, ‘Magyar
főpapok angliai zarándoklata 1220-ban (The pilgrimage of Hungarian prelates to England in
1220)’, Történelmi Szemle (Historical Miscellany), 55, no 4 (2013), 527–40 at 527 and 536. For
these references I am very grateful to Professor Martyn Rady.
94 Described by Walter of Coventry, Memoriale, ed. W. Stubbs, RS 58, 2 vols (London, 1872–73),
ii, 245–6; Rogeri de Wendover liber qui dicitur Flores Historiarum ab anno domini MCLIV annoque
Henrici Anglorum Regis Secundi Primo, ed. H. G. Hewlett, RS 84, 3 vols (London, 1886–89), ii,
254; Matthew Paris, Chronica Majora, iii, 59–60.
95 Curia Regis Rolls of the Reign of Henry III Preserved in the Public Record Office: A.D. 1237–1242,
HMSO (London, 1979) 175, 181, 208 (24 Henry III); cf. 374–5 (26 Henry III). On royal
pilgrimages, see N. Vincent, ‘The Pilgrimages of the Angevin Kings 1154–1272’, in Pilgrimage:
The English Experience from Becket to Bunyan, ed. C. Morris and P. Roberts (Cambridge, 2002),
12–45. On the so-called images of Becket’s shrine in the miracle windows at Canterbury, see now
R. Koopmans, ‘Visions, Reliquaries, and the Image of “Becket’s Shrine” in the Miracle Windows
of Canterbury Cathedral’, Gesta, 54 (2015), 37–57. Koopmans argues persuasively that all the
‘shrine’ images are, in fact, depictions of reliquaries.

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the year of the translation (1220–21) was designated as a year of jubilee,96

which was repeated every fifty years until the abolition of the cult in 1538.97
Visits to the shrine in jubilee years attracted special spiritual benefits in the
form of indulgences for those who wished to avail themselves of them by
confessing their sins, and from at least 1370, the indulgence was plenary.98
Edward I visited the shrine six times between 1279 and 1305.99 Particularly
memorable was the year 1285: in addition to the customary monetary
offerings, he gave four statuettes and models of two ships (naves), all fashioned
in pure gold, and various brooches ornamented with precious stones, to the
value of £347;100 in July of that year, he donated the royal crown of Scotland
(confiscated from John Balliol) to the shrine; and on 8 September of the same
year his marriage to Margaret of France, sister of Philip IV, was celebrated
at Canterbury. She may have been the recipient of the Nuremburg Hours,
mentioned above.101 Not much later, the so-called ‘Queen Mary Psalter’, an
even more splendid devotional book made either for Margaret’s niece, Isabella
of France, Edward II’s queen (married 1308; †1358), or possibly for Edward
himself, contains in its bas-de-page miniatures the most complete pictorial
cycle of Becket’s career still surviving. It illustrates the major incidents in
St Thomas’s life, from birth to presentation in heaven, even including the
‘Saracen legend’ of Thomas’s mother.102 Edward II and Edward III were to
continue the patronage through the fourteenth century.103 Even as late as

96 Modelled on the Old Testament jubilee described in Leviticus 25: 8–9, which was a year of
special celebration: Duggan, ‘Cult’, 38–9. The fullest treatment remains R. Foreville, Le jubilé
de saint Thomas Becket: Du XIIIe au XVe siècle (1220–1470). Étude et documents, Bibliothèque
générale de l’École pratique des hautes-études, VIe section (Paris, 1958).
97 Below, at n. 128.
98 R. Foreville, ‘Mort et survie de saint Thomas Becket’, CCM, 14 (1971), 21–38, at 29.
99 Foreville, Le jubilé, 15 n. 4; A. J. Taylor, ‘Edward I and the Shrine of St Thomas of
Canterbury’, Journal of the British Archaeological Association, 132 (1979), 22–8.
100 C. E. Woodruff, ‘The Financial Aspect of the Cult of St Thomas of Canterbury’, Archaeologia
Cantiana, 44 (1932), 13–32, at 29 n. 1; Nilson, 119; M. Prestwich, Edward I (Berkeley, CA,
1988), 112.
101 Scott Robertson, Crypt of Canterbury Cathedral, 44–5; see above, nn. 47 and 48.
102 London, BL, MS Royal 2 B vii, fols 236v, 237r, and 287v–299r passim; cf. A. R. Stanton, The
Queen Mary Psalter: A Study of Affect and Audience, Transactions of the American Philosophical
Society, 91 Pt. 6 (Philadelphia, PA, 2001), 142–6 and 231–40, ‘The Case for Isabelle’. For
the Latin version, see MTB, ii, 453–8; cf. Duggan, Textual History, 178 n. 7. For the mid/late
thirteenth-century Old English version, which forms the opening of a long Life of St Thomas,
datable to the second half of the thirteenth century, see The Early South-English Legendary; or,
Lives of Saints: I. Ms. Laud, 108, in the Bodleian Library, ed. C. Horstmann, Early English Text
Society, Original Series, 87 (London, 1887), 106–77 at 106–12.
103 Scott Robertson, Crypt of Canterbury Cathedral, 50 n.; cf. A. J. Mason, What Became of the
Bones of St Thomas? A Contribution to his Fifteenth Jubilee (Cambridge, 1920), esp. 96–107, ‘Caput
and Corona’, and especially M. Ormrod, ‘The Personal Religion of Edward III’, Speculum, 64
(1989), 849–77.

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1520, Henry VIII himself, accompanied by the emperor Charles V, visited the
shrine in the course of a high-level diplomatic encounter.104
Once established, as it was by the end of the twelfth century, royal partici-
pation in the Becket cult might be considered as merely a formal extension
of the public religious practices expected of the king and his family, although
Professor Vincent warns against too rigorous a separation between the political
and the sacred.105 Edward I’s rich offerings suggest a personal devotion; and
something more than lip-service is evident in the behaviour of Edward the
Black Prince and King Henry IV, both of whom chose to be buried close to
the shrine in 1376 and 1413 respectively, and Henry V went to Canterbury in
November 1415 to give thanks for the victory at Agincourt.106
More dispersed was the influence of Henry II’s three daughters, Matilda,
Eleanor and Joanna. Their marriages – to Henry the Lion of Saxony (1168),
Alfonso VIII of Castile (1170) and William II of Sicily (1177) respectively
– encouraged the consolidation of the cult of St Thomas across Europe. The
recognition of St Thomas as a family saint in Saxony107 is splendidly manifested
in the so-called coronation page of the Helmarshausen Gospels, commissioned
by Henry the Lion between 1185 and 1188 for presentation to the altar of
Our Lady in the newly built basilica of Saints John the Baptist and Blaise in
Brunswick. Henry is shown kneeling before a standing Matilda, both splendidly
attired, flanked by their kin, with their patron saints above. Matilda’s principal
protectors are St Gregory the Great and St Thomas, the latter bearing his
martyr’s palm.108 That tiny presence on a manuscript page merely hints at the
embrace of the English martyr as a patron of the Welfs, later proclaimed in the
addition of St Thomas to the patronage of the basilica in Brunswick (which
housed the Welf family mausoleum) and the painting of a now much-restored
depiction of the Regressio and martyrdom in the choir.109 The work was carried
out under the auspices of Henry and Matilda’s eldest son, Henry V, count

104 Foreville, ‘Mort et survie’, 31.

105 Vincent, ‘Pilgrimages’, 43, ‘I would suggest that there is a point at which royal piety and
religious ritual can come close to a convergence with the sacred’.
106 R. Barber, ‘Edward, Prince of Wales and of Aquitaine (1330–1376)’, ODNB (Oxford, 2004;
online edn, 2008) [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/8523, accessed 24 October 2010];
W. Urry, ‘The Resting Places of St Thomas’, in Sédières, 195–209, at 207.
107 See Colette Bowie’s essay in this volume, chapter 6.
108 Herzog August Bibliothek Wolfenbüttel, Cod. Guelf. 105, noviss. 2, fol. 171v. On this
image, see esp. O. G. Oexle, ‘Lignage et parenté, politique et religion dans la noblesse du XIIs.:
l’évangélaire de Henri le Lion’, CCM, 36 (1993), 339–58 and plates 1–4. This magnificent
manuscript was sold for eight million pounds sterling to a German consortium at Sotheby’s,
London, in December 1983 (Country Life, 5 January 1984); cf. Das Evangeliar Heinrichs des
Löwen: Kommentar zum Faksimile, ed. D. Kötzsche (Frankfurt-am-Main, 1989).
109 J. Petersohn, Der südliche Ostseeraum im kirchlich-politischen Kräftespiel des Reichs, Polens
und Dänemarks vom 10. bis 13. Jahrhundert: Mission – Kirchenorganisation – Kultpolitik (Cologne,
1979), 137.

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palatine of the Rhine (†1227), whose own devotion may have been encouraged
by the fact that he had been born in the year of Becket’s canonisation (1173).
More than thirty years ago, Jürgen Petersohn showed how Brunswick became
the centre of liturgical and cultural life in North Germany. From there, the cult
of the English martyr was carried to Halberstadt and Merseburg in Saxony,110
to the cities of the Hansa (whose members traded with England), Hamburg,
Lübeck and Bremen,111 and also to Ratzeburg, to the south of Hamburg.112
In the Spanish peninsula, the church of San Tomás Cantuariense in
Salamanca, said to have been designed by English masons, dates from Eleanor’s
time as queen of Castile;113 and on Sicily the devotion of Queen Joanna is
evident in the splendid sanctuary mosaic in Monreale Cathedral (c.1188),
where St Thomas of Canterbury (CANTUR’), flanked by two Roman martyrs
(Saints Silvester and Lawrence), stands in an iconic pose giving a blessing in
the Greek manner. Joanna’s marriage was almost certainly the occasion on
which Bishop Reginald of Bath sent to her prospective mother-in-law, Queen
Margaret, the little pendant reliquary, fashioned in gold and rock crystal to
contain some of the earliest relics of the new saint: fragments ‘of the blood and
blood-stained garments of St Thomas the Martyr and of his hair shirt, cowl,
shoes and shirt’. Denuded of its crystal face and of the relics which had lain
beneath, this unique testament to the export of Becket’s cult in the wake of a
royal wedding can still be seen in the Metropolitan Museum of New York.114
It is even possible that Henry’s former daughter-in-law, Margaret of France,
widow of the younger Henry, reinforced devotion to St Thomas the Martyr in
Hungary when she married Béla III in 1186.115 The Pray codex, originally from
Vác, provides evidence that his cult was established in Hungary by 1192/95,

110 Petersohn, Der südliche Ostseeraum, 138–9; M. Barth, ‘Zum Kult des hl. Thomas Becket in
deutschen Sprachgebiet, in Skandinavien und Italien’, Freiburger Diözesan-Archiv, 80 (1960),
97–166, at 156–7. The fine Romanesque Neumarktkirche at Merseburg, dedicated to St Thomas
the Martyr, was founded sometime between 1173 and 1188. Its restoration was noted by Günter
Kowe in the Mitteldeutsche Zeitung, 28 May 1993; cf. U. Real, ‘Die Merseburger Neumarktkirche
St Thomas. Überlegungen zur Funktion der Kirche und zum Patrozinium des Thomas von
Canterbury’, in Pfarrkirchen in Städten des Hanseraumes: Beiträge eines Kolloquiums vom 10. bis
13. Dezember 2003 in der Hansestadt Stralsund, ed. F. Biermann, M. Schneider and T. Terberger,
Archäologie und Geschichte im Ostseeraum, 1 (Rahden, 2006), 275–90; for the existence of the
church in 1188, see MGH Diplomata Frederici I, 5 vols (Hannover, 1975–1990) iv, 271 no. 985.
For a splendid collection of recent studies, see Die romanische Neumarktkirche zu Merseburg und
ihr Patron Thomas Becket von Canterbury, publ. by the Förderkreis Museum, Schloss Merseburg
(Merseburg, 2014); cf. 159 for a map of Becket dedications in the German empire.
111 Barth, ‘Zum Kult’, 159–60.
112 Petersohn, Der südliche Ostseeraum, 135; Barth, ‘Zum Kult’, 138–9.
113 See José Manuel Cerda’s essay in this volume, chapter 7.
114 P. A. Newton, ‘Some New Material for the Study of the Iconography of St Thomas Becket’,
in Sédières, 255–63.
115 MGH SS, xxvi, 248, 42–3; Z. J. Kosztolnyik, From Coloman the Learned to Béla III (1095–
1196): Hungarian Domestic Policies and Their Impact upon Foreign Affairs (Boulder, CO, 1987), 212.

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and probably much earlier.116 Fr Radó listed him as one of the special patrons
of the Hungarian Church (with Saints Stephen and Ladislas),117 and two
ecclesiastical foundations from the late twelfth century confirm this liturgical
evidence: the collegiate church of Szent Tamás outside Esztergom118 and the
church of St Thomas in Pest.119 Whether this segment of Becket’s cult should
be ascribed to the influence of the French-educated Archbishop Lukács of
Esztergom (1158–81)120 or to that of Queen Margaret, or to both, is difficult
to say, but the church in honour of St Thomas the Martyr in Borszörcsök in
the district of Veszprém is situated in part on crown land assigned to the queen
of Hungary.121 It is also significant that her great-granddaughter, St Margaret
of Hungary (1242–71), after whom the Margit Sziget (Margaret Island) in
the Danube at Budapest is named, was said to have modelled her penitential
habits on St Thomas, whose Vita she read with devotion.122 Independently of
Queen Margaret, however, the foundation of a Cistercian monastery at Egres
(now Igriş in Romania) in 1179, populated by monks from Pontigny, would
have augmented the cult of St Thomas in the region.123
Patron of the Plantagenets and Welfs he may have become, but St Thomas’s
favour was not exclusive. William the Lion, the king of Scots whose capture
at Alnwick in 1174 was ascribed to Thomas’s pardon of the repentant Henry,
was equally a devotee of the new martyr, founding the Augustinian monastery
of Arbroath in his honour in 1178;124 Count Matthew of Boulogne made what

116 Budapest, Biblioteca nazionale Széchényi, MS Nyelvemlékek 1: P. Radó, OSB., revised

L. Mezey, Libri liturgici manuscripti bibliothecarum Hungariae et limitropharum regionum (Budapest,
1973), 40–51, esp. 51.
117 Radó, Libri liturgici manuscripti, 15, 17, 51, and passim; cf. Fragmenta codicum in bibliothecis
Hungariae, i/1: Fragmenta latina codicum in bibliotheca universitatis Budapestensis, i/2: Fragmenta
latina codicum in bibliotheca seminarii cleri Hungariae Centralis, ed. L. Mesey (Budapest and
Wiesbaden, 1983; repr. Budapest, 1988), i/1, 61, 195; i/2, 85, 128.
118 G. Győrffy, ‘Thomas à [sic] Becket and Hungary’, Angol Filológiai Tanulmányok [Hungarian
Studies in English], iv (1969), 45–52, at 50–51; idem, Az Árpad-Kori Magyarorszag Tőténeti Főldrajsa
(Budapest, 1987), 253, 259, 270, 273, 283–4. Since it was founded on Church land, Professor
Peter Erdő (now Cardinal) inclines to the belief that it was an archiepiscopal foundation, despite
its reception of royal patronage under Imre (1196–1206).
119 The oldest surviving parish church in Pest (and second oldest in foundation), situated near
the Erszébet hid (Elizabeth Bridge), now the Belváros (city) church, dedicated to Our Lady. For
the earlier dedication of this church to St Thomas, I am indebted to Professor Peter Erdő, now
cardinal archbishop of Esztergom-Budapest.
120 Z. J. Kosztolnyik, ‘The Church and Béla III of Hungary (1172–92): The Role of Archbishop
Lukács of Esztergom’, Church History, 49 (1980), 375–86. For Lukasz’s dates, see Decretales ineditae, 161.
121 Győrffy, ‘Thomas à Becket’, 51. The earliest surviving reference to this church is from 1299,
and the date of foundation has not yet been established.
122 Győrffy, ‘Thomas à Becket’, 51.
123 Győrffy ‘Thomas à Becket’, 49; L. Janauschek, Origines Cisterciensium (Vienna, 1877), i, 177.
124 C. Renardy, ‘Notes concernant le culte de saint Thomas Becket dans le diocèse de Liège aux
XIIe et XIIIe siècles’, Revue belge de philologie et d’histoire, 55 (1977), 381–9, at 383; Liber S. Thome

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 BECKET IS DEAD! LONG LIVE ST THOMAS

may have been a penitential visit to the tomb in 1173 and granted free passage
through his territories to the Canterbury monks, ‘pro honore Dei et beati
Thome archiepiscopi Cantuariensis et gloriosi martiris’;125 and King Louis VII
of France made a sudden pilgrimage to the tomb in August 1179 to pray for the
recovery of his only son,126 giving precious gifts, including an annual donation
of French wine, with which to celebrate the feast of St Thomas.127
The ghost of Becket hovered over the remainder of Henry’s reign, and
more than a ghost persisted as a discernible influence on religious attitudes
for the rest of the Middle Ages, until 16 November 1538, when Henry VIII
decided to exorcise the ghost forever. His peremptory edict left no room for

de Aberbrothoc. Registrum abbacie de Aberbrothoc, ed. C. Innes and P. Chalmers, Bannatyne Club,
86, 2 vols (Edinburgh, 1848–56), i, xi, 1–8; cf. ii, xxxi and frontispiece for the seal, with depiction
of Becket’s martyrdom; Chronicon de Lanercost MCII–MCCCXLVI, ed. J. Stevenson, Bannatyne
Club, 65, and Maitland Club, 46 (Edinburgh, 1839), 11: ‘Rex vero Willelmus Scottorum supra
memoratus, ob familiarem amorem inter ipsum et Sanctum Thomam dum adhuc in curia regis
Henrici esset contractum, divulgatum in mundo et approbato in coelo ejus martyrio, abbatiam de
Aberbroutok in honore ipsius fundavit et redditibus ampliavit.’
125 Canterbury Cathedral Library, Chartae Antiquae F132; William of Canterbury, Miracula
S. Thomae Cantuariensis, auctore Willelmo, monacho Cantuariens, MTB, i, 264: cf. J. O. Moon,
‘The European Connection – Aspects of Canterbury Cathedral Priory’s Temporalities Overseas’,
in Canterbury, A Medieval City, ed. C. Royer-Hemet (Newcastle-upon-Tyne, 2010), 177–93, at
180 and 188–9. The penance was for his scandalous marriage (1160) to Mary of Blois, a life-long
nun and abbess of Romsey. Laura Napran (‘Marriage and Excommunication: The Comital
House of Flanders’, in Exile in the Middle Ages: Selected Proceedings from the International Medieval
Congress, University of Leeds 8–11 July 2002, ed. L. Napran and E. van Houts [Turnhout, 2004],
69–79 at 78) is mistaken when she says that Pope Alexander III ‘refers to Matthew as count,
showing that the Pope had recognised his succession to the county of Boulogne’. The cited letter
does not. It instructs the archbishop of Reims to urge ‘praedictum comitem’, meaning Matthew’s
father, Count Thierry of Flanders, to take action against his son, who is scrupulously denied
both the comital title and the normal diplomatic designation as ‘dilectus filius noster’ (PL, cc,
184–5 no. 114: Tours, 18 December 1163). Nor did the earlier letter, also to Henry of Reims
(PL, cc, 184 no. 113: Tours, 10 December 1163), treat Matthew as count: he is simply ‘M. filius
comitis Flandrensis’; and the pope declares that the excommunication pronounced by the bishop
of Thérouanne against Matthew and the secular canons he had intruded into two monasteries
was issued lawfully (canonice) and ordered Henry to observe it himself. Whether he did or not is
another matter.
126 Howden: Gesta, i, 240–42; Howden, Chronica, ii, 192–3; Diceto, i, 432–3; Gervase, i, 293.
127 According to J. B. Sheppard, ‘A Notice on Some Manuscripts Selected from the Archives
of the Dean and Chapter of Canterbury’, Archaeological Journal, 33 (1876), 151–67, at 163, Louis’
gift of 100 muys of wine yielded 1600 gallons per annum. This ‘wine of St Thomas’ was sent,
more or less regularly, for more than 350 years: Moon, ‘The European Connection’, 178–9, 189,
and especially, Norman Charters from English Sources: Antiquaries, Archives and the Rediscovery of
the Anglo-Norman Past, ed. N. Vincent, PRS 97, ns 59 (London, 2013), 98–104, 203–4 no. 77,
Canterbury, [23/24 August], 1179. Successive confirmations by French kings: ibid., 204–10 nos.
80–83, 212–17 nos. 84–9; successive quittance from customs by English kings: ibid., 217–20 nos.
91–3; and further quittances and grants by counts of Flanders and Boulogne and others: ibid.,
220–47 nos. 94–121.

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 ANNE J. DUGGAN

doubt: ‘his [Becket’s] pictures throughout the realm are to be plucked down
and his festivals shall no longer be kept, and the services in his name shall
be razed out of all books’.128 The ferocity of that attack is itself an indication
of the power of Becket’s name, even after 350 years. Where Magna Carta had
come to symbolise the rights of the ‘people’, the causa beati Thome had become
the symbol of the rights of the Church from the days of Stephen Langton,
who had opposed King John and presided over the translation of the martyr’s
relics, to those of Stephen’s successor William Warham (1503–32), who had
been prepared to defend himself against a praemunire charge in 1532 with the
assertion that, ‘The case that I am put to trouble for is one of the articles that
St Thomas of Canterbury died for,’ and he arranged to be buried close to the
place of Becket’s martyrdom.129 Only three years later (1535), St Thomas’s
name was invoked by his namesake, Thomas More, in his last letter, sent from
the Tower to his daughter Margaret (Roper). In the letter, More prayed that
he would ‘go to God’ on the following day, since it was the eve of St Thomas
(6 July, the eve of the Translation on 7 July), and he concluded with an echo
of the last line of Felix locus, one of Benedict of Canterbury’s antiphons for the
original main feast (29 December): ‘pray for me, and I shall pray for you and
all our friends, that we may merrily meet in heaven’.130 It is a curious coincidence
that More’s severed head was later placed in the Roper vault in the very church
of St Dunstan where Henry II had disrobed for his penitential procession to
Becket’s tomb in 1174.
It was this still potent symbol that Henry VIII attacked root and branch
when he ordered the total destruction of the shrine in Canterbury and the
systematic erasure of his cult from the calendars and service books of the
Ecclesia Anglicana. Even then, however, after the removal of the shrine and

128 Letters and Papers, Foreign and Domestic, on the Reign of Henry VIII, ed. J. S. Brewer,
J. Gairdner and R. H. Brodie (London, 1862–1910), 13/ii, 848; cf. E. Duffy, The Stripping of the
Altars: Traditional Religion in England c. 1400–c. 1580 (New Haven, CT, and London, 1992), 412
and plates 131 and 132; Duggan, Thomas Becket, 238.
129 J. J. Scarisbrick, ‘Warham, William (1450?–1532)’, ODNB (Oxford, 2004; online edn,
2008) [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/28741, accessed 22 October 2010]. His career
was in many ways similar to Becket’s. He came from a modest background, had discharged
numerous diplomatic missions before appointment as archbishop of Canterbury (1503–32) and
Lord Chancellor (1504–15), and was confronted with the matrimonial crisis and the sustained
onslaught on ecclesiastical independence; he may have been prepared to follow St Thomas to a
martyr’s death, had he not died in 1532; cf. F. R. H. Du Boulay, ‘The Fifteenth Century’, in The
English Church and the Papacy in the Middle Ages, ed. C. H. Lawrence (London, 1965; revised
1999), 185–242, at 241–2.
130 The Correspondence of Sir Thomas More, ed. E. F. Rogers (Princeton, NJ, 1947), 564.
Benedict’s antiphon finished with the verse: ‘Felix pater, succurre miseris, | Ut felices jungamur
superis’ (Oh blessed father, help us poor folk, | That we may happily be united in heaven):
Breviarium … Sarum, i, cclvi. In the Sarum liturgy, it preceded the Gospel reading, ‘Ego sum
pastor Bonus (I am the good shepherd)’: John 10: 11–16.

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 BECKET IS DEAD! LONG LIVE ST THOMAS

the scattering or concealment of his bones,131 Becket’s name was not forgotten.
St Thomas the Martyr was chosen as the principal patron of the Collegio Inglese,
established by the Jesuits in Rome in 1579 for the training of English Catholic
priests, who were inspired to answer the call to martyrdom.132 There St Thomas
can still be seen, kneeling before the Trinity, in the fine altarpiece painted for
the College chapel by Durante Alberti in 1581. St Thomas, in a red chasuble,
kneels on the left, while an angel holds the sword of his martyrdom above his
uncovered head. St Edmund, the martyred king of the East Angles (killed by
Vikings in 869), in brown robes, kneels on the right, as a second angel holds
three arrows, the symbol of his martyrdom, above his head.133 It was before this
image that newly ordained priests prayed before departing for what lay ahead
of them in England. Between the two English martyr-saints stands a depiction
of the Flaminian Gate (Porta Flaminia, now the Porta del Popolo), through
which they would pass out of Rome on their missionary journey.134
Henry II may have obtained the canonisation of Edward the Confessor
in 1161; Henry III may have devoted much gold and personal attention to
rebuilding the abbey church at Westminster which housed his shrine;135 but
the cult of St Thomas at Canterbury easily outstripped that of St Edward
at Westminster,136 both in England and outside it, in a cult which left its
imprint in liturgical and spiritual life across the whole of the Latin West. Yet,
although St Thomas became a patron of the royal house, he was also very
much a ‘people’s saint’, so much so that Geoffrey Chaucer was able to use the
Canterbury pilgrimage as a microcosm of contemporary English life:137

131 For an excellent review of the numerous theories surrounding the fate of Becket’s relics,
see J. Butler, The Quest for Becket’s Bones: The Mystery of the Relics of St Thomas of Canterbury
(New Haven, CT, and London, 1995); cf. T. F. Mayer, ‘Becket’s Bones Burnt! Cardinal Pole
and the Invention and Dissemination of an Atrocity’, in Martyrs and Martyrdom in England,
c. 1400–1700, ed. T. S. Freeman and T. F. Mayer (Woodbridge, 2007), 126–43.
132 Duggan, Thomas Becket, 239–52. For the wider context, see P. Roberts, ‘Politics, Drama, and
the Cult of Thomas Becket in the Sixteenth Century’, in Pilgrimage: The English Experience from
Becket to Bunyan, ed. C. Morris and P. Roberts (Cambridge, 2002), 199–237.
133 C. M. Richardson, ‘Durante Alberti, the Martyrs’ Picture and the Venerable English
College, Rome’, Papers of the British School at Rome, 73 (2005), 223–63.
134 It is not without significance that it was ‘From without the Flaminian Gate’ that Cardinal
Wiseman announced his appointment as the first archbishop of Westminster after the restoration
of the Catholic hierarchy to England in 1850, for he was a former student and rector of the
Collegio Inglese.
135 Spencer, Pilgrim Souvenirs, 182.
136 The contrast in popularity between St Thomas’s shrine in Canterbury and St Edward’s in
Westminster is amply demonstrated by the great disparity in the volume of surviving pilgrim
badges generated by the two cults. Where Spencer, Pilgrim Souvenirs, devotes 92 pages (37–128)
to the Becket finds, those for St Edward occupy fewer than four (182–5), and some of them are
doubtful.
137 Geoffrey Chaucer (c.1340–1400), ‘Prologue’ to the Canterbury Tales, lines 15–18: The
Riverside Chaucer, ed. L. D. Benson (based on the edition of F. N. Robinson), 3rd edn (Oxford,

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 ANNE J. DUGGAN

And specially, from every shires ende

Of Engelond, to Caunterbury they wende,
The hooly blisful martir for to seke,
That hem hath holpen, whan that they were seeke.

Until its destruction in 1538, his shrine drew men and women in their many
thousands to pray or give thanks for favours received though his intercession.138
For the English Church he became a heroic inspiration. The archbishops of
Canterbury placed his image on their seals; so did the monks of the cathedral
church139 and Canterbury’s citizens;140 so also did the aldermen of London,
who asked him to continue to protect the city that had given him birth,141
and the mayors of London, who placed him on their seals beside St Paul.142
Even Old London Bridge had an impressive stone chapel of St Thomas at its
centre point.143 All that, of course, was swept away by Henry VIII’s edict; but

2008), 23. Chaucer’s pilgrims are depicted in a sixteenth-century Flemish MS of John Lydgate’s
Siege of Thebes. Like the contemporary Tale of Beryn, this was a supplement to the Canterbury
Tales, composed c.1420–22: H. Loxton, Pilgrimage to Canterbury (Newton Abbot, 1978), frontis-
piece; cf. The Canterbury Interlude and Merchant’s Tale of Beryn, published online from The
Canterbury Tales: Fifteenth-Century Continuations and Additions, ed. J. M. Bowers (Kalamazoo, MI,
1992), which likewise began with a prologue describing the pilgrims.
138 The most probing study is Nilson, esp. 147–54 and 211–15. Contrary to the general view
(e.g. Loxton, Pilgrimage to Canterbury, 173), Nilson argues (148–53) that the recorded figures
which show a steep decline in income in the fifteenth century are seriously misleading, since,
instead of transmitting all the offerings to the prior as in the past, the shrine-keepers themselves
disbursed stipends and expenses of various kinds and were also responsible for the purchase of
wax. For the impact on the city, see Duggan, ‘Canterbury: The Becket Effect’, 67–91. For the
continuing popularity through the later Middle Ages, eadem, ‘“The hooly blisful martir for to
seke”’, in Chaucer in Context: A Golden Age of English Poetry, ed. G. Morgan (Oxford, Berlin, et
alibi., 2012), 15–41.
139 Age of Chivalry: Art in Plantagenet England 1200–1400, Royal Academy of Arts Exhibition
Catalogue, ed. J. Alexander and P. Binski (London, 1987), 399–400 no. 461.
140 W. Urry, Thomas Becket: His Last Days, ed. P. A. Rowe (Stroud, 1999), 179.
141 On the reverse of the common seal of the ‘barons’ (aldermen) of London, c.1219: ME QVE
TE PEPERI NE CESSES THOMA TVERI (May thou never cease, O Thomas, to protect me
who gave thee birth): described in Age of Chivalry, 273 no. 193, which shows the obverse (with
St Paul), from London, The National Archives, E329/428.
142 For the first (before 1278) and second (1381) seal, see Age of Chivalry, 274 nos. 194 and 195.
143 A scale model of the bridge with the St Thomas chapel on its eastern side can be seen
in the church of St Magnus the Martyr (Lower Thames Street), in whose parish it was until
desecration at the Reformation, when it was put to secular uses (house, warehouse). It is also
represented in a modern stained-glass window. The first chapel was built under the supervision
of Peter of Colechurch (Cheapside) between 1176 and 1209, and the second, in splendid
perpendicular gothic style between 1384 and 1397 by Henry Yevele (c.1320–1400), the great
architect (master mason) who, among other works, refaced Westminster Hall and rebuilt the
naves of Westminster Abbey and Canterbury Cathedral. It is Yevele’s design which is represented
in the model and window in St Magnus Church. Magnus is generally identified with Magnus
Erlendsson, St Magnus of Orkney, †1118.

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 BECKET IS DEAD! LONG LIVE ST THOMAS

St Thomas can still be seen, holding his corona in his hands, in one of the
niches on the west front of Wells Cathedral;144 and the London hospital estab-
lished in Southwark under his patronage, ‘for the reception and care of the
poor and sick’ (‘ad pauperum et infirmorum susceptionem pariter et sustenta-
tionem’), still stands on the south bank of the Thames, though on a different
site, and, after four hundred years of disguise under the name of St Thomas the
Apostle, it again bears his name.145 In Canterbury Cathedral itself, whose east
end was rebuilt as a martyrium to enshrine his relics between 1174 and 1186
to a design probably influenced by early Christian models like the basilica
of S. Costanza in Rome,146 eight of the original array of twelve stained-glass
windows, designed to celebrate his life and miracles,147 remain as a tantalising
reminder of the man and the saint, despite the haunting emptiness of the place
in the Trinity Chapel where the shrine once stood.148

144 P. Binski, Becket’s Crown: Art and Imagination in Gothic England 1170–1300 (New Haven, CT,
and London, 2004), 117, fig. 96; detail, 13, fig. 12.
145 As defined in Gilbert Foliot’s letter granting an indulgence to all who supported the building
programme 1173 x 80: The Letters and Charters of Gilbert Foliot, Abbot of Gloucester (1139–48),
Bishop of Hereford (1148–63) and London (1163–87), ed. A. Morey and C. N. L. Brooke
(Cambridge, 1967), 482 no. 452. After a devastating fire in 1212, St Thomas’s Hospital was
re-founded on a new site by Peter des Roches, bishop of Winchester, in 1215, and re-located to
its present site, across the Thames from the Houses of Parliament, in 1862.
146 Binski, Becket’s Crown, 24–5, and fig. 23–4; cf. T. Tatton-Brown, ‘Canterbury and the
Architecture of Pilgrimage Shrines in England’, in Pilgrimage: The English Experience from Becket
to Bunyan, ed. C. Morris and P. Roberts (Cambridge, 2002), 90–107. For the debate about the
design of ‘Becket’s Crown’, see esp. P. Draper, ‘Interpretations of the Rebuilding of Canterbury
Cathedral, 1174–1186: Archaeological and Historical Evidence’, Journal of the Society of
Architectural Historians, 56 (1997), 184–203, which rightly challenges the interpretations of
P. Kidson, ‘Gervase, Becket, and William of Sens’, Speculum, 68 (1993), 969–91 and M. F. Hearn,
‘Canterbury Cathedral and the Cult of Becket’, Art Bulletin, 76 (1994), 19–54.
147 The array comprised Trinity Chapel windows, n.VII–n.II and s.II–s.VII, but the original glass
from n.VI and s.III–s.V has been lost. For the position and content of the surviving windows, see
M. H. Caviness, The Early Stained Glass of Canterbury Cathedral circa 1175–1220 (Princeton, NJ,
1977), 164–6 (appendix, fig. 6), and plates 92–3, 115, 159, 162, 164, 167, 169, 171–5, 185–91,
194, 197 and 197a–h, 199, 205–6, 208–11; Caviness, Windows of Christ Church. For excellent
coloured plates, see M. A. Michael, Stained Glass of Canterbury Cathedral (London, 2004).
148 Binski, Becket’s Crown, fig. 1; cf. 25, fig. 16.

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2276 (Boydell - St Thomas Becket).indd 52 20/09/2016 8:46 pm
 3.

The Cult of St Thomas in the

Liturgy and Iconography of
Christ Church, Canterbury

MARIE-PIERRE GELIN

On Christmas Day 1170, a few weeks after his return to England after seven
years in exile in France, Archbishop Thomas Becket preached a sermon in his
cathedral at Canterbury. While speaking of the men who had preceded him
in the see, ‘the holy men who are [buried] here … he said that they had one
martyr archbishop, St Alphege, and that it was possible that before long they
would have another.’1 A few days later, on 29 December, Thomas Becket was
killed in the cathedral by four royal knights, not very far from the spot where
he had preached on Christmas Day, and he indeed became the other martyr of
Canterbury, as he had seemingly foreseen. The liturgy for his feast day further
adds that at the point of death, he commended his soul to several saints,
among them to ‘sanctis hujus ecclesiae patronis’, while one of his biographers
specifies that he explicitly invoked St Alphege.2 Archbishop Thomas is thus
presented as belonging to the long line of archbishops of Canterbury who
displayed admiration and veneration for their sainted predecessors. Alphege
(1006–12), for instance, was devoted to the memory of St Dunstan (959–88);
Anselm (1093–1109) defended Alphege’s claim to sanctity against the doubt
expressed by Lanfranc (1070–89); Lanfranc himself turned to St Dunstan
for help and support on several occasions.3 Thomas Becket himself, during

1 ‘qui ibi sunt confessores, loqueretur, ait, unum eos habere martyrem archiepiscopum, sanctum
Elphegum; possibile esse, ut et alterum in brevi ibi haberent’, William FitzStephen, MTB, iii,
130.
2 ‘the saint patrons of this church’, lectio vi of the Matins office on the Day of St Thomas,
Breviarium ad usum insignis ecclesiae Sarum, ed. F. Procter and C. Wordsworth, 3 vols (Cambridge,
1882), cclii; ‘vir sanctus … dixit, “Deo et beato Dionysio sanctoque Elphego me commendo!”’
(‘the holy man said … I commend myself to God and the blessed Denis and St Alphege’),
Anonymous I (‘Roger of Pontigny’), MTB, iv, 77.
3 Alphege commissioned Adelard to write liturgical lections to celebrate the feast day of
St Dunstan: Memorials of St Dunstan, ed. W. Stubbs, RS 63 (London, 1874), 53–68. In an episode

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 MARIE-PIERRE GELIN

his pontificate, sought to have Anselm formally canonised by the pope,

although the quarrel with Henry II prevented him from seeing this task
through.4
From the point of view of the monastic community, Archbishop Thomas
did not fit easily in the traditions of Christ Church. As a secular clerk, he had
spent most of his career serving the Crown. Even after he became archbishop
of Canterbury, his relations with the monastic community, whose nominal
abbot he was, had been at best distant and at worst confrontational.5 The
monks, however, rapidly and enthusiastically supported the beginnings of the
cult of the new martyr.6 After the murderers had departed, they removed the
body to the front of the main altar of the cathedral and carefully collected
the blood which had been spilled.7 While preparing the archbishop’s body for
burial, they discovered that he had been wearing monastic garments under
his archiepiscopal vestments, as well as a hair shirt next to his skin, revealing
Becket’s austere habits of discipline.8 This discovery, maybe more than the
murder in the cathedral itself, allowed the monks to claim Becket as one
of their own, although he had been an absentee abbot and had not always
placed the interests of the monastery at the forefront of his actions. It also
allowed the monks to inscribe him fully in the long line of archbishops whose

of his Life of Anselm, Eadmer recounted how Lanfranc had sought Anselm’s advice about whether
Alphege should be venerated as a saint or not: Eadmer, Vita Sancti Anselmi, ed. R. W. Southern,
NMT (London, 1962), 50–54. Lanfranc accepted Anselm’s argument that the reason for which
Alphege had died was enough to count him a martyr and the liturgical calendars show continued
devotion at Christ Church. According to Osbern, Lanfranc sought (and received) Dunstan’s help
in his struggle against Odo of Bayeux, as well as in the case of the cure of a possessed man; he
also experienced a vision of St Dunstan during an illness, from which he miraculously recovered:
Memorials, 144, 146–50 and 151–2.
4 R. Foreville, ‘Regard neuf sur le culte de saint Anselme à Canterbury au XIIe siècle (à la
mémoire de William G. Urry)’, in Les Mutations socio-culturelles au tournant des XIe–XIIe siècles,
Spicilegium Beccense II (Paris, 1984), 299–316 at 299.
5 Richard Southern pointed out that ‘the relationship between a medieval archbishop or
bishop of a monastic cathedral could never be entirely cordial’: R. W. Southern, The Monks of
Canterbury and the Murder of Archbishop Becket (Canterbury, 1985), 8. The relationship between
Becket and the Canterbury monks seems however to have been particularly strained. In all the
archbishop’s voluminous correspondence, only three letters are addressed to the community,
in which he generally upbraids them for their lack of support in his cause: CTB, ii, 911–21
(no. 209), 1092–7 (no. 254), 1238–41 (no. 292).
6 Anne J. Duggan noted that the monks’ ‘delay and hesitation’ in accepting the cult of Thomas
Becket ‘lasted short of twelve hours’ after the murder: Duggan, Thomas Becket, 214.
7 Gervase, i, 228; MTB, iii, 150, 519; MTB, iv, 78; The Letters of John of Salisbury, Volume II:
The Later Letters 1163–1180, ed. and trans. W. J. Millor and C. N. L. Brooke, OMT (Oxford,
1979), 724–38 (no. 305) at 737.
8 As reported by several of the biographers, for instance Benedict of Peterborough, MTB, ii, 17;
William FitzStephen, MTB, iii, 148; Herbert of Bosham, MTB, iii, 521; Anonymous I, MTB, iv,
78; or Gervase, i, 229.

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 THE CULT OF ST THOMAS AT CHRIST CHURCH, CANTERBURY

bodies rested in the cathedral and with whose memory they saw themselves as
entrusted.
In the decades following the murder of Thomas Becket, Christ Church
underwent a series of major upheavals, which led the monastic community
to embark on an extensive campaign of architectural, liturgical and icono-
graphic creation. The archbishop’s relics soon attracted scores of pilgrims to
Canterbury, and after he was canonised in 1173 his cult became one of the
most important and most popular of the Middle Ages.9 It would hardly be
surprising, therefore, to find that the cult of Thomas Becket overshadowed
the cults of the other archbishops buried in the cathedral, in particular his
Anglo-Saxon predecessors St Dunstan and St Alphege.10 Indeed, the scale of
the celebrations and commemorations (textual, liturgical and iconographic)
dedicated to Becket at Christ Church surpassed in complexity and lavishness
those which had been created for either Dunstan or Alphege. I would,
however, like to argue in favour of evidence indicating that far from being
consigned to oblivion, the Anglo-Saxon archbishops saw their cults revitalised
and maybe even enhanced by the development of devotion to St Thomas at
the end of the twelfth century.
The aim of this paper is to examine how certain liturgical and iconographic
aspects of the cult of St Thomas, as it was established at Christ Church in the
last decades of the twelfth century, made deliberate reference to the cults of
his Anglo-Saxon predecessors who were, after him, the two more important
saints of the cathedral. The reconstruction of the eastern end of the cathedral
was seized by the monastic community as an opportunity to accommodate the
growing popularity of the new saint on the one hand, and on the other to
reinvigorate the older cults through the creation of new iconographic cycles.
The way in which these older cults may have been used by the monastic
community to enhance the reputation of the new Canterbury saint allowed
the monks to establish his place in the traditions of the monastery and in
inscribing him in the long line of archbishops.

9 The pope announced the canonisation of the archbishop on 21 February 1173 in three letters
sent to England in March 1173: MTB, vii, 544–8 (nos. 783–5). Anne J. Duggan has analysed in
detail the ways in which the cult of Becket spread to the whole of Europe through the manuscript
tradition of the liturgies, the Vitae and the miracle compilations: Duggan, ‘Cult’; A. J. Duggan,
‘John of Salisbury and Thomas Becket’, The World of John of Salisbury, ed. M. Wilks, SCH
Subsidia, 3 (Oxford, 1984), 427–38; A. J. Duggan, ‘A Becket Office at Stavelot: London, BL,
MS Addit. 16964’, in Omnia disce: Medieval Studies in Memory of Leonard Boyle, ed. A. J. Duggan,
J. Greatrex and B. Bolton (Aldershot, 2005), 160–82; repr. with the same pagination in Duggan,
Friends, Networks, no. XI. The papers published in Sédières provide further insights into the early
development of the cult.
10 Which, for instance, is the opinion of M. Budny and T. Graham, ‘Les cycles des saints
Dunstan et Alphège dans les vitraux romans de la cathédrale de Canterbury’, CCM, 38 (1995),
55–78, at 62.

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 MARIE-PIERRE GELIN

Old and New Cults

In September 1174, ‘by the just but obscure judgement of God’, in the words of
the monk Gervase, the cathedral of Christ Church, Canterbury, was partially
destroyed by fire.11 Coming only a few years after the dramatic murder of
Archbishop Thomas Becket, the conflagration was another dramatic event
for the monastic community of Christ Church. The subsequent recon-
struction of the eastern end of the cathedral started in 1175 and was largely
finished by 1220. The monk Gervase documented the stages of the planning
and reconstruction in a text which offers an almost unique insight into the
rebuilding process, known as the Tractatus de combustione et reparatione ecclesiae
Cantuariensis.12 The rebuilding was planned on a grand scale to accommodate
the new devotional and liturgical needs of the monastic community and of
the pilgrims who had started flocking to the tomb of St Thomas soon after
his murder.13 As described by Gervase, the entire eastern end of the new
building – the Trinity Chapel and the Corona – was from the start intended
by the monks to house the shrine of St Thomas.14 As was often the case during

11 ‘justo sed occulto Dei judicio’, Gervase, i, 3. The cathedral had already been damaged by fire
in 1011, when the Danes sacked Canterbury, and again in 1067. The 1174 fire seems to have
affected mostly the eastern end, leaving the nave intact.
12 The tract opens the first volume of William Stubbs’s edition of Gervase’s historical works:
Gervase, i, 3–29. It was in all probability written around 1188, and possibly as late as 1199, as
argued in C. Davidson Cragoe, ‘Reading and Rereading Gervase of Canterbury’, Journal of the
British Archaeological Association, 154 (2001), 40–53, esp. 48–50. It was translated into English by
R. Willis, The Architectural History of Canterbury Cathedral (London, 1845), 32–62.
13 F. Woodman, The Architectural History of Canterbury Cathedral (London, 1981), esp.
chapter 3. The various stages of the design of the eastern end of Christ Church in relation to
the political context and the development of the cult of St Thomas are analysed in a series of
articles by P. Draper, ‘William of Sens and the Original Design of the Choir Termination of
Canterbury Cathedral 1175–1179’, Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, 42 (1983),
238–48; P. Draper, ‘Interpretations of the Rebuilding of Canterbury Cathedral, 1174–1186:
Archaeological and Historical Evidence’, Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, 56
(1997), 184–203. See also the differing opinions of P. Kidson, ‘Gervase, Becket and William of
Sens’, Speculum, 68 (1993), 969–91; and M. F. Hearn, ‘Canterbury Cathedral and the Cult of
Becket’, Art Bulletin, 76 (1994), 19–52. More recently, Paul Binski has offered a more aesthetic
analysis of the eastern end of Christ Church: P. Binski, Becket’s Crown: Art and Imagination in
Gothic England, 1170–1300 (New Haven, CT, and London, 2004), chapter 1.
14 After describing how the burnt remains of the old structure were pulled down and the initial
stages of the rebuilding, Gervase mentions how, in the fifth year of the works, the architect
‘praeterea ex parte orientali ad incrementum ecclesiae fundamentum fecit, eo quod capella Sancti
Thomae ibidem ex novo fieri debuit’ (laid the foundation for the enlargement of the church at
the eastern part, because a chapel of St Thomas was to be built there): Gervase, i, 26; trans. in
Willis, Architectural History, 51. The archbishop’s remains were initially interred in the crypt by
the monks after the murder. The canonisation of St Thomas and the influx of pilgrims made that
situation quite unsatisfactory and a translation was therefore quickly intended into the upper
church, although it did not happen until 1220 and the pontificate of Stephen Langton.

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major rebuilding campaigns, this presented the monastic community with

an opportunity to update the liturgy and rituals celebrated in their church.
Gervase held the office of sacrist at Christ Church and as such he was much
concerned with the treasures and relics present in the cathedral. He outlined
the various stages of the building campaign in relation to the resting places
of the archbishops within the sanctuary and his text, which has often been
used by architectural historians to trace the history of the physical fabric of
Christ Church, also provides a fascinating insight into how the members of
the monastic community perceived the space of the church as a ‘spiritual
landscape’, organised around the altars, the relics of the saints and, maybe
most importantly, the remains of the archbishops.15
Christ Church was, from the end of the twelfth century, associated first and
foremost with the cult of St Thomas and the relics of the martyr drew increas-
ingly important crowds of pilgrims on his feast days.16 Undoubtedly, the new
martyr attracted far more devotion than any of his predecessors whose remains
were at Christ Church, or even than any of the other saints whose relics Christ
Church possessed.17 The other saints who had long been venerated at Christ
Church nonetheless retained their importance for the monastic community,
in particular the cults of the former archbishops of Canterbury, first among
whom were St Dunstan and St Alphege. The monastic community of Christ
Church took great pride in its role as guardian of the tombs and remains of
the archbishops of Canterbury, a role it had held since the pontificate of
Archbishop Cuthbert (740–60) in the eighth century, when Christ Church
had replaced the other Canterbury abbey, St Augustine’s, as the burial site
for the archbishops. All of them, save one, had been buried there, initially
in a separate structure, the church of St John. The archbishops’ remains were

15 On the architectural history of the cathedral, see n. 13 above. The uses of the space of
the cathedral to map out a spiritual journey, both geographical and temporal, are analysed in
E. Robertson Hamer, ‘Christ Church, Canterbury: The Spiritual Landscape of Pilgrimage’, Essays
in Medieval Studies, 7 (1990), 59–69; M.-P. Gelin, ‘Gervase of Canterbury, Christ Church and the
Archbishops’, JEH, 60 (2009), 449–63.
16 The records of the offerings made at the shrine show that even before the translation of
Thomas Becket’s relics in 1220 the offerings were considerable and remained greatly superior
to that of any other English shrine until the fifteenth century: Nilson, 147–54. On the basis of
these offerings, Nilson estimated that in jubilee years, Canterbury may have seen more than one
hundred thousand pilgrims throng for St Thomas’s feast day: Nilson, 113–15.
17 In addition to the remains of the archbishops, Christ Church possessed one of the most
impressive relic collections in England, many of which had been brought back from Rome by
Archbishop Plegmund (890–923): Gervase, ii, 350. An inventory compiled by Prior Henry of
Eastry (1285–1331) in 1315 shows how extensive the collection was: London, BL, MS Cotton
Galba E. iv, fols. 112–186v; The Inventories of Christ Church, Canterbury, ed. J. Wickham-Legg
and W. H. St John Hope (London, 1902), 9–94.

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subsequently buried near the altars and the relics they contained within the
main cathedral church.18
Nowhere is the importance of the cults of the archbishops more apparent
than in the narrative of Gervase.19 At the time Gervase wrote his account,
seven of these archbishops were considered as saints and two, St Dunstan and
St Alphege, had been particularly revered by the monastic community since
the Anglo-Saxon period.20 They were buried in the monks’ choir, on either
side of the main altar and enjoyed a particularly elevated status in the liturgical
practices of Christ Church. Lavish cycles of stained-glass windows dedicated to
St Dunstan and St Alphege, around the choir, and to St Thomas, around the
Trinity Chapel, were part of the rich decoration of the new church.21 Although
put in place about thirty years apart, these three cycles appear to have been
intended by those who conceived them – the monks of Christ Church – to put
forward a specific, unified image of the archbishops of Canterbury.22 Associated
with prominent shrines and splendid liturgical ceremonies, the cycles allowed
the monks to re-assert their claim to being the guardians of the relics of the
archbishops. Their lives – and death, in the case of St Alphege – provided the
monastic community with types which prefigured the fate of St Thomas.
Even at the highest point of their veneration in the pre-Conquest period,
Dunstan and Alphege never enjoyed the same popularity as St Thomas and,
while the latter rapidly became a saint of international repute, the other cults

18 These altars were mostly located at the eastern end of the church, but also in the crypt
and the nave: Gervase, i, 10–17 and ii, 345–8. S. Robertson, ‘Burial-Places of the Archbishops
of Canterbury’, Archaeologia Cantiana, 20 (1893), 276–94; M. Sparks, ‘The Liturgical Use
of the Nave 1077–1540’, in Canterbury Cathedral Nave: Archaeology, History and Architecture,
ed. K. Blockley, M. Sparks and T. Tatton-Brown (Canterbury, 1997), 121–8, at 121–3, figs 46
and 53.
19 It is a theme Gervase also developed in his Actus Pontificum, a history of the archbishops of
Canterbury: Gervase, ii, 325–414. See also Gelin, ‘Gervase of Canterbury’, 451–5.
20 The saintly archbishops are Cuthbert (741–60), the first archbishop to be buried at Christ
Church; Bregwine (760–64); Æthelhard (790–805); Oda (942–58); Dunstan (959–88); Alphege
(1006–12); and Anselm (1093–1109).
21 According to the numbering of the international Corpus Vitrearum Mediii Aevi, the
windows of the life of St Alphege probably originally occupied windows Nt. III and Nt. II and
those of St Dunstan windows St. II and St. III, ‘possibly extending to St. XI’: Caviness, Windows
of Christ Church, 64. Those dedicated to the life of St Thomas were windows n. VII and n. VI,
while the windows depicting the miracles spanned the openings n. V to n. II and s. II to s. VII:
M. H. Caviness, The Early Stained Glass of Canterbury Cathedral circa 1175–1220 (Princeton, NJ,
1977), 164–6 (appendix, fig. 6). See also eadem, Windows of Christ Church, plates 92–3, 115, 159,
162, 164, 167, 169, 171–5, 185–91, 194, 197 and 197a–h, 199, 205–6, 208–11 for the surviving
panels from these windows. The hagiographic windows have all but disappeared, except maybe
for a single panel which may have come from one of them originally, now in an American
collection: Caviness, Windows of Christ Church, 177.
22 The dating of the various cycles is discussed below.

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remained essentially local.23 Veneration of St Dunstan and St Alphege was not

limited to Canterbury alone in the Middle Ages, but only at Christ Church
did their cults develop to such an extent. The creation of substantial picture
cycles describing the life and death of the two Anglo-Saxon saints in the
rebuilt cathedral, the location of altars dedicated to them in close proximity
to the main altar of the church and inclusion of several important liturgical
celebrations in the monastery’s calendars all point to the regard in which they
continued to be held by the Christ Church monks.
As the old structure was pulled down in preparation for the rebuilding,
the relics contained in the altars and the remains of the archbishops interred
within the cathedral were removed while waiting to be reinstalled in the new
church. Gervase dedicated the bulk of his account of the rebuilding to listing
exhaustively the altars near which the archbishops had been buried, not only in
the choir which had just burned, but also in the structure which had preceded
it and which had been destroyed in 1067.24 The first archbishops whose bodies
were removed by the monks were St Dunstan and St Alphege.25 St Dunstan
had left a particularly strong impression on the cathedral community. A
monk from Glastonbury, he was bishop first of Worcester and then of London.
Archbishop of Canterbury from 959 to 988, he was remembered as having
been one of the principal actors in the reform of English monasticism at the
end of the tenth century.26 Furthermore, he was usually credited with having
introduced Benedictine monastic practices at Christ Church, although in

23 For an analysis of the early cult of St Dunstan, see A. Thacker, ‘Cults at Canterbury: Relics
and Reform under Dunstan and his Successors’, in Saint Dunstan: His Life, Times and Cult, ed.
N. Ramsay, M. Sparks and T. Tatton-Brown (Woodbridge, 1992), 221–45. In the same volume,
N. Ramsay and M. Sparks further examine the development of the cult of St Dunstan at Christ
Church during the rest of the Middle Ages: N. Ramsay and M. Sparks, ‘The Cult of St Dunstan at
Christ Church, Canterbury’, in Saint Dunstan: His Life, Times and Cult, ed. N. Ramsay, M. Sparks
and T. Tatton-Brown (Woodbridge, 1992), 311–23.
24 Gervase included a description of no fewer than four distinct structures in his account: (i) the
old Anglo-Saxon cathedral destroyed in 1067: Gervase, i, 7–9, quoting a text by the Canterbury
monk Eadmer, De reliquiis S. Audoenis et quorumdam aliorum sanctorum quae Cantuariae in aecclesia
Domini Sancti Saluatoris habentur, ed. A. Wilmart, Revue des sciences religieuses, 15 (1935),
184–219, 354–79; (ii) the nave built by Lanfranc in the late eleventh century: Gervase, i, 9–12;
(iii) Prior Conrad’s choir rebuilt while Anselm was archbishop: Gervase, i, 12–16; and finally (iv)
the choir and Trinity Chapel built between 1174 and 1184: Gervase, i, 19–29. See also Gelin,
‘Gervase of Canterbury’, 457.
25 Gervase, i, 5–6.
26 Six Lives of Archbishop Dunstan were written in the Middle Ages. They have been published
in Memorials of St Dunstan. Eadmer’s Vita et Miracula S. Dunstani has recently been published
with an English translation: Eadmer of Canterbury: Lives and Miracles of Sts Oda, Dunstan and
Oswald, ed. and trans. A. J. Turner and B. J. Muir, OMT (Oxford, 2006). St Dunstan’s career and
his impact at Christ Church are examined in N. Ramsay, M. Sparks and T. Tatton-Brown (eds),
Saint Dunstan: His Life, Times and Cult (Woodbridge, 1992).

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effect this does not seem to have been the case.27 As such, he embodied, in
the Christ Church tradition, the ideal of the ‘monk-archbishop’, dedicated
to the service of the Church of Canterbury and the welfare – both physical
and spiritual – of its community. More importantly, his struggles with royal
power and his exile during the reign of King Eadwig made him an ideal type
of the tribulations suffered by his successor Thomas Becket.28 From early on
he was venerated at Christ Church, as attested by the commission of a Vita
and liturgical lections by two of his successors, as well as by the high solemnity
accorded to his feast day in the liturgical calendars of the monastery.29
Although now less well-known than Dunstan, Alphege was held in perhaps
even higher regard at Christ Church. He had had a distinguished ecclesiastical
career before becoming archbishop of Canterbury in 1006, but he owed his
fame mostly to his martyrdom at the hands of the Vikings in 1012.30 Having
been taken prisoner by a party of Danish raiders, he angered them by refusing
to pay the large ransom they were demanding; after a drunken feast, they

27 At Christ Church, the tradition, based on Bede’s account, was that St Augustine had estab-
lished monks after his arrival in England in 597, though there is no strong evidence for the
presence of a monastic community before the pontificate of Ælfric (995–1005), even though
Dunstan must have brought monks with him when he was elected: Bede, The Ecclesiastical
History of the English People, ed. and trans. B. Colgrave and R. A. B. Mynors, OMT (Oxford,
1969), i, 27. For an analysis of the composition of the clergy serving the cathedral since its
foundation, see J. A. Robinson, ‘The Early Community at Christ Church, Canterbury’, Journal
of Theological Studies, 27 (1926), 225–40; T. Symons, ‘The Introduction of Monks at Christ
Church, Canterbury’, Journal of Theological Studies, 27 (1926), 409–11; D. Knowles, ‘The Early
Community at Christ Church, Canterbury’, Journal of Theological Studies, 39 (1938), 126–31;
N. Brooks, ‘The Anglo-Saxon Cathedral Community 597–1070’, in A History of Canterbury
Cathedral, ed. P. Collinson, N. Ramsay and M. Sparks (Oxford, 1995), 1–37.
28 Dunstan was sent into exile by Eadwig in 956 and he spent time in Ghent before returning
to England in 957, M. Lapidge, ‘Dunstan [St Dunstan] (d. 988)’, ODNB (Oxford, 2004) [http://
www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/8288, accessed 20 September 2015].
29 The Life was dedicated to Ælfric (995–1005) and the lections to Alphege by their author,
Adelard: Memorials of St Dunstan, 3–52 and 53–68. The lections contained in the letter written
to Archbishop Alphege remained the basis of the breviary office for St Dunstan: Memorials of
St Dunstan, xxxi; The Monastic Breviary of Hyde Abbey, Winchester (Oxford Bodl. Library, MSS
Rawlinson liturg. E.1 and Gough liturg. 8), ed. J. B. L. Tolhurst, Henry Bradshaw Society, 69–71,
76, 4 vols (London, 1932–33, 1938), iii, fols. 256–7. The liturgical calendar contained in
London, BL, MS Addit. 37517, fols 2–3, shows that St Dunstan’s feast day was celebrated with
twelve lections and the entry is written in capitals: English Kalendars Before 1100, ed. F. Wormald,
Henry Bradshaw Society, 72 (London, 1934), 62. Alan Thacker argued that although Dunstan’s
sanctity was recognised immediately upon his death, the development of his cult was notably
slow at Christ Church. The two earliest lives of the saint were written by outsiders and the
location of the tomb within the Anglo-Saxon cathedral made access difficult, thus hindering the
development of a popular cult: Thacker, ‘Cults at Canterbury’, 223, 225–6.
30 He had, in particular, held the see of Winchester between 984 and 1006, to which he was
appointed on Dunstan’s recommendation: H. Leyser, ‘Ælfheah (d. 1012)’, ODNB (Oxford, 2004;
online edn, 2006) [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/181, accessed 20 December 2015].

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pelted him with ox bones before killing him with an axe blow to the head. The
gruesome manner of his death, as well as the circumstances, encouraged a cult
to develop quite rapidly at his tomb in St Paul’s Cathedral in London, where
miracles started happening. Alphege’s resistance against a party of Danish
raiders and subsequent demise at their hands may indeed have been seen by
many as a symbol of the struggles of the English population against the new
Danish king, Cnut, and the high tribute he was exacting from the country.31
His remains were solemnly translated from London to Canterbury in 1023,
possibly as an attempt by Cnut to remove an embarrassing cult from London
and to deprive the disgruntled inhabitants of the city of a focal point for their
resentment of his rule.32 Liturgical calendars from the eleventh century show
that the day of the martyrdom of St Alphege became fairly widely celebrated
in the years following his death, although Christ Church was probably the
only church where it was celebrated with solemnity.33 Like Dunstan, he had
started his ecclesiastical career as a monk, distinguishing himself with his
ascetic practices. His martyrdom at the hands of angry soldiers, though for
reasons substantially different from those that caused the murder of Thomas
Becket, made him another prefiguration of the fate of the recent martyr in the
eyes of the community.
Alphege had been closely involved in the development and promotion of the
cults of his predecessors while he was bishop of Winchester and it seems that he
continued this process when he became archbishop.34 As already mentioned,
he promoted the cult of St Dunstan, and his translation to Canterbury also
coincided with a renewed interest in the cult of his predecessor.35 The

31 Cnut became king of England in 1016 after several years of renewed raiding by the Danes and
of heavy tributes being exacted from the population: M. K. Lawson, Cnut: The Danes in England
in the Early Eleventh Century (London and New York, 1993), 18.
32 The party of Danish raiders who captured and murdered Alphege were associated with Cnut’s
father, Swein Forkbeard, a fact which may have been inconvenient for Cnut. M. Lawson pointed
out that Alphege’s cult was not the only one to have political overtones in the troubled years
after the conquest of England by Cnut: the cults of St Edmund of East Anglia and St Edward the
Martyr also served as a focus for anti-Danish feeling: Lawson, Cnut, 95 and 140–43.
33 English Kalendars Before 1100, nos. 2, 4, 6–20. In most of these calendars, the feast day of the
martyrdom of St Alphege (19 April) is not recorded with any specific grading.
34 He pursued his predecessor St Aethelwold’s relentless efforts to promote the cult of the
most famous Winchester saint, St Swithun. Wulfstan of Winchester, precentor of the cathedral,
dedicated his Narratio metrica de S. Swithuno to Bishop Alphege and in the dedicatory preface
(Epistola specialis), credited him with having completed a large tower above the high altar, a
ring-crypt where the relics of the other Winchester saints could be kept and displayed and a
massive organ: M. Lapidge et al., The Cult of St Swithun, Winchester Studies 4 ii (Oxford, 2003),
67–8, 335–6. For his role in Dunstan’s cult, see Thacker, ‘Cults at Canterbury’, 240–41.
35 In the liturgical calendar included in the Arundel Psalter (London, BL, MS Arundel 155,
fols 2–10v), dated 1012–23, with many later, in particular twelfth-century additions, Dunstan
and Alphege are the only two archbishops whose feasts were originally (that is to say before the
twelfth century) included in addition to St Augustine: English Kalendars Before 1100, 169–81.

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Canterbury monk Osbern wrote a Vita of Alphege, as well as an account of the

translation of his remains from London to Canterbury, maybe at the request
of Archbishop Lanfranc.36 There is some evidence that the texts could have
been used in liturgical contexts. In the 1120s and ’30s, the Christ Church scrip-
torium embarked on the realisation of a de luxe passionale, containing the lives
of all the saints venerated in the cathedral. Now surviving only in fragmentary
form and scattered between three libraries, this huge manuscript probably
comprised seven volumes originally.37 The two texts of the Life of St Alphege and
of the translation of his relics from London to Canterbury can be found in the
surviving fragments of this manuscript.38 Both are divided into nine lectiones,
which could have been used for the celebrations of the feasts of the passio and
of the translatio. The Life of St Dunstan, contained in the same passionale, was
also divided into lessons which could be read at the office.39
By the middle of the eleventh century, Dunstan and Alphege appeared as

The dating is discussed at length in R. Pfaff, ‘Lanfranc’s Supposed Purge of the Anglo-Saxon
Calendar’, in Warriors and Churchmen in the High Middle Ages: Essays presented to Karl Leyser, ed.
T. Reuter (London, 1992), 95–108; repr. with the same pagination in Liturgical Calendars, Saints
and Services in Medieval England (Aldershot, 1998); T. A. Heslop, ‘The Canterbury Calendars and
the Norman Conquest’, in Canterbury and the Norman Conquest: Churches, Saints and Scholars,
ed. R. Eales and R. Sharpe (London, 1995), 53–85. Their feasts are distinguished by a grading of
‘III’, the highest employed by the compiler of the calendar. According to Wormald, this notation
‘probably indicates the number of cantors used at the Divine Office on those days’: English
Benedictine Calendars After A.D. 1100, ed. F. Wormald, Henry Bradshaw Society, 77 (London,
1939), i, 48. It is reserved for the most important feasts of the monastery and is used for only a
handful of celebrations, such as the Nativity, the Epiphany or the Assumption of the Virgin.
36 Vita S. Elphegi authore Osberno, ed. H. Wharton, Anglia Sacra, 2 vols (London, 1691), i,
122–48. The Translatio has been edited in the ‘Textual Appendix’ to A. R. Rumble, The Reign of
Cnut, King of England, Denmark and Norway (London and New York, 1994), 283–315. Osbern
was precentor of the community and a talented musician. It is therefore not surprising that at
least some of his hagiographical compositions were chosen as the basis for the offices honouring
the archbishops. He appears to have been fascinated by the relics held by Canterbury and to
have made it his life’s endeavour to spread their fame, even when little information was available
regarding the life of the saints, as was for instance the case with Alphege. For an analysis of his
role in the promotion of the older Christ Church cults, see J. Rubenstein, ‘The Life and Writings
of Osbern of Canterbury’, in Canterbury and the Norman Conquest: Churches, Saints and Scholars,
1066–1109, ed. R. Eales and R. Sharpe (London, 1995), 27–40.
37 Canterbury Cathedral Library, MSS Lit. E. 42 and Lit. E. 42A (part 1); Maidstone, Kent
County Archives Office (S/Rm Fae. 2); London, BL, MS Cotton Nero C vii, fols 29–78; London,
BL, MS Harley 315, fols 1–39, and Harley MS 624, fols 84–143. The Canterbury fragments are
discussed in N. R. Ker, Medieval Manuscripts in British Libraries, Vol. II, Abbotsford-Keele (Oxford,
1977), and more recently in R. Gameson, The Earliest Books of Canterbury Cathedral: Manuscripts
and Fragments to c. 1200 (London, 2008), 226–47. This was a long-term project which took many
years to complete, as shown by the many hands involved in the copying and in the illuminating,
as well as in the variety of formats adopted.
38 The Life can be found in London, BL, Cotton MS Nero C. vii, fols 45–57, while the account
of the translation is in London, BL, MS Harley 624, fols 137–9.
39 London, BL, MS Harley 315, fol. 15v.

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the most prominent saints of Christ Church. The few decades after the Norman
Conquest seem to have been in marked contrast. No mention was made by
Lanfranc in the customary he wrote for Christ Church of the celebration of
St Dunstan, and Eadmer mentioned how sceptical Lanfranc was of Alphege’s
claims to sanctity.40 Lanfranc had their bodies removed from the choir of the
Anglo-Saxon church after the 1067 fire, first to the western end of the church
and then, as reconstruction progressed, to the refectory, and from there to an
unspecified location.41 Nevertheless, their veneration seems to have endured at
Christ Church in spite of the upheaval of the Norman Conquest. As recorded
by Gervase, both had been returned at some point to their former, prominent
resting places on either side of the main altar of the cathedral in the new choir
built during Anselm’s pontificate and consecrated in 1130, from which they
were again carefully removed after the 1174 fire.42 Gervase mentioned how, in
Prior Conrad’s choir, the images of St Dunstan and St Alphege were placed on
a beam crossing the choir above the main altar, on either side of that of the
Lord, a sign of the high esteem in which they were held.43
Dunstan was remembered with two feasts: his death was commemo-
rated on 19 May and his ordination on 21 October. Alphege, for his part,
was remembered on 19 April (passio), 8 June (translatio) and 16 November
(ordinatio). In three Christ Church liturgical calendars which seem to have
been in constant use from before the Norman Conquest to the translation

40 In the customary of Lanfranc (often referred to as the Constitutions), only Alphege appears
among the main liturgical celebrations the monks need to observe, as a feast of second rank: The
Monastic Constitutions of Lanfranc, ed. and trans. D. Knowles, 2nd edn, rev. by C. N. L. Brooke,
OMT (Oxford, 2002), 55–65.
41 Eadmer, Vita Sancti Dunstani, in Memorials of St Dunstan, 232, 236. Eadmer, in his Vita Sancti
Bregwini, mentions how the remains of the Anglo-Saxon archbishops were kept in chests located
in the gallery of the north transept and it is possible that this included the relics of Dunstan and
Alphege: Anglia Sacra, ed. H. Wharton, 2 vols (London, 1691), ii, 188.
42 Gervase, i, 5. Their translation back into the choir a few days before Easter 1180 was done
secretly, at the behest of Alan, the prior of the convent, and gave rise to indignation on the part
of the community who felt deprived of a splendid and solemn celebration: Gervase, i, 22–3.
43 ‘Ad cornua altaris orientalia erant duae columpnae ligneae auro et argento decenter ornatae,
quae trabem magnam sustentabant, cujus trabis capita duorum pilariorum capitellis insidebant.
Quae per transversum ecclesiae desuper altare trajecta, auro decorata, majestatem Domini,
imaginem Sancti Dunstani, et Sancti Aelfegi, septem quoque scrinia auro et argento cooperta,
et multorum sanctorum reliquiis referta sustentabat’ (At the eastern horns of the altar were two
wooden columns, gracefully ornamented with gold and silver, and sustaining a great beam, the
extremities of which rested upon the capitals of two of the pillars. This beam, carried across the
church above the altar, and decorated with gold, sustained the representation of the Lord, the
images of St Dunstan and of St Elphege, together with seven chests, covered with gold and silver,
and filled with the relics of divers saints): Gervase, i, 13; trans. in Willis, Architectural History,
43–4. It is not clear, however, what kind of ‘imagines’ were meant by Gervase. Since they are
said to have been placed on a beam across the choir, it seems possible that they were three-
dimensional representations of the archbishops, maybe even reliquaries.

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of St Thomas in 1220, the feast days of St Dunstan and St Alphege stand

out as some of the most important saints’ festivals, second only to those of
Thomas Becket, both in terms of numbers of celebrations dedicated to them
and in terms of the solemnity with which these celebrations were observed.44
The death of Dunstan on 19 May is distinguished with a grading of ‘III’ in
both the earliest (BL MS Arundel 155) and latest (BL MS Cotton Tiberius B.
iii) calendars, as is the passio of Alphege.45 The calendars furthermore show
an increase in the liturgical attention given to those celebrations through the
period. An octave to the main feast of St Dunstan on 19 May is thus noted
in the latest calendar and was added in the twelfth century in the earliest
one. The same thing can be observed for the octave of the feast of Alphege’s
translation to Canterbury on 8 June. This veneration, however, may have
remained essentially liturgical, limited to the celebrations mentioned in the
calendars, as there seem to have been few miracles occurring at the tomb of
either prelate.46 For instance, it does not seem that any pilgrimage developed
at the site of the archbishops’ burial and overall popular devotion remained
limited. These elements show that the older cults were not superseded by that
of Thomas Becket and that they remained central to the way the monastic

44 The earliest of these calendars can be found in London, BL, MS Arundel 155 (see n. 35
above). The second calendar of interest is contained in Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Add.
C 260, and is representative of the early post-Conquest period, although it too was added to
at later dates. It is edited and discussed in Heslop, ‘Canterbury Calendars’, 53–85. The third
calendar can be found in London, BL, MS Cotton Tiberius B. iii, fols 2–7v, and is possibly the
most interesting. It is edited in English Benedictine Kalendars after A.D. 1100, i, 68–79. Compiled
around 1200–20, not only does it exhibit an unusual degree of complexity in its recording of the
grading of the feasts, but it also includes many feasts of local Christ Church saints which seldom
appear elsewhere, in particular feasts concerning the archbishops, for instance the feast of the
Regressio sancti Thome de exilio (2 December), rare outside of Christ Church: English Benedictine
Kalendars after A.D. 1100, i, 64–5. Another calendar compiled at Christ Church in this period
is the famous Eadwine Psalter (Cambridge, Trinity College MS R.17.1), probably dating from
around the middle of the twelfth century: The Canterbury Psalter, with an introduction by
M. R. James (London, 1935); R. Pfaff, ‘The Calendar’, in The Eadwine Psalter: Text, Image and
Monastic Culture in Twelfth-Century Canterbury, ed. M. Gibson, T. A. Heslop, and R. W. Pfaff
(London and University Park, PA, 1992), 62–87. This calendar, although the closest in time to
the conception of the iconographic programme of the rebuilt cathedral, unfortunately presents
characteristics which make it a slightly less than reliable witness to the liturgical practices of
the monastic community. In particular, it does not seem to have been kept up to date and shows
several important omissions; for instance, neither of the main Becket feasts (the martyrdom and
the translation) were added to it. It is therefore not included here.
45 See n. 35 above.
46 Even the inclusion of a feast in a liturgical calendar does not necessarily mean that it was
still celebrated by the community and may simply reflect an earlier state of the liturgy, or even
the personal devotion of the scribe compiling the document: V. Ortenberg, ‘Aspects of Monastic
Devotions to the Saints in England, c.950 to c.1100: The Liturgical and Iconographical
Evidence’ (unpublished Ph.D. thesis, University of Cambridge, 1987), 34; Pfaff, ‘The Calendar’,
62; Heslop, ‘Canterbury Calendars’, 55.

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community perceived its history and traditions. As late as the last quarter of
the twelfth century, Gervase could still call Dunstan and Alphege the patroni
ecclesiae, thus underlining the high regard these two saints were still held in
by the community, even after the tomb of St Thomas had become the main
pilgrimage and devotion locus in the church.47

Types and Prefigurations

Devotion to the Anglo-Saxon saints at the cathedral gained in solemnity at
the time of the rebuilding and their liturgical importance was reflected in the
newly created iconographic programmes which adorned the walls of the rebuilt
cathedral. Elements foregrounded in these pictorial narratives were chosen for
their resonance with the dramatic events of the pontificate of Thomas Becket.
In the new choir, their prominent resting places on either side of the main
altar were further enhanced with extensive stained-glass narratives located in
the windows of the triforium of the choir, in close proximity to their altars.48
Madeline Caviness estimated that these Lives of Dunstan and Alphege could
have included up to fifteen panels each, making them almost as long as the
cycle dedicated to Thomas Becket’s life in the Trinity Chapel. Only a few
panels remain of these two cycles, now grouped in two triforium windows on
the north side of the cathedral.49 It seems likely that these cycles were planned
and created as the building works progressed eastwards, and they could already
have been in place when the monastic community formally re-entered the
choir at Easter 1180.50
Three panels from a Life of St Alphege and six from a Life of St Dunstan

47 Gervase, i, 5. Although the exact date of the composition of the Tractatus is not known,
C. Davidson Cragoe suggested that it could have been written as late as 1199, to provide
background information to the two papal envoys who were investigating the outstanding dispute
between the convent and Archbishop Baldwin: Davidson Cragoe, ‘Reading and Rereading
Gervase of Canterbury’, 48–50.
48 Alphege’s altar was located on the north side of the main altar, Dunstan’s on the south.
Madeline Caviness suggested that the original stained-glass cycles dedicated to the Anglo-Saxon
saints could have been located in the windows directly above those altars, Nt. III and Nt. II
(Alphege) and St. II and St. III, ‘possibly extending to St. XI’ (Dunstan), Caviness, Windows of
Christ Church, 64.
49 Caviness, Windows of Christ Church, 64; Budny and Graham, ‘Les cycles des saints Dunstan
et Alphège’, 57. Other saints were honoured in the windows: St John the Evangelist, St Stephen,
St Martin and St Gregory, but only one window was dedicated to each of them: Caviness,
Windows of Christ Church, 127–9, 138–9.
50 Caviness, Windows of Christ Church, 63; Budny and Graham, ‘Les cycles de saints Dunstan et
Alphège’, 55–6. As the bodies of the saints were translated into the choir a few days before Easter
1180 (see n. 42 above), this completion date seems likely. The ceremony of the re-entry of the
community into the choir is described in Gervase, i, 23–4.

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can be seen today in the cathedral. Heavily restored, the narratives they illus-
trated are difficult to reconstruct, but the episodes that remain are nonetheless
significant when looked at in the context of the growing cult of St Thomas
and of the renewed interest in those of Dunstan and Alphege. The studies of
the Canterbury glass cycles by Madeline Caviness and by Mildred Budny and
Timothy Graham have shown that of the nine surviving panels, eight depict an
episode from the Lives written by Osbern and Eadmer, with two episodes (the
miracle at Calne and the vision of King Eadwig) being found only in Osbern.51
As mentioned by Gervase, the Trinity Chapel was from the start of the
rebuilding intended to house the shrine of St Thomas and to become the focus
of his cult.52 The decoration of the Trinity Chapel was, therefore, likely to
have been planned at an early stage, in order for it to be completed by the
time St Thomas’s relics were translated from the crypt.53 The account of the
rebuilding stops in the year 1184. After that date, expenses occasioned by
the dispute between the convent and Archbishop Baldwin (1184–90) placed
considerable strain on the monastery’s finances. This may explain, in part
at least, why the pace of the rebuilding slowed down.54 Completion of the
eastern end was undoubtedly further delayed by the turmoil created by the
contested election of Stephen Langton to the archbishopric in 1207, which
eventually led to an interdict being placed on the kingdom by the pope and
to the eviction of the monks from the monastery and their exile until 1213.55
The windows of the Trinity Chapel were in all probability not fully glazed
before the community returned, although it seems likely that the work was
finished by the time the translation of the remains of St Thomas took place on
7 July 1220.56 Although they were completed at such different dates, it seems
probable that those who conceived the hagiographic cycles intended, from
an early stage, that the programme should function as a whole, with similar
themes being illustrated in all three narratives and significant visual similar-
ities being underlined to create unity between different parts of the programme
across the space of the church.

51 The panels are Nt. X, 5 and Nt. XI, 9: Caviness, Early Stained Glass of Canterbury Cathedral,
145; Budny and Graham, ‘Les cycles de saints Dunstan et Alphège’, 63–75.
52 Cf. n. 14 above.
53 The translation eventually took place in 1220 under the pontificate of Archbishop Langton
(1207–28), who made it coincide with the celebration of the first jubilee of St Thomas:
R. Foreville, Le Jubilé de saint Thomas Becket: Du XIIIe au XVe siècle (1220–1470). Études et
documents, Bibliothèque générale de l’École pratique des hautes-études, VIe section (Paris, 1958).
54 Gervase, i, 29.
55 C. Holdsworth, ‘Langton, Stephen (c. 1150–1228)’, ODNB (Oxford, 2004) [http://www.
oxforddnb.com/view/article/16044, accessed 21 December 2015]. On the impact of this period
on the rebuilding process, see Caviness, Early Stained Glass of Canterbury Cathedral, 24–5. On the
impact of Becket’s legacy during the period of the contested election and interdict, see the essay
by Paul Webster in this volume (chapter 8).
56 Caviness, Windows of Christ Church, 164.

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Twelve stained-glass windows located in the lower walls around the Trinity
Chapel were dedicated to St Thomas and the way in which he was remembered
at Christ Church. According to Madeline Caviness, two of the windows
originally told the story of the life of the saint, while up to a further ten
recounted many of the miracles that had already been wrought by him, mostly
at the site of his tomb in the crypt.57 These twelve windows constituted what
was undoubtedly one of the most extensive iconographic programmes ever
dedicated to a single saint in the Middle Ages. Like the cycles of the Anglo-
Saxon archbishops, the representations in these windows were based on literary
works produced at Christ Church. Two monks of the community, Benedict and
William, started compiling miracle accounts soon after they started happening.
The miracles depicted in the Trinity Chapel windows are taken from these
compilations.58 Both men prefaced their collection with a Life of St Thomas,
and Benedict was besides probably responsible for the composition of the
liturgy of the feast day.59 He seems also to have composed the verse tituli which
accompany the scenes of the biblical windows in the lower windows around
the choir.60 As was the case with the earlier hagiographic cycles, the same texts
were therefore used as a basis of the liturgy and the pictorial cycles.
The creation and display of an appropriate image for the archbishop was
crucial in the church that housed his remains. Even after Becket had been
canonised, some still expressed doubts that his life entitled him to sanctity.61
For the monastic community, in addition, it was of paramount importance
to make sure that Thomas Becket could take his place within the ‘spiritual
genealogy’ of the archbishops.62 This task had partly been achieved already,
by the liturgical and literary texts which, as already mentioned, develop the

57 Caviness, Windows of Christ Church, 175–210. See also n. 21 above.

58 Benedict of Peterborough, Miracula S. Thomae Cantuariensis, MTB, ii, 21–281; William of
Canterbury, Miracula S. Thomae Cantuariensis, auctore Willelmo, monacho Cantuariensis, MTB,
i, 1–136. Rachel Koopmans has recently analysed these two compilations in great detail:
R. Koopmans, Wonderful to Relate: Miracle Stories and Miracle Collecting in High Medieval England
(Philadelphia, PA, 2011), 139–200.
59 S. Reames, ‘Liturgical Offices for the Cult of St Thomas Becket’, in Medieval Hagiography: An
Anthology, ed. T. [F.] Head (New York, 2000), 561–93, at 561; Duggan, ‘Becket Office at Stavelot’,
164. The original – monastic – Canterbury liturgy in honour of St Thomas was lost due to the
decree of Henry VIII that all trace of the memory of St Thomas should be destroyed: Letters and
Papers, Foreign and Domestic, on the Reign of Henry VIII, ed. J. S. Brewer, J. Gairdner, and R. H.
Brodie (London, 1862–1910), 13/ii, 848. However, a shorter, secular version has come down to
us via the Salisbury breviary: Breviarium … Sarum, I, ccxlv–cclx. The Sarum office, including the
music, can be found in Slocum, Liturgies. See also the discussion of specific liturgical texts for
St Thomas by Anne J. Duggan in this volume (chapter 2).
60 Caviness, Early Stained Glass of Canterbury Cathedral, 32. These are windows n. XV–n. XI,
n. VIII, s. VIII and s. IX–s. XV.
61 Lambeth Anonymous, MTB, iv, 135–7.
62 Gelin, ‘Gervase of Canterbury’, 452.

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theme of the relationship Becket had with his predecessors. The pictorial
cycles completed it.
At Canterbury, the two obvious models for St Thomas were of course
Dunstan and Alphege. By the time the Trinity Chapel windows were created,
the iconography of the murder of Thomas Becket was already well established.
It had been elaborated and fixed remarkably rapidly in the wake of his murder
in 1170.63 Almost immediately, and probably not very surprisingly, the moment
of the mortal blows had been chosen as emblematic and representative, and
a very stable iconographic formula can be found in a variety of media from
the 1180s onwards [Fig. 3.2].64 Although the iconography of the martyrdom
was fixed very early on, at the time the glass cycles were being conceived no
pictorial narrative of the life of St Thomas had yet been created. This afforded
those who conceived the programme considerable freedom in terms of the
choice of scenes represented and in terms of the models that they used.
The Lives, the liturgical texts and the images created at Christ Church
at the time developed some key themes which shaped the image of the
archbishop for the rest of the Middle Ages.65 As analysed in particular by
Michael Staunton, Kay Brainerd Slocum and Sherry Reames, the hagiography
and the liturgy both presented Thomas Becket as a ‘new man’ transformed by
his election to the archbishopric, as a good shepherd, as the defender of the
church, as a martyr, as a miracle-worker and above all as a type of Christ.66
First expressed in a letter written by John of Salisbury soon after the murder,
these themes were repeated and developed by all of Becket’s biographers.67
They can also be seen illustrated in the windows of the life of St Thomas at
Sens and Chartres Cathedrals, which are chronologically and stylistically close
to the Trinity Chapel programme.68 The Sens window places a strong emphasis

63 Borenius, Becket in Art. Several contributions in Sédières examine the development of the
early iconography of St Thomas. More recent contributions include C. T. Little, ‘The Road to
Glory: New Early Images of Thomas Becket’s Life,’ in Reading Medieval Images: The Art Historian
and the Object, ed. E. Sears and T. K. Thomas (Ann Arbor, MI, 2002), 201–11; Gameson, ‘Early
Imagery’; M. Poza Yagüe, ‘Santo Tomás Becket’, Revista Digital de Iconografía Medieval, 5, no. 9
(2013), 53–62.
64 Colour plates of representations in various media can be seen in Poza Yagüe, ‘Santo Tomás
Becket’, 60–62.
65 The Lives of St Thomas in Latin have been published in MTB, vols. i–iv. Michael Staunton
has published a volume in which significant passages from the Lives have been translated: Lives
of Thomas Becket.
66 M. W. J. Staunton, ‘Politics and Sanctity in the Lives of Anselm and Becket’ (unpublished
Ph.D. thesis, University of Cambridge, 1994), 162–4, 169; Reames, ‘Liturgical Offices’; Slocum,
Liturgies, 5–7.
67 Letters of John of Salisbury, Volume II, 724–38 (no. 305); cf. MTB, vii, 462–70 (no. 748).
68 The window at Sens could have been completed c.1210 and the one at Chartres can be
dated to 1210–20: C. Brisac, ‘Thomas Becket dans le vitrail français au début du XIIIe siècle’, in
Sédières, 221–31; Caviness, Early Stained Glass of Canterbury Cathedral, 84–5; Caviness, Windows

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 Figure 3.1. Thomas Becket preaching a sermon.
Sens, St Etienne Cathedral, c.1210, Bay 23, panel 5.

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 Figure 3.2. The Martyrdom of Thomas Becket.
Chartres, Notre-Dame Cathedral, c.1210–20, Bay 18, panels 22–23.

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 MARIE-PIERRE GELIN

on the pastoral and liturgical duties of the archbishop, with such scenes as
Thomas preaching from a pulpitum, celebrating mass, consecrating a church
or taking part in a confirmation ceremony [Fig. 3.1]. Here, Thomas Becket
is presented as the good shepherd who looks after his flock and as the type
of Christ.69 As these duties are not specific to St Thomas and do not refer to
particular events in his career, this window creates an almost generic image
of the archbishop, a representation of an ideal prelate depicted in the course
of delivering the duties of his office. The window at Chartres follows more
closely the episodes of the life of the archbishop, in particular those relative to
his quarrel with Henry II.70 The narrative starts with Thomas Becket’s inves-
titure as archbishop and includes several scenes where the archbishop meets
a king (either Henry II or Louis VII).71 The martyrdom also receives a more
developed treatment, with three panels dedicated to this episode and two to
the murder itself [Fig. 3.2].72 In this window, the relationship between prelate
and secular power is abundantly illustrated and Thomas Becket is depicted as
defender of the Church and as martyr. There can be no doubt that the Trinity
Chapel programme illustrated these themes in detail in the two windows
dedicated to the life of St Thomas.73
The Lives of St Dunstan and St Alphege both included episodes which
allowed them to be presented as types and prefigurations of their more
famous successor. Although the Lives of the Anglo-Saxon archbishops were
undoubtedly well known at Christ Church at the end of the twelfth century,
their iconography was never fixed to the same extent as that of St Thomas.
No picture cycle seems to have existed to illustrate the lives of St Dunstan
and St Alphege prior to the reconstruction of the cathedral, although
several images of Dunstan were produced at Christ Church in the course of

of Christ Church, 81, 141, and 193; M.-P. Gelin, ‘Heroes and Traitors: The Life of Thomas Becket
in French Stained-Glass Windows’, Vidimus, 14 (2008) [http://vidimus.org/issues/issue-14/
feature/, accessed 2 October 2015]; A. A. Jordan, ‘Rhetoric and Reform: The St Thomas Becket
Window of Sens Cathedral’, in The Four Modes of Seeing: Approaches to Medieval Imagery in Honor
of Madeline Harrison Caviness, ed. E. Staudinger Lane, E. Carson Pastan, and E. M. Shortell
(Farnham, 2009), 547–64.
69 Sens Cathedral, Bay 23, Panels 5, 7, 9 and 10 [http://www.medievalart.org.uk/Sens/23_Pages/
Sens_Bay23_key.htm, accessed 7 October 2015].
70 The Chartres window can be seen at http://www.medievalart.org.uk/Chartres/18_pages/
Chartres_Bay18_key.htm [accessed 7 October 2015]. See also C. Manhes-Deremble with
J.-P. Deremble, Les Vitraux narratifs de la cathédrale de Chartres: étude iconographique (Paris, 1993),
249–53; C. and J.-P. Deremble, Les Vitraux de Chartres (Paris, 2003), 128–33. On the other two
surviving French windows of St Thomas (Angers and Coutances), see the contribution of Alyce
A. Jordan in this volume (chapter 9).
71 Chartres Cathedral, bay 18, panels 9, 11, 14, 15.
72 Chartres Cathedral, bay 18, panels 21–3.
73 Madeline Caviness suggests that the Sens Life originally also spanned two windows: Caviness,
Windows of Christ Church, 314.

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 Figure 3.3. Alphege killed by the Danes.
Canterbury, Christ Church Cathedral, c.1180, Window Nt. IX, 5.

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 MARIE-PIERRE GELIN

the eleventh and twelfth centuries, and only one of Alphege.74 Only one of
these representations illustrated an event from the lives of the archbishops,
and none of them provided those who conceived the iconographic programme
with narrative models.75 In this case again, the creators of the stained-glass
windows had to rely on their own ingenuity to compose their narratives. In
their lives as in the liturgical texts, the archbishops were presented as being
willing to endure exile and even martyrdom in defence of what they deemed
to be a just cause.76 It is clear that the theme of the difficult relationship with
secular powers is one that was foregrounded in the lives of the Anglo-Saxon
archbishops, as they must have been in the windows of St Thomas.77 They
both depict examples of ill-treatment of ecclesiastics by secular rulers and
their representatives and outline the dramatic consequences of such actions.
Dunstan had endured exile, like Thomas Becket, following a disagreement
with King Eadwig in 956.78 As for Alphege, it is undoubtedly his martyrdom
which made him a type of St Thomas: his death at the hands of armed soldiers
could quite clearly evoke Becket’s murder [Fig. 3.3].
Visually, it was easy to bring out similarities between the three prelates. In
all the surviving panels pertaining to their time in office, the archbishops are
depicted wearing full liturgical vestments, with the white pallium, symbol of
their office, displayed prominently [Figs 3.3, 3.4 and 3.5].79 The colours chosen
by the glass painter for the various pieces of their outfits appear to be relatively
consistent throughout the whole programme: each wears a red chasuble over a
green surplice and white alb, and a mitre. Furthermore, all three archbishops
are systematically represented sporting short beards, which makes the figure

74 For Dunstan, these images can be found in London, BL, MS Cotton Tiberius A iii, fol. 2v
(frontispiece of the Regularis Concordia), around 1050; London, BL, MS Harley 315, fol. 15v (a
fragment of the Christ Church Passionale of c.1123, see n. 37 above); London, BL, MS Cotton
Claudius A iii, fol. 8 (a Christ Church benedictional of the first half of the twelfth century);
and in London, BL, MS Royal 10 A. xiii, fol. 2v (the frontispiece of the Expositio super regualam
beati Benedicti, from the twelfth–thirteenth centuries). The earliest of these representa-
tions are discussed in T. A. Heslop, ‘“Dunstanus archiepiscopus” and painting in Kent around
1120’, Burlington Magazine, 126 (1984), 195–204. For Alphege, I have been able to locate only
one image, contained in another fragment of the Christ Church Passionale: London, BL, MS
Cotton Nero C vii on fol. 46v. In this historiated initial, Alphege is represented as a fully vested
archbishop enthroned in heaven.
75 In all the depictions Dunstan is represented in full archiepiscopal vestments, usually
enthroned, except in the passionale, where he is shown dressed as a monk, pinching the devil’s
nose.
76 According to Anselm, dying in defence of justice was enough to justify Alphege’s claim to
martyrdom and sanctity: Eadmer, Vita Sancti Anselmi, 50–54.
77 Budny and Graham, ‘Les cycles de saints Dunstan et Alphège’, 66.
78 Memorials of St Dunstan, 100–101.
79 It is worth noting that in neither the Chartres, Angers or Coutances windows is Becket repre-
sented as wearing a pallium. See, for instance, fig. 3.2 here and the plates in Alyce A. Jordan’s
contribution in this volume (chapter 9).

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 Figure 3.4. St Dunstan frees King Eadwig’s soul from the devil.
Canterbury, Christ Church Cathedral, c.1180, Window Nt. XI, 1.

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 Figure 3.5. Apparition of St Thomas.
Canterbury, Christ Church Cathedral, c.1213–20, Window n. IV, 4.

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 THE CULT OF ST THOMAS AT CHRIST CHURCH, CANTERBURY

of the archbishop readily identifiable while strengthening the visual links

between the three parts of the programme.80 While the Becket windows are
inscribed with short verses which specify the type of miracle performed, there
are no inscriptions in the Dunstan and Alphege cycles. This complete absence
of inscriptions helping to identify the scenes from the lives of Dunstan and
Alphege, coupled with the definite physical similarities between the three
archbishops, must have made the association between the three prelates even
easier. The result is, visually, the creation of a single, unified, a-temporal figure,
‘the archbishop’, whose presence and actions span not only most of the history
of Christ Church, but also the entire space of the choir and Trinity Chapel.
In the panels which have survived, the two early cycles deal with the theme
of the relations between Church and secular powers. The easiest parallel to
draw was undoubtedly between the two Canterbury martyrs, Alphege and
Thomas. The scenes where Alphege is attacked and then led away by the
Danish soldiers would have taken on a particular meaning when compared
to the story of Thomas Becket’s murder by four knights.81 Visually, the two
situations could easily be cross-referenced [Figs 3.2 and 3.3]. Soldiers in armour
manhandling an archbishop in full liturgical vestments would have immedi-
ately evoked the more recent murder to the audience, especially with the
addition of the cathedral in the background.
A panel of the Life of St Dunstan seems to indicate that something more
systematic still may have been attempted. In an episode first recounted in
the Vita S. Dunstani by Osbern, Dunstan is said to have once experienced a
vision of King Eadwig’s soul being carried away by devils after his death [Fig.
3.4]. Only the saint’s prayers prevailed over the demons, and the king’s soul
was finally released.82 In the panel, the archbishop in full liturgical garments
is standing in front of the gaping jaws of hell, out of which a group of figures
emerge, led by a man wearing a crown. This episode seems to have been
introduced for the first time by the Anglo-Norman hagiographers and, taken
in the context of the difficult relationship between archbishop and king under
Lanfranc’s and Anselm’s pontificates, it was no doubt intended as a warning
to rulers who would mistreat churchmen. Both Osbern and Eadmer place this
episode after Dunstan became bishop of Worcester in 957/58, but before he
was elected to Canterbury in 959. The panel, however, shows Dunstan wearing
the archiepiscopal pallium. As the figure of Dunstan is heavily restored, it is

80 The exception is the scene representing Dunstan being saved from the devil by an angel (Nt.
X, 2). As this episode had taken place while he was still a monk at Glastonbury, he is represented
as a young man wearing the monastic habit.
81 Nt. IX, 1 and 5.
82 Osbern, Vita S. Dunstani, in Memorials of St Dunstan, 104–5. This episode is also recounted
by Eadmer in his Vita S. Dunstani, in Memorials of St Dunstan, 196. Window Nt. XI, 1.

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 MARIE-PIERRE GELIN

possible that the pallium was added at a later date.83 If it is authentic, however,
this slight distortion of the chronology might have been intended to increase
the relevance of such an episode in the aftermath of Thomas Becket’s murder.
It would certainly have been seen as an admonishment to Henry II to keep on
repenting and asking for St Thomas’s help in order to avoid dire consequences
for his soul.
It is difficult to generalise these alterations, as the cycles dedicated to
the archbishops are incomplete. However slight, such modifications do
nonetheless seem to point to a desire to create links – not least visually –
between the principal saints venerated in the eastern end of the cathedral.
The foregrounding of specific elements in the lives of Dunstan and Alphege
served two purposes: first, by drawing out parallels between the Anglo-
Saxon saints and Thomas Becket, the creators of the programme sought to
strengthen the claims to sanctity of the more recent martyr and to make him
a worthy successor to Dunstan and Alphege. Second, the inclusion of the
episodes described above, scenes which may have been consciously altered and
rewritten in order to increase their relevance to Thomas Becket’s story, created
visual and typological links between the various parts of the hagiographical
programme. The two Anglo-Saxon archbishops could thus be presented as
prefiguring Thomas Becket, and St Thomas in turn could be seen as uniting
in him the virtues of the two Canterbury models of sanctity, St Dunstan the
confessor and St Alphege the martyr.
What emerges from an analysis of the panels dedicated to Dunstan and
Alphege, therefore, is the impression that the similarities which existed
between their lives and that of St Thomas were deliberately brought out –
sometimes at the price of slightly distorting the original narratives – in order
to model Becket on his saintly predecessors and to create a sense of continuity
between the archbishops. The creation of extensive visual links thus allowed
the creators of the programme to weave Thomas Becket into the Canterbury
tradition, at the time when his cult was being established at Christ Church.
Inscribing St Thomas in the line of saintly archbishops who had preceded him
in the see may have been seen as a necessity in the context of the 1180s, when
the windows were created. For the monks, after the difficult period which
immediately followed the archbishop’s death, those years were marked by their
protracted and much-publicised quarrel with Archbishop Baldwin (1184–90).
After his election, Baldwin rapidly expressed his intention to found a church
dedicated to St Thomas at Hackington, near Canterbury. The community
took offence at this project, which threatened both their right to elect the
archbishop and their possession of St Thomas’s relics.84 In this context, it may
have been felt of paramount importance to reassert the links between Thomas

83 Budny and Graham, ‘Les cycles des saints Dunstan et Alphège’, 57.
84 The whole dispute is summarised in C. R. Cheney, Hubert Walter (London, 1967), 135–50.

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 THE CULT OF ST THOMAS AT CHRIST CHURCH, CANTERBURY

Becket and his remains and the cathedral and its community. The sumptuous
iconographic programme no doubt had a role to play in this.
Just as Gervase’s account of the rebuilding was intended to underline the role
of the community as guardian of the church where the archbishops’ remains
had been kept and honoured since the eighth century, the miracle windows of
the Trinity Chapel spelt out clearly the role the monks intended to play in the
cult of St Thomas.85 In these panels, a monastic figure is almost systematically
present near the tomb, dispensing the miraculous water, accepting the thanks-
giving offerings and recording the cures, which were thus validated by their
insertion in the ‘official’ compilations produced by the monks. The essential
role of the monastic community in the establishment and mediation of the
cult was thus underlined, while at the same time the cathedral was presented as
the locus of the saint’s presence and power. Like the iconography put in place
in the years following the murder, the devotion to Thomas Becket, as it was
developed and encouraged at Christ Church, emphasised the links between
the archbishop and his cathedral.

Conclusion
In the hagiographic narratives produced at Christ Church at the end of the
twelfth century, the parallels between Thomas Becket and some of his prede-
cessors in the see of Canterbury were brought forward, at the price, however, of
sometimes altering the Lives of the earlier prelates. Nothing was left to chance
by those who conceived the iconographic cycles, and numerous links between
the liturgy and the images, and between the different parts of the programme,
can be found, weaving a dense network of echoes and references. The result
was the creation of an ideal figure of the archbishop, modelled in part on
St Dunstan and St Alphege, two of the most important Canterbury saints
before St Thomas, an archetype of both the martyr and the confessor, bringing
together the virtues of the monk and the bishop, and a champion of the rights
of the Church. Seen in the context of the threat posed to the incipient cult
by Archbishop Baldwin’s plans, the iconographic programme can, alongside
Gervase’s account of the rebuilding, be seen as a re-formulation by the
community of its traditional role in the creation, preservation and propagation
of the cults of the archbishops, and the degree to which these cults were insepa-
rable from the physical fabric of the cathedral itself. The pattern of sanctity
which emerged from these narratives helped the monastic community establish
the basis for the cult of St Thomas, unquestionably one of the most successful
cults of the Middle Ages, on which, in turn, other cults were modelled.

85 Gelin, ‘Gervase of Canterbury’, 461.

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2276 (Boydell - St Thomas Becket).indd 80 20/09/2016 8:46 pm
 4.

Thomas Becket and Leprosy in Normandy

ELMA BRENNER

As Thomas Becket’s cult flourished throughout Europe following his murder in

December 1170 and canonisation in February 1173, numerous churches and
hospitals were dedicated to the saint in Normandy. The duchy of Normandy
was closely connected both to England, as part of the Anglo-Norman realm
(until 1204), and to Becket himself since, according to tradition, his parents
were both burgesses of Norman origin, his father Gilbert coming from Rouen
and his mother Matilda from Caen.1 Becket’s cult in Normandy has been
studied in detail by Raymonde Foreville, Jean Fournée and Ursula Nilgen;2 a
specific aspect of that cult, the leper houses dedicated to Becket in the duchy,
is the focus here. These hospitals devoted specifically to the care of leprosy
sufferers were religious institutions, a status formalised at the Third Lateran
Council in 1179, which decreed that all communities of lepers should have
their own church, cemetery and priest.3 A number of other saints were popular
dedicatees of leper houses in Normandy and England, above all St Mary
Magdalene, St Giles, St Nicholas, St Lazarus and St Julian.4 Thomas Becket
thus joined a distinguished pantheon of celestial patrons of lepers.
Deserving particular attention in Normandy are the leper house of
Mont-aux-Malades outside Rouen (originally dedicated to St James, and
re-dedicated to Becket by King Henry II c.1174) and that of St-Thomas at
Aizier, located halfway between Rouen and Le Havre, established in the late

1 R. Foreville, ‘Les origines normandes de la famille Becket et le culte de saint Thomas en

Normandie’, in Mélanges offerts à Pierre Andrieu-Guitrancourt, L’année Canonique, 17 (1973),
433–80 at 439–41; Nilgen, 190.
2 Foreville, ‘Les origines normandes’; J. Fournée, ‘Les lieux de culte de Saint Thomas Becket
en Normandie’, Annales de Normandie, 45 (1995), 377–92; J. Fournée, ‘Contribution à l’histoire
de la lèpre en Normandie: Les maladreries et les vocables de leurs chapelles’, Lèpre et lépreux en
Normandie, Cahiers Léopold Delisle, 46 (1997), 49–142, at 126–9; Nilgen.
3 Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils, trans. and ed. N. P. Tanner, 2 vols (London, 1990), i, 222–3.
4 Fournée, ‘Maladreries’, 76–8, 85–7, 88–91, 93–104, 116–22; B. Tabuteau, ‘Le grand saint
Nicolas, patron de léproseries: une histoire d’influences’, Lèpre et lépreux en Normandie, Cahiers
Léopold Delisle, 46 (1997), 1–18; C. Rawcliffe, Leprosy in Medieval England (Woodbridge, 2006),
119–27.

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 ELMA BRENNER

twelfth century on land belonging to the abbey of Fécamp. Mont-aux-Malades

was a wealthy and prestigious Augustinian priory, which was associated with
Becket during his lifetime through his friendship with the first prior of the
leper house, Nicholas. The community had enjoyed considerable support from
Henry II and other members of the Anglo-Norman royal family prior to 1173.
St-Thomas at Aizier was a much smaller and less distinguished institution, but
nonetheless offered important provision to lepers, as archaeological excava-
tions of its chapel, associated buildings and cemetery have attested.5
The miracle collections associated with Becket’s shrine at Canterbury reveal
that the saint was quickly attributed with healing a wide range of afflictions.
Unusually among miracula, these include cases of leprosy.6 The dedication of
leper houses to specific saints, however, should not be understood in terms of
the expectation of healing. Although palliative care was provided at these
institutions, they were not intended to be sites of recovery from sickness,
since medieval people recognised that leprosy was a chronic and ultimately
fatal disease. What, then, were the reasons for the dedication of a number of
Norman leper houses to Becket? A key factor could have been the need to
attract charitable benefactions, since Becket’s cult was highly fashionable in
the late twelfth and thirteenth centuries. The numerous donation charters to
Mont-aux-Malades in this period, preserved in the house’s rich archive, suggest
that this institution’s new dedication to Becket indeed encouraged the wealthy
citizens of Rouen to support it.7 The emergence of the cult coincided with a
period in which the patronage of hospitals and leper houses was itself very
popular, further explaining the support received by Mont-aux-Malades. Yet
powerful spiritual associations may also have motivated the dedications. Many
contemporaries viewed lepers as a group specially chosen by God to suffer on
earth and be saved.8 Such ideas linked lepers to Christ and to martyrs. Indeed
martyrs, such as St Laurence and St Bartholomew, were among the most

5 C. Niel and M.-C. Truc (with B. Penna), ‘La chapelle Saint-Thomas d’Aizier (Eure): premiers
résultats de six années de fouille programmée’, in Étude des lépreux et des léproseries au Moyen Âge
dans le nord de la France: histoire – archéologie – patrimoine, ed. B. Tabuteau, Histoire Médiévale
et Archéologie, 20 (2007), 47–107; C. Niel and M.-C. Truc, ‘Fouille d’une léproserie médiévale’
[http://w3.unicaen.fr/ufr/histoire/craham/spip.php?article120&lang=fr, accessed 24 June 2013].
6 On miracle accounts in the collections of Benedict of Peterborough and William of
Canterbury that involve leprosy, see R. Koopmans, Wonderful to Relate: Miracle Stories and Miracle
Collecting in High Medieval England (Philadelphia, PA, 2011), 153–4, 156, 165–6, 168, 177, 179,
186–7, 196. See also the discussion in Alyce A. Jordan’s essay in this volume (chapter 9).
7 Rouen, Archives départementales de Seine-Maritime (ADSM), 25HP (archive of Mont-aux-
Malades). For the numerous donation charters to Mont-aux-Malades in the late twelfth and
thirteenth centuries, see E. Brenner, Leprosy and Charity in Medieval Rouen (Woodbridge, 2015),
appendix 2.
8 See F.-O. Touati, ‘Les léproseries aux XIIème et XIIIème siècles, lieux de conversion?’, in
Voluntate dei leprosus: les lépreux entre conversion et exclusion aux XIIème et XIIIème siècles, ed.
N. Bériou and F.-O. Touati, Testi, Studi, Strumenti, 4 (Spoleto, 1991), 1–32.

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 THOMAS BECKET AND LEPROSY IN NORMANDY

popular dedicatees of leper houses in medieval England.9 In the late twelfth

and early thirteenth centuries, Becket’s martyrdom was an event in living
memory, no doubt making the association of his suffering with that of lepers all
the more vivid. It is thus likely that a house dedicated to Becket was perceived
to be a particularly appropriate place for the spiritual and bodily care of the
leprous. Unlike St Thomas’s role in the healing miracles, therefore, in this
particular context he was linked to the earthly care and ultimate salvation of
those who would not recover from sickness.

The Becket Cult and Leper Houses in Normandy

Between 1173 and the end of the fourteenth century, fifty-nine churches or
chapels were dedicated to St Thomas Becket in the ecclesiastical province of
Rouen (its borders roughly corresponding to those of modern-day Normandy),
the majority of these dating from 1173 to 1220. These dedications ranged
from chapels within cathedrals, to parish churches, to hospital and leper house
chapels, to chapels that served castles.10 Generally speaking, these were smaller
scale entities rather than major monastic, cathedral or hospital churches.
Among the dedications, Fournée has traced twelve leper houses associated
with St Thomas in Normandy, at Rouen (Mont-aux-Malades), Caen, Aizier,
Boissy-Lamberville, Cherbourg, Canville-les-Deux-Églises, Criel, Lisieux,
Harcourt, Vittefleur, Vesly and St-Pierre-des-Ifs.11 In her earlier survey,
however, Raymonde Foreville did not consider the chapels at Aizier, Boissy-
Lamberville, Criel, Lisieux, Vesly and Vittefleur to be connected to commu-
nities of lepers, although she did list the leper house at Arthies, first attested in
1263, which was not included by Fournée.12 While the foundation at Vittefleur
dates from the fourteenth century (1311), and the date of origin of those at
Boissy-Lamberville and St-Pierre-des-Ifs is unclear, the other houses listed by
Fournée were in existence in the late twelfth or thirteenth centuries.
Several of these earlier houses were associated with members of Henry II’s
secular and ecclesiastical élites. The leper house at Criel is said to have been
established by the count of Eu (presumably Henry, count of Eu 1170–91) in
the late twelfth century. The leper house at Harcourt was founded in 1179
by Robert II, lord of Harcourt, who also established a chapel dedicated to
Becket in the castle at Harcourt two years earlier.13 Also in the 1170s, Rotrou

9 Rawcliffe, Leprosy, 124–5.

10 Foreville, ‘Les origines normandes’, 448–55.
11 Fournée, ‘Maladreries’, 126–9.
12 Foreville, ‘Les origines normandes’, 467, 468, 473, 475, 477, 478. For the leper house at
Arthies, also see Niel and Truc, ‘La chapelle Saint-Thomas d’Aizier’, 51 n. 16.
13 Foreville, ‘Les origines normandes’, 473.

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 ELMA BRENNER

de Beaumont-le-Roger, archbishop of Rouen (1165–84) dedicated the altar

of the chapel of the leper house at Cherbourg to St Thomas. At Lisieux,
the chapel of the hospital for the sick poor was dedicated to Becket by
Arnulf, bishop of Lisieux, before 1180. Fournée suggests that this institution
may have initially catered for lepers as well as for the sick more generally,
although such dual provision would have been very unusual.14 Arnulf
also established a chapel dedicated to Becket in Lisieux Cathedral, while
Archbishop Rotrou founded churches dedicated to the saint at Barfleur and
St-Maclou-de-Folleville.15
It would appear that, in the last quarter of the twelfth century, certain
members of Henry II’s aristocracy felt impelled to venerate St Thomas in the
same manner as their lord. They may have focused on leper houses in order
to emulate Henry II’s re-foundation of the leper house of Mont-aux-Malades
at Rouen in dedication to Becket, enacted soon after the canonisation. Such
patronage enabled the nobility to demonstrate their loyalty to the king, and
was a powerful means of ensuring the future salvation of their souls and those
of their family members. The likelihood that such a ‘patronage network’
operated in Normandy following Becket’s canonisation is increased by the
fact that Henry II’s nobles also supported Mont-aux-Malades, both before and
after 1173. For example, the king’s chamberlain, Roscelin, son of Clarembaud,
founded the parish church of St-Gilles at Mont-aux-Malades between 1154
and 1165, and at least three members of the Talbot family, an important
Anglo-Norman lineage, patronised the leper house in the twelfth century.16
Most interestingly, after February 1173 but before Henry II’s re-dedication
of c.1174, Gilbert Foliot, bishop of London (1163–87) granted the church
of Vange (Essex, diocese of London) to Mont-aux-Malades, on behalf of
Lady Cecily Talbot.17 He confirmed the charter with his own seal, that of
Cecily Talbot and that of ‘St Thomas, a short time previously archbishop of
Canterbury’.18
The grant by Gilbert Foliot is significant. He had earlier been one of
Thomas Becket’s leading opponents but now demonstrated his subscription

14 Fournée, ‘Maladreries’, 126–9.

15 Nilgen, 196.
16 Rouen, ADSM, 25HP1 (act of Roscelin, son of Clarembaud, 1154–65); 25HP1 (grant by
Richard Talbot to Mont-aux-Malades, c.1166, mentioning an earlier donation to the lepers by
his father); The Letters and Charters of Gilbert Foliot, Abbot of Gloucester (1139–48), Bishop of
Hereford (1148–63) and London (1163–87), ed. A. Morey and C. N. L. Brooke (Cambridge,
1967), 472 (no. 436: gift of Cecily Talbot to Mont-aux-Malades, 1173–74).
17 Letters and Charters of Gilbert Foliot, 472 (no. 436). The charter can be dated to before the
re-dedication of Mont-aux-Malades because the gift is made in favour of the church of St James
of Mont-aux-Malades, rather than the church of St Thomas.
18 ‘sancti Thome dudum Cant(uariensis) archiepiscopi’: Letters and Charters of Gilbert Foliot,
472 (no. 436).

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 THOMAS BECKET AND LEPROSY IN NORMANDY

to Becket’s cult, symbolically attaching the saint-archbishop’s seal alongside

his own. Rotrou, archbishop of Rouen, and Arnulf, bishop of Lisieux, both
themselves involved in the Becket cult from 1173, had also been key players
in the Becket dispute. Neither man had overtly opposed Becket, but equally
neither had been forthcoming in his support. Rotrou and Arnulf’s reserve
was due to the political difficulty of the situation but also, Nilgen argues, to
the fact that the Norman secular clergy was embedded in the Anglo-Norman
aristocracy, which owed natural allegiance to the king. Rotrou, as a member
of the great Beaumont-le-Roger family, had very different social origins to
Becket, the son of a merchant.19 Rotrou had led the failed negotiations of 1170
between Becket and Henry II, while Arnulf had supported Henry, defending
the Constitutions of Clarendon to Pope Alexander III (1159–81), but had also
played an important role in mediating between the exiled archbishop and the
king.20 Both Rotrou and Arnulf were also involved in arranging for Henry II
to receive papal absolution for Becket’s murder at Avranches in May 1172.21
Rotrou and Arnulf’s dedications to Becket, and Gilbert Foliot’s involvement
in the saint’s cult, can be perceived as part of the process of penance followed
by the protagonists of the Becket dispute after the archbishop’s murder.
The leper house chapel dedicated to Becket at Caen was built in the
last quarter of the twelfth century, probably in the 1190s, in the Bourg-
l’Abbesse suburb, the area where the urban possessions of the nunnery of
Holy Trinity were focused. There was still a leper house functioning on this
site in the second half of the fifteenth century.22 Also in the later twelfth
century (or early thirteenth century), Caen’s hospital for the sick poor was
dedicated to St Thomas the Martyr, and bore a dual dedication to St Thomas
and St Anthony. The leper house at Caen apparently received income from
(or paid money to) Holy Trinity Abbey, the abbess of which had the right
of presentation to its chapel. The hospital for the sick poor similarly came
under the patronage of the abbess alongside the abbot of St Stephen of Caen,
suggesting that the town’s great monastic houses played a role in the promotion
of Becket’s cult in the locality.23 In the late twelfth century, William of Calix,
‘a leper’, donated a house to Holy Trinity Abbey so that he would be received
in ‘the leper house of St Thomas’ and would benefit from the prayers of the

19 Nilgen, 193–5.
20 Fournée, ‘Maladreries’, 127, 128; T. Shahan, ‘Arnulf of Lisieux’, in The Catholic Encyclopedia,
I [http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/01752a.htm, accessed 29 June 2013]; Nilgen, 194.
21 Barlow, 260–61.
22 Fournée, ‘Lieux de culte’, 386; C. Collet, P. Leroux and J.-Y. Marin, Caen, cité médiévale: bilan
d’archéologie et d’histoire (Caen, 1996), 71, 72; Charters and Custumals of the Abbey of Holy Trinity
Caen. Part 2: The French Estates, ed. J. Walmsley (Oxford, 1994), 10, 129 n. 6.
23 Foreville, ‘Les origines normandes’, 462–3.

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 ELMA BRENNER

community of Holy Trinity.24 This man was very probably synonymous with
the Caen money-lender William of Calix, who witnessed transactions relating
to Holy Trinity between 1178 and 1183.25 The size of his gift and his likely
identity suggest that the leper house of St-Thomas at Caen, like Mont-aux-
Malades at Rouen, received wealthy individuals who offered a substantial
entrance gift.26 William of Calix chose to enter a very new foundation, and
may have been attracted by its dedication to Becket. The fact that Holy Trinity
administered this donation suggests that the nuns were directly involved in
the oversight of the leper house’s affairs, further pointing towards their likely
role in its foundation.

St Thomas Becket and the Care of Lepers:

Mont-aux-Malades, Rouen and St-Thomas, Aizier
Henry II’s re-foundation of Mont-aux-Malades at Rouen in dedication to
Thomas Becket c.1174 undoubtedly increased the prestige of the leper house
as a religious house, as well as leading to increased charitable patronage.
However, before the re-foundation Mont-aux-Malades was already a distin-
guished monastery, and was already associated with Becket. The first prior
of Mont-aux-Malades, Nicholas, was a personal friend of the archbishop of
Canterbury. The two men probably became acquainted when Becket lay ill
at the Benedictine priory of St-Gervais, not far from Mont-aux-Malades, in
the late summer of 1161.27 Becket’s presence at Rouen at this time reflects his
links with the city: he also stayed there for lengthy periods in 1159 and 1160.28
St-Gervais was a dependency of the abbey of Fécamp, located beyond the walls
to the north-west of Rouen.29 It was known for the medical care of another

24 ‘leprosus … maladeriam beati Thome’: Charters, ed. Walmsley, 129 (cartulary document
no. 17), and see also 129 n. 6, citing the 1257 Holy Trinity survey §125, which states: ‘Saint-
Thomas, qui estoit une leproserie, avoit distribucions sur l’abbaye.’
25 Ibid., 36–7 (original charter no. 3), 112–13 (cartulary document no. 1), 128–9 (cartulary
document no. 16).
26 On entrance gifts at Mont-aux-Malades, see Brenner, Leprosy and Charity, chapter 1.
27 P. Langlois, Histoire du prieuré du Mont-aux-Malades-lès-Rouen, et correspondance du prieur
de ce monastère avec saint Thomas de Cantorbéry, 1120–1820 (Rouen, 1851), 20; Barlow, 62;
M. Chibnall, The Empress Matilda: Queen Consort, Queen Mother and Lady of the English (Oxford,
1991), 169; Nilgen, 192, 193.
28 Foreville, ‘Les origines normandes’, 447.
29 On the priory and parish of St-Gervais, Rouen, see F. Lemoine and J. Tanguy, Rouen aux
100 clochers: dictionnaire des églises et chapelles de Rouen (avant 1789) (Rouen, 2004), 49–51;
G. Combalbert, ‘Archbishops and the City: Powers, Conflicts, and Jurisdiction in the Parishes
of Rouen (Eleventh–Thirteenth Centuries)’, in Society and Culture in Medieval Rouen, 911–1300,
ed. L. V. Hicks and E. Brenner, Studies in the Early Middle Ages, 39 (Turnhout, 2013), 185–223,
at 191–2.

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very high status individual, since, according to Orderic Vitalis, William the
Conqueror received the attentions of physicians there before he died at the
priory on 9 September 1087, having been brought there after falling very sick
at Mantes while on military campaign.30 The Conqueror himself instructed
that he should be taken to St-Gervais because Rouen was too noisy, suggesting
that the health-giving benefits of this semi-rural location were recognised.31
The friendship between Nicholas, an Augustinian prior, and Becket was
appropriate given the latter’s early education in England at the Augustinian
priory of Merton.32 Nicholas loyally supported the archbishop during his exile
from England (1164–70) as part of a wider ‘intelligence network’, and wrote
several letters to him during this period. He also corresponded with John of
Salisbury, a key figure in Becket’s entourage.33 The letter of Prior Nicholas to
Becket of Christmas 1164, recounting the audiences that he had recently had
with Henry II’s mother the Empress Matilda, reveals that he moved in courtly
circles. The same letter states that the community at Mont-aux-Malades was
at this time praying for the exiled archbishop’s cause, thus explicitly pledging
its support for him.34
The leper community’s allegiance could have placed it in a delicate situation.
Since its early twelfth-century origins it had depended on the patronage of
the Anglo-Norman royal family, with the earliest donation associated with the
community being a grant by Geoffrey of Anjou, issued as duke of Normandy
(1144–50), reconfirming the gift by King Henry I of 40 sous a month to ‘the
lepers of Rouen’.35 Henry II was himself a generous patron prior to 1170.36 This
suggests both that Becket had a very strong personal relationship with the
community, which resulted in its loyalty, and that Prior Nicholas was adept

30 On William the Conqueror’s illness and death at the priory of St-Gervais, see The Ecclesiastical
History of Orderic Vitalis, ed. and trans. M. Chibnall, OMT, 6 vols (Oxford, 1969–80), iv, 78–81,
100–101.
31 Ibid., iv, 78–81.
32 Nilgen, 190, 195. On the Augustinian movement in Normandy, of which Mont-aux-Malades
formed part, see M. Arnoux (ed.), Des clercs au service de la réforme: études et documents sur les
chanoines réguliers de la province de Rouen, Bibliotheca Victorina, 11 (Turnhout, 2000).
33 Barlow, 129–30; CTB, i, 158–69 (no. 41: Prior Nicholas to Becket, Christmas season,
1164), 382–9 (no. 94: Nicholas to Becket, before 6 July 1166), 548–53 (no. 113: Nicholas to
Becket, before 18 November 1166), 622–3 (no. 132: Nicholas to Becket, August 1167). See also
CTB, i, 342–7 (no. 83: Becket to Nicholas, after 12 June 1166) – however, the author of this
letter was probably John of Salisbury – see The Letters of John of Salisbury, Volume II: The Later
Letters 1163–1180, ed. and trans. W. J. Millor and C. N. L. Brooke, OMT (Oxford, 1979), 64–7
(no. 157). For other relevant John of Salisbury letters, see Letters of John of Salisbury, Volume II,
250–53 (no. 188), 452–7 (no. 239).
34 CTB, i, 158–69 (no. 41, at 160–61, 162–9); Chibnall, Empress Matilda, 169–71.
35 ‘leprosis Rothomagi’: Paris, Archives Nationales (AN), *K23 15 22.
36 For Henry II’s gifts to Mont-aux-Malades before and after 1170, see Brenner, Leprosy and
Charity, chapter 1.

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in managing his relations with the Empress Matilda and, perhaps, Henry II
during this difficult period.
Henry II’s patronage for Mont-aux-Malades after Becket was murdered
in December 1170 should be understood in the context of both this direct
link between the leper house and Becket, and the king’s own penance for
the murder. On 12 July 1174, the king visited the saint’s tomb at Canterbury,
where he did penance and apparently sought Becket’s intercession in order
to defeat a rebellion against his rule by the Young King Henry, Eleanor of
Aquitaine and Louis VII of France.37 On his return to Normandy, Henry
successfully overwhelmed the rebellion at Rouen on 14 August, and his
dedication to Becket at Mont-aux-Malades, as well as his involvement in the
establishment of an Augustinian priory dedicated to Becket at Dublin and his
possible re-foundation of hospitals at Argentan and Caen in dedication to the
martyr, should be seen in the light of these events.38
Following its re-dedication, Mont-aux-Malades became an important focus
for the charitable patronage of Rouen’s burgess élite, revealing that the house’s
association with the martyr saint was perceived to bring spiritual benefit to all
those connected to it, including its benefactors. Between 1206 and 1218, the
Rouen burgess Ralph the Jew, a convert to Christianity or the son of converts,
made a gift ‘to God and St Mary and St Thomas the Martyr’ of Mont-aux-
Malades, for the salvation of himself, his parents, ancestors, children and
successors.39 The wording of his charter suggests that he was specifically
appealing to St Thomas, as well as to the Virgin Mary, for intercessory aid.
Donors like Ralph the Jew may also have sought to benefit from the potency
of the relics of Becket possessed by Mont-aux-Malades. In 1610, the leper
house held a reliquary containing a bone of St Thomas Becket and fragments
of his stole, goblet, rochet and hair-shirt.40 It is not known when these relics
were acquired, but it is plausible that the community obtained them soon after
the re-dedication. The fragments of objects owned by Becket could have been
received before 1220, when Becket’s body was transferred from Canterbury
Cathedral crypt into the Trinity Chapel, only after which date relics of parts

37 Barlow, 269–70; W. L. Warren, Henry II (London, 1973), 135–6. On the Great Rebellion, see
also the discussion in Anne J. Duggan’s essay in this volume (chapter 2).
38 E. M. Hallam, ‘Henry II as a Founder of Monasteries’, JEH, 28 (1977), 113–32, at 125,
127–8. The Caen foundation was the hospital for the sick poor there, the Hôtel-Dieu, dedicated
to Becket and St Anthony, which should not be confused with the leper house of St-Thomas in
the Bourg-l’Abbesse.
39 ‘deo et beate Marie et Sancto Thome martyri de monte Leprosorum’: Rouen, ADSM, 25HP3.
On Ralph the Jew, see E. Brenner and L. V. Hicks, ‘The Jews of Rouen in the Eleventh to the
Thirteenth Centuries’, in Society and Culture in Medieval Rouen, 911–1300, ed. L. V. Hicks and
E. Brenner, Studies in the Early Middle Ages, 39 (Turnhout, 2013), 369–82, at 378–9.
40 Langlois, Histoire, 363; Nilgen, 196.

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of his body began to appear.41 These relics were presumably venerated by the
lepers and other members of the community when they worshipped, directly
benefiting the health of their souls. Other leper houses possessed collections
of relics, such as St Bartholomew’s, Oxford, the residents of which complained
in 1391 that relics including a piece of St Bartholomew’s skin, a rib of St Peter
and a comb owned by St Edmund had been removed by Oriel College,
Oxford.42 Relics attracted gifts, as well as serving as a focus for worship. The
ownership of Becket relics marked Mont-aux-Malades out as one of the key
sites for the martyr’s cult in Normandy. Relics of the saint were also held at
Bayeux Cathedral, the Hôtel-Dieu of Lisieux and the Augustinian priories of
Sausseuse and Ste-Barbe-en-Auge.43
In and around Rouen, the saint’s cult was also prominent at other locations
that were not associated with leprosy. In Rouen Cathedral, a lateral chapel
dedicated to Becket was established within the larger chapel of St-Romain
in 1207, and the Portail des Libraires to the cathedral’s north incorporates
a late thirteenth-century carved image of the saint.44 The priory church of
St-Gervais, where Becket had recovered from his illness in 1161, evidently
possessed relics of the martyr from an early date, since on 7 July 1222 some of
these were transferred to the cathedral.45 In the fourteenth century, stained-
glass panels depicting scenes of Becket and Henry II, and of the murder in
Canterbury Cathedral, were installed in one of the choir chapels of the abbey
church of St-Ouen, Rouen’s largest monastic house.46 This later iconography
at St-Ouen indicates the longevity of the Becket cult at Rouen, suggesting that
a major reason for the continuing flow of donations to Mont-aux-Malades into
the fourteenth century was the ongoing popularity of the saint. The fact that
this institution catered for lepers was, therefore, not necessarily the primary
reason for the support it received, although charity for lepers was undoubtedly
a key focus of piety in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries.
The chapel of St-Thomas at Aizier had a much more rural location than
Mont-aux-Malades, being situated on the edge of the forest of Brotonne on the
left bank of the river Seine, on a hill. Other leper houses, such as St Nicholas,
Harbledown, outside Canterbury, and indeed Mont-aux-Malades, were also
located on elevated ground. This made them more visible to travellers – who
might potentially donate alms – and may reflect ideas about the health-giving
benefits of pure air.47 Part of the chapel at Aizier is still standing, with the choir

41 Nilgen, 196.
42 Rawcliffe, Leprosy, 124, 340 n. 177.
43 Nilgen, 196 (and n. 28), 197.
44 Nilgen, 197; Fournée, ‘Lieux de culte’, 380.
45 Fournée, ‘Lieux de culte’, 380.
46 Nilgen, 197, 199; Fournée, ‘Lieux de culte’, 380.
47 E. J. Kealey, Medieval Medicus: A Social History of Anglo-Norman Medicine (Baltimore, MD,
1981), 85, 86–7.

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exhibiting a flat chevet and two fully arched openings. It is Romanesque in

style, dating from the late twelfth century, probably between 1173 and 1180.48
Excavations have uncovered a large building to the west of the chapel, in use
between the thirteenth and fifteenth centuries, and a cemetery immediately to
the north.49
The village of Aizier, with ‘whatever Trostincus held there’, was granted
by Duke Richard II of Normandy (996–1027) to the abbey of Fécamp on 30
May 1006. He reconfirmed the grant in August 1025, adding the village of
Ste-Croix[-sur-Aizier].50 While no documentary evidence survives regarding
the establishment of a leper community at Aizier or the construction of the
chapel, it is noteworthy that the abbot of Fécamp in the 1170s, when the
chapel was most likely built, was Henry de Sully (abbot 1139–88). De Sully was
Henry II’s second cousin and also made one of the earliest gifts to Mont-aux-
Malades. In 1154, Henry de Sully donated four acres of land in the fief of
the priory of St-Gervais to the lepers of Rouen, at the request of Henry II,
Hugh of Amiens, archbishop of Rouen (1130–64), the Empress Matilda and
the burgesses of Rouen.51 Like the foundation of many of the other Norman
leper houses dedicated to St Thomas Becket, therefore, the establishment of
the house at Aizier could have been influenced by the example of Henry II and
could fit within wider patterns of aristocratic charitable patronage.
The earliest known documentary reference to the dedication at Aizier
is a charter of July 1227 now held in the archive of the abbey of Jumièges,
marking the sale of a property at Vieux-Port, a village less than two kilometres
from Aizier, by Richard Andreu to Richard Loquet. The vendor obliged the
recipient of the property to maintain ‘a lamp burning before the altar of
St Thomas once a year’.52 Although this reference, which almost certainly
refers to the chapel at Aizier, does not testify to the presence of a community
of lepers at this date, it does indicate that the chapel was an important local
site of worship, with attention focusing on the altar dedicated to the popular
saint. Written evidence for the presence of lepers at Aizier does not appear
until the mid-fifteenth century: a document of 1449 relating to fishing on the
river Seine refers to the ‘chemin des Malades’, a path leading from the chapel
of St-Thomas to the Seine. A land register of 1744 mentions a pledge made by
‘the sick of St-Thomas’ on 13 February 1514.53

48 Niel and Truc, ‘La chapelle Saint-Thomas d’Aizier’, 51.

49 Ibid., 63–5; Niel and Truc, ‘Fouille d’une léproserie médiévale’.
50 ‘quicquid ibi Trostincus tenuit’: Recueil des actes des ducs de Normandie (911–1066), ed.
M. Fauroux (Caen, 1961), 79–81, at 80 (no. 9), 124–31 (no. 34); Niel and Truc, ‘La chapelle
Saint-Thomas d’Aizier’, 50–51.
51 Paris, AN, S4889B, liasse 1, no. 4; Langlois, Histoire, 12.
52 ‘unam lampadam ardentem ante altare sancti Thome annuatim’: Rouen, ADSM, 9H1275;
Niel and Truc, ‘Fouille d’une léproserie médiévale’.
53 Niel and Truc, ‘La chapelle Saint-Thomas d’Aizier’, 51–2.

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However, archaeological excavations conducted by Cécile Niel and Marie-

Cécile Truc between 1998 and 2010 confirm that St-Thomas at Aizier did cater
for men and women suffering from leprosy (in terms of the symptoms associated
with Hansen’s disease, as leprosy is clinically defined today) in the central and
later Middle Ages. Although the preliminary publication (in 2007) of Niel
and Truc’s findings discussed excavated skeletons prior to laboratory dating,
the fact that the incidence of leprosy significantly declined in Western Europe
from the sixteenth century strongly indicates that those skeletal remains
showing signs of leprosy are medieval burials. Among roughly thirty burials
identified or excavated by 2005, Niel and Truc found that several individuals
probably suffered from leprosy, indicated above all by bone changes in the
face, particularly around the nose and upper jaw.54 The more common form
of leprosy, lepromatous leprosy (as opposed to the other, tuberculoid form),
results in degeneration of the facial features, particularly the nose, as well as
destruction of the nerves at the extremities of the body, such as the fingers
and toes, resulting in loss of sensation and thus damage to these areas.55 One
female burial at Aizier shows significant bone changes to the legs and feet.56
The signs therefore indicate that St-Thomas at Aizier accommodated leprosy
sufferers, even though Raymonde Foreville did not consider this foundation
to be a leper house.57 A community of lepers at Aizier could have come into
existence when the chapel was built, or subsequently. A group of lepers could
also have been living on the site prior to the chapel’s construction.58
Although we have no evidence that the chapel at Aizier housed relics,
the site may well have been associated with healing. Today there is a pond
south-east of the chapel of St-Thomas. In the 1830s, the site was known for
having a water source associated with the healing of fevers, a connection
that could plausibly date back to the Middle Ages.59 The presence of healing
waters could originally have attracted lepers, as well as many other categories
of people seeking therapeutic benefits, to this place. Bathing was an important
aspect of the palliative care of lepers, and the sites of several leper houses in
England, such as those at Dunwich (Suffolk), Brewood (Staffordshire) and

54 Niel and Truc, ‘La chapelle Saint-Thomas d’Aizier’, 97–101.

55 P. Richards, The Medieval Leper and his Northern Heirs (Cambridge, 1977), xv, xvi;
C. Rawcliffe, ‘Learning to Love the Leper: Aspects of Institutional Charity in Anglo-Norman
England’, Anglo-Norman Studies, 23 (2000), 231–50, at 232; D. Marcombe, Leper Knights: The
Order of St Lazarus of Jerusalem in England, 1150–1544 (Woodbridge, 2003), 135–6; Black’s
Medical Dictionary, ed. H. Marcovitch, 41st edn (London, 2005), 406.
56 Niel and Truc, ‘La chapelle Saint-Thomas d’Aizier’, 100–101, 102.
57 See p. 83 above.
58 See Niel and Truc, ‘La chapelle Saint-Thomas d’Aizier’, 52.
59 A. Canel, Essai historique, archéologique et statistique sur l’arrondissement de Pont-Audemer
(Eure). Tome deuxième (Paris, 1834), 92; Fournée, ‘Lieux de culte’, 381; Fournée, ‘Maladreries’,
126.

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Harbledown, were close to healing springs or wells, where the water was often
sulphurous.60 It is known today that contact with sulphurous water alleviates
skin complaints; lesions on the skin are one of the main symptoms of leprosy.
At Burton Lazars (Leicestershire), which was very probably the location of an
important leper house run by the Order of St Lazarus, a spa was opened in the
second half of the eighteenth century to enable people to benefit from the
healing properties of the spring there. This spring was traditionally held to
have healed leprosy in the Middle Ages. Although David Marcombe notes
that the spring ‘lies well outside the bounds of the hospital’, he argues that its
presence, and the elevated topography of the site, could well have influenced
the original intention to establish a leper house there.61
Hot herbal baths were viewed more generally as a key measure for the
maintenance of health and treatment of disease in medieval Europe, and were
advocated in regimina sanitatis, the health manuals that became increasingly
popular in the later Middle Ages. In accordance with the idea that health was
derived from the internal balance of the bodily humours, it was understood
that sweating would allow corrupt humoral matter to leave the body and that
the beneficial scent of medicinal herbs would enter through the open pores.
For the treatment of lepers specifically, baths would lessen pain and keep their
sores and lesions clean. Scrubbing could also restore feeling to the bodily
extremities where nerves were damaged by the disease. Bathing had strong
spiritual associations, mirroring the cleansing of the soul provided by baptism.
Lepers had a biblical exemplar in the form of Naaman the Syrian, whose
leprosy was cured after he had bathed in the river Jordan.62 The presence of
the pond at Aizier thus supports the archaeological evidence that this was an
important site for the care of lepers, and suggests that this was a holy place of
some significance in the locality, where perhaps many different types of people
came to seek physical and spiritual healing.

Conclusion
At the time of the emergence of the cult of St Thomas Becket in the later
twelfth and early thirteenth centuries, lepers held a special religious status. It
was believed that the leprous suffered on earth as a result of God’s will, and that
their future salvation was ensured through their suffering. In this sense, like
Christ and Becket, they were martyrs. On one level, therefore, the dedication
of a number of leper houses in Normandy to Becket drew attention to lepers’
commonality with the saint and underlined their pious suffering. However,

60 Rawcliffe, Leprosy, 227, 228–9; Marcombe, Leper Knights, 137–8.

61 Marcombe, Leper Knights, 142–6.
62 Rawcliffe, Leprosy, 226–32; II Kings 5:1–27.

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these foundations, like those of other churches and chapels dedicated to Becket
in Normandy, also reflect the saint’s connections with the duchy, especially
the city of Rouen, during his life, and the participation of Henry II and his
aristocracy in the Becket cult. With regard to leper houses, the popularity of
the cult coincided with the status of lepers as a fashionable focus of charitable
patronage. The examples of Mont-aux-Malades and St-Thomas at Aizier
demonstrate the diversity of the dedications to Becket, and also show that,
even though the connection to lepers was significant, the dedication of a leper
house church or chapel to the saint enhanced the broader spiritual significance
of that site. Mont-aux-Malades came to possess a respectable collection of
relics, while the altar at Aizier was marked out for veneration in a document of
the 1220s. While Thomas Becket was associated with the lepers of Mont-aux-
Malades during his life, he became linked to many other communities of lepers
in Normandy after his death. The saint’s association with Norman leper houses
was linked less to bodily healing than to the cure of souls, underlining the fact
that Becket’s cult had a much broader significance than the healing miracles
that took place at his tomb.

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 5.

Thomas Becket in the Chronicles1

MICHAEL STAUNTON

When he came to the year of Thomas Becket’s death, the Limoges chronicler
Geoffrey of Vigeois decided that he would pass over it, explaining that since
so many people had written about the archbishop’s life and death, there was
no point in his covering the same material again.2 Geoffrey’s editorial decision
is understandable. Although he wrote his chronicle little more than a decade
after Thomas’s murder in December 1170, he was evidently aware of the
recent explosion of literary interest in the subject. By 1180, lengthy Lives of
St Thomas had been written by Edward Grim, William of Canterbury, John
of Salisbury, William Fitz Stephen, Guernes de Pont-Sainte-Maxence and two
anonymous authors, in addition to shorter works by John of Salisbury, Alan
of Tewkesbury and Benedict of Peterborough. Benedict had composed his
collection of the saint’s miracles, and William of Canterbury had published
most of his, while Alan of Tewkesbury had completed the great task begun by
John of Salisbury of putting together Thomas’s collection of correspondence.3
One could be forgiven for thinking that all that needed to be said had been
said. But then and now, people have always found more to say about Thomas’s
life and death, and new angles from which to view it. The half-century after
Becket’s murder was a very productive period of historical writing, especially
in England and especially in histories of recent events, and few of those
who wrote about their own times could resist touching on the subject of the
martyred archbishop. Here I shall look at how Thomas Becket featured in
historical writing at the end of the twelfth and the beginning of the thirteenth

1 The research for this article was supported by a Senior Research Fellowship from the Irish
Research Council for the Humanities and Social Sciences.
2 Geoffrey of Vigeois, Chronicle, in P. Botineau, ‘Chronique de G. de Breuil, prieur de Vigeois’
(unpublished Ph.D. thesis, École des Chartes, 1964), 153.
3 The Lives, miracles and letters are published in MTB. Thomas’s correspondence, which forms
the majority of Alan’s letter collection, is edited in CTB. Extracts from the Lives are translated
in Lives of Thomas Becket. For a comparison of the Lives, letters and chronicle accounts, see
S. Jansen, Wo ist Thomas Becket? Der ermordete Heilige zwischen Erinnerung und Erzählung (Husum,
2002). For the letters see A. Duggan, Thomas Becket: A Textual History of his Letters (Oxford,
1980); and for the Lives, M. Staunton, Thomas Becket and his Biographers (Woodbridge, 2006).

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centuries, using the term ‘chronicles’ in the widest possible sense to distinguish
them from the Lives. My concern is not so much to examine what they add to
our knowledge about Thomas’s life and death, but how they related his legacy
to their own concerns in the decades after his murder.
The cult of Thomas Becket had a remarkable geographical reach, and
his murder also won the attention of chroniclers far and wide.4 One need
look no further than the Holy Land, where William of Tyre interrupted his
account of local affairs to record Thomas’s death and summarise his career,
concluding with a brief account of his murder and the miracles which God
performed through him.5 Well beyond England other chroniclers thought
it appropriate to mention Thomas’s death, if only briefly. An entry from a
chronicle of Reichersberg reads, ‘In the year 1171, St Thomas archbishop of
Canterbury suffered in England. In our lands a cow gave birth to a calf with
two heads, eight feet and two tails.’6 Becket’s murder was an essential part of
any English chronicle of the period and even the shortest entry, such as Ralph
of Coggeshall’s, tells the basic story:7

St Thomas, archbishop of Canterbury, formerly chancellor of King Henry II,

for the sake of preserving the liberty of ecclesiastical dignity, after he had spent
seven years in exile, was crowned with martyrdom in the cathedral church of
his own see before the altar of St Benedict, on the fifth day of Christmas, at the
hour of vespers.

Some writers were evidently so drawn to the subject that they chose to include
it even if it altered their original literary plan. The author of the Liber Eliensis
prefaces his account of Thomas’s life and death by explaining that he was
pleased to have finally reached the end of his work. ‘However’, he continues:8

the thought came into my mind of the most holy Thomas, confessor of the Lord
and beloved martyr of Christ who, recently, and now in our times, is seen to
have met his death. And I have resolved to extend my work by including him,
so that my labour, entered upon in a holy beginning may, by the mercy of God,
be allotted a joyful ending.

4 See also the discussion in the essay by Anne J. Duggan in this volume (chapter 2).
5 Willelmus Tyrensis, Chronicon, ed. R. B. C. Huygens, Corpus Christianorum Continuatio
Mediaevalis, 63A (Turnhout, 1986), 940.
6 Chronicon Magni Presbiteri, ed. W. Wattenbach, MGH SS, xvii, 496. Thomas died on 29
December 1170, but since his death comes after Christmas, many chroniclers date it to 1171. See
Gervase, i, 91, 232.
7 Radulphi de Coggeshall Chronicon Anglicanum, ed. J. Stevenson, RS 66 (London, 1875), 16.
8 Liber Eliensis, ed. E. O. Blake, Camden Third Series, 92 (London, 1962), 391–4 at 391, 437
(appendix F); Liber Eliensis: A History of the Isle of Ely from the Seventh Century to the Twelfth,
trans. J. Fairweather (Woodbridge, 2005), 482–3.

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 THOMAS BECKET IN THE CHRONICLES

There is also a case where Thomas’s death may have ended a historical work
prematurely. Stephen of Rouen’s Draco Normannicus contains passages hostile
to Thomas, comparing him to Simon Magus and mocking him for his poor
Latin. This Latin verse poem ends at 1169 with the appearance of peace
between Henry and Thomas, and although it has been suggested that this
is the natural end, the argument that the events of 1170 led the author to
abandon the manuscript remains a strong one.9
The Draco Normannicus is one of those works that gives us some original
information on Thomas’s life not found in the Lives and letters, in particular his
account of Thomas’s attendance at the Council of Tours in 1163. The Chronicle
of Battle Abbey, too, throws some light on Thomas as chancellor, where it
presents him siding with the king against papal authority in a dispute over the
liberty of that house.10 Most of the later chroniclers drew on the Lives and letters,
but occasionally provide anecdotes which cannot be found elsewhere. Roger of
Howden’s Gesta Regis Henrici begins at 1169 and includes an account of the final
negotiations between king and archbishop, Thomas’s last days, the murder and
its immediate aftermath, largely based on the Lives by John of Salisbury and the
Anonymous I. However, in the 1190s, Howden revised and expanded his earlier
work to produce the Chronica and, whereas in many places he follows the earlier
work very closely, the section on Becket is quite different. He again draws on
other sources – John of Salisbury, an anonymous Passio and some letters – but he
also appears to use a source as yet unidentified. Howden includes an account of
Thomas’s trial at Northampton not found elsewhere, a day-in-the-life of Thomas
as archbishop different from that given by John of Salisbury or Herbert of
Bosham, and an anecdote about Thomas turning water to wine before the pope.
He also makes some curious errors, mistakenly placing Thomas’s appointment
as chancellor in 1157 rather than 1154 and the trial at Northampton in 1165
rather than 1164. He says that Thomas’s death was miraculously revealed to the
hermit Godric of Finchale, 160 miles away, despite the fact that, as Howden had
earlier reported, Godric died in 1169.11 Later, he tells the story of how St Thomas
appeared to English crusaders navigating around the Iberian coast and led them
safely to Silva.12 Lambert, chaplain of Ardres, wrote in the late 1190s of the
special devotion of Count Baldwin II of Guines for St Thomas. He explains that
the count had been knighted by Thomas, and many years later entertained the
archbishop on his return from exile to death.13 In briefly reporting the papal

9 Stephen of Rouen, Draco Normannicus, in Chronicles, ed. Howlett, ii, 675–7, 741–2, 744,
756–7; Jansen, Wo ist Thomas Becket?, 107–12.
10 The Chronicle of Battle Abbey, ed. and trans. E. Searle, OMT (Oxford, 1980), 176–209. See
also the account of Thomas’s dispute with the king and murder, 272–9.
11 Howden, Gesta, i, 7–24, 31–3; Howden, Chronica, ii, 6–29, 35–9. See also Passio Prima, ed.
J. A. Giles, PL, cxc, cols 317–24.
12 Howden, Gesta, ii, 116–17; Howden, Chronica, iii, 42–3.
13 Lamberti Ardensis historia comitum Ghisensium, ed. J. Heller, in MGH SS, xxiv, 596, 601–2.

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canonisation of St Thomas at Anagni in 1173, the Chronicle of Melrose adds,

‘and he who saw and heard has given testimony’, suggesting that the writer was
present.14 Adam of Eynsham’s Life of St Hugh relates how the bishop of Lincoln
forbade his officials from imposing financial penalties on sinners, and when they
tried to defend themselves by saying that Thomas had done the same, Hugh
replied, ‘Believe me, this did not make him a saint, his other conspicuous virtues
showed him to be one, and he deserved the martyr’s palm for another cause.’15
All the chroniclers agreed that Thomas was a saint, and while few present
a multi-dimensional picture of the chancellor and archbishop, occasional
disparity may be found in their assessments of the dispute and the man.
Perhaps the most original is that of William of Newburgh. William, it seems,
spent all his life in and around Yorkshire, and there is no evidence that he
had any contact with those involved in the Becket dispute. Nonetheless, he
was a deeply moralistic historian, and one might have expected him to praise
Thomas as a champion of the Church. But William was also a thoughtful and
nuanced writer and his comments on Becket are a case in point. Reviewing
the course of the dispute, he writes:16

Many people, driven more by affection than prudence, tend to approve

everything that is done by those they love and praise. But these actions of the
venerable man, although they proceeded from praiseworthy zeal, by no means do
I consider praiseworthy, as they brought not profit but only incited the king to
anger, from which so many evil things are later known to have derived.

He draws a parallel with St Peter’s attempts to compel the Gentiles to become

Jews, which, though done out of praiseworthy piety, were rebuked by St Paul.
William prefaces his description of Thomas’s murder by noting how, on the
point of return to England, he sent ahead letters of censure against the prelates
who had taken part in the coronation of the Young King Henry in July 1170. ‘It
is not for one as lowly as me to dare to judge the actions of so great a man’, he
writes, but adds that perhaps the archbishop might have acted more carefully
towards the newly established peace, according to the saying of the prophet,
‘He who is prudent will keep silent in such a time, for the days are evil’.17 He
goes on:18

14 Chronica de Mailros e codice unico in bibliotheca Cottoniana servato, ed. J. Stevenson, Bannatyne
Club, 49 (Edinburgh, 1835), 85. See also John 3:32; Revelation 1:2.
15 Magna Vita Sancti Hugonis: The Life of St Hugh of Lincoln, ed. D. L. Douie and H. Farmer,
NMT, 2 vols (London, 1961–62), ii, 38. See also Hugh’s opposition to the plans to establish a
house of canons at Hackington and later Lambeth, i, 121–3. The proposed house of canons is
discussed further below.
16 William of Newburgh, Historia Rerum Anglicarum, in Chronicles, ed. Howlett, i, 142–3.
17 Amos 5:13.
18 William of Newburgh, Historia, i, 161; see also James 3:2.

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I neither declare the archbishop’s actions praiseworthy, nor do I presume to

disparage them. But this I say, that if perhaps through the slightly excessive force
of praiseworthy zeal, the holy man went a little too far, he was purged by the fire
of his holy passion which we know followed. So though we ought to love and
praise holy men, whom we know to be far superior to us, we should nevertheless
by no means either love or praise the actions which they committed through
human weakness, but only those which we ought to imitate without reservation.
For who can say that they ought to be imitated in their every deed, when the
apostle James says, ‘For we err in many ways’? Therefore we ought not to praise
them for everything they do, but wisely and cautiously so that God, Whom no
one can praise enough, no matter how hard we try, should have His dignity
preserved.

In contrast to William of Newburgh, Ralph of Diceto, dean of St Paul’s, found

himself in the midst of the Becket dispute, but carefully avoided judgement on
it. More than any other writer, Ralph faced a conflict of allegiances, summed
up by William Fitz Stephen’s report of the dean in tears on the last day of
Thomas’s trial at Northampton.19 Ralph was a loyal supporter of the king,
and close to senior royal servants. Moreover, his bishop, Gilbert Foliot, was
Thomas’s most eloquent critic during the dispute. On the other hand, Ralph’s
support for clerical privilege and papal authority was as strong as that of most
other senior churchmen in England, and his letter of 1166 urging Richard of
Ilchester to respect Thomas’s censures at Vézelay, shows his search for a middle
path even in the midst of the dispute.20 He writes about the Becket dispute at
some length in the Ymagines Historiarum, a chronicle of recent events, and an
edited summary makes up his Series causae inter Henricum regem et Thomam
archiepiscopum.21 Writing perhaps two decades after the events, his approach
appears detached and balanced, though his omissions and obfuscations have
been noted.22
A few peculiarities of Diceto’s account may be pointed out. One is the fact
that he draws parallels between the murder of Thomas Becket and the killing

19 MTB, iii, 59.

20 Diceto, i, 319–20. Ralph’s name appears variously as de Diceto, Disci, Dysci, and Dici in
contemporary documents, suggesting that it derives from Diss in Norfolk. See Ancient Charters,
Royal and Private, Prior to A.D. 1200, ed. J. H. Round, PRS 10 (London, 1888), 77–8; The Letters
and Charters of Gilbert Foliot, Abbot of Gloucester (1139–48), Bishop of Hereford (1148–63) and
London (1163–87), ed. A. Morey and C. N. L. Brooke (Cambridge, 1967), 467; J. le Neve, Fasti
Ecclesiae Anglicanae, 1066–1300: Vol. 1: St Paul’s, London, rev. edn. by D. E. Greenway (London,
1968), 5.
21 Diceto, ii, 279–85.
22 C. Duggan and A. Duggan, ‘Ralph de Diceto, Henry II and Becket, with an Appendix on
Decretal Letters’, in Authority and Power: Studies on Medieval Law and Government Presented to
Walter Ullmann on his Seventieth Birthday, ed. B. Tierney and P. Linehan (Cambridge, 1980),
59–81.

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of others: Hugh, archbishop of Tarragona, murdered with a knife; Hamo,

bishop of León, killed by his nephew; William Trincavel, killed in the church
of St Mary Magdalene at Béziers.23 Another is how, in both works, he marks out
with symbols the main points of the controversy.24 The first cause he highlights
is Thomas’s resignation of the chancellorship upon becoming archbishop,
something to which few other twelfth-century writers pay much attention,
and he notes with apparent approval how, in Germany, Rainald of Dassel had
retained both offices.25 This is a good example not only of Diceto’s character-
istic interest in historical precedents and parallels, but also of his favourable
attitude, in strong contrast to William of Newburgh, towards churchmen who
play an active role in secular government. As Duggan and Duggan remark, it
was entirely natural to Diceto that secular and church leaders should work in
harmony, and it is possible to read his account of the Becket affair as one which
does not simply seek to avoid controversy, but rather seeks reconciliation. This
reconciliation is seen most clearly in Ralph’s account of the rebellion of the
Young King Henry against his father Henry II in 1173–74, and his sentiment is
echoed by many other writers.
Some writers never forgave Henry II for his role in the murder. Ralph Niger,
a former clerk of Archbishop Thomas, whom the king banished from England,
habitually refers to Henry II as ‘the king under whom Thomas the blessed
martyr of the English suffered’, and he included a savage picture of the king
in his shorter chronicle.26 But even writers more sympathetic to the king saw
the rebellion of 1173–74 as punishment for his sin. Ralph of Coggeshall, for
one, explicitly states that the various rebellions were just judgment for Henry’s
treatment of the archbishop.27 William of Newburgh sees the rebellions as
appropriate reward for the king’s marrying in defiance of the Church, and
because he did not sufficiently lament his obstinacy toward St Thomas.28
According to almost all these writers, the turning-point in the rebellion was
Henry II’s decision to do penance at the tomb of St Thomas in July 1174. One
of the earliest reports is by Jordan Fantosme, who says that when King Henry
was told of the mixed news from England in 1174, he said, ‘St Thomas, guard

23 Diceto, i, 345–6. On the latter, see William of Newburgh, Historia, i, 126–30.

24 Diceto, i, 307–14; ii, 280–82. Beryl Smalley argues that such juxtaposition made synthesis
and judgment unnecessary: B. Smalley, Historians in the Middle Ages: A Study of Intellectuals in
Politics (London, 1974), 116–19. See also B. Smalley, The Becket Conflict and the Schools (Oxford,
1973), 230–34.
25 Diceto, i, 307–8.
26 The Chronicles of Ralph Niger, ed. R. Anstruther, Caxton Society (London, 1851), 93, 167–9,
176; G. B. Flahiff, ‘Ralph Niger: An Introduction to his Life and Works’, Mediaeval Studies, 2
(1940), 104–26 at 107 n. 22.
27 Radulphi de Coggeshall, 26.
28 William of Newburgh, Historia, i, 281.

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my realm, I admit to you my guilt for which others bear the blame’.29 Jordan’s
account is brief, but later writers presented a more elaborate explanation of
the outcome of the war in which standard elements are present. The account
found in the second recension of Edward Grim’s Vita Sancti Thomae appears
influential, though the same theme is found so widely that its dissemination
would appear to go well beyond textual transmission. There he describes how
the king humbled himself before the monks of Canterbury and spent the night
in vigil at the tomb of St Thomas, whereupon he learned that his adversary,
William I, king of Scots, had been captured, a clear sign of Thomas’s inter-
vention.30 Ralph of Diceto, Roger of Howden and William of Newburgh
broadly echo Edward Grim’s narrative and interpretation, and make some
additions.31 For those, such as Diceto, who showed high regard for both king
and archbishop and whose political tendencies were towards moderation and
stability, the conclusion that the penitent king had triumphed through the
intercession of St Thomas allowed them to draw a line under the dispute.32
An exception is Gerald of Wales, whose interest in the Becket dispute
lasted throughout his long literary career. Gerald grew up during the dispute,
and he says that as a child, whenever he heard of a dispute regarding the law
of the land and the law of the Church, he would put himself forward as an
advocate of the Church.33 When burdened by debt as a student at Paris, he
prayed to St Thomas and was released from his money troubles, and he and
his companions returned to England wearing medallions with images of the
saint around their necks.34 Though his early Expugnatio Hibernica presents
a picture, familiar from other writers, of King Henry’s penance at Thomas’s
shrine as an act of redemption, his late work, De Principis Instructione, presents

29 Jordan Fantosme, ed. Johnston, 120–21 (lines 1599–1600) and see also 142–3 (lines 1912–14).
Also noted in the articles by Anne J. Duggan (chapter 2), Colette Bowie (chapter 6) and José
Manuel Cerda (chapter 7) in this volume.
30 MTB, ii, 444–8. See also William of Canterbury, MTB, i, 485–95; Herbert of Bosham,
Liber Melorum, in PL cxc, cols 1316–17, 1320–21; Guernes de Pont-Sainte-Maxence, La Vie
de S. Thomas le Martyr, ed. E. Walberg (Paris, 1922), 199–205 (lines 5906–6060), 207–8 (lines
6124–55).
31 Diceto, i, 382–5; Howden, Gesta, i, 72; Howden, Chronica, ii, 61–3; William of Newburgh,
Historia, i, 186–8, 196.
32 Though this is the dominant picture, there are some differences of tone in the description of
Henry’s penance, for example: Rogeri de Wendover liber qui dicitur Flores Historiarum ab anno domini
MCLIV annoque Henrici Anglorum Regis Secundi Primo, ed. H. G. Hewlett, RS 84, 3 vols (London,
1886–89), i, 92; Robert of Torigni, Chronica, in Chronicles, ed. Howlett, iv, 264; Liber Gaufridi
Sacristae de Coldingham de statu Ecclesiae Dunhelmensis, ed. J. Raine, in Historiae Dunelmensis
Scriptores Tres: Gaufridus de Coldingham, Robertus de Graystanes, et Willielmus de Chambre, Surtees
Society, 9 (London and Edinburgh, 1889), 10.
33 De rebus a se gestis, in Giraldi Cambrensis Opera, ed. J. S. Brewer et al., RS 21, 8 vols (London,
1861–91), i, 22.
34 De rebus a se gestis, 49–50, 53.

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the subsequent downfall of the king as a morality tale in which three main
sins are dominant: his marriage to Eleanor, his role in Becket’s murder and his
failure to go on crusade. The third criticism is related to the second, as it was
part of Henry’s penance to which he submitted at Avranches in 1172.35
Though those works are better known, Gerald gives his fullest attention to
Thomas in the Vita S. Remigii, the first edition of which was written around
1198. Most of this work has nothing to do with St Remigius, and a large part
of it is taken up with accounts of praiseworthy prelates of Gerald’s own time,
presented in paired portraits. The first pair is Thomas of Canterbury and
Henry of Winchester. Gerald writes that it would be presumptuous and super-
fluous to extol Thomas’s glory, since he had already been commemorated in
writing by great men, or to hold a light to one whose light illuminates the
world. Nonetheless, he concedes to present a summary of Thomas’s life, death
and posthumous glory, which rehearses the same comments made by countless
other writers. He then tells some stories of Thomas’s prophesies during life and
miracles after death which he says he has not found in other writings, most
of which are in fact recorded in earlier texts.36 Much more original are his
comments in the section on Bartholomew of Exeter and Roger of Worcester.
There he relates how one of Thomas’s murderers, William de Traci, came to
confess his crime to Bartholomew. The murderer told the bishop that when his
three accomplices had already inflicted their blows on Thomas, they rebuked
him for being too slow to strike, reminding him that the king had bound
them by oath to carry out the murder. Although, he acknowledges, the king
swore that the murder had not been carried out through his hand or desire,
Gerald notes that Bartholomew remained insistent in his belief that the king
had mandated it.37 Gerald goes on to state that when Henry II, ‘fleeing from
the face of the cardinals’, crossed from Normandy to England and thence to
Wales, he met Bartholomew at Milford Haven and said of the cardinals, ‘If
they want to talk to me, let them come to me in Ireland’. Gerald goes on to
cite biblical readings on the futility of attempting to flee from God’s judgment,
including ‘The wicked flee when no one pursues’, a clever use of the words

35 Expugnatio Hibernica: The Conquest of Ireland, ed. A. B. Scott and F. X. Martin (Dublin,
1978), 108–113, 120–25; De Principis Instructione, in Giraldi Cambrensis Opera, viii, 159–72,
210–11, 251–3. See also R. Bartlett, Gerald of Wales: A Voice of the Middle Ages, 2nd edn (Stroud,
2006), 56–86; K. Schnith, ‘Betrachtungen zum Spätwerk des Giraldus Cambrensis: “De principis
instructione”’, in Festiva Lanx: Studien zum mittelalterlichen Geistesleben Johannes Sporl dargebracht
(Munich, 1966), 54–63.
36 Vita S. Remigii, in Giraldi Cambrensis Opera, vii, 43–56, esp. 50–56. On this work, see the
introduction to the edition, and more recently M. Mesley, ‘The Construction of Episcopal
Identity: The Meaning and Function of Episcopal Depictions within Latin Saints’ Lives of the
Long Twelfth Century’ (unpublished Ph.D. thesis, University of Exeter, 2009), 178–239.
37 Vita S. Remigii, 60–61.

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thrown at Archbishop Thomas when he fled from King Henry into France in
1164.38
The Becket dispute was most obviously a clash between king and
archbishop, but the debate was fiercest between ecclesiastics, and the debate
over his legacy continued among them long after. In the Vita S. Remigii, Gerald
takes the opportunity to compare Thomas to his two immediate successors in
the see of Canterbury, Richard of Dover and Baldwin of Ford. In his discussion
of Baldwin, he quotes Thomas’s former cross-bearer, Alexander Llewelyn, as
saying that Thomas tended to be angered by injuries to the Church; Richard
was easily moved to anger but was remiss in his works; and Baldwin was hardly
ever angry at all. When Thomas came riding into a vill he immediately sought
the court, Richard the grange and Baldwin the church. While his successors
showed their religion by the habits of their respective orders, and by their
speech, Thomas showed his by his deeds.39
Gerald was present at the first public festival on St Thomas’s day at
Canterbury on 29 December 1172, among many barons of the realm. He
reports that after lunch the new archbishop, Richard of Dover, made loud
complaint about injuries to the dignity of his church at the hands of royal
officials and, putting his hand to his head, he swore that he would expose it to
the swords rather than allow this. But Hugh de Lacy, who was present, said:40

There is no need, archbishop, for you to lay down your head or even your foot.
You can securely maintain your rights and exercise ecclesiastical justice. God
has done so much for the holy martyr, your predecessor, that the king, even if
he wanted to, would not find a single rogue in his land who would dare raise
his hand against you. The war is over: you hold in your hand, if you will, what
the martyr has won.

Gerald also reports a discussion from around the same time in which a certain
bishop complained that the Church had obtained nothing at all regarding
the issues for which the archbishop died. In response, Richard, bishop of
Winchester, put the blame on Richard of Dover, arguing that, ‘if his successor
had a tenth of [Thomas’s] goodness and probity the Church would have lost
nothing on these points. But what he acquired through his extraordinary

38 Vita S. Remigii, 1–2; Proverbs 28:1; MTB, ii, 338; C. Ó Clabaigh and M. Staunton, ‘Thomas
Becket and Ireland’, in ‘Listen, O Isles, Unto Me’: Studies in Medieval Word and Image in Honour
of Jennifer O’Reilly, ed. E. Mullins and D. Scully (Cork, 2011), 87–101, 340–43. See also, in this
section of the Vita S. Remigii, the miracle involving a cross which foretold Thomas’s martyrdom
and the actions of the bishops of Exeter and Worcester on behalf of the archbishop during his
exile, 66–7.
39 Vita S. Remigii, 68–9.
40 Vita S. Remigii, 69.

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energy, the other lost entirely through his cowardice.’41 Gerald was more
favourably inclined to Richard’s successor, Baldwin, but Hubert Walter, the
third archbishop to succeed Thomas, faces some fierce criticism. Hubert is
accused of comparing himself to the martyr, while going against his example
in retaining secular and ecclesiastical offices and accepting royal control of
episcopal elections. Most seriously, Gerald claims that on the archbishop’s
orders the abbot of St Augustine was violently dragged from the altar at
Faversham, where he was celebrating Mass, which Gerald calls the most
atrocious crime since the murder of St Thomas.42
The struggle over Thomas’s legacy was fought with most intensity by the
custodians of his shrine and is recorded in two substantial literary sources:
the Canterbury letter collection and the Chronicle of Gervase of Canterbury.
Gervase was a monk of Canterbury who made his profession to Thomas in the
first year of his archiepiscopacy. He tells us that his brother Thomas experi-
enced a vision of the saint after his death in which he declared that his actions
in life had been for his monks and clerks.43 Gervase says that he has passed over
many things about Thomas because they are described more fully elsewhere,
but also asks the reader not to be angry because he has exceeded the rule of
a chronicle a little in giving such attention to the saint: ‘for what memory is
more worthy of relation than that of a man of flesh and blood like us, yesterday
hateful to the world, today glorious to the world?’44 It has been noted that
while Gervase’s account of Thomas’s life and death is substantial, it reveals
little intimate or original knowledge about the subject, being largely derivative
of the earlier Lives by William of Canterbury, Edward Grim and Herbert of

41 Vita S. Remigii, 69–70. See also De Invectionibus, ed. W. S. Davies, Y Cymmrodor, 30 (1920),
197–8.
42 De Invectionibus, 90–91, 97–8, 116–17. For the Faversham dispute, see E. Fernie, ‘The
Litigation of an Exempt House, St Augustine’s Canterbury, 1182–1237’, Bulletin of the John
Rylands Library, 39 (1957), 390–415; C. R. Cheney, Hubert Walter (London, 1967), 85–7. Gerald
later regretted the bitterness of his portrayal of Hubert: Retractiones, in Opera, i, 427.
43 Gervase, i, 231. Most scholarship has concentrated on Gervase’s Tractatus de combustione,
for example C. Davidson Cragoe, ‘Reading and Rereading Gervase of Canterbury’, Journal of
the British Archaeological Association, 154 (2001), 40–53; P. Draper, ‘William of Sens and the
Original Design of the Choir Termination of Canterbury Cathedral, 1175–9’, Journal of the
Society of Architectural Historians, 42 (1983), 238–48; P. Kidson, ‘Gervase, Becket, and William
of Sens’, Speculum, 68 (1993), 969–91; M. F. Hearn, ‘Canterbury Cathedral and the Cult of
Becket’, Art Bulletin, 76 (1994), 19–54. M.-P. Gelin, ‘Gervase of Canterbury, Christ Church
and the Archbishops’, JEH, 60 (2009), 449–63, examines this work in the light of the Vitae
Archiepiscoporum. For a detailed discussion of Gervase’s Chronicle, see R. W. Huling, ‘English
Historical Writing under the Early Angevin Kings, 1170–1210’ (unpublished Ph.D. thesis,
State University of New York, Binghamton, 1981), 187–45. On the Canterbury perspective in
the Lives, see M. Staunton, ‘The Lives of Thomas Becket and the Church of Canterbury’, in
Cathedrals, Communities and Conflict in the Anglo-Norman World, ed. P. Dalton, C. Insley and L. J.
Wilkinson (Woodbridge, 2011), 169–86.
44 Gervase, i, 230–31.

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Bosham.45 It does, however, show traits characteristic of his chronicle as a

whole. Most obvious is the distinct perspective of the monastic community of
Christ Church, Canterbury, seen in the praise of his own prior’s actions in the
dispute and criticism of the actions of St Augustine’s, Canterbury.46 He plays
up the significance of the Becket dispute in other affairs: King Henry attacked
the Welsh in 1165 to escape possible censure by the pope or archbishop; in
1167 war resumed between King Henry and King Louis of France for various
reasons, but especially because of Thomas.47 In recounting the Becket dispute
he even shows his fondness for significant astronomical phenomena. After
describing the reconciliation between the king and archbishop in 1170, he
reports that two planets seemed conjoined as if they were the same star, then
separated.48 There are inaccuracies, too: he claims that at Vézelay in 1166
the archbishop threatened the king of England, and he confuses the Assize
of Clarendon with the Constitutions of Clarendon, so central to the Becket
dispute.49
Gervase also deals with the political fallout of the murder. He claims King
Henry’s envoys had to bribe the cardinals to gain access to the pope, and
suggests that the main reason for the king’s visit to Ireland in 1171–72 was
his fear that the cardinals would impose an interdict.50 Important to him, of
course, is the reopening of the church of Canterbury in 1171 and the prolifer-
ation of miracles at Thomas’s tomb.51 He describes Henry’s return from Ireland
to face the cardinal envoys in 1172 and the settlement he made with them
at Avranches.52 He also devotes some attention to the protracted process to
choose a new archbishop, noting that the king blocked the monks’ nomination
of their prior, Odo, thinking that he would be an imitator of Thomas.53 In
common with other contemporary writers, Gervase attributes the victory of
Henry II over the rebellion of 1173–74 to the intervention of St Thomas,
and he records the visit of the two Henrys to Canterbury in 1175, where they
gave thanks to God and the martyr for the peace restored.54 Gervase records
subsequent visits by Henry II to the shrine of St Thomas, in 1177, 1183 and
1187.55 Also noted are pilgrimages by Count Philip of Flanders and William
de Mandeville in 1177, on their way to the Holy Land, the celebrated visit of

45 Gervase, i, xii–xiii.
46 Gervase, i, 197, 224.
47 Gervase, i, 197, 203.
48 Gervase, i, 220–21.
49 Gervase, i, 200, 257–8.
50 Gervase, i, 232–6.
51 Gervase, i, 236–7.
52 Gervase, i, 237, 238–9.
53 Gervase, i, 239–40.
54 Gervase, i, 248–51, 256.
55 Gervase, i, 261–2, 309, 348.

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King Louis of France in 1179, when he offered an annuity of wine to Christ

Church, the visit of Joscius, bishop of Acre, in the same year, and of Henry the
Lion in 1183.56
Becket’s legacy hangs heavily over Gervase’s treatment of later issues.
Sometimes Thomas provides a yardstick with which to measure the actions
of later churchmen. Gervase claims that Cardinal-Legate Hugucio was bribed
by King Henry to accept the submission of clerks to secular justice regarding
the forest, disregarding the example of Thomas who suffered exile, loss of
property and even his own head for the protection of clerks.57 The record
of participants in the Becket dispute, too, is recalled in later affairs. Gervase
reports that at the boisterous Council of Westminster in 1176, the cry went up
against Roger, archbishop of York, ‘Be gone, traitor to St Thomas, your hands
are still stained with blood’, and in recording his death Gervase calls Roger a
special enemy of St Thomas.58 Likewise, in his obituary for Gilbert Foliot, the
bishop of London is called St Thomas’s persecutor.59 In contrast, the clergy
of Chartres are said to have chosen John of Salisbury as their bishop in 1176
for love of St Thomas, and Gervase recalls John’s service to the archbishop
even in exile.60 In recording the death of Henry the Young King in 1183,
Gervase makes the point that he died in the same month and the same week
as he was crowned king by Archbishop Roger of York, thirteen years before,
leaving a warning to others against usurping the crown contrary to the rights
of Canterbury.61
Most of Gervase’s chronicle is taken up with the dispute over the plans
by Thomas’s successors, Baldwin and Hubert Walter, to establish a college of
canons, first at Hackington and later at Lambeth.62 Baldwin claimed that his
plan to build a collegiate church of canons outside the city, to be dedicated
to St Stephen and St Thomas, was originally projected by his predecessors,
Anselm and Thomas. The monks, on the other hand, saw it as an attempt to
displace Christ Church as the mother church of England, and to circumvent

56 Gervase, i, 262, 293, 311. On Henry the Lion, his wife Matilda and the cult of St Thomas,
see Colette Bowie’s essay in this volume (chapter 6).
57 Gervase, i, 257.
58 Gervase, i, 258, 297.
59 Gervase, i, 360.
60 Gervase, i, 259–60.
61 Gervase, i, 305.
62 For the dispute, see the introduction to Epistolae Cantuarienses, the Letters of the Prior and
Convent of Christ Church, Canterbury, ed. W. Stubbs, Chronicles and Memorials of the Reign of
Richard I, RS 38, 2 vols (London, 1864–65), ii, xxxiii–cxx; repr. A. Hassall (ed.), Historical
Introductions to the Rolls Series: By William Stubbs, D.D., formerly Bishop of Oxford and Regius
Professor of Modern History in the University (New York, 1902), 380–438. For a shorter account
with more emphasis on the literary context, see the introduction to Nigellus Wireker. The Passion
of St Lawrence: Epigrams and Marginal Poems, ed. and trans. J. M. Ziolkowski (Leiden, 1994),
16–42. For further discussion and references, see Paul Webster’s essay in this volume (chapter 8).

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their rights to election and appeal.63 In common with other advocates of

the convent’s cause, Gervase saw the present struggles as a continuation of
the struggle, persecution and ultimate triumph of St Thomas.64 Late in the
chronicle he has a monk recalling how the whole Hackington plan had
emerged from King Henry’s discovery that his bishops were planning to take
back lost liberties and his fear that they would rise up against him following
Thomas’s example.65 In addition to describing the debates at Rome regarding
Thomas’s intentions or otherwise for a collegiate church,66 Gervase reports
how an accomplice of Thomas’s murderers, William Fitz Nigel, helped in
Baldwin’s persecution of the monks by breaking through the wall of their court
and occupying the offices.67 He also describes how a nephew of St Thomas was
imprisoned during the dispute and how enemies of Christ Church tried to burn
down the prison in which he was held.68
The association of the Hackington plan with the continuing persecution
of St Thomas, and the role of the martyr in the convent’s redemption, is
presented most vividly in the vision of the Canterbury monk, Andrew John.
On the night before St Catherine’s feast, 25 November 1186, there appeared
to Andrew a vision of St Thomas, who identified himself as his archbishop
who had suffered for and in that church. The saint led him from the dormitory
into a tower beside the choir and showed him a great and terrible wheel
spewing flames. This, said the saint, was the Catherine wheel which Baldwin
had built and which threatened ruin to the monks. Next, Baldwin appeared
and announced that he had built this wheel so as to destroy the church but he
needed the assistance of the monks to push it. However, the saint presented
Andrew with a magnificent sword inscribed with the words ‘the sword of
St Peter’, signifying appeal to the pope, and told him that his prior might use
it to destroy the wheel. This is followed by a shorter vision in which a monk
saw Baldwin trying to transfer the martyr’s body from his place of rest. The
archbishop admitted that he was trying to cut off Thomas’s head, but in trying
to do so his mitre fell off.69
For Gervase, the persecutions of the monks by Baldwin and Hubert Walter
were all of a piece with the earlier persecutions of Thomas and the church of
Canterbury, and their struggles the same. His work is evidently meant to be
a continuation of the records of those struggles. This is made most clear in

63 The arguments of both sides are made in Epistolae Cantuarienses, 7, 8, 17–18, 18–19, 20–21,
135, 421, 423, 532–3, 556.
64 The convent’s current struggles are linked to Thomas’s struggle in Epistolae Cantuarienses, 29,
30, 45, 55, 86, 87, 163, 219–20, 260, 358, 418, 441, 450, 490, 492, 501–502, 505.
65 Gervase, i, 538–43.
66 Gervase, i, 368–9.
67 Gervase, i, 399.
68 Gervase, i, 425. See also Epistolae Cantuarienses, 201, 209, 211.
69 Gervase, i, 338–42. See also Epistolae Cantuarienses, 56, 278–9.

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a feature of Gervase’s chronicle which, though central to it, does not seem
to have received much notice. That is, that Gervase’s approach, in providing
a detailed narrative of a struggle for the rights of Christ Church, played out
largely in a series of public debates, is part of a long-standing Canterbury
tradition, going back at least to Eadmer’s Historia Novorum and reaching its
fullest expression in the Lives of St Thomas. More than just sharing the form
of public debates, Gervase’s work often shows linguistic echoes of the Becket
Lives. Take, for example, the visit of King Henry, Archbishop Baldwin and
his suffragans to Canterbury on Ash Wednesday, 11 February 1187, with the
intention of filling vacant sees. ‘The whole battle was turned against the
monks of Canterbury’, writes Gervase, but, unlike the sons of Ephraim, the
monks were not turned in the day of the battle, but rather made constant.
In the chapter house, the archbishop and his advisors stood on one side, the
sub-prior with his chosen monks sat opposite them with lowered countenances
but remained intrepid, as sheep for the slaughter. They were made a spectacle
to God, angels and men, but they ended the day with victory. The language
here echoes accounts of Becket’s steadfastness in the face of persecution, and
in particular his stance at the Council of Northampton in 1164.70 This may
also be seen in Gervase’s description of the monks’ appearance before King
Richard and the bishops at Westminster on 8–9 November 1189. While
Gervase’s account tallies in most details with a letter written shortly after to
the sub-prior of Christ Church, his is much closer in character to the writings
of his Canterbury predecessors. This is particularly pronounced in the account
of the second and final day, when the monks are presented as sheep prepared
for sacrifice, with insults hurled at them and terrors threatened by mimed
actions. Just as Thomas did at Northampton, they left the council confused
and frightened, but nonetheless rejoicing in their hearts that they merited to
bear insults and terrors for the liberty of the Church.71
Gervase’s language shows the influence, in particular, of Thomas’s clerk
and biographer, Herbert of Bosham. Herbert was still writing his Life of
St Thomas as the dispute over Hackington was raging and he plays a walk-on
part in Gervase’s account of December 1187. Herbert, ‘master and clerk of
the glorious archbishop and martyr Thomas, came to Canterbury as if out of
special love’ and spoke to the convent ‘with the elegant eloquence of which
he was full’. The monks’ cause had suffered a series of setbacks and Herbert,
so outspoken in the past about Canterbury’s rights, now found it necessary to
advise the monks to throw themselves on the mercy of Archbishop Baldwin.
But the sub-prior cut him off, saying that even if they faced prison, mutilation

70 Gervase, i, 353–4. Sons of Ephraim: MTB, iii, 320; Psalm 78:9; spectacle for men and for
angels: MTB, iii, 310; 1 Corinthians 4:9; sheep to the slaughter: MTB, iii, 363; Jeremiah 12:3.
See also Staunton, Becket and his Biographers, 129–52.
71 Gervase, i, 463–72, esp. 471–2; Epistolae Cantuarienses, 315–19.

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or death, they would do nothing to damage their cause or the battle of the
Church, for they were bound to maintain the liberty of the Church which has
been handed down by predecessors. Herbert, marvelling at the constancy of
the convent, said, ‘Then, if this is so, you must either give in disgracefully, or
stand manfully’. Here, Gervase echoes the words that Herbert, as he records
in his Life, spoke to St Thomas many years earlier, urging him to return from
exile to Canterbury and certain death.72
A final example also illustrates the influence on later chronicles of the image
of Thomas presented in the Lives. On 14 September 1191, Geoffrey, archbishop
of York, landed at Dover and made his way to the priory of St Martin’s
nearby. Two days later he was arrested by agents of the chancellor, William
Longchamp, concerned at the entrance into England of King Richard’s half-
brother so soon after the king’s departure for crusade. The violence of his arrest
in a church, and his subsequent imprisonment, made for obvious comparisons
with Thomas Becket. This is an image that Geoffrey himself seems to have
helped to engineer, for immediately after his release he paid a visit to Thomas’s
shrine at Canterbury. It is also fostered in Gerald of Wales’s account of the
arrest in his De Vita Galfridi, where he notes that Thomas had fled into exile
in a small boat not far away on the same shore, and now the archbishop of
York seeking his church was vexed by a similar tyranny to that which Thomas
had evaded. He presents Geoffrey being arrested as he stood at the altar in
white cloak and stole, holding a processional cross, an image that owes much
to literary and visual elaborations of Thomas’s murder.73
Richard of Devizes too, describes the arrest in some detail, but apparently
to a very different purpose. Some soldiers, writes Richard, armed under their
cloaks and girded with swords, entered the monastery to arrest the archbishop,
upon which the archbishop took the cross in his hands. Stretching out his
hands to his followers he said to the soldiers, ‘I am the archbishop. If you are
seeking me, let these men go’. The soldiers said:

Whether you are the archbishop or not is nothing to us. One thing we do know:
that you are Geoffrey, the son of King Henry whom he begot in some bed or
other, who, in the presence of the king, whose brother you make yourself out
to be, abjured England for three years. If you have not come into the realm as
a traitor to the realm, if you have brought letters releasing you from your oath,
either speak or take the consequences.

72 Gervase, i, 394: ‘aut cedendum est turpiter, aut standum viriliter’. See also MTB, iii, 473: ‘aut
regrediendum turpiter, aut procedendum audacter et agendum viriliter’.
73 De Vita Galfridi, in Giraldi Cambrensis Opera, iv, 388, 391, 396. For an analysis of contem-
porary comment on Geoffrey’s arrest and imprisonment, see D. Balfour, ‘William Longchamp:
Upward Mobility and Character Assassination in Twelfth-Century England’ (unpublished Ph.D.
thesis, University of Connecticut, 1996), 349–65.

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The archbishop replied, ‘I am not a traitor, nor will I show you any letters.’
At this they dragged him violently from the church, bumping his head on the
muddy ground, he unwilling and resisting but not fighting back. As soon as
he was past the threshold the archbishop excommunicated those who had
laid hands on him, who were present and hearing him and still holding him.74
Richard of Devizes’s tone is frequently ironic, and though it is hard to say
for certain, the most convincing reading of this passage is as a satire on the
attempts by Geoffrey’s supporters to turn him into a new martyr. The language
used is that of virtually all accounts of Thomas’s arrest in the cathedral, but
the contrast between the two situations makes it bathetic rather than apposite.
Where Thomas’s words, ‘I am the archbishop’ and ‘let these men go’, are
presented as evidence of his confession of the faith and similarity to Christ,75
Geoffrey’s similar words bring a reminder of his illegitimate birth. Where
Thomas suffered martyrdom, Geoffrey suffers a bumped head.
What does it say about Thomas’s legacy that within little over twenty
years the scene of his murder is even being recalled for satirical purposes?
The frequency of references to Thomas in the historical writing of the late
twelfth and early thirteenth centuries suggests, most obviously, that his death
was regarded as one of the most significant events of the age, not only in
England but well beyond. While some writers acknowledged that a great deal
had already been said and written about Thomas, most were keen to introduce
additional information and comment, particularly where his story and legacy
related to their own concerns. It was possible to use Thomas in support of
and against kings and ecclesiastics, and his legacy had a particular bearing
on the fortunes of Canterbury. The diffusion of Thomas’s image, not only in
writing but also in art and devotional culture, meant that his legacy was ever
present, especially for those involved in Church controversies. But at the same
time, this might have meant a certain blunting of his impact as an example.
Notable is how all three of Thomas’s successors are mocked for attempting
to associate themselves with their illustrious predecessor, as are Geoffrey of
York, Hugh of Lincoln’s household and even King Henry II. At the end of
the 1180s, Herbert of Bosham complained that Thomas was being venerated

74 The Chronicle of Richard of Devizes of the Time of King Richard I, ed. and trans. J. T. Appleby,
NMT (Oxford, 1963), 40–42. Compare MTB, iii, 141. This accords with Richard’s generally
favourable treatment of Longchamp in the chronicle, and in the Winchester Annals, often
attributed to Richard of Devizes: Annales de Wintonia, in Annales Monastici, ed. H. R. Luard, RS
36, 5 vols (London, 1864–69), ii, 64. Another outrage against an ecclesiastic around the same
time was compared to Thomas’s murder. When Bishop Albert of Louvain was murdered by agents
of Emperor Henry VI in 1192, his hagiographer claimed that the crime was greater than that
against St Thomas: Vita Alberti episcopi Leodiensis, ed. I. Heller, MGH SS, xxv (Berlin, 1880),
167–8. See R. H. Schmandt, ‘The Election and Assassination of Albert of Louvain, Bishop of
Liege 1191–2’, Speculum, 42 (1967), 653–60 at 659.
75 See MTB, ii, 12–13, 319–20, 435–6; iv, 131; John 18:6–9.

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as a miracle-worker but his actions were not being followed.76 Perhaps the
very popularity of St Thomas’s appeal made it difficult for those who came
after him to take up his banner. When Thomas belonged to everyone, no one
could claim exclusive right to his legacy. A final point should be made about
the relationship between the chronicles and the earlier literary manifesta-
tions of the cult of St Thomas. The letters and Lives, and even the miracles,
of St Thomas are a striking example of contemporary history being recorded
and interpreted. Apart from the case of Gervase, there is no evidence that
the chroniclers of the next generation were directly inspired to write by the
literary productions of St Thomas’s cult. However, they can be seen as part
of a larger trend towards the recording and interpretation of the recent past
that dominated historical writing in the fifty years after the murder of Thomas
Becket.

76 MTB, iii, 156.

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 6.

Matilda, Duchess of Saxony (1168–89)

and the Cult of Thomas Becket:
A Legacy of Appropriation

COLETTE BOWIE

In 1168, Matilda, the eldest daughter of Henry II of England, married Henry

the Lion of Saxony and Bavaria, and it is clear that Saxony in particular
became a centre of Becket devotion noticeably quickly after Becket’s death
and canonisation. Evidence of autonomous female patronage is, however,
frequently difficult to establish, with various acts, such as the foundation or
endowment of religious houses, often being attributed in sources either solely
to their husbands or as joint acts of patronage. This is particularly true for
Matilda, duchess of Saxony, for whom no charters issued in her own name
survive. She appears on just two of her husband’s extant charters, both of which
were issued in the early years of their marriage, and both of which concern
religious donations.1 On the first of these, issued at Hertzburg in November
1170, Matilda gives her consent to a donation to the monastery of Northeim.2
She is only referred to on the second charter, recording the gift Henry made in
1172 of three candles which were to burn in perpetuity in the Holy Sepulchre
at Jerusalem for, in Henry’s words, ‘the sake of the forgiveness of all my sins
and those of my famed wife Matilda, daughter of the glorious king of England,
and those of my heirs given to me by God as a token of His mercy, and also for
[the sake] of my whole lineage’.3
The only other extant charter on which Matilda appears is that given by
her son, Henry of Brunswick, in 1223, some thirty-four years after Matilda’s
death. In this charter, Henry describes his ‘dearest mother of most happy
memory’ as the donor of the altar dedicated to the Virgin which stands in the

1 Henry the Lion’s collected charters have been edited by K. Jordan, Die Urkunden Heinrichs
des Löwen, Herzogs von Sachsen und Bayern, Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Diplomata, 5,
Laienfürsten- und Dynastenurkunden der Kaiserzeit, 1 (Leipzig, 1941–49, repr. 1957–60).
2 Jordan, Urkunden Heinrichs des Löwen, 123–4 (no. 83).
3 ‘… pro remissione omnium peccatorum meorum et inclite uxoris mee ducisse Matildis,
magnifici Anglorum regis filie’: Jordan, Urkunden Heinrichs des Löwen, 143–5 (no. 94).

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 COLETTE BOWIE

church of St Blaise at Brunswick.4 As there is no record of Matilda as either the

founder or the sole patron of any religious establishments during her lifetime –
although it is almost certain that, together with her husband, she was a patron
of the church at Brunswick and co-donor of the famous Gmunden Gospels
– the mention of Matilda in her son’s charter as the sole donor of the altar at
Brunswick is of great significance for evidence of Matilda’s patronage.
Further light has been thrown on the problem of ascertaining the extent
of Matilda’s patronage by examining the early dissemination of the cult
of Thomas Becket. This article will attempt to define what role Henry II’s
daughter Matilda played in the promulgation of popular saints’ cults, and what
prompted her to do so.5 Why would Matilda promote devotion to the man who
had caused her father such trouble, whose quarrel with Henry had damaged
his international reputation and whose death forced Henry to perform public
acts of penance? Can her role in the promotion of Becket’s cult be viewed as
an act of filial disloyalty? Or is there another, more political reason, for this
act of patronage? In order to understand the significance of Matilda’s partici-
pation in the dissemination of Becket’s cult, it will be expedient to consider
the importance of dynastic saints’ cults, as well as to examine Henry’s own
reaction to Becket’s death and the role which he himself played in fostering
the cult of the martyred archbishop.

Henry II and Becket: From Denial to Appropriation

Henry II was at Argentan when news of Becket’s murder reached him on New
Year’s Day 1171. Chronicle accounts and even Becket’s biographers stress
Henry’s initial grief, noting that he fasted and shut himself in his rooms.6
Henry’s letter to Pope Alexander III, Ob reverentiam, dated March 1171,

4 Ibid., 178–9 (no. 121), although the Annals of St Blaise record the donation of the altar as a
joint enterprise: Liber Memoriam Sancti Blasii, MGH SS, xxiv (Hannover, 1879), 824.
5 The participation of Henry’s second daughter, Leonor of Castile, in Becket’s cult is discussed
in José Manuel Cerda’s essay in this volume (chapter 7). For an overview of all three daughters’
participation, as well as that of Henry’s daughter-in-law, Margaret of France, see C. Bowie, The
Daughters of Henry II and Eleanor of Aquitaine (Turnhout, 2014), 141–72; and see also Anne J.
Duggan’s essay in this volume (chapter 2).
6 According to Herbert of Bosham, after Becket’s death Henry II ‘retired for forty days of
penance and fasting, refusing to leave his apartments at Argentan’: N. Vincent, ‘The Pilgrimages
of the Angevin Kings of England, 1154–1272’, in Pilgrimage: The English Experience from Becket
to Bunyan, ed. C. Morris and P. Roberts (Cambridge, 2002) 12–45, at 23; MTB, iii, 542. The
author of the Lansdowne Anonymous blamed Henry for the incitement, although not the authori-
sation, of Becket’s murder, and relates that Henry grieved and fasted because Thomas had been
his friend, although later ‘he hardly sorrowed, or not at all, or else he hid his sorrow completely’:
MTB, iv, 159; trans. in Lives of Thomas Becket, 212.

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 MATILDA, DUCHESS OF SAXONY, AND THE CULT OF BECKET

however, presents a very different picture. The letter, which in effect blames
Becket for his own death, contains no such suggestions of sorrow, shock or
remorse and was clearly an exercise in damage limitation.7 Attempts to appeal
to the papal curia, however, proved unsuccessful and after Easter 1171, Henry’s
continental lands were placed under interdict. Moreover, as the author of the
Lansdowne Anonymous relates, because of Becket’s murder, the English were
everywhere vilified, with the nation as a whole being held accountable for
the actions of a few and letters from such prominent men as King Louis VII
of France blaming Henry for not punishing the men who had committed the
crime.8 Nevertheless, Henry was at this point still maintaining that he had
neither approved nor had foreknowledge of the murder, and was attempting
to suppress the nascent cult by forbidding pilgrimages to Becket’s tomb. By
1172, however, Henry was beginning to take a very different stance, as stories
of miracles and suggestions of Becket’s sanctity grew in scope. Henry therefore
began to make arrangements for a public reconciliation with the pope.9
On 21 May 1172, Henry engineered a public display of repentance and
reconciliation at Avranches.10 His insistence on the public nature of this
reconciliation suggests that he was aware of the general view, prevalent in
much of western Europe, of his culpability in Becket’s murder. The absolute
eradication of all doubt that Henry was guiltless was paramount for the resto-
ration of his international standing. Royal appropriation of the burgeoning
cult was also essential. Thus, two years after Avranches, Henry undertook a
further act of public display by making a penitential pilgrimage, on 12 July
1174, to Becket’s tomb at Canterbury.11
After this first, penitential, visit to Becket’s tomb in 1174, Henry made
at least nine further visits – every year when he was in England – as well as

7 Anne J. Duggan calls the letter ‘a masterpiece of distortion and suppression’, noting that
Henry was ‘more concerned for his reputation than for his conscience’: Duggan, ‘Diplomacy’,
267–8. See also Duggan’s essay in this volume (chapter 2).
8 See MTB, iv, 159. The author suggests that Henry may have been lenient with Becket’s
murderers because ‘he understood that these attendants had done what they had done out of love
or fear of him’: MTB, iv, 159; trans. in Lives of Thomas Becket, 212.
9 Several preliminary negotiations preceded Henry’s public reconciliation at Avranches:
Gorron on 16 May 1172, Savigny on 17 May, and Avranches on 19 May. The ceremony at
Avranches on 21 May was followed by a larger one at Caen on 30 May, although the recon-
ciliation was not formally confirmed by the pope until 2 September. See Duggan, ‘Diplomacy’,
274–7.
10 For accounts of the proceedings at Avranches, see MTB, iv, 173–4; MTB, vii, 516 (no. 772),
518 (no. 773), and 520 (no. 774); Howden, Gesta, i, 32; Howden, Chronica, 35–7; Diceto, i, 352.
For the official record of the proceedings, see A. J. Duggan, ‘Ne in dubium: The Official Record of
Henry II’s Reconciliation at Avranches, 21 May 1172’, EHR, 115 (2000), 643–58; repr. with the
same pagination in Duggan, Friends, Networks, no. VIII.
11 William of Canterbury’s Miracula (1174) has the fullest account and is the earliest source:
MTB, i, 173–546. See also the account given by Edward Grim: MTB, ii, 445–7.

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 COLETTE BOWIE

accompanying Louis VII in 1179 when the French king came to pray for the
health of his young son, Philip.12 This visit demonstrates that by the late
1170s, Henry’s attitude to Becket’s cult had changed drastically from (or was a
different form of) his initial policy of damage limitation, which was apparent
in his reaction to the news of the murder and his carefully publicised actions at
Avranches in May 1172. It also suggests that Becket’s cult had the potential to
be a common spiritual uniting factor, a sort of extended family tradition, over
and above the political differences which existed between Henry and Louis.13
Henry’s pilgrimage to Becket’s tomb was a voluntary act of penance, as it
had not been mandated by the pope. It is possible that Henry’s penance was
a public and ‘conscious acknowledgement of guilt’, as Anne J. Duggan has
suggested, although it is more likely that Henry was driven by political consid-
erations.14 Henry’s standing at this time, both on a national and international
level, was greatly reduced due to the conflict with, and subsequent murder of,
Thomas Becket. Moreover, Henry was facing the impending invasion of his
eldest son, Henry the Young King, and his allies, William I (‘the Lion’), king
of Scots and Count Philip of Flanders. Henry’s visit to Becket’s tomb was the
first act he undertook on coming to England to deal with this threat and was
undoubtedly made in order to align the new martyr-saint with the monarchy,
and thus prevent the rebels from appropriating the cult for themselves.
Henry had accidentally created a saint of his former political opponent. To
prevent this cult becoming a focus for rebellion and a rallying point for his
enemies, Henry had needed to act quickly in order to neutralise the potential
threat that Becket’s cult represented. As examples of later medieval political
saints demonstrate, in the vast majority of cases, without royal endorsement
such cults ultimately tended to vanish within a few short years.15 Sometimes,
as with the case of Simon de Montfort (d. 1265), such cults disappeared as

12 Duggan, ‘Diplomacy’, 283. See also R. W. Eyton, Court, Household, and Itinerary of King
Henry II (Dorchester, 1878), 190, 213–14, 223, 228, 241, 256, 257, 259, 268, 276. Richard I
prayed at Becket’s shrine before departing on crusade; John visited the shrine at least three times
and was re-crowned at Canterbury in 1202 before leaving for Normandy; Duggan, ‘Cult’, 31, 31n.
See also the essays by Anne J. Duggan (chapter 2) and by Paul Webster (chapter 8) in this volume.
13 Continued royal devotion to St Thomas must, however, be considered in the context of
the plurality of saints venerated in England – and elsewhere – at this time. Richard’s donations,
on his return from crusade, to the shrine of St Edmund, rather than to that of Becket, perhaps
reveal where his true interests in the patronage of saints’ cults lay. For Richard’s visit to Bury
St Edmunds in 1194, see Itinerarium Peregrinorum et Gesta Regis Ricardi, ed. W. Stubbs, Chronicles
and Memorials of the Reign of Richard I, RS 38, 2 vols (London, 1864–65), i, 446; Radulphi de
Coggeshall Chronicon Anglicanum, ed. J. Stevenson, RS 66 (London, 1875), 63.
14 Duggan, ‘Diplomacy’, 266.
15 See S. Walker, ‘Political Saints in Later Medieval England’, in The McFarlane Legacy: Studies
in Late Medieval Politics and Society, ed. R. H. Britnell and A. J. Pollard (Stroud, 1995), 77–106,
at 81–2. See also M. Evans, The Death of Kings: Royal Deaths in Medieval England (London, 2003),
175–205.

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 MATILDA, DUCHESS OF SAXONY, AND THE CULT OF BECKET

a result of direct royal suppression.16 Conversely, the cult of Thomas, earl of

Lancaster (d. 1322), and that of Richard Scrope (d. 1405), endured precisely
because of royal support.17
The intercessory power of saints and their perceived ability to intervene
in daily life was one of their crucial attributes. St Thomas certainly seemed
to have intervened to save Henry’s kingdom in 1174 – or at least, that was
the way Henry wished to present things, and his contemporaries seem agreed
on this. As most chroniclers observed, Henry’s fortunes improved dramatically
after his penitential visit to the new saint’s tomb, seen most notably in the
capture of William the Lion of Scotland at Alnwick, which occurred at the
very moment that Henry was praying at Becket’s shrine.18 Jordan Fantosme’s
verse, written for Henry in 1174–75 to celebrate his victories over his enemies,
not only has Henry commend the protection of his realm to the saint, but also
shows him appearing to admit a degree of responsibility for Becket’s death:19

‘Seint Thomas’, dist li reis, ‘guardez-mei mun reaume.

A vus me rent cupable dunt li autre unt le blasme’.
(‘St Thomas’, said the king, ‘guard my realm for me.
To you I declare myself guilty of that for which others have the blame’.)

Henry later thanks God, St Thomas and all the saints for his victory over the
Scots king:20

16 For de Montfort’s cult, see C. Valente, The Theory and Practice of Revolt in Medieval England
(Aldershot, 2003), 68–105; eadem, ‘Simon de Montfort, Earl of Leicester, and the Utility of
Sanctity in Thirteenth-Century England’, Journal of Medieval History, 21 (1995), 27–49. For
comparisons between de Montfort and Becket in the early fourteenth century, see ‘The Lament
of Simon de Montfort’, ed. T. Wright, The Political Songs of England, From the Reign of John to that
of Edward II, Camden Society, Old Series, 6 (London, 1839), 125–7, at 125–6.
17 For Scrope’s cult, see Walker, ‘Political Saints’, 84–5; Valente, Theory and Practice of Revolt,
216–21. For the cult of Thomas of Lancaster, see Walker, ‘Political Saints’, 83–4; Evans, Death
of Kings, 188–92; Valente, Theory and Practice of Revolt, 30, 47, 123–53; and for comparisons of
Lancaster with Becket, see ‘The Office of St Thomas of Lancaster’, ed. Wright, Political Songs,
268–72, at 268. The efforts to sanctify the last Lancastrian monarch, Henry VI, whose cult
eventually superseded that of Becket as the most popular English saint, provides a further example
both of attempts to establish a dynastic saint, and of the longevity and success of cults which
enjoyed royal sponsorship. For Henry’s cult and its popularity, see Evans, Death of Kings, 199–205.
18 See Edward Grim, who relates that ‘the humbled king, through the intervention of the
venerable martyr, divine favour now restored … subdued the enemy’, MTB, ii, 447–8; trans. in
Lives of Thomas Becket, 219. See also Howden, Gesta, i, 72.
19 Chronicles, ed. Howlett, 337–8 (lines 1605–6); Jordan Fantosme, ed. Johnston, 120 (lines
1599–1600). Also noted in the essays by Anne J. Duggan (chapter 2), Michael Staunton (chapter
5), and José Manuel Cerda (chapter 7) in this volume.
20 Chronicles, ed. Howlett, 371 (lines 2017–18); Jordan Fantosme, ed. Johnston, 148 (lines
2011–12). Also noted in the essay by Anne J. Duggan (chapter 2) in this volume. The connection

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 COLETTE BOWIE

‘Dunc,’ dit li reis Henris: ‘Deus en seit mercié,

E saint Thomas martyr, e tuz les sainz Dé!’
(‘Then,’ says King Henry, ‘God be thanked for it,
And St Thomas the Martyr and all God’s saints.’)

These lines reveal that by 1174–75, Henry was ready to admit some culpa-
bility in Becket’s death – or at any rate, Fantosme was able to present such
sentiments to the king in verse. Moreover, they reveal that by this date, Henry
had successfully managed to neutralise the political threat that Becket’s cult
potentially presented. Instead, Becket was promoted as the guardian of Henry’s
realm and, as such, as the personal protector of the Angevin dynasty, bestowing
honour on Henry and his family by way of association with the Canterbury
martyr.
The capture of the Scots king, the defeat or submission of the rest of the
rebels and the subsequent end of the Great Rebellion were Henry’s rewards
for his penance; and also provided public evidence that St Thomas, once the
thorn in Henry’s side, was now very much a firm supporter of the Angevin
cause. Henry, it seemed, had managed not only to appease the martyr-saint,
but had successfully won him over to his side. Nicholas Vincent has noted
that it was only after the spring of 1172 – that is, after Avranches – that
Henry began to use the title of king Dei gratia, ‘reflecting the King’s desire to
broadcast a new image of himself in the aftermath of the Becket conflict’.21
This new image, of the king ruling by the grace of God and with the support of
a powerful saint, was promulgated not merely by Henry himself, but also by his
daughter, Matilda, in Saxony.

Matilda and the Cult of Becket in Saxony

When discussing the dissemination of his cult, the many monographs of
Becket’s life and career focus largely on the various Vitae written after his
death. Whilst acknowledging that this dissemination was both widespread
and rapid, historians of Becket have largely disregarded the role of Henry’s
daughters. Yet it is clear that Becket’s cult reached Sicily, Saxony and Castile
noticeably quickly. José Manuel Cerda discusses the involvement of Henry’s
daughter, Leonor of Castile, in promoting the cult of Becket, elsewhere in this
volume.22 Here, the focus will be on Henry’s eldest daughter, Matilda, and her
role in fostering Becket’s cult in her marital lands in Saxony.

between the capture of William the Lion and Henry’s visit to Becket’s tomb is also made explicit
in the poem, and Fantosme is keen to stress that Henry’s penance was both humble and genuine.
21 Vincent, ‘Pilgrimages’, 38.
22 See below, chapter 7.

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 MATILDA, DUCHESS OF SAXONY, AND THE CULT OF BECKET

Anne J. Duggan has seen some paradox in the fact that any of Henry’s
daughters chose to promote the cult of his old adversary.23 But was such
patronage an act of filial disobedience, or even betrayal? Or was it rather an
act of filial devotion, motivated by political considerations? In promoting the
cult of Becket in Saxony, was Matilda trying to atone for the sins of her father,
or was she, like Henry II, following her own political agenda? In fostering
devotion to St Thomas in terms of a dynastic cult, was she also promoting the
prestige of her natal family, and appropriating the cult for, rather than against,
the Angevins?
Matilda’s patronage provides the earliest surviving example of Becket
veneration in Saxony. Later medieval altar-pieces depict his life in four
different cities in the north of the duchy: at St Jürgen in Wismar, at Tettens
in Oldenburg, at St Nicholas in Stralsund and at Hamburg Cathedral.24 By far
the most compelling piece of evidence for Matilda’s influence in promoting
the cult of Becket, however, is to be found in the Gmunden Gospels, otherwise
known as the Gospel Book of Henry the Lion, in which both Henry and
Matilda are prominently portrayed as patrons who receive the crown of eternal
life as a reward for their piety. The Gospels, known to have been commissioned
by Duke Henry in the 1170s, contain scenes from the Old Testament and
provide the earliest known example of St Thomas of Canterbury in the whole
of Germany. The work was produced for the ducal couple at Helmarshausen
monastery, a leading centre of German manuscript illumination, between the
mid-1170s and late 1180s.25
The Gospel Book’s dedicatory poem, along with the accompanying
miniature, the coronation image and the image of Majestas Domini which
immediately follows it, highlights the dynastic and political purposes of
the work.26 The dedication, which offers the book to Christ in the hope of
attaining eternal life and a place amongst the righteous, identifies Henry as

23 Duggan, ‘Cult’, 25–6.

24 See Borenius, Becket in Art, 58, 62, 67–9, with images at 62–3 and 69; idem, ‘The Iconography
of St Thomas of Canterbury’, Archaeologia, 79 (1929), 29–54, at 40–43, and plate XIV, figs 1–3,
plate XV, figs 1–2; idem, ‘Some Further Aspects of the Iconography of St Thomas of Canterbury’,
Archaeologia, 83 (1933), 171–86, at 178–80, and plate XLVII, figs 1–4; idem, ‘Addenda to the
Iconography of St Thomas of Canterbury’, Archaeologia, 81 (1931), 19–32, at 24–5, and plate
XXI, fig. 1.
25 K. Jordan (trans. P. S. Falla), Henry the Lion: A Biography (Oxford, 1986), 157, and 206–7 for
more on the scriptorium at Helmarshausen. Richard Gameson, however, has dated the Gospels
to c.1185–88: Gameson, ‘Early Imagery’, 52. See also O. G. Oexle, ‘Lignage et parenté, politique
et religion dans la noblesse du XIIe siècle: l’évangéliaire de Henri le Lion’, CCM, 36 (1993),
339–54. Oexle argues for the later date of 1188.
26 See Oexle, ‘Lignage et parenté’, 340, 350. The Majestas Domini image, united with the
coronation image, depicts the enthroned Christ holding the Book of Life, which contains
the names of the just, and is an allusion to Henry the Lion’s Gospel Book: Oexle, ‘Lignage et
parenté’, 353.

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 COLETTE BOWIE

the patron and highlights both his and Matilda’s noble ancestry: Matilda is of
stirps regalis, Henry is of stirps imperialis and, furthermore, is a descendant of
Charlemagne (nepos Karoli).27 Although the dedication seems to make it clear
that it was Henry the Lion who was the patron of the work, the accompanying
miniature shows both Henry and Matilda being recommended to the Virgin.
Henry presents a gilt-bound book, presumably the Gospel Book, to St Blaise;
Matilda stands beside him offering a jewelled pendant and holding the hand
of St Giles, the patron saint of the Ägidienkloster in Brunswick, suggesting
that the donation was indeed made jointly by the ducal couple.28 As has been
noted, it is not unusual to find joint acts of patronage being attributed to the
husband alone, but it is certain that the Gospel Book was presented to the
church of St Blaise by both Henry and Matilda, presumably in a symbolically
charged ceremony, where it was probably destined to be placed on the newly
constructed altar.29
Moreover, the inclusion of the newly canonised Becket in the series of
illuminations can surely be attributed to Matilda’s influence, strengthened
perhaps by her and Henry’s exile at the Angevin court in France and England.
Matilda and Henry were exiled from Germany from 1182–85, during which
time Becket’s cult was thriving. It is likely that these years spent in the Angevin
realm served to strengthen their attachment to the cult of St Thomas, and
Pipe Roll evidence shows that in 1184, Duke Henry made a visit to Becket’s
shrine at Canterbury.30
St Thomas of Canterbury appears in the illumination depicting the
coronation of Henry and Matilda at the hands of Christ. This coronation
image shows Henry kneeling, dressed in robes decorated with crosses. Behind
him stand his father, Henry the Proud; his mother Gertrude, daughter of the
emperor Lothair III; and his grandparents, Lothair and his consort Richenza.31
Opposite Henry stands Matilda, and behind her, her father Henry II; her
grandmother, the Empress Matilda; and an unnamed figure of indeterminate

27 Oexle, ‘Lignage et parenté’, 349–50; Jordan, Henry the Lion, 157–8. It seems to have been
Gisele, consort of Emperor Conrad II, who first claimed descent from Charlemagne – she is
described in sources as de stirpe Caroli Magni – and thus formed the basis of both Salian and
Staufen claims to descent from Charlemagne: Oexle, ‘Lignage et parenté’, 351.
28 Jordan, Henry the Lion, 206. See also Oexle, ‘Lignage et parenté’, 348–9. Oexle suggests a
possible English provenance for this imagery, citing the eleventh-century Liber memorialis, the
memorial book of Newminster Abbey, Winchester (c.1031–32). Henry and Matilda had spent
the winter of 1184–85 there, their son, William, being born there at this time. Oexle believes
that either Henry or one of his entourage would have seen this image at Winchester, from
whence the idea was transported to Brunswick: Oexle ‘Lignage et parenté’, 349.
29 Jordan, Henry the Lion, 157; Oexle, ‘Lignage et parenté’, 348.
30 The Great Roll of the Pipe for the Thirtieth Year of the Reign of King Henry the Second, A.D.
1183–1184, PRS 33 (London, 1912), 145. See also Gervase, i, 311.
31 K. Bertau, Deutsche Literatur im europäischen Mittelalter, 2 vols (Munich, 1972–73), i, 459,
and ii, plate 64.

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 MATILDA, DUCHESS OF SAXONY, AND THE CULT OF BECKET

sex, perhaps the Empress’ first husband Henry V. The apparent exclusion of
Matilda of Saxony’s mother, Eleanor of Aquitaine, from the Gospel illumina-
tions is striking. If the figure was meant to portray Eleanor, then surely she, like
the other female figures in the picture, would have been named. This suggested
to Elisabeth van Houts that ‘something clearly went wrong between Eleanor
… and her daughter’.32 Van Houts believes that Eleanor was either deliberately
excluded as an act of ‘damnatio memoriae’, or was ‘disguised as an insignificant
lay woman on the instructions of Matilda herself’.33
However, whilst it is plausible that Eleanor’s role in the Great Rebellion
of 1173–74 and her position in the late 1170s and ’80s as Henry’s prisoner
provides a reason for her absence, the ‘strong pro-mother sentiment on Duke
Henry’s side’, which van Houts has highlighted, seems to stem more from the
fact that Henry had inherited his lands from these rich heiresses.34 Moreover,
all of the (named) terrestrial figures depicted in the illumination are those who
were entitled to wear royal or even imperial crowns, and the impression given
is very much that it is the imperial dynastic connection which is being stressed.
Karl Bertau has noted the ‘extraordinary and unique’ nature of a German duke
being depicted in art in imperial fashion, and Otto Gerhard Oexle has pointed
out that whilst coronation by the hands of God was a common image in
Carolingian, Ottonian and Salian iconography, this form of image was tradi-
tionally reserved solely for kings and emperors.35
It has been suggested, therefore, that Henry the Lion was seeking the
imperial throne for himself, and the imagery in the coronation illumination
certainly appears to lend weight to this hypothesis.36 As noted above, with the
exception of Henry the Lion’s parents and the unidentified figure at Matilda’s
extreme right, who are all shown uncrowned, the ancestors depicted in the
image all wear either royal or imperial crowns. The crowns on these figures
are depicted as identical to those being bestowed on the ducal couple, and
although the crown of eternal life is expressly referred to at each of the corners
of the miniature, these earthly crowns have been taken as an indication that
Henry was attempting to assert regal power in Saxony and Bavaria.37 No
other contemporary source suggests that Henry was considering such a move,
however, and his motivations are therefore unclear.38 Nonetheless, what is

32 E. van Houts, Memory and Gender in Medieval Europe, 900–1200 (London, 1999), 96.
33 Ibid., 97.
34 Ibid., 97.
35 Bertau, Deutsche Literatur, i, 460; Oexle, ‘Lignage et parenté’, 342–3.
36 See Jordan, Henry the Lion, 158.
37 Jordan, Henry the Lion, 158. Such ambitions were not without precedent. In 1158, Frederick I
had granted Duke Vladislav II of Bohemia royal status at the Diet of Regensburg. See Jordan,
Henry the Lion, 159.
38 It is difficult to agree with Jordan’s assessment, based solely on the evidence of the coronation
image in the Gospel Book, that the seeds of Henry’s conflict with the emperor were germinating

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clear is that the earthly figures in the coronation image were included expressly
to emphasise the prestigious lineages of the ducal couple.
In terms of celestial figures, Christ Pantocrator sits in the upper register with
various saints and angels. The saints ranged with Christ are those of special
importance for Duke Henry, such as St Blaise, as well as those important to
England, such as Thomas Becket. St Thomas appears directly above Matilda’s
namesake the Empress, indicating the special relationship the saint was
deemed to share with Matilda’s natal family. Becket’s position immediately
above Matilda’s ancestors clearly indicates ‘his recently renewed protection
and support of the Angevin rulers’.39 His inclusion in the coronation image
could designate the saint’s support of the duke’s alleged ambitions. More perti-
nently for the argument advanced here, it demonstrates the continued appro-
priation of the saint by members of the Angevin family.

A Legacy of Appropriation
Matilda clearly had a strong sense of family identity: her devotion to her
Anglo-Saxon ancestors included the worship of seven Anglo-Saxon royal
saints.40 These appear on a head-reliquary held at Hildesheim Cathedral,
which was said to contain a fragment of the skull of the royal saint Oswald,
the king of Northumbria who had died in battle in 642 against the heathen
King Penda of Mercia. Both the workmanship of the artefact and the inclusion
of six other saintly Anglo-Saxon kings on the panel-work suggest an English
provenance, which has led some historians to conclude that Matilda and her
husband Henry were responsible both for the donation of the reliquary to
Hildesheim and for the reintroduction of Oswald’s cult in Saxony.41
An extant inventory from Hildesheim, dated June 1189, provides further
evidence of Matilda’s association with the church there. This inventory,
mentioned in Hildesheim’s register of donations and income from the
thirteenth century and published in Karl Jordan’s edited collection of Henry
the Lion’s charters, lists the donations to the church at Hildesheim made

in the early 1170s, as such an argument assumes that Henry played a greater and more direct role
in the production of the manuscript and its illuminations than is likely to have been the case.
See Jordan, Henry the Lion, 159.
39 Slocum, ‘Marriage’, 218. For further discussion linking the cults of Becket and Blaise, see the
essay by Alyce A. Jordan in this volume (chapter 9).
40 Vincent, ‘Pilgrimages’, 40n. See also W. A. Chaney, The Cult of Kingship in Anglo-Saxon
England (Manchester, 1970), 78, 81–2; D. Rollason, Saints and Relics in Anglo-Saxon England
(Oxford, 1989), 137–63.
41 D. Ó Riain-Raedel, ‘Edith, Judith, Matilda: The Role of Royal Ladies in the Propagation
of the Continental Cult’, in Oswald: Northumbrian King to European Saint, ed. C. Stancliffe and
E. Cambridge (Stamford, 1995), 210–29, at 223.

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 MATILDA, DUCHESS OF SAXONY, AND THE CULT OF BECKET

by Matilda, ‘ducissa ecclesie nostre devotissima una cum marito suo Heinrico
duce’ [my italics].42 The phrasing of this inventory – that Matilda donated gifts
together with her husband – suggests that the donations were made at Matilda’s,
rather than at Henry’s, behest, and the description of her as ‘ducissa ecclesie
nostre’ suggests that the church of Hildesheim may have regarded her as its
patron. In light of the fact that the relics of the Anglo-Saxon Saint-King
Oswald were also housed at Hildesheim, Matilda’s patronage of this church is
interesting indeed.
Dagmar Ó Riain-Raedel has argued that there exists a connection between
the growth of Welf power and that of the cult of Oswald, and believes that the
arrival of the reliquary must have occurred after Henry the Lion had consoli-
dated his power in the north-east of the duchy, and therefore after his marriage
to Matilda. Despite the fact that Oswald was not of the Wessex line of Anglo-
Saxon kings, the suggestion that Matilda would have counted these saintly
kings amongst her ancestors seems plausible in light of the political clout
that was associated with blood relationships to powerful saints. Moreover, the
inclusion of so many Anglo-Saxon royal saints would have served the useful
political purpose of furthering Welf claims to legitimate authority over Saxony,
through Henry’s dynastic marriage to Matilda.43 Their appropriation of Becket,
as evidenced in the Gmunden Gospels, would have served the same political
ends.
Veneration of St Oswald in Saxony did not originate with Matilda and
Henry the Lion, but the dissemination of this English saint-king’s cult by
women of the royal English line highlights certain parallels with Matilda’s
appropriation of saints’ cults. Ó Riain-Raedel has studied the links between
the introduction of and subsequent waves of interest in the cult of St Oswald
in Germany, and the English royal women who had married into the Saxon
ducal dynasty during the course of the tenth to the twelfth centuries.44 She
sees a clear link between the transmission of this cult and the marriages of
the Saxon dukes with women of the English royal dynasty. Edith in particular,
who married Otto the Great of Saxony in c.930, was said by one contem-
porary chronicler to be descended from the royal saint,45 and she also seems

42 Jordan, Urkunden Heinrichs des Löwen, 179 (no. 122).

43 Whilst these hypotheses remain speculative, the extant inventory from Hildesheim Cathedral
which names Matilda as its patron serves to support this argument, and provides further evidence
both of Matilda’s religious patronage and of her association with Hildesheim overall.
44 Ó Riain-Raedel, ‘Edith, Judith, Matilda’, 210–29. See also E. van Houts, ‘Women and
the Writing of History in the Early Middle Ages: The Case of Abbess Matilda of Essen and
Aethelweard’, in eadem, History and Family Traditions in England and the Continent, 1000–1200
(Aldershot, 1999), 53–68.
45 This was Hrotsvita of Gandersheim, who composed the Gesta Ottonis in c.965 at the request
of Otto’s niece Gerberga, abbess of Gandersheim. For the possibility that Edith was descended
from Oswald, or that claims of this affinity were already being promoted by the Anglo-Saxon

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to have been promoted as a saint herself after her death. An entry for 8 July
in the twelfth-century Martyrology of Hermann the Lame of Reichenau reads
as follows: ‘Apud Parthenopolim [Magdeburg] civitatem Saxonie sancta
Enid reginae, uxoris quondam primi Ottonis’ [my italics].46 This projection
of sainthood was not something out of the ordinary for Saxon royal women:
Edith’s mother-in-law, Matilda of Ringelheim, who married the first Ottonian
ruler Henry I, was herself the subject of two Vitae composed at the convent of
Nordhausen.47
Whilst reference to Edith’s saintly ancestry may or may not have been
accurate, it is certain that her family were responsible for the continued
veneration of Oswald in England. The political expedience of this for her half-
brother, Athelstan, was that promotion of the Northumbrian saint-king was of
assistance in his attempts to establish authority over the newly Christianised
kingdom of Northumbria.48 This early example of royal appropriation of a
saint’s cult serves to demonstrate that in appropriating the cult of Becket,
both Henry II and his daughter Matilda were merely following established
and well-tried precedents. Matilda’s marriage to Henry the Lion in 1168 saw
a renewed Anglo-Welf alliance, and with regards to the presentation of the
Oswald relic to Hildesheim Cathedral, discussed above, Matilda’s political
ambitions not only exceeded those of her tenth-century predecessor Edith, but

royal house at the time of Edith’s marriage to Otto, see Ó Riain-Raedel, ‘Edith, Judith, Matilda’,
214–15. The value of the marriage between Otto and Edith, and of Edith’s role in helping to give
legitimacy to Otto’s rule, is highlighted. Edith’s ancestry is even more impressive than Otto’s and,
indeed, more impressive than that of her half-brother, Athelstan, whose mother seems to have
been a concubine: Ó Riain-Raedel, ‘Edith, Judith, Matilda’, 213, 213n.
46 ‘at the city of Magdeburg in Saxony, St Enid [Edith] the queen, formerly wife of Otto I’:
Ó Riain-Raedel, ‘Edith, Judith, Matilda’, 213n. Edith was buried in Magdeburg Cathedral, her
joint foundation with Otto. The cathedral was dedicated to St Maurice, and it is possible that
it housed relics of the saint which had once belonged to Athelstan, and which were given as a
wedding gift to Edith and Otto. Ó Riain-Raedel has suggested that Otto may have presented
Athelstan with a gospel-book in return: Ó Riain-Raedel, ‘Edith, Judith, Matilda’, 215–16. The
manuscript (London, BL, MS Cotton Tiberius A. ii) is dated to c.900, and is inscribed with the
names ‘Odda Rex’ and ‘Mihthild Mater Regis’.
47 Van Houts, ‘Women and the Writing of History’, 59. Otto I’s daughter Matilda, abbess of
Quedlinburg, was the dedicatee of Widukind of Corvey’s History of the Saxon People and commis-
sioned one of her nuns to compose the Annales Quedlinburgenses: van Houts, ‘Women and the
Writing of History’, 58. Otto’s granddaughter Matilda, abbess of Essen, was responsible for
directing Aethelweard to produce the now-fragmentary Latin translation of the Anglo-Saxon
Chronicle, which highlights the dynastic links between Matilda’s family and the Anglo-Saxon
royal house, and may even have introduced Aethelweard to Widukind’s History, a copy of which
was held at Essen: van Houts, ‘Women and the Writing of History, 60–68.
48 As Ó Riain-Raedel has pointed out, ‘As the first southern king of this region, Athelstan’s
efforts to impose his authority could only have benefited from a claim to a relationship with a
historical king and martyr of the calibre of Oswald’: Ó Riain-Raedel, ‘Edith, Judith, Matilda’,
216.

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‘may well have represented something of a political statement on Matilda’s

part, an act of solidarity with her earlier role model’.49 Thus, just as Henry was
following royal precedent in appropriating a saint’s cult for the promotion of
his own dynasty, so too his daughter, Matilda, followed queenly precedents in
promoting her lineage through the worship of sainted ancestors.
Through dynastic alliances with England, the Saxon ducal house was able to
utilise the cult of St Oswald and their association with it to further their own
political agendas.50 Oswald’s monarchical as well as saintly status ‘lent a special
aura to his devotees’, and his credentials ‘eminently qualified him for inclusion
in the category of sainted ancestors, by then so prevalent in continental royal
houses’.51 Oswald became, in effect, the patron saint of the Saxon dynasty, just
as Becket was later adopted as the special protector of the Angevin family.
In terms of longevity and geographical diffusion, Oswald’s cult seems to have
been as successful in Saxony as Becket’s was later to be throughout Europe.

Matilda’s Secular Patronage

The above evidence suggests that Matilda was more involved as a religious
patron than has heretofore been accepted. Specifically centred around
Hildesheim, which probably formed part of her dower lands, Matilda’s religious
patronage seems to demonstrate a strong sense of her royal lineage and dynastic
connections. As well as promoting the cult of Becket, she seems to have felt
an especial affinity towards Anglo-Saxon saint-kings whom she may have
perceived as her ancestors, and she may also have been partly responsible for
the reintroduction of the cult of St Oswald in Saxony. Some historians have
asserted that it was also Matilda’s presence in Saxony which brought new,
specifically Angevin, literary and artistic influences to her husband’s lands,
thereby casting Matilda in the role of literary and artistic patron, as well as a
patron of religion.52

49 Ibid., 223. The reliquary is now housed at the Dom- und Diözesanmuseum in Hildesheim.
Richard Bailey notes that the first reference to this particular reliquary at Hildesheim occurs in
1286: R. Bailey, ‘St Oswald’s Heads’, in Oswald, ed. Stancliffe and Cambridge, 195–209, at 202.
The relic at Hildesheim provides the only evidence of Oswald’s cult in Saxony, although the cult
had been established in Bavaria long before, possibly through the efforts of a contingent of Irish
monks who took up residence at Regensburg in c.1080 and whose successors appear to have been
responsible for a number of German redactions of Oswald’s Life. See Ó Riain-Raedel, ‘Edith,
Judith, Matilda’, 225–9.
50 Ó Riain-Raedel, ‘Edith, Judith, Matilda’, 229.
51 Ibid., 222.
52 See, for example, Jordan, Henry the Lion, 147; K. Norgate, ‘Matilda, Duchess of Saxony
(1156–1189)’, rev. by T. Reuter, ODNB (Oxford, 2004) [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/
article/18339, accessed 9 January 2015].

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Henry the Lion was certainly a wealthy and lavish patron of literature and
the arts, and, according to Karl Jordan, his connection to the Angevin dynasty
through his marriage to Matilda ‘gave a decisive impulse to intellectual and
artistic life in the ducal entourage’.53 As well as the Gmunden Gospels, Henry
the Lion is the probable patron of two illuminated psalters which were also
produced at Helmarshausen and which are now housed at the Walters Art
Museum, Baltimore, and the British Library.54 Certainly the London Psalter, of
which only fragments remain, contains an illuminated miniature of the ducal
couple kneeling before the crucified Christ, and the miniature may have been
produced to commemorate their marriage in 1168.55 Similarly, Jordan believes
that the so-called reliquary of Emperor Henry II, which features effigies both
of the emperor and of various kings with ties to the English royal dynasty, was
commissioned by Henry the Lion soon after his marriage to Matilda.56
Matilda herself was highly involved in her husband’s rebuilding programme
at Brunswick, and she has also been credited with introducing a new, specifically
French style of poetry to the Saxon ducal court.57 Several German romance
poems had begun to appear following the canonisation of Charlemagne in
1165, and two epics in particular, the Rolandslied and Tristant und Isalde, are
thought to have been composed as a direct result of Matilda’s influence.58 The
German translation of the Chanson de Roland, or Rolandslied, was produced by
Conrad, a cleric at Regensburg, who apparently procured his source material
from England at Matilda’s behest.59 In his epilogue, Conrad states that the work
was composed at the request of the ‘noble spouse’ of ‘Duke Henry’, who was
herself the daughter of a ‘mighty king’.60 Evidence from the text itself, such as
the conversion of pagan peoples and references to the relics of St Blaise, suggest
that the Duke Henry in question was Henry the Lion and that it was his ‘noble
spouse’ Matilda, daughter of the ‘mighty king’ Henry II, who had requested

53 Jordan, Henry the Lion, 200.

54 Ibid., 205. The manuscripts themselves are Baltimore: The Walters Art Museum, MS W. 10;
London: BL, MS Lansdowne 381.
55 Jordan, Henry the Lion, 206.
56 Ibid., 208. This reliquary is now held at the Louvre. For the many other gold and silver
reliquaries commissioned by Henry the Lion (the so-called ‘Welf Treasury’), see Jordan, Henry the
Lion, 207–8. The stylistic similarities between the St Lawrence reliquary, now in the Cleveland
Museum, and the St Oswald reliquary, now in the treasury at Hildesheim Cathedral, suggest
that they were made by the same craftsman, and the probability that both were produced at
Hildesheim presents a further link with the ducal court of Henry the Lion. See Jordan, Henry the
Lion, 208.
57 Norgate, ‘Matilda, Duchess of Saxony’.
58 Jordan, Henry the Lion, 200, and 209–12 for more on these works.
59 Ó Riain-Raedel, ‘Edith, Judith, Matilda’, 224. For the poem: Das Rolandslied des Pfaffen
Konrad, ed. C. Wesle (Tübingen, 1967).
60 Das Rolandslied, 316–17 (lines 9017–25). My thanks to Jitske Jasperse for help with the
translation.

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a German translation of the Chanson de Roland.61 As there is no mention of

Matilda’s death in the work, it must have been composed before 1189, and Karl
Jordan has proposed a date of between 1168 and 1172, as Henry the Lion’s
journey to the Holy Land is also absent from the text.62 The Rolandslied is the
earliest extant German rendering of the Chanson de Roland and, like the images
in the Gospel Book, is suffused with genealogical references.63
The author of Tristant und Isalde has been identified persuasively by Jordan as
the same Eilhart of Oberg who appears as witness on several charters issued by
Henry the Lion’s sons, Henry of Brunswick and Otto IV.64 He would therefore
have had close ties to the ducal household, and, although the date of compo-
sition is unknown, Jordan estimates it to have been completed at some time in
the 1170s, probably at around the same time as the Rolandslied, and therefore
before Matilda’s death.65 If the tale of Tristan and Isolde was indeed brought to
Saxony via Henry the Lion’s marriage to Matilda, then, as with the Rolandslied,
it is likely that they were the patrons of this work. Eilhart’s later associations
with Henry and Matilda’s sons may have been in recognition of his earlier
service to their parents, which may also suggest that this work, along with the
Rolandslied, was well-known not just at the ducal court, but also within the
more intimate household of their immediate family, perhaps forming part of
the literary education of Henry and Matilda’s children.
Matilda, who was almost certainly literate, was also commemorated in verse
as the lady Elena, or Lana (variants of Helen), by the troubadour poet Bertran
de Born, whom she met at Argentan in 1182 whilst in exile in Normandy.66
De Born addressed two poems to Matilda, which express the notion that the
dullness and vulgarity of the court at Argentan was lifted only by Matilda’s
beauty and ‘sweet conversation’.67 Both poems are overtly erotic, even going
so far as to suggest how much more beautiful Matilda would be, were she
unclothed.68 In Casutz sui de mal en pena, de Born laments the fact that the
‘frisky, gay Elena’ will ‘never keep me’, will ‘never be mine’, and hopes only
that she will ‘favour me with her smile’.69 Similar sentiments are expressed
in Ges de disnar non for’oimais maitis, which states further that the imperial

61 Jordan, Henry the Lion, 209.

62 Ibid., 209.
63 Ibid., 209–10. See also Bertau, Deutsche Literatur, i, 460.
64 Jordan, Henry the Lion, 210–11.
65 Ibid., 211.
66 The Poems of the Troubadour Bertran de Born, ed. W. Paden, T. Sankovitch and P. Stäblein
(Berkeley and Los Angeles, CA, and London, 1986), 117n; Norgate, ‘Matilda, Duchess of
Saxony’. For Matilda’s education, see Bowie, Daughters of Henry II and Eleanor, 57–64.
67 Poems of the Troubadour Bertran de Born, 160–73 (nos. 8 and 9). Matilda is the only one of
Henry II’s daughters to be immortalised in verse by de Born.
68 Ibid., 167 (no. 8, lines 37–48).
69 Ibid., 164–7 (no. 8, lines 7–9, 17–24, 50–65).

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crown would be ‘honoured if it encircles your head’.70 These are interesting

sentiments indeed, considering Duke Henry’s alleged imperial ambitions.

Becket at Brunswick: Continuation of a Family Tradition

Bertran de Born’s image of Matilda wearing an imperial crown brings us back to
the political motivations for the appropriation of saints’ cults. Whether or not
Henry the Lion, or indeed Matilda, viewed themselves as having the right to
royal or even imperial rule in Saxony, they certainly constructed a magnificent
palace there for themselves and their household. The palace at Brunswick,
which lay at the heart of Henry the Lion’s patrimony, and which appears to have
been based on the palace complex at Goslar, certainly became the permanent
ducal residence, a unique phenomenon in an itinerant world.71 The ducal
couple’s attachment to Brunswick is clear, and the cathedral, where both Henry
and Matilda are laid to rest, also houses a series of mid-thirteenth-century wall-
paintings, on the south wall of the choir, which depict Thomas Becket’s life
and death, beneath scenes depicting the lives of the other patron saints of the
cathedral, St John the Baptist and St Blaise. Of these images, only the first four
scenes are original; the subsequent three were invented to complete the series
by the restorer Heinrich Brandes in the nineteenth century.72
As the wall-paintings at Brunswick date to the mid-thirteenth century, they
cannot have been commissioned by either Matilda or Henry the Lion. In all
probability, they were commissioned by Henry and Matilda’s son, Henry of
Brunswick, who had also been responsible for commissioning, in c.1230–40,
the magnificent joint tomb for his parents which stands beneath the choir and
before the high altar of the cathedral. As the artist commissioned to undertake
the work had in all probability never seen either Henry or Matilda, the effigies
on the tomb do not present a true likeness of the ducal couple but rather an
idealised image of ducal rule. Henry holds a sword in his left hand and a repre-
sentation of Brunswick Cathedral in his right; Matilda wears a circlet around
her head (not, after all, de Born’s imagined imperial crown) and her hands are
raised in prayer.73
Above the tomb, at the edge of the choir and to the side of the nave, rises

70 Ibid., 170–71 (no. 9, lines 21–4).

71 The glory of Brunswick as the principal ducal residence and as Henry’s ancestral patrimony
is celebrated in the dedicatory poem of the Gospel Book, which asserts that Brunswick has been
further augmented by Henry and Matilda through their gifts of relics: Oexle, ‘Lignage et parenté’,
350.
72 The original images were repainted in the nineteenth century as part of Brandes’s restoration
project. See Borenius, Becket in Art, 52–4, with image at 55; idem, ‘Iconography’, 39–40, and
plate XIII, fig. 4.
73 Jordan, Henry the Lion, 214–15.

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 MATILDA, DUCHESS OF SAXONY, AND THE CULT OF BECKET

a monumental seven-branched candelabra, which was probably commissioned

by Henry the Lion.74 It has been suggested that it was originally intended to
stand by Matilda’s tomb and, whilst there is no corroborating evidence for
this, if true it would be indicative of some emotional bond between the ducal
couple.75 Certainly, on hearing of his wife’s death in July 1189, the twice-exiled
Henry returned to Saxony immediately, in direct contravention of his oath
to the Holy Roman Emperor, Frederick I, not to return to his lands within
three years.76 When Duke Henry died on 6 August 1195, he was buried in the
cathedral on the right hand side of his wife.77
Henry and Matilda’s son, Henry of Brunswick, not only commemorated his
parents in magnificent style by commissioning their grand tomb at Brunswick
Cathedral, but he also followed their preferences in terms of the patronage
of saints’ cults. In particular, he was devoted to St Thomas of Canterbury: he
established St Thomas as patron saint of the whole duchy and officially added
him to the canon of original patron saints of Brunswick Cathedral, St Blaise
and St John the Baptist. It was also Henry who oversaw completion of the
reconstruction of the church of St Blaise, begun by his parents in 1173, and its
consecration, which was held, significantly, on 29 December 1226 – the feast
day of the martyrdom of St Thomas.78 By the mid-thirteenth century, the feast
of St Thomas was celebrated throughout Saxony and Bavaria.
By the fifteenth century, the feast was celebrated throughout Germany and
the cult of Thomas Becket was well established. It is clear that the beginnings
of such devotion to the martyr-saint of Canterbury originated in Saxony, under
the ducal rule of Henry the Lion and Matilda Plantagenet, and that their son,
Henry of Brunswick, continued the tradition of patronising and promoting a
saint they may well have viewed as their personal protector. Henry the Lion had
personally instituted the cult of Becket at Ratzeburg, which has been viewed as
a ‘direct result’ of his marriage to Matilda.79 Henry had also been, in his lifetime,
an avid collector of relics, which he acquired on his pilgrimages to Jerusalem
and Byzantium. He commissioned goldsmiths to fashion containers for these
items, including a silver reliquary depicting the three patron saints of Brunswick
Cathedral: St Blaise, St John the Baptist and St Thomas of Canterbury.80

74 Oexle, ‘Lignage et parenté’, 346.

75 Jordan, Henry the Lion, 202.
76 Ibid., 189, and 19–99 for the years following Henry the Lion’s return to Saxony in 1189 until
his death in 1195.
77 Arnold of Lübeck, Chronica Slavorum, MGH SS, xiv (Hannover, 1868), 193; Annales
Stederburgenses, MGH SS, xvi (Hannover, 1859), 231; Jordan, Henry the Lion, 198.
78 Jordan, Henry the Lion, 201.
79 Slocum, ‘Marriage’, 219.
80 Jordan, Henry the Lion, 154–5. Henry’s relic collection, known as the Welf Treasury, is now
housed in museums in Berlin and in the United States. The silver St Blaise reliquary was once
housed at Brunswick and is now in the collection of the Cleveland Museum of Art in Ohio.

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 COLETTE BOWIE

It is the Gmunden Gospels, however, which provide the earliest surviving

example of Becket veneration in Saxony, and, whilst Matilda’s influence is not
noted in the dedication of the Gospel Book, she certainly acted in concert
with Henry the Lion in their presentation of the book to the cathedral of
St Blaise. The Liber Memoriam Sancti Blasii, which records Matilda’s death
erroneously under the year 1188, names her as domina nostra: patron of the
church.81 If the church of St Blaise itself viewed Matilda as its patron, her
involvement not just in the symbolic presentation of the Gospel Book, but
also to some degree in its content and production, seems likely. Matilda’s
piety and generous almsgiving, as well as her noble lineage, were noted by
the chronicler Arnold of Lübeck, who described Matilda as ‘a most religious
woman’ who performed many good and charitable works, donated alms freely
and richly, prayed frequently and attended Mass devotedly.82 Clearly, in terms
of religious patronage, Matilda was adept at fulfilling her role both as duchess
of Saxony and as a woman from the royal English line, and was praised as such
by her contemporaries. Politically, the constant emphasis on Matilda’s royal
ancestry, highlighted by chroniclers and made explicit in the illuminations
sequence in the Gmunden Gospels, serves to demonstrate the prestige of this
marriage for Henry the Lion. More spiritually – but nevertheless with clear
and overt political implications – Matilda and Henry were promoting Becket
as a dynastic saint; and who better to seek spiritual protection from than the
holy supporter of the great Angevin realm?

Conclusion
In light of all this, the participation of Henry’s daughter, Matilda, in the
dissemination of Becket’s cult can hardly be considered surprising. Devotion
to Becket had grown quickly, and the Angevin dynasty was clearly ‘instru-
mental in this rapid development of organised veneration’.83 As Henry II had
successfully managed to appropriate Becket’s cult for his own political ends, it
is unsurprising that there is evidence of continued veneration of the saint by
Henry’s daughter. Far from being a paradox, as Duggan has suggested, Matilda’s
involvement in the dissemination of Becket’s cult can be viewed positively,
as both an act of filial devotion and as a celebration of her great lineage.
Moreover, the patronage of saints’ cults by royal women was not merely an
established tradition, but a role which the daughters and wives of kings were
expected to fulfil.

81 ‘Anno Domini 1188 domina nostra Mechtildis fundatrix obiit’: Liber Memoriam Sancti Blasii,
825.
82 Arnold of Lübeck, Chronica Slavorum, 11.
83 Slocum, ‘Marriage’, 217.

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 MATILDA, DUCHESS OF SAXONY, AND THE CULT OF BECKET

As Richard Gameson has pointed out, the dissemination of images of saints

‘provided a forceful reminder that the holy person in heaven was still very
much a living presence on earth’.84 Art could be a form of advertising as well
as dissemination, and images such as those in the Gmunden Gospels could be
both possessed and appropriated. It is clear that in venerating Thomas Becket,
both Henry and his daughter Matilda were attempting to do just that.85 It
cannot be coincidental that Becket was included in Henry the Lion’s Gospel
Book so soon after his marriage to Matilda. The latter’s motives for dissemi-
nation were likely to have been a mixture of dynastic, political and genuinely
pious considerations. As has been demonstrated, Henry II, from 1174 onwards,
was particularly concerned with the appropriation of Becket’s cult, with
perhaps varying degrees of political motivation and genuine devotion. In the
immediate aftermath of Henry’s penitential visit to Becket’s tomb, his enemies
were defeated and he was triumphant. Becket was clearly on his side and was
emphatically being promoted as defender of the Angevin dynasty.
Becket was, in effect, becoming a patron saint of the Angevin family. In this
light, then, it is not at all surprising that Henry’s daughter Matilda should play
such a prominent role in the dissemination of Becket’s cult. Far from being
an act of filial disobedience, it was more a stamp of authority, a continuation
by the daughter of the father’s appropriation of a potentially dangerous cult –
one which came to symbolise far less a stand against tyranny, than the whole-
hearted support of the powerful Angevin dynasty, who were made all the more
powerful by having such a mighty saint on their side. That Matilda was able
to transplant what was essentially a family tradition, in terms of patronage, to
her marital lands in Saxony, is testament both to the power and prestige of
her natal family and to her consciousness of her dynastic heritage. Similarly,
Matilda’s involvement in the cult of the English Saint-King Oswald, as well
as her promotion and patronage of secular literature from the Angevin lands
of her birth, served much the same purpose. Considerations of genuine piety
aside, it is nonetheless clear that politics and religion could intertwine most
usefully to further the prestige of both one’s family and oneself. The Angevin/
Welf family tradition of patronising Becket’s cult was continued and furthered
by Matilda’s son, Henry of Brunswick, and the cult rapidly became entrenched
not just in Saxony but throughout all of Germany as a direct consequence of
such patronage. Ultimately then, in terms of dynastic connections, Matilda
was perhaps the most successful of Henry II’s daughters in promoting her
lineage through her participation in the dissemination of royally sponsored
saints’ cults.

84 Gameson, ‘Early Imagery’, 46.

85 Ibid., 48.

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 7.

Leonor Plantagenet and the Cult of

Thomas Becket in Castile1

JOSÉ MANUEL CERDA

When Alfonso VIII of Castile married Leonor, the sixth child of King Henry II
of England and Eleanor of Aquitaine, in September 1170, the young and small
Iberian kingdom entered the most important dynastic network in twelfth-
century Europe, and its affairs thereafter attracted attention in the Angevin
dominions. Robert of Torigni, the Norman chronicler and the princess’s
godfather, noted: ‘by God’s favour, and by his own virtue, this Alfonso has
married my dearest lady and my baptismal daughter, Leonor, the daughter of
the king of England, whose advice and assistance have been productive to him
of many happy results.’2 An Angevin outpost south of the Pyrenees, as it were,
Leonor was to become the first dynastic link between England and Spain in
the Middle Ages.3
On 29 December 1170, only some three months after the marriage, Thomas
Becket, archbishop of Canterbury, was murdered in his cathedral. Becket, once
the king’s most trusted minister, had become his most stubborn adversary, and
the news of his brutal assassination sent shock waves all over Europe, where
it was interpreted as martyrdom in defence of the Church’s liberties and juris-
diction. Pilgrims flocked to the martyr’s tomb at Canterbury. Many miracles

1 This article is part of a research project funded with a two-year postdoctoral fellowship granted
by CONICYT (Comisión Nacional de Investigación Científica y Tecnológica) of the Chilean
Government (Project no. 3090034) for the period 2008–10. I am very grateful to Anne J. Duggan
and Donald Matthew, who have generously read a draft of this paper and offered comments and
suggestions, and to Jitske Jasperse and Anna Harnden for bringing my attention to some bibli-
ography. I also appreciate the assistance of Alfredo Rodríguez from the Cathedral Archives of
Toledo, Camino Redondo from the Museum of San Isidoro, and María Jesús Herrero Sanz from
Patrimonio Nacional.
2 Robert of Torigni, Chronique de Robert de Torigni, ed. L. Delisle, 2 vols (Rouen, 1872–73), ii,
116.
3 I have explored some of the wider implications of this marriage on the cultural and diplomatic
links between Castile and England in J. M. Cerda, ‘The Marriage of Alfonso VIII of Castile and
Leonor Plantagenet: The First Bond between Spain and England in the Middle Ages’, in Les
Stratégies Matrimoniales (IXe–XIIIe siècles), ed. M. Aurell (Turnhout, 2013), 143–53.

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 JOSÉ MANUEL CERDA

were attributed to Becket’s intercession and promptly recorded. He was,

accordingly, widely venerated as a saint, and the pope canonised the martyr
as early as 1173. Even if the ultimate responsibility for the archbishop’s death
lay with the king, Henry was personally innocent. He sent embassies to Rome
and was decisively defended by Peter of Blois, who wrote to the archbishop of
Palermo in 1177:4

In conscience I believe in no way that the king was guilty of this thing; and the
most complete confirmation of this the lord Theodinus, bishop of San Vitale,
and the lord Albert, the chancellor, will make to you, who because of this matter
investigated in our regions performing the office of legate; they confirmed the
innocence of the man.

Henry, however, was compelled to perform public penance. As Edward Grim

explained, ‘even though the shedding of innocent blood had not been done by
or through him, the king bore responsibility for it on account of his anger’, and
in 1174, he humbly travelled the pilgrim road to Canterbury and confessed his
fault.5 When Henry’s own penitential visit proved to have coincided with the
providential defeat of Henry II’s enemy, William I, the king of Scots, Henry
concluded that he had been forgiven and recognised Becket as his saintly
protector.
The martyr of Canterbury, once a victim of Angevin wrath, became a
focus of Angevin piety. Peter of Blois assured the Sicilian prelate that ‘the
lord king has made the glorious martyr his chief patron in all his needs’.6 The
cult quickly took root. Within a short time, altars, shrines and churches were
dedicated to the martyr throughout western Europe.7 In his twelfth-century

4 Petri Blesensis Opera Omnia, ed. J. A. Giles, 4 vols (Oxford, 1846–47), i, 66. See also Ralph
Diceto, ‘Ymagines Historiarum’, in Diceto, i, 345–6, 351. Theodinus and Albert were sent to
hear the king’s confession after the reconciliation at Avranches in 1172.
5 Edward Grim, in MTB, ii, 445.
6 Petri Blesensis Opera Omnia, i, 66. During the war against his wife and sons in 1173, Henry II
implored the assistance of the martyr, according to the vernacular (French) chronicle of Jordan
Fantosme: ‘“St Thomas”, said the king, “preserve me my kingdom; I confess myself guilty to
you for what others have the blame”’; ‘The king was truly at St Thomas the martyr’s, where he
confessed himself guilty, sinful and repentant …’: Jordan Fantosme, ed. Johnston, 120–21 (lines
1599–1600), 142–3 (lines 1912–13). Also noted in the articles by Anne J. Duggan (chapter 2),
Michael Staunton (chapter 5) and Colette Bowie (chapter 6) in this volume.
7 On the earliest manifestations of the cult in Europe, see R. Foreville, ‘Le culte de saint
Thomas Becket en Normandie: Enquête sur les sanctuaires anciennement placés sous le vocable
du martyr de Canterbury’, in Sédières, 135–52; H. Martin, ‘Le culte de saint Thomas Becket dans
les diocèses de la province de Tours’, in Sédières, 153–8; J. Becquet, ‘Les sanctuaires dédiés à
saint Thomas de Cantorbéry en Limousin’, in Sédières, 159–61; R. Foreville, ‘Le culte de saint
Thomas Becket en France: bilan provisoire des recherches’, in Sédières, 163–87; and R. Foreville,
‘La diffusion du culte de Thomas Becket dans la France de l’Ouest avant la fin du XIIe siècle’,
CCM, 19 (1976), 347–69. A brief but useful survey of the representations of the martyrdom in

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 LEONOR PLANTAGENET AND THE CULT OF THOMAS BECKET IN CASTILE

Vie Saint Thomas Le Martyr de Cantorbire, Guernes de Pont-Sainte-Maxence

declared, ‘kings have sought him in pilgrimage … princes, barons, dukes
with their nobles, strangers from foreign countries, speaking many languages,
prelates, monks, recluses, rows of foot travellers; they take phials home with
them as a sign of their journey’.8
Devotion to the martyr of Canterbury spread out so successfully in time and
space, and became so firmly established in Spain itself, that the cult travelled
to places as far removed from medieval England as Latin America in the
nineteenth century. In 1856, a group of Chilean clerics established the Society
of St Thomas of Canterbury in order to defend the autonomy and authority
of the Catholic Church under threat from secular policies.9 Becket was then
invoked under the impression that the increasing antagonism between the
Church and the state in Chile was akin to the situation that had led to the
dispute between the king and the archbishop seven centuries before.
It is natural to suspect that Alfonso VIII’s marriage to Leonor had some
influence on the spread of the Becket cult in Spain. Leonor herself would have
had reason for concern about her family and its reputation and, as Kay Brainerd
Slocum has pointed out, ‘diplomatic connections … provide a widespread
public forum in which Henry and his progeny might atone for the act which
was an egregious sin in the eyes of twelfth-century Europeans’.10 Alfonso may
have had reasons of his own to be interested in the matter of relations between
a king and his archbishop, quite apart from his concern about the likely value
of a Plantagenet ally on the defensive. It is natural to think that some of the
protagonists of such a ‘devotional export’ might be the daughters of Henry II;
a significant example of the religious patronage exercised by powerful women
in this period. The focus of this work is to examine the role of the royal family
of Castile, and especially the queen, in the growth of veneration for Becket in
their dominions.11

twelfth- and thirteenth-century art is in M. Poza Yagüe, ‘Santo Tomás Becket’, Revista Digital de
Iconografía Medieval, 5, no. 9 (2013), 53–62.
8 Garnier’s Becket, trans. J. Shirley (Felinfach, 1975), 157 (lines 5893–7).
9 The society was created in 1856 in the capital, Santiago, in a context that confronted ultra-
montane conservatives, who defended the Church’s autonomy, and regalists, who endorsed state
intervention in ecclesiastical matters. More details of this controversy are given in Z. Martinic,
‘Relaciones Iglesia-Estado en Chile, desde 1820 hasta la muerte del arzobispo Rafael Valentín
Valdivieso en 1878’, Archivum, 4 (2002), 21–8, at 24; F. A. Encina, Historia de Chile desde la
prehistoria hasta 1891, 20 vols (Santiago de Chile, 1948–53), xiii (1949), 260. I thank the
historian Leonor Riesco for bringing this case to my attention.
10 Slocum, ‘Marriage’, 215.
11 A comprehensive account of the spread of the cult in Iberia has recently been published,
offering a description of the documentary and artistic evidence for the period 1170–1230 for
all of the Spanish kingdoms and Portugal: Cavero, Tomás Becket. A brief summary of the devel-
opment of the cult in Castile in this period is provided at pp. 220–23, and the volume is particu-
larly significant for the study of the martyrdom in Spanish medieval liturgy (pp. 141–203). An

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 JOSÉ MANUEL CERDA

There is no datable evidence for any Spanish interest in Becket earlier

than 1177, when a chapel dedicated to him was set up in Toledo Cathedral.
The timing of this donation was determined by the siege and conquest of
the Muslim city of Cuenca during the first half of 1177. In July, the altar to
be erected to Thomas Becket was endowed by Count Nuño Pérez de Lara,
the most prominent member of a highly influential noble family, who had
himself formerly been King Alfonso’s tutor.12 Perhaps at the suggestion of
William, his English chaplain, Count Nuño had invoked the intercession of
the martyr as the saintly ‘winner of battles’ during the arduous enterprise of
the siege, just as Henry II had prayed to Becket in 1174. What the martyr had
miraculously done for an English king who had called for his aid in the face
of military adversity was accomplished for his Castilian kinsmen. According
to the Anales Toledanos, the count died in the siege and, along with his wife,
Teresa Fernández, left his own house in Toledo and the rights over the nearby
village of Alcabón for the maintenance of the chaplain. The charter that
registered the grant was witnessed by five bishops, three counts, several knights
and members of the besieging host. The following year, Alfonso VIII himself
confirmed this grant ‘pro remedio delictorum parentum meorum’, and declared
that the counts of the powerful Lara family had dedicated the chapel especially
‘for the remission of [unspecified] crimes against churches and ecclesiastical
persons’.13 The Lara family was a generous patron of churches and promoter of
both new cults and religious orders.
The military circumstances, alongside the influence of the Poitevin clergy

article published by Fernando Galván Freile offers an iconographic survey of the presence of the
Becket cult in the Iberian Peninsula in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries: F. Galván Freile,
‘Culto e Iconografía de Tomás de Canterbury en la Peninsula Ibérica (1173–1300)’, in Hagiografia
peninsular en els segles medievals, ed. F. Español and F. Fité (Lleida, 2008), 197–216. The present
paper is only concerned with the agency of Queen Leonor in the spread of such devotion in
Castile during Alfonso VIII’s reign.
12 The charter is registered in S. Barton, The Aristocracy in Twelfth-Century León and Castile
(Cambridge, 1997), 328. See also Cavero, Tomás Becket, 49–50.
13 This phrase is contained in a royal diploma confirming the donation and issued the
following year by King Alfonso, in the regesta: J. González, El Reino de Castilla durante el reinado
de Alfonso VIII, 3 vols (Madrid, 1960) [hereafter AVIII], ii, 506 (no. 307): ‘pro remissione
criminum ecclesiis et ecclesiasticis personis iuste data sunt et concessa’. See also: Los Cartularios
de Toledo: Catálogo documental, ed. F. J. Hernández (Madrid, 1985), i, 173–4 (no. 180); M. Shadis,
Berenguela of Castile (1180–1246) and Political Women in the High Middle Ages (New York, 2009),
36. According to Gregoria Cavero (et al.), Alfonso confirmed the counts’ grant in January 1181
at Toledo: AVIII, ii, 603–4 (no. 355); Cavero, Tomás Becket, 51, 220. Although the king did then
protect the altar, he was really confirming his wife’s diploma of April 1179. Alfonso had already
confirmed Count Nuño’s donation with a royal diploma drafted in September 1178: AVIII, ii,
506 (no. 307), which is not considered by Cavero. Although there is no mention of the altar as
such, the document clearly makes reference to the donation made to the cathedral of Toledo by
Nuño and his wife Teresa, and the property protected corresponds to that destined by the counts
for the altar and the chaplaincy.

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 LEONOR PLANTAGENET AND THE CULT OF THOMAS BECKET IN CASTILE

close to Nuño and Teresa, had turned Becket into the ideal patron saint
of the moment.14 Once launched, the cult took off. After the death of her
husband at Cuenca, Countess Teresa left the court of Alfonso and married
Fernando II, the king of León. Her arrival in León seems to have coincided
with the endowment of a church dedicated to Becket in Salamanca, for which
two English scholars, Randolph and Richard, have been held responsible. This
building was probably constructed in the 1180s, being the first Becket church
in the kingdom of León, and one of the earliest in Europe.15
Countess Teresa may also have had something to do with drawing Queen
Leonor into the matter of promoting the Becket cult in Spain. One of the
countess’s daughters was given the name Leonor, still foreign to most Castilians
at that time, which suggests a close relationship with the queen, who probably
became the infant’s godparent.16 When the countess left Castile for León, the
queen herself emerged as a champion of Becket, and it is likely that Leonor’s
daughter, and later queen of León, Berenguela, continued the promotion of
the cult between 1197 and 1204.17
The only document issued independently by Leonor’s chancery to have
survived to this day, a charter granted on 30 April 1179 confirming and
extending the grant made by Count Nuño in 1177, has been preserved in
magnificent condition at Toledo Cathedral.18 The opening lines clearly reveal
the agency of the queen: ‘ego Alienor, Dei gratia regina Castelle’, who placed
under her protection all that pertained to the altar of St Thomas located at
a chapel within the cathedral church; who entrusted the devotional services
and the protection of its rights and liberties to the chaplain, William, and

14 A considerable number of clergy from Aquitaine had occupied important ecclesiastical

seats in Castile during the twelfth century. Prominent examples are Jocelin of Sigüenza and
Cerebrun, archbishop of Toledo. On the other hand, the bishop of Poitiers until 1181 was John
of Canterbury, a member of the Becket circle. On the contribution of Aquitanian clergy to the
spread of the cult, see Cavero, Tomás Becket, 211–15.
15 Julio González asserts that academic and intellectual life was intensified in Castile in the
second half of the twelfth century, and that school teaching seems to reveal some learning
experience from abroad. Moreover, some of the names of the masters teaching at the cathedral
schools also indicate the presence of foreigners: AVIII, i, 630, 634. See also T. M. Vann, ‘The
Theory and Practice of Medieval Castilian Queenship’, in Queens, Regents, and Potentates, ed.
T. M. Vann (Sawston, 1993), 125–48, at 134, n. 35; Documentos de los Archivos Catedralicio
y Diocesano de Salamanca (siglos XII y XIII), ed. J. L. Martín et al. (Salamanca, 1977), 161–2
(no. 74); Cavero, Tomás Becket, 55, 73–6.
16 Shadis, Berenguela, 36.
17 See Cavero, Tomás Becket, 55–60; Shadis, Berenguela, 75–6.
18 Los Anales Toledanos I y II, ed. J. Porres Martin-Cleto (Toledo, 1993), 146–7; Los Cartularios
de Toledo: Catálogo documental, 173–8 (nos. 180, 184); AVIII, i, 923–9. It is very surprising that
there is hardly any consideration or analysis of this crucial diploma in Cavero, Tomás Becket, 51.
This survey – otherwise very useful and complete – devotes an entire chapter to the documentary
evidence of the spread of the cult in the peninsula (pp. 49–66), yet the most relevant document,
Leonor’s grant from April 1179, is only mentioned, with no commentary on its content.

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his successors; and who freed the chaplaincy from all impositions in Castile.
The diploma was drafted by the queen’s chancellor at Toledo, two years after
Alfonso’s conquest of Cuenca; it was authenticated by Leonor’s signum drawn
into the document and her wax seal, ‘propria manu hanc cartam roboro et
confirmo’, and ‘for the salvation and redemption of our souls’ (those of
Alfonso and Leonor).19 The donation threatened God’s wrath and eternal
punishment in Hell in the company of Judas for anyone who dared violate
the privileges and property granted to the altar and its chaplains. Although
this was formulaic phrasing found in most royal diplomas drafted in Castile at
the time, the financial penalties clearly established for transgressions demon-
strate the queen’s authority ‘per totum regnum meum’ – as the diploma states
– and her determination to promote devotion to the English martyrdom as
‘regina Castellae’. The village of Alcabón near Toledo, with all its property
and income, was given in perpetuity to William, the first chaplain, and his
successors, and they were also exempted from any kind of taxation. The
queen’s initiative was confirmed and witnessed by the archbishop of Toledo,
five bishops, and some sixteen magnates, local authorities and royal officials.
Significantly, the document was drafted by Egidio, Leonor’s own chancellor.
Alcabón was not among Leonor’s dower property granted to her by Alfonso,
‘donatio propter nuptias’, in 1170, and had belonged to the late Count Nuño,
but the wording of the 1179 diploma implies that the Castilian consort was in
command of these resources and that she acted with some independence from
the king. Theresa Vann has suggested that the royal protection of the altar was
probably petitioned by the citizens of Toledo, some of whom witnessed the
charter, but such family devotion was nevertheless an intimate undertaking for
the daughter of the English king.20
Alfonso had confirmed the counts’ donation in 1178, but Leonor’s charter
reveals, as Shadis asserts, ‘a queen in control of her resources and a continued
attention to her family’s affairs in England’, and that Leonor ‘did not function
simply as an adjunct in her husband’s patronage activities’.21 That she remained
proud of her connections with the kings of England is borne out by some of
her own handiwork. Two stoles embroidered in the 1190s, decorated with red
castles over golden background, claim to have been made by her: ‘Alienor

19 Toledo, Cathedral Archives of Toledo, AC Toledo, A-2-G-1–5; AVIII, ii, 542–3 (no. 324).
The charter is preserved in its original form and is very similar to those produced at Alfonso’s
chancery (35.5 cms x 25.5 cms, a seal drawn in the document depicting the hand of the queen,
and another wax seal of 9 cms x 6.5 cms with some wear and damage, attached by leather tag,
depicting a full-length image of the queen). The transcription is in AVIII, ii, 542–3 (no. 324).
Other references are: AVIII, i, 373, 418–19; F. V. de la Cruz, Berenguela la Grande. Enrique I el
Chico (1179–1246) (Gijón, 2006), 8–9. Richard Gameson mistakenly indicates the year 1174 for
this grant: Gameson, ‘Early Imagery’, 51.
20 Vann, ‘Theory and Practice’, 133. This is also suggested by Slocum, ‘Marriage’, 220.
21 Shadis, Berenguela, 36–7; Slocum, ‘Marriage’, 220.

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Regina Castelle Filia Henrici Regis Anglie me fecit’.22 She was often identified
as the daughter of the king of England in scribal records and chronicles, and
to this day the carvings on her sarcophagus at the monastery of Las Huelgas in
Burgos bear the Plantagenet crest with the golden lions, probably made in the
middle of the thirteenth century, a testimony to her ancestry set in stone.23
The wax seal attached to the 1179 diploma supplies us with a contemporary
representation of the queen. In a diploma with almost identical wording and a
similar list of witnesses, King Alfonso ratified his consort’s endowment of 1179
sometime during the weeks he spent in Toledo during the winter of 1180–81.24
The initiative had clearly been taken by Leonor, but the king’s charter reveals
the importance achieved by the cult within the royal agenda.
Toledo was the main ecclesiastical see in the reign – and arguably in the
entire peninsula – so the queen’s choice to continue the counts’ devotional
patronage instead of establishing a shrine or an altar at the much favoured
royal city of Burgos, for example, is very significant. Moreover, it is very
likely that Leonor’s monetary endowment to the chaplain and the chaplaincy
was taken from the dower granted to her by Alfonso in 1170, part of which
came precisely from the annual rents of Toledo.25 The cult of Thomas Becket
was pushed by royal initiative, but it only took root with the support of the
Castilian Church.
If her charter of confirmation clearly demonstrates Leonor’s interest in
the Becket cult by 1179, it also appears to strengthen the case for attributing
to her the evidence for an interest in Becket at Soria. This was not among
Leonor’s dower towns but was her husband’s birthplace, so it seems a fitting
place to establish a monument of expiation for the murder in the cathedral.
Frescoes depicting the infamous assassination at Canterbury were discovered
some thirty years ago in near pristine condition. Wooden boards protecting the
pictures were recently removed to reveal the stunning painting (albeit consid-
erably damaged since their discovery).26 Unlike some depictions of the murder,

22 The stoles are now kept at the museum of the Colegiata de San Isidoro in León. ‘Inventario
de Bienes Muebles de la Real Colegiata de San Isidoro (León)’, no. 11C-3-089-002-0024:
Embroidered in silk (277 cms x 6.5 cms) dated 1197, and with inscription: ‘+ Alienor Regina
Castelle Filia + Henrici Regis Anglie Me Fecit + Sub Era M CC XXXV Annos +’. Object: no.
11C-3-089-002-0025: same material (156 cms x 6.5 cms), dated 1198, with inscription: ‘… M CC
XXX VI …’. See also AVIII, i, 191.
23 R. Walker, ‘Leonor of England and Eleanor of Castile: Anglo-Iberian Marriage and Cultural
Exchange in the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries’, in England and Iberia in the Middle Ages,
12th–15th Century: Cultural, Literary and Political Exchanges, ed. M. Bullón-Fernández (New York,
2007), 67–87, at 77–83.
24 AVIII, ii, 603–4 (no. 355); Vann, ‘Theory and Practice’, 134; Shadis, Berenguela, 36–7.
25 AVIII, i, 192–3; Shadis, Berenguela, 25–30.
26 L. Romera, ‘Iglesia de San Nicolás en Soria: las pinturas sobre el asesinato de Tomás Becket’,
Revista de Arqueología, 329 (2008), 40–43; Cavero, Tomás Becket, 94–8. The paintings were
restored in 1977 and measure 1.9 m. x 4 m. approximately.

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where four knights face Becket, with one of them cutting his head, the Soria
paintings show a bearded man thrusting his sword into the archbishop’s back.
Due to the deterioration of the wall, his companions have disappeared from
the scene. It is difficult to determine what early model or tradition might have
informed this intriguing work in the church of San Nicolás, one of the most
accomplished Romanesque buildings in Castile, built in the early thirteenth
century and now in ruins. Although they are undoubtedly medieval, the
dating has not yet been resolved, nor can the agency of the queen be estab-
lished beyond doubt. According to Fernando Galván Freile, the artistic style
of these paintings corresponds to the early decades of the fourteenth century,
and they seem to follow not the written traditions of the vitae, but rather the
established visual models such as the early iconographic programme of the
martyrdom painted in the walls of the church of Santa María de Terrassa in
Catalonia.27
Likewise, it is not easy to link the agency of Leonor with some Romanesque
sculpture in the church of San Miguel de Almazán (province of Soria), crafted
around 1200 and discovered in 1936. The stone carvings show four knights
facing Archbishop Thomas, who is kneeling down, showing his palms ready
for martyrdom and defenceless before the slaughter, after which angels carry
his soul to the encounter with God. The depiction is similar to the funerary
sculpture of the small sarcophagi at Las Huelgas and the cathedral of Burgos,
belonging to two of Leonor’s children who died shortly after birth and whose
souls are also shown being taken to Heaven.28
There seems to be more reason to relate the presence of the queen of
Castile with some evidence of the cult at Sigüenza. A papal bull issued by
Celestine III in 1192 refers to an altar dedicated to the English martyr in the
cathedral there, and the martyrdom is solemnly commemorated in the breviary
of Bishop Rodrigo of Sigüenza (1192–1221).29 The altar was most probably
erected by Jocelin, the Aquitanian bishop of Sigüenza from 1168 to 1178, who
had witnessed Count Nuño’s grant in Becket’s honour at the siege of Cuenca.
Jocelin had succeeded Cerebruno (another native of Aquitaine) at Sigüenza,
when Cerebruno became archbishop of Toledo, and both had accompanied
Leonor across the Pyrenees to Tarazona in 1170, a magnificent cortège that
was also joined by Count Nuño.30 All three were royal advisors and courtiers
of Alfonso and Leonor, and if Jocelin was responsible for the Becket altar, it

27 Galván Freile, ‘Culto e Iconografía’, 207–8; Cavero, Tomás Becket, 82–94.

28 Galván Freile, ‘Culto e Iconografía’, 209–10; Cavero, Tomás Becket, 79–82.
29 Gameson, ‘Early Imagery’, 51; Duggan, ‘Cult’, 26; A. Herrera Casado, Heráldica Seguntina
(Guadalajara, 1990), i, 177; F.-G. Peces Rata, La Fortis Seguntina: La Catedral de Sigüenza
(Barcelona, 1997); F.-G. Peces Rata, Paleografía y epigrafía en la Catedral de Sigüenza (Sigüenza,
1988), 51; E. S. Dodgson, ‘Thomas Á Becket and the Cathedral Church of Sigüenza’, Notes and
Queries (1902), s.9–IX (227), 344.
30 Anales Toledanos, 150; Shadis, Berenguela, 35–6; Cavero, Tomás Becket, 52.

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must have been one of the earliest signs in Castile of veneration for the martyr,
possibly earlier than Count Nuño’s dated grant. But here there is no link with
Queen Leonor, apart from Jocelin’s participation in welcoming her to the
kingdom in 1170.
The supposition that Leonor played a more significant role than others in
promoting the Becket cult in Spain is connected with the assumption that
Henry II’s other daughters similarly performed a filial duty by their patronage of
Becket, their father’s newly canonised protector.31 The matter of royal relations
with the episcopate and papacy was of perennial interest in Germany. The
wonderfully illuminated Gospel book of Henry of Saxony, who had married
Matilda of England in 1168, bears witness to the family veneration adopted
by Henry II’s eldest daughter.32 Furthermore, one of the king’s daughters-in-
law was also instrumental in promoting the Becket cult in a kingdom as far
away as Hungary. The Capetian Margaret was betrothed to Henry II’s eldest
son, also named Henry, in 1158 and once a widow (1183) she married King
Bela III of Hungary in 1186.33 As for the commitment of Leonor’s youngest
sister, Joan, to the cult in Sicily, it has to be remembered that links between
the English and the Sicilian kingdoms long antedate Becket’s death.34 The
mosaic of Becket installed as part of the elaborate decoration of William II’s
most lavish religious foundation at Monreale may have been commissioned
after William’s marriage to Joan in 1177. However, as Evelyn Jamison pointed
out, the origins of Sicilian devotion to Becket probably went back to his
personal contacts with the local episcopate, well before the Plantagenet
princess arrived at Palermo, and, of course, the close relations of the kings
with the papacy itself.35 Unlike Leonor, Joan was married after the Becket cult
had become well ingrained and there was no need for her to pioneer a new
devotion. There is no reason to suppose that Becket had any interest whatever
in Castile or that the problems he faced with Henry II roused any sympathy

31 According to Anne J. Duggan, ‘the marriage alliances of Henry II’s three daughters (and
one daughter-in-law) played some part in spreading devotion to their father’s chief ecclesiastical
adversary’: Duggan, ‘Cult’, 25–6.
32 See Colette Bowie’s essay in this volume (chapter 6).
33 Some work has been done on the patronage of Bela and Margaret for the veneration of
Thomas Becket in Hungary: Slocum, ‘Marriage’, 222 and n. 48. See also the discussion of further
relevant evidence in the essay by Anne J. Duggan in this volume (chapter 2) and the references
cited there.
34 See D. Matthew, Britain and the Continent 1000–1300: The Impact of the Norman Conquest
(London, 2005), 96; E. Jamison, ‘The Alliance of England and Sicily in the Second Half of the
12th Century’, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, 6 (1943), 20–32, at 24; M. Barth,
‘Zum Kult des hl. Thomas Becket im deutschen Sprachgebiet, in Skandinavien und Italien’,
Freiburger Diözesan-Archiv, 80 (1960), 97–166.
35 D. Matthew, The Norman Kingdom of Sicily (Cambridge, 1992), 205; Jamison, ‘Alliance of
England and Sicily’, 24–5. Tancred Borenius, on the other hand, credits Joan with more agency
in the promotion of the cult on the island: Borenius, Becket in Art, 13.

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in the Castilian episcopate, so Leonor seems to have been more active and
independent than her sisters abroad.36
However, apart from her diploma for Toledo Cathedral, the evidence for
Leonor’s active interest in the promotion of the Becket cult is inconclusive.
A wooden chasse that once contained relics of the English martyr is found
amongst the medieval property of the nunnery of Las Huelgas, founded by
Alfonso and Leonor, and a Limoges-style reliquary casket from Palencia was
produced in the last decade of the twelfth century and has scenes depicting
the martyrdom.37 Becket became the patron saint of the village of Alcabón
(Toledo), and its parish church is dedicated to the martyr. There is also a
thirteenth-century church named Santo Tomás de Cantorbery in Avilés
(Asturias) and a chapel enlarged into a church in the sixteenth century at
Vegas de Matute (Segovia).38 However, none of these is evidently linked to
the agency of the queen. There is no evidence to suggest that Leonor had
anything to do with the dedication of the Becket church in Salamanca and
another twelfth-century church, named Santo Tomás Cantuariense, in Toro
(León), was probably dedicated to the martyr only in the eighteenth century.
Nor can Leonor have had anything to do with the mural of the martyr in the
church of Terrasa (Catalonia), or a chapel dedicated at Barcelona Cathedral in
1186, the most significant evidence of the spread of the cult to the northeast of
Castile. Some literary influences of the Becket story over some texts written in
Castile in the late twelfth and early thirteenth centuries have also been noted
and demonstrate the spread of the cult in peninsular poetry, but there is no
evidence to suggest the agency of the queen here.39
As for an interest in Becket at Burgos Cathedral, it was Archdeacon

36 M. Shadis and C. H. Berman, ‘A Taste of the Feast: Reconsidering Eleanor of Aquitaine’s

Female Descendants’, in Eleanor of Aquitaine: Lord and Lady, ed. B. Wheeler and J. C. Parsons
(London, 2002), 177–211, at 182–3. Kay Brainerd Slocum, writing on the role of Henry II’s
daughters in the spread of the cult, appears to suggest that the patronage of Leonor in Castile was
more active and independent compared to that of her sisters: Slocum, ‘Marriage’, 219–20, 223–5.
37 D. Ocón, ‘Alfonso VIII, la llegada de las corrientes artísticas de la corte inglesa y el bizan-
tinismo de la escultura hispánica a fines del siglo XII’, in Alfonso VIII y su época (Aguilar de
Campoo, 1990), 307–20, at 314, n. 30; S. Caudron, ‘Thomas Becket et l’Œuvre de Limoges’,
in Valérie et Thomas Becket: De l’influence des princes Plantagenêt dans l’Œuvre de Limoges, ed.
V. Notin et al. (Limoges, 1999) 56–68. The Palencia reliquary is now in the Musée de Cluny
(Musée National du Moyen Âge) in Paris.
38 F. J. Fernández Conde, La religiosidad medieval en España: Plena Edad Media (ss. XI–XII)
(Gijón, 2005), 481; Cavero, Tomás Becket, 76–8. A confraternity was founded in Puente Castro
(León) in 1884 to preserve the memory of its patron saint and, as in other parishes dedicated to
the martyr in Spain, they commemorate 29 December every year.
39 Estrella Pérez Rodríguez has suggested that the author of the Vita Didaci, a poem about
the founder of the Castilian abbey of Benevívere, may have been an Anglo-Norman, perhaps
someone from Christ Church, Canterbury, who would have been all too aware of the details of
the murder in the cathedral, as well as a contemporary of Queen Leonor: E. Pérez Rodríguez, Vita
Didaci, Poema sobre el Fundador de Benevívere (León, 2008), 182–93.

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Matthew who provided the funds to support two chaplaincies at that church
and for a mass to be said for sinners and the dead: ‘in altaribus que ad honorem
Sancti Tome Martiris et Beati Antonii Abbatis in ecclesia Sancte Marie
construximus’.40 Although the charter is not dated, José Manuel Garrido
suggests that it was issued in 1202, because the archdeacon begins to appear as
witness in other documents from this year. It is not clear that the chaplaincy
and the altar were established at the same time or if the altar was already there.
In any case, the cathedral chapter took the initiative and there is nothing to
suggest any involvement by the queen. Nor can the agency of Leonor be estab-
lished for a thirteenth-century codex and a reliquary related to Becket, both to
be found at Burgos Cathedral.41
About the same time in Burgos, the construction of the royal monastery of
Las Huelgas owed something to an English master, named Richard, for which
he was generously rewarded in 1203, ‘pro laudabili obsequio quo in construc-
tione Burgensis monasterii nostri Sancte Marie Regalis nobis exibuistis’.42 Had
the daughter of Henry II petitioned for English expertise for the building of
one the earliest Gothic structures in Iberia?43 The marriage between Alfonso
and Leonor certainly inaugurated an unprecedented alliance between
England and Castile, so that, quite apart from any devotion to the martyr,
the Angevin princess was probably active in promoting exchanges between
these kingdoms. An entry in the English Pipe Rolls for 1184 registers some
expenses concerning the purchase of utensils by Richard and Edward for the

40 Documentación de la Catedral de Burgos (1184–1222), ed. J. M. Garrido (Burgos, 1983), 155,

no. 363; AVIII, i, 374, nos. 24, 25.
41 Cavero, Tomás Becket, 105–11.
42 AVIII, iii, 310, no. 747; T. Tolley, ‘Eleanor of Castile and the “Spanish” Style in England’, in
England in the Thirteenth Century: Proceedings of the 1989 Harlaxton Symposium, ed. W. M. Ormrod
(Stamford, 1991), 167–92, at 186; J. González, ‘Un arquitecto de las Huelgas de Burgos’, Revista
de Archivos, Bibliotecas y Museos, 53 (1947), 47–50; J. M. Lizoaín Garrido and J. José García, El
Monasterio de las Huelgas: Historia de un Señorío Cisterciense Burgalés (siglos XII–XIII) (Burgos,
1988); A. Rucquoi, Rex, Sapientia, Nobilitas: Estudios sobre la Península Ibérica Medieval (Granada,
2006), 82. Tolley indicates that ‘Ricardo was either an Englishman or an Angevin. The former
seems more likely because the architectural style, particularly of the chapter house, is distinctly
English, and the form of the vaults is not of the Angevin kind’ (p. 186). The oldest surviving
parts of the building, contemporary with Alfonso and Leonor, are the small Romanesque cloisters
known as the claustrillas (c.1180–90), followed by the early Gothic church built in the first
decades of the thirteenth century: M. J. Herrero Sanz, Guide to Santa María la Real de las Huelgas,
Burgos (Madrid, 2002), 16, 46, 54; AVIII, i, 654–6.
43 Here, see E. McKiernan, ‘Monastery and Monarchy: The Foundation and Patronage of Santa
María la Real de Las Huelgas and Santa María la Real de Sigena’ (unpublished Ph.D. thesis,
University of Texas at Austin, 2005), 167–8, 176, 179–82; Herrero Sanz, Guide to Santa María la
Real de las Huelgas, 9–10. Leonor had visited France in 1199 and 1206 for diplomatic reasons and
she may have appreciated some of the features of the new architecture: McKiernan, ‘Monastery
and Monarchy’, 59.

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use of those who travelled to Spain on the king’s service.44 Were they sent to
honour the alliance with Castile? Leonor kept in touch with English affairs
and appears as the axis of the increasing relations between Castile and the
kings of England. After Henry II was buried at the abbey of Fontevraud in
1189, Leonor revealed her concern for her father’s soul when the monarchs of
Castile committed themselves to an annual payment to the monastery, for the
benefit of his soul, ‘pro remedio anime felicissime recordationis famosissimi H.
regis Anglie’, and possibly to reward the education Leonor had received there
in her tender years.45 Magán, a farm near Toledo which provided the gold for
the abbey’s endowment, and a house for the nuns of Las Huelgas in 1209, had
been one of the villages included in the queen’s dowry: ‘quas regina domna
Alienor … tenebat’.46
The scanty and difficult evidence available for the early phase of the Becket
cult in Castile is connected not only with the queen but particularly with those
men who escorted her from Bordeaux in 1170 and besieged Cuenca seven years
later. The Poitevin connections of the Castilian bishops and the Lara family
were also relevant for the perception of what was happening on the other side
of the Pyrenees and it is sensible to recognise that Leonor’s interest in her
family was not dependent on any perceived respect for Becket. It is unlikely
that she had ever met the archbishop of Canterbury in person. But the impact
of the murder in the cathedral was, indeed, swift, profound and widespread,
and the contribution of clerical migration and aristocratic patronage in trans-
mitting the devotion to the English martyr was significant. The phenomenon
also reveals the importance of devotion as a bonding element within dynastic
families and the role played by powerful women in sponsoring pious under-
takings in this period. In Castile, the cult was lively, as well as being royal,
aristocratic and popular; the intercession of the saint was deemed effective,
and his invocation owed much to the initiative of Henry II’s daughter, whose

44 The Great Roll of the Pipe for the Thirtieth Year of the Reign of King Henry the Second, A.D.
1183–1184, PRS 33 (London, 1912), 137: Et Ricardo filio Reineri et Ædwardo Blundo .xxxvj. s. et
.ix. d. ad emendas nappas et patellas et alia vtensilia ad opus eorum qui transfretaverunt in Hispanias in
servitio regis per breve Rannulfi de Glanuill.
45 AVIII, iii, 475, no. 482. See also AVIII, ii, 945–7, no. 551. Among the witnesses of his
grant was García Martínez, maiordomus regine. On Leonor’s education and her relationship
with Fontevraud, see R. Favreau, ‘Aliénor d’Aquitaine et Fontevraud’, 303 Arts, Recherches et
Créations, 81 (2004), 41–4, at 41. See also AVIII, i, 509; Rucquoi, Rex, Sapientia, Nobilitas, 61;
M. Shadis, ‘Piety, Politics, and Power: The Patronage of Leonor of England and Her Daughters
Berenguela of León and Blanche of Castile’, in The Cultural Patronage of Medieval Women, ed.
J. H. McCash (Athens, GA, and London, 1996), 202–27, at 203. For some of the benefits, grants
and payments conferred by Leonor’s mother on Fontevraud, see M. P. Marchegay, ‘Chartes de
Fontevraud concernant l’Aunis et la Rochelle’, Bibliothèque de l’École des Chartes, 19 (1857–58),
132–70 and 321–47, at 134–6, 329–39.
46 AVIII, ii, 945–7, no. 551; AVIII, iii, no. 842. See also Shadis, Berenguela, 37.

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agency brought ‘many happy results’ to Alfonso’s reign, in the words of the
abbot of Mont St-Michel.47
In 2014, the year of the eighth centenary of her death, the interesting life
and work of the Castilian consort, of which the promotion of the Becket cult
is but a small chapter, gained relevance. Leonor Plantagenet was an active
outpost of the Angevin family in Iberia, and as a member of a dynasty belea-
guered by the blame for one of medieval Europe’s most stunning murder cases,
she was diligent in procuring the expiation of her father’s memory and soul,
and promoting the cult of the English saint, ‘winner of battles’, in her adopted
kingdom.
In 1197, however, it was the queen who persuaded an unwilling Alfonso VIII
to defy canonical dispositions concerning consanguinity so as to procure peace
between Castile and León with the betrothal of their daughter Berenguela
to Alfonso IX, who was the king of Castile’s first cousin. It appears that no
dispensation was issued by Pope Celestine III and the marriage was, in fact,
condemned by Innocent III the following year. The newly wedded couple were
excommunicated and the kingdom threatened with interdict. Early in 1204,
the marriage was finally annulled and the children produced considered illegit-
imate by the pope, although Fernando was still considered legitimate heir in
Castile and, centuries later, he was even canonised. Leonor Plantagenet had
decisively promoted in her kingdom the cult of a saint who laid down his
life defending ecclesiastical independence and authority. Perhaps the means
justified the ends or simply the queen had not learnt the lessons taught by fate
to monarchs like her father.

47 Robert of Torigni, Chronique, ii, 116.

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 8.

Crown Versus Church After Becket:

King John, St Thomas and the Interdict1

PAUL WEBSTER

When John, the youngest son of Henry II and Eleanor of Aquitaine, was born
in December 1166 or 1167, Archbishop Becket was in exile. When Becket was
murdered in 1170, John was still a toddler, probably resident at Fontevraud.2
Almost certainly, he never met St Thomas, but as the martyr’s legacy unfolded,
John was growing up: part of the generation that experienced the exponential
growth of the Becket cult. John’s reign as king (1199–1216) witnessed renewed
conflict between king and Church over claims to the exercise of authority. Like
the Becket crisis, this dispute involved its protagonists in diplomatic conflict
on a European stage, and would be remembered as one of the most significant
clashes between king and Church in English medieval history. However, unlike
the Becket dispute and the period following the martyrdom, John’s obstinacy
resulted in a prolonged period (1208–14) in which the kingdom of England
was subject to a general interdict and in which the king was personally excom-
municate (1209–13). This article will examine the extent to which the legacy
of St Thomas Becket, and the memory of the Becket crisis, loomed over royal
relations with the Church, in particular with the papacy, during the dispute of
King John’s reign.
When John was a boy, Henry II was facing the consequences of the
martyrdom. From 1174 until the end of his reign in 1189 he made regular

1 My thanks are due to various scholars for help that has contributed to the writing of this
article: Helen Nicholson for reading a draft version; Nicholas Vincent for sending a copy of his
unpublished paper on Master Simon Langton; Sophie Ambler for supplying me with a copy of
David D’Avray’s article on Stephen Langton; Katherine Harvey for discussion of the dating of
the Burton Annals; and Lauren Davies for drawing my attention to relevant material in the work
of Orderic Vitalis.
2 On John’s date of birth and early upbringing at Fontevraud, see A. W. Lewis, ‘The Birth and
Childhood of King John: Some Revisions’, in Eleanor of Aquitaine: Lord and Lady, ed. B. Wheeler
and J. C. Parsons (New York and Basingstoke, 2002), 159–75, at 166–8. Lewis’s re-dating of
John’s birth to 1166 is now questioned by David Crouch, based on the evidence of Gerald of
Wales: D. Crouch, William Marshal, 3rd edn (London and New York, 2016), 88 nn. 5–6.

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 PAUL WEBSTER

pilgrimages to Canterbury.3 After the capture of the Scottish king, William the
Lion, at Alnwick, following the first of these pilgrimages, Henry was able to
assert the idea that St Thomas supported the crown.4 This was a legacy inherited
and continued by Richard I. On his two brief visits to England, the Lionheart
included Canterbury on his itinerary.5 Gervase of Canterbury claimed that when
Richard returned from captivity in 1194, he prioritised going to Canterbury
over any other church in England.6 John, who had been present at the time of
Richard’s visit of 1189, continued the example set by his father and brother.7
Prior to the death of Archbishop Hubert Walter in 1205, John made regular visits
to the martyr’s shrine at Canterbury at moments of significance in the regnal
or religious calendar, combining this devotion with pilgrimage to the shrines of
royal saints, notably St Edmund the Martyr and St Edward the Confessor.8
John also provided support for religious houses established by Henry II as part
of the revised version of the penance agreed at Avranches in 1172.9 In terms of
the houses traditionally assumed to have been founded or re-founded by Henry
as a result of this agreement, John provided support for the Augustinian canons
of Waltham Holy Cross. His grants were diverse, including the gift of a tin or
pewter laver or ewer (stagneum lavatorium), previously given to Westminster
by Henry II but then removed, forest rights and confirmation of the manor
of Waltham.10 John’s itinerary also records several visits to Waltham between
1204 and 1214.11 He was remembered at the abbey as a donor of relics.12

3 Duggan, ‘Diplomacy’, 278–84; T. K. Keefe, ‘Shrine Time: King Henry II’s Visits to Thomas
Becket’s Tomb’, Haskins Society Journal, 11 (2003), 115–22.
4 Keefe, ‘Shrine Time’, 117–18.
5 L. Landon, The Itinerary of King Richard I with Studies on Certain Matters of Interest Connected
with his Reign, PRS 51, ns 13 (London, 1955), 17–21, 85.
6 Gervase, i, 524.
7 For John’s presence at Canterbury in 1189, see Landon, Itinerary, 19, 21.
8 P. Webster, ‘Crown, Cathedral and Conflict: King John and Canterbury’, in Cathedrals,
Communities and Conflict in the Anglo-Norman World, ed. P. Dalton, C. Insley and L. J. Wilkinson
(Woodbridge, 2011), 203–19, at 204–9.
9 On Henry’s penance and resultant monastic benefaction, see Duggan, ‘Diplomacy’, 285–7;
E. M. Hallam, ‘Henry II as a Founder of Monasteries’, JEH, 28 (1977), 113–32, at 113–14, 117–18;
and the essays in this volume by Anne J. Duggan (chapter 2) and Elma Brenner (chapter 4).
10 Rotuli Litterarum Clausarum In Turri Londinensi asservati, Vol. 1, 1204–1224, ed. T. D. Hardy,
Record Commission (London, 1833), 140b, 158a; Rotuli Chartarum in Turri Londinensi asservati,
Vol. 1, pt. 1, 1199–1216, ed. T. D. Hardy, Record Commission (London, 1837), 65b–66a; The
Early Charters of the Augustinian Canons of Waltham Abbey, Essex 1062–1230, ed. R. Ransford
(Woodbridge, 1989), 27 (no. 38), 127 (no. 201), 197–8 (nos. 294–5), and for grants by John’s
father and brothers to Waltham, 14–27 (nos. 26–36).
11 John is recorded at Waltham in October 1204, August 1205, October 1207, October 1208,
December 1213 and January 1214: T. D. Hardy, ‘Itinerary of King John, &c.’, in Rotuli Litterarum
Patentium in Turri Londinensi asservati. Vol. 1, Pt. 1, 1199–1216, ed. T. D. Hardy, Record
Commission (London, 1835), unpaginated.
12 Early Charters of the Augustinian Canons of Waltham, 435 (no. 637).

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 CROWN VERSUS CHURCH AFTER BECKET

Meanwhile, at Amesbury, a Benedictine nunnery re-founded by Henry II as a

Fontevraudine community in 1177, John again honoured his father’s gifts. This
can be seen in the evidence of the Pipe Rolls, and through royal confirmation
charters, issued for John’s salvation, that of his father, mother, ancestors and
successors, and ‘for the honour of religion’ (‘pro … religionis honestate’).13
Further evidence suggests that John supported a range of houses where
Henry II’s largesse may well be explained by post-martyrdom repentance. These
included Gilbertine Newstead (Lincolnshire), established by Henry by 1173, and
probably in 1171. Here, the dedication of the house to the Holy Trinity (the only
Gilbertine house to be so) suggests a link with the memory of Thomas Becket. The
feast had been promoted by the archbishop, who had ordered its celebration as
his first act as a consecrated bishop.14 John continued the association, augmenting
his father’s grants to Newstead with land in Howsham (Lincolnshire), in a grant
issued for the king’s salvation, and that of his ancestors and heirs, in pure and
perpetual alms.15 Beyond England, John followed his father’s example in taking
the leper hospital of Mont-aux-Malades, Rouen, under his protection. Henry II
had undertaken construction of a new church there, dedicated to St Thomas, in
a re-foundation dating to c.1174.16 The king also issued grants to Carthusian Le
Liget in the Touraine, supported by his father in the second half of his reign, and
favoured the Augustinian foundation of St Thomas the Martyr outside Dublin,
established by Henry II in 1177, perhaps in fulfilment of a promise made during
his famous Canterbury pilgrimage in 1174.17

13 On the re-foundation, see S. K. Elkins, Holy Women of Twelfth-Century England (Chapel Hill,
NC, and London, 1988), 146–7; B. M. Kerr, Religious Life for Women c. 1100–c. 1350: Fontevraud
in England (Oxford, 1999), 70–73, 78–9. For John’s grants, see Rotuli Chartarum, 13b–14b. For
an example of the Pipe Roll payments recorded in each regnal year (barring the fifteenth and
eighteenth years of John’s reign, for which rolls do not survive), see The Great Roll of the Pipe for
the First Year of the Reign of King John, Michaelmas 1199 (Pipe Roll 45), ed. D. M. Stenton, PRS 48,
ns 10 (London, 1933), 1.
14 B. Golding, Gilbert of Sempringham and the Gilbertine Order, c. 1130–c. 1300 (Oxford, 1995),
223–4; H. Mayr-Harting, Religion, Politics and Society in Britain 1066–1272 (Harlow, 2011), 93.
15 Rotuli Chartarum, 84b.
16 Rotuli Chartarum, 76a; L. Grant (trans. B. Duchet-Filhol), ‘Le patronage architectural de
Henri II et de son entourage’, CCM, 37, no. 145–6 (1994), 73–84, at 76. Royal patronage of this
leper house is also considered in: E. Brenner, ‘Charity in Rouen in the Twelfth and Thirteenth
Centuries (with special reference to Mont-aux-Malades)’ (unpublished Ph.D. thesis, University
of Cambridge, 2008); E. Brenner, Leprosy and Charity in Medieval Rouen (Woodbridge, 2015).
17 For John’s grants, see Rotuli Chartarum, 63a; Rotuli Normanniae in Turri Londinensi asservati:
Johanne et Henrico Quinto, Angliae Regibus. Vol. I. 1200–1205, necnon de anno 1417, ed.
T. D. Hardy, Record Commission (London, 1835), 77; Chartae, Privilegia et Immunitates, Being
Transcripts of Charters and Privileges to Cities, Towns, Abbeys, and Other Bodies Corporate: 18
Henry II to 18 Richard II (1171 to 1395), Irish Record Commission (Dublin, 1829–30), 4–6,
8–9, available online at the website of Circle: A Calendar of Irish Chancery Letters, c. 1244–1509
[http://chancery.tcd.ie/images/cpi/0?page=1, accessed 28 June 2012]; Register of the Abbey of
St Thomas, Dublin, ed. J. T. Gilbert, RS 94 (London, 1889), 6–7; Rotuli de Liberate ac de Misis et

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 PAUL WEBSTER

Meanwhile, there was considerable continuity in the Angevin attitude

towards episcopal and archiepiscopal appointments. The Constitutions of
Clarendon (1164), to which Becket had objected so vehemently, set out the
way in which bishops and abbots were to be elected in the king’s chapel, with
his approval, on the advice of those churchmen the king felt it appropriate
to summon. Little changed in the decades following Becket’s martyrdom.
Although the Third Lateran Council (1179) forbade the involvement of
clergy in secular affairs, the kings of England took no notice.18 Richard I ‘had
little respect for the church’s freedom and worked to preserve his royal prede-
cessors’ authority over it’, taking especial care in supervising elections, and
proving even better able than Henry II or John at promoting men of the court
to the episcopate.19 Jörg Peltzer has argued that in the later years of Richard’s
reign, and in the early phase of John’s, the evidence of elections to the Norman
dioceses shows that the Angevins were gradually fighting against the tide of
Church attitudes to lay (and in particular royal) influence over elections.20 Yet
none of these three kings experienced great difficulty in the post-Becket era
in appointing bishops with a background in royal service prepared to fulfil a
dual secular and ecclesiastical function, in the way Becket had conspicuously
refused to do. William de Longchamp, Hubert Walter and Peter des Roches
are just some of the most conspicuous examples.21 Indeed, the executors of
the interdict of John’s reign, William de Ste-Mère-Eglise, bishop of London,
Eustace, bishop of Ely, and Mauger, bishop of Worcester, were classic examples
of bishops nominated for the role by the king.22
John was not prepared to let the Church stand in the way of what he
perceived to be royal rights. In the case of Canterbury, he probably had

Praestitis regnante Johanne, ed. T. D. Hardy, Record Commission (London, 1844), 71. On Henry,
see Hallam, ‘Henry II as a Founder of Monasteries’, 117, 118–20; Duggan, ‘Diplomacy’, 287.
18 C. R. Cheney, Pope Innocent III and England (Stuttgart, 1976), 124; Mayr-Harting, Religion,
185.
19 R. V. Turner, ‘Richard Lionheart and English Episcopal Elections’, Albion: A Quarterly
Journal Concerned with British Studies, 29 (1997), 1–13, at 1, 11. See also D. Walker, ‘Crown
and Episcopacy under the Normans and Angevins’, Anglo-Norman Studies, 5 (1983), 220–33,
at 220–21, 223–4, 227–31; N. Vincent, ‘Beyond Becket: King Henry II and the Papacy (1154–
1189)’, in Pope Alexander III (1150–81): The Art of Survival, ed. P. D. Clarke and A. J. Duggan
(Farnham, 2012), 257–99, at 292–3. On Richard’s enraged response when the monks of Durham
attempted an unauthorised election in 1195, see Cheney, Pope Innocent III, 126–7.
20 J. Peltzer, Canon Law, Careers and Conquest: Episcopal Elections in Normandy and Greater
Anjou, c. 1140–c. 1230 (Cambridge, 2008), 167–8, with trends in canon law explored at 31–6.
21 On William, see R. V. Turner, ‘Longchamp, William de (d. 1197)’, ODNB (Oxford, 2004;
online edn, 2007) [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/16980, accessed 12 June 2012]. On
Hubert, see Mayr-Harting, Religion, 186–93; C. R. Cheney, Hubert Walter (London, 1967). On
Peter, see N. Vincent, Peter des Roches: An Alien in English Politics, 1205–1238 (Cambridge, 1996).
22 Turner, ‘Richard Lionheart and English Episcopal Elections’, 9–10. On William, see also R. V.
Turner, Men Raised from the Dust: Administrative Service and Upward Mobility in Angevin England
(Philadelphia, PA, 1988), 27. On Eustace and Mauger, see Cheney, Pope Innocent III, 28, 142.

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experience of Richard I’s efforts to compel the cathedral monks to reach a

settlement of their long-running dispute over Archbishop Baldwin’s proposed
collegiate foundation at Hackington (just outside Canterbury), revived by
Archbishop Hubert Walter as a proposed college at Lambeth. John was present
at Canterbury in late November and early December 1189, when Richard
intervened in the dispute.23 During the quarrel, a steady procession of deputa-
tions from the archbishop, and from the prior and monks of Canterbury,
travelled to Rome to seek papal judgement. Here, the memory of Thomas
Becket was kept alive as the monks drew on supposed visions of the saint as
their supporter against the archbishop, with the saint seen as defender of the
monastic community rather than the see.24
As king, John proved determined to protect his rights in relation to episcopal
appointments.25 He was quick to visit sees which fell vacant or, if he was not
present, to ensure that elections took place in the presence of his officials. In
1200, he stated that he expected his wishes to be respected and that it was his
right to approve the election of a new bishop of Lisieux.26 Elsewhere, John tried
unsuccessfully to block elections made by cathedral chapters: as in the cases of
Sylvester, bishop of Sées, in 1202–1203 (provoking a stern rebuke and threat of
interdict on Normandy from Pope Innocent III), and of Archbishop Eugenius
of Armagh in 1206.27 The early years of the reign were marked by ongoing
dispute over the election to the bishopric of St David’s. Perhaps most notably,
the king secured his favoured candidate, Peter des Roches, for the bishopric of
Winchester in 1205, despite the election being disputed and subject to adjudi-
cation at the papal curia.28 In elections held during the general interdict, the
king made a concerted effort to secure the candidates he wanted, resulting in
an unsuccessful attempt to elect the chancellor, Walter de Gray, to Coventry
and Lichfield. This did not always work out as John intended. For instance,

23 Landon, Itinerary, 19, 21. The dispute is summarised in Cheney, Pope Innocent III, 209–20.
24 For recent discussion of the dispute, see J. Sayers, ‘Peter’s Throne and Augustine’s Chair: Rome
and Canterbury from Baldwin (1184–90) to Robert Winchelsey (1297–1313)’, JEH, 51 (2000),
249–66, at 252–6, and see also 259–61; M.-P. Gelin, ‘Gervase of Canterbury, Christ Church and
the Archbishops’, JEH, 60 (2009), 449–63; S. Sweetinburgh, ‘Caught in the Cross-Fire: Patronage
and Institutional Politics in Late Twelfth-Century Canterbury’, in Cathedrals, Communities and
Conflict in the Anglo-Norman World, ed. P. Dalton, C. Insley and L. J. Wilkinson (Woodbridge,
2011), 187–202. For aspects of the dispute after John’s reign, see C. R. Cheney, ‘Magna carta beati
Thome: Another Canterbury Forgery’, in Medieval Texts and Studies, by C. R. Cheney (Oxford,
1973), 78–110. See also the discussion in Michael Staunton’s essay in this volume (chapter 5).
25 For this paragraph, unless otherwise stated see Cheney, Pope Innocent III, 125–31, 135–41,
145–7, 153–4, 158, and see also 281–2 for the view that John took a similar line as lord of Ireland,
again attracting the attention of Pope Innocent III.
26 Rotuli Chartarum, 99a; Peltzer, Canon Law, Careers and Conquest, 213.
27 For Sées, in addition to Cheney’s discussion, see also Peltzer, Canon Law, Careers and
Conquest, 124–32.
28 In addition to Cheney’s discussion, see also Vincent, Peter des Roches, 47–55.

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Hugh of Wells, elected bishop of Lincoln in 1209, effectively defected, seeking

consecration at the hands of Archbishop Langton in exile.
The Canterbury dispute could have provided the king with a lesson that
he could not always secure his own way in episcopal elections. However,
John’s desire to secure the appointment of his own candidates was apparently
undimmed, even after the resolution of the interdict. Although he was not able
to secure promotion for Peter des Roches from Winchester to the archbish-
opric of York, nor was Archbishop Langton’s brother Simon able to obtain
the see.29 Elsewhere, curialist bishops were appointed, Archbishop Langton
became politically isolated and went into exile, and the bishops supported
the crown in the final months of the reign.30 Even after issuing his charter
confirming free elections in 1214, re-issued in January 1215 and summarised
in Magna Carta in June 1215, the king and his successors retained influence.31
Furthermore, in a number of instances throughout the reign, John’s bishops
served the king in his secular affairs without incurring papal displeasure.
Hubert Walter was chancellor from 1199 almost until his death in 1205, whilst
John de Gray, bishop of Norwich, and Peter des Roches, bishop of Winchester,
served as justiciar in Ireland and England respectively.32 Four out of the nine
bishops named in Magna Carta had assisted John without interruption during
the interdict and the period of the king’s excommunication.33

29 On des Roches, see Vincent, Peter des Roches, 95–8; Cheney, Pope Innocent III, 77. On Simon
Langton, see Cheney, Pope Innocent III, 162–5; F. A. Cazel Jr, ‘Langton, Simon (d. 1248)’, ODNB
(Oxford, 2004) [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/16043, accessed 26 June 2012]. The
impact of Simon’s failure to become archbishop on his later career is also discussed in N. Vincent,
‘Master Simon Langton, King John and the Court of France’, an unpublished article supplied to
me by Professor Vincent.
30 Curialist bishops elected in this period included Henry of London (elected archbishop of
Dublin in 1212 or 1213 after failing to secure confirmation as bishop of Exeter), William of
Cornhill (elected to Coventry and Lichfield in 1214, following a second unsuccessful attempt
to secure the bishopric for Walter de Gray), Walter de Gray (elected first to Worcester in 1214,
then to York in 1215), Richard Marsh (put forward for the sees of Winchester and Ely, but then
elected at Durham in 1215): Cheney, Pope Innocent III, 131–3, 162–7. On the contrast between
Langton and his episcopal colleagues in the last months of the reign, see Vincent, ‘Langton’, 99.
31 Cheney, Pope Innocent III, 168–70. For the 1214 charter, see Select Charters and Other
Illustrations of English Constitutional History, ed. W. Stubbs, 9th edn, rev. by H. W. C. Davis
(Oxford, 1921), 282–4, available online on the website of the Early English Laws project [http://
www.earlyenglishlaws.ac.uk/laws/manuscripts/stubbs/?tp=ob&nb=lib-elec, accessed 3 February
2015]. For its inclusion in Magna Carta, see J. C. Holt, Magna Carta, 2nd edn (Cambridge, 1992),
448–51. See also K. Harvey, Episcopal Appointments in England, c. 1214–1344: From Episcopal
Election to Papal Provision (Farnham, 2014), 19–26.
32 Cheney, Pope Innocent III, 19–20. Innocent had, however, requested Hubert’s dismissal as
justiciar during Richard’s reign, prompting the archbishop’s resignation from the role.
33 Cheney, Pope Innocent III, 378. These were Archbishop Henry of Dublin, Peter des Roches,
bishop of Winchester, Walter de Gray, bishop of Worcester, and William of Cornhill, bishop of
Coventry and Lichfield, all named in the preamble to the charter: Holt, Magna Carta, 448–9.

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However, the Angevin association with the murder of an archbishop

in his own cathedral created a problem for any king wishing to assert his
authority over the Church: a ‘ghost of Christmas past’ which could not be
ignored. It seems likely that this explains why Henry II failed to inspire the
writing of panegyric biography, after the manner of that compiled for the
Anglo-Norman rulers or the Capetian kings of France.34 It may also explain
why Hugh of Lincoln was able to stand up to the Angevins with what his
biographer portrays as impunity.35 Even John’s half-brother, Geoffrey, bishop-
elect of Lincoln and royal chancellor under Henry II, and archbishop of York
from 1189–1212, could invoke the memory of the murdered archbishop of
Canterbury when dragged from sanctuary on his attempted return to England
from the Continent in 1191. On his release, Geoffrey made sure to visit
Becket’s tomb at Canterbury on his way to London.36
In this context, we can now turn to the major dispute between king and
Church in the reign of King John. To summarise the main events: Hubert
Walter, King Richard I’s choice as archbishop of Canterbury in 1193, who
served as justiciar (1193–98) under the Lionheart and Chancellor (1199–
1205) under John, died in July 1205.37 The election of Hubert’s archiepis-
copal successor was beset by attempted deception by the monks of Canterbury
Cathedral and by ‘bully-boy’ tactics employed by King John. The monks sought
to elect their sub-prior, Reginald, hoping to avoid a candidate imposed by the
king, but conducted their election in secret. This was unknown to John for
several months. In turn, he sought to promote the bishop of Norwich, John de
Gray. Following appeals and counter-appeals at the papal curia, Innocent III
annulled both elections and summoned the Canterbury monks to choose their
archbishop in his presence. The result was the choice of the English cardinal
and Master of the Paris schools, Stephen Langton. The pope consecrated the
new archbishop at Viterbo in June 1207. However, King John believed that
the traditional royal right of involvement and, in particular, of giving consent

34 N. Vincent, ‘The Strange Case of the Missing Biographies: The Lives of the Plantagenet
Kings of England 1154–1272’, in Writing Medieval Biography, 750–1250: Essays in Honour of
Professor Frank Barlow, ed. D. Bates, J. Crick and S. Hamilton (Woodbridge, 2006), 237–57.
35 On religion and politics in the career of Hugh of Lincoln, see Mayr-Harting, Religion,
193–200, 203–4. For the medieval biography of Hugh, see Magna Vita Sancti Hugonis: The Life of
St Hugh of Lincoln, ed. D. L. Douie and H. Farmer, NMT, 2 vols (London, 1961–62).
36 For the visit to Canterbury, see M. Lovatt, ‘Geoffrey (1151?–1212)’, ODNB (Oxford, 2004;
online edn, 2007) [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/10535, accessed 29 June 2012]. For
Geoffrey invoking the memory of the saint, see Michael Staunton’s essay in this volume (chapter
5), noting that where Gerald of Wales evoked parallels of Becket, Richard of Devizes’ account
probably sought to provide a satire on this ‘new martyr’.
37 For this paragraph, see the following unless otherwise stated. On the Canterbury election:
M. D. Knowles, ‘The Canterbury Election of 1205–6’, EHR, 53 (1938), 211–20; Cheney, Pope
Innocent III, 147–54. On the king’s belief that he had been deceived, and its influence on his
behaviour: Webster, ‘Crown, Cathedral and Conflict’, 211–16.

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to an election, had been disregarded. He therefore refused to allow Archbishop

Langton to enter England, allegedly threatening that he would be hanged if he
attempted to do so.38 In addition, he drove the Canterbury monks into exile,
believing them to have deceived him, to the extent of committing treason. As
a result of the king’s ongoing intransigence, Pope Innocent III threatened, and
then imposed, sentences of interdict on England (which lasted from 1208 to
1214) and personal excommunication on the king (which lasted from 1209 to
1213).
To what extent was the memory of St Thomas and the Becket dispute
deployed during the Canterbury crisis of John’s reign?39 Here, there are
two important elements of long-term context. A clear image of Becket had
developed: as a defender of, and martyr for, the freedoms of the Church. This
was prevalent by the early thirteenth century and was essentially a posthumous
creation. In part this was the work of Becket’s biographers.40 It was also heavily
influenced by the schoolmen of Paris, through their biblical commentaries and
glosses, focused on the interrelationship of Church, king and people, coupled
with a tradition dating to the Gregorian reformers and longer-term conflict
between anointed rulers and the Church. The result was that kingship could
be seen both positively and negatively, but in this period the behaviour of
earthly monarchs was often portrayed not only unfavourably, but as an evil
which it fell to the Church to combat.41 This was the case not least because,
according to the highly influential theologian Peter the Chanter, a king’s
subjects were tainted with their ruler’s sins, since it fell to the subjects to
prevent those sins, if and when they were able.42 ‘Much of that power, in turn,
rested with a ruler’s clerical subjects.’43 In this context, the impact of being

38 Annales de Burton (A.D. 1004–1263) in Annales Monastici, ed. H. R. Luard, RS 36, 5 vols
(London, 1864–69), i, 209–11.
39 On factors that distinguish the two disputes, see Vincent, ‘Langton’, 80–81.
40 On whom see M. Staunton, Thomas Becket and his Biographers (Woodbridge, 2006).
41 On the schoolmen, see B. Smalley, The Becket Conflict and the Schools: A Study of Intellectuals
in Politics (Oxford, 1973); J. W. Baldwin, Masters, Princes and Merchants: The Social Views of Peter
the Chanter and his Circle, 2 vols (Princeton, NJ, 1970); P. Buc, ‘Principes Gentium Dominantur
Eorum: Princely Power Between Legitimacy and Illegitimacy in Twelfth-Century Exegesis’,
in Cultures of Power: Lordship, Status and Process in Twelfth-Century Europe, ed. T. N. Bisson
(Philadelphia, PA, 1995) 310–28. The latter summarises fuller discussion in: P. Buc, L’ambiguïté du
livre: Prince, pouvoir et peuple dans les commentaires de la bible au moyen âge (Paris, 1995). See also
P. Buc, ‘Pouvoir royal et commentaires de la bible (1150–1350)’, Annales: Économies, Sociétés,
Civilisations, 44 (1989), 691–713. Here, Buc notes a gradual trend to write favourably of kings
and kingship, emerging in tentative form in the twelfth century, but much more pronounced by
the fourteenth.
42 P. D. Clarke, The Interdict in the Thirteenth Century: A Question of Collective Guilt (Oxford,
2007), 39–40.
43 B. Weiler, ‘Bishops and Kings in England c. 1066–c. 1215’, in Religion and Politics in the Middle
Ages: Germany and England by Comparison, ed. L. Körntgen and D. Wassenhoven (Berlin and
Boston, MA, 2013), 87–134, at 129–30.

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perceived to have ordered the murder of an archbishop in his own cathedral

was magnified. As a result, the language deployed in the disputed election of
John’s reign reflects a legacy of thought about kings and their relationship with
the Church influenced by interpretation of Becket and his fate. Men at the
forefront of the two crises – John of Salisbury and Stephen Langton – led the
way in developing the view that the kingship of their own time was flawed
in the manner of that of the biblical tyrants.44 Although there were contexts
(such as sermons) where Langton accepted monarchy, he nonetheless used his
biblical exegesis to argue that God was angered by the Israelites’ request to
have a king, with the prophet Samuel warning of the potential for tyranny
that would ensue.45
A comparison may be drawn between the attitude of Henry II and John
towards the threat of interdict and excommunication. In the late 1160s, the
prospect of sanctions was enough to bring Henry II to the negotiating table.
The peace of Fréteval (July 1170) arose out of threatened interdict of Henry’s
lands.46 Becket observed afterwards that Henry II immediately made peace
when he learned that it was proposed to interdict his lands, to excommunicate
the bishops who opposed Archbishop Thomas, and perhaps even to sentence
the king himself – much as Pope Alexander had acted against the Emperor
Frederick I a decade earlier.47 After the murder, in the early 1170s, Henry II’s
continental lands were placed under a general interdict and the pope forbade
him from entering churches. This was the prelude to the agreement of penance
in the Compromise of Avranches in 1172.48 Like his father, John was keen to

44 See Vincent, ‘Langton’, 74–5, and the references collected there.

45 D. L. D’Avray, ‘“Magna Carta”: Its Background in Stephen Langton’s Academic Biblical
Exegesis and its Episcopal Reception’, Studi Medievali, 38 (1997), 423–38, at 426–7, 429.
46 Duggan, Thomas Becket, 183–6. For Henry II’s letter announcing his climb down, see CTB,
ii, 1258–61 (no. 299).
47 CTB, ii, 1260–79 (no. 300 at 1260–61), 1279–81 (no. 301 at 1280–81). See also CTB, ii,
1054–67 (no. 244 at 1062–3), written in 1169, when Becket told his clerks to impress upon
the pope the need to ‘frighten the king by fear of an interdict’; and CTB, ii, 1314–17 (no. 315),
dated October 1170, where Pope Alexander III expressly excluded the king from those on whom
Becket could impose sanctions. The excommunication of Frederick I in 1160 was not conspic-
uously successful. It was repeated in 1162, effectively repeated in 1163, and enhanced with a
sentence of deposition in 1167. The schism did not end until 1177. T. Reuter, ‘John of Salisbury
and the Germans’, in The World of John of Salisbury, ed. M. Wilks, SCH, Subsidia 3 (Oxford,
1984), 415–25 at 417–18; J. Johrendt, ‘The Empire and the Schism’, in Pope Alexander III
(1159–81): The Art of Survival, ed. P. D. Clarke and A. J. Duggan (Farnham, 2012), 99–126 at
112–13. Becket was soon of the opinion Henry had gone back on his word once the threat had
passed: CTB, ii, 1320–29 (no. 318, at 1320–21).
48 Duggan, ‘Diplomacy’, 265, 271–8. See also A. J. Duggan, ‘Ne in dubium: The Official Record
of Henry II’s Reconciliation at Avranches, 21 May 1172’, EHR, 115 (2000), 643–58, repr. with
the same pagination in Duggan, Friends, Networks, no. VIII. For a parallel with the events of
1105, when Henry I was on the point of being excommunicated by Archbishop Anselm of
Canterbury for his failure to restore archiepiscopal lands and revenues, see J. R. Maddicott, ‘The

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avoid ecclesiastical sanctions, with diplomatic avenues kept open as long as

possible. As late as August 1209, when the threat of the king being excommu-
nicated was clear, the bishop-executors of Innocent III’s sentences (William
of London, Eustace of Ely and Mauger of Worcester) negotiated with the king
in the hope of brokering a settlement. Stephen Langton himself travelled
to Dover from the Continent in October 1209, in response to royal letters
probably inspired by the impending excommunication.49 The anonymous
Deeds of Pope Innocent III closed at this point, in the opinion that the dispute
had been resolved.50
However, there was a mutual intransigence that might not have been
unfamiliar to those charged with persuading Henry II and Becket to make
peace. John wanted agreement on his terms or not at all. This may reflect the
extent to which times had changed since the pontificate of Alexander III.
Innocent III’s papacy has been described as ‘the golden age of the interdict
… not indeed because it then proved most effective but because it was
most frequently employed’.51 In this period, kings were apparently used to
sentences of interdict or excommunication being threatened and imposed,
with examples ranging from the Iberian kingdoms, to countries at the edge
of Europe such as Norway and Armenia, or to realms at the heart of western
European politics such as the Empire, France and England.52 It was a trend that
was set to continue across the thirteenth century, especially in the handling
of papal territorial interests in Italy.53 However, highlighting the fact that
such sentences were used more often than they worked is to overlook the fact
that Innocent III’s papacy was in a position to use them at all. Alexander III’s
struggle to assert his legitimacy as pope meant that he needed all the support
he could get from European monarchs, a fact he was well aware of, as the
evidence for his gratitude for Henry II’s backing bears witness.54
In response to papal sanctions, if John was prepared to ride out a sentence
of interdict, he seemed much more concerned with the threat of excommu-
nication. His response was not entirely dissimilar to that of Henry II in 1169.
Henry had ordered that everyone over the age of fifteen should swear an oath

Oath of Marlborough, 1209: Fear, Government and Popular Allegiance in the Reign of King
John’, EHR, 126 (2011), 281–318, at 291–2. Henry, however, gave in, unlike John.
49 Maddicott, ‘Oath of Marlborough’, 286–7.
50 The Deeds of Pope Innocent III, by an Anonymous Author, trans. J. M. Powell (Washington
D.C., 2004), xliv–xlv, 240–41.
51 H. G. Richardson and G. O. Sayles, The Governance of Medieval England from the Conquest to
Magna Carta (Edinburgh, 1963), 344–5, citing the remarks of L. Godefroy.
52 J. Sayers, Innocent III: Leader of Europe (London and New York, 1994), 79–80, 82, 84, 116;
J. C. Moore, Pope Innocent III (1160/61–1216): To Root Up and to Plant (Leiden and Boston, MA,
2003), 70–73, 195–7, 201.
53 Clarke, The Interdict, 117–18.
54 Vincent, ‘Beyond Becket’, 271.

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not to obey sentences of interdict or excommunication issued by the pope or

archbishop (on pain of exile and forfeiture of possessions). Further instructions
sought to prevent letters of interdict entering the country. Ironically, this was
entirely counter-productive, provoking Alexander III to authorise the very
sanctions Henry had sought to avoid.55 In 1209, John ordered assemblies to
be held across the land, in which ‘all the men of England’ performed oaths.
However, these went much further than those demanded by his father (or
indeed any of his predecessors), requiring freemen to swear fealty and perform
homage to the king and his infant son Henry.56 In neither case did this create
lasting loyalty. Henry II found himself facing the most serious and sustained
rebellion of his reign in 1173–74, leading to demands for further oaths of
fealty as part of the Assize of Northampton in 1176.57 John was faced with
the uprising that led to Magna Carta and civil war. His death meant that he
could not emulate his father by demanding oaths of fealty within a few years
of the restoration of peace. However, such oaths were required by the minority
government of Henry III, in 1218–19.58
During the exchanges between John and Innocent III or his representatives,
the ghost of St Thomas reared its head on a number of occasions, for instance
in a papal letter of 1206 to the prior and monks of Canterbury, recounting
the course of Langton’s election.59 In writing to John in May 1207, Innocent
impressed upon the king that ‘to fight against God and the Church in this
cause for which St Thomas, that glorious martyr and archbishop, recently
shed his blood, would be dangerous for you’.60 This sentiment seems to reflect
a mood current in papal circles. The Deeds of Pope Innocent observed that
St Thomas had been martyred for no purpose, because the Angevin kings, ‘by
the insolence of princes’, kept the English Church ‘in the handmaidenship of
servitude’.61 In addition, Becket was remembered in a papal letter to Langton
and various English bishops, issued in 1213 as the dispute neared resolution.

55 Maddicott, ‘Oath of Marlborough’, 295; A. J. Duggan, ‘Henry II, the English Church and
the Papacy, 1154–76’, in Henry II: New Interpretations, ed. C. Harper-Bill and N. Vincent
(Woodbridge, 2007), 154–83 at 174–5; M. D. Knowles, A. J. Duggan and C. N. L. Brooke,
‘Henry II’s Supplement to the Constitutions of Clarendon’, EHR, 87 (1972), 757–71; Clarke,
The Interdict, 175–6.
56 Maddicott, ‘Oath of Marlborough’, 281 (quoting Gervase of Canterbury), and see also
299–307.
57 On the Great Rebellion, see W. L. Warren, Henry II (London, 1973), 116–43. For the oaths
of 1176, see Maddicott, ‘Oath of Marlborough’, 295–6. Maddicott notes that similar measures
were taken after Richard I’s capture travelling home from the Third Crusade, again in the wake
of a crime wave in 1195, and by John in 1205 when faced with the threat of French invasion.
58 Maddicott, ‘Oath of Marlborough’, 313.
59 Gervase, ii, lxviii–lxxii; Vincent, ‘Langton’, 68.
60 Selected Letters of Pope Innocent III Concerning England (1198–1216), ed. and trans. C. R.
Cheney and W. H. Semple, NMT (London, 1953), 89 (no. 29).
61 Deeds of Pope Innocent, 238; Cheney, Pope Innocent III, 16–17.

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Here, John’s opposition was seen as a characteristic inherited from Henry II:
‘sometimes the perversity of the wicked passes down by succession of blood
from father to son’. A direct comparison was drawn between the fate of
St Thomas and John’s persecution of the English bishops and the Canterbury
monks.62
Intriguingly, King John may have invoked the memory of St Thomas in
building his case before papal representatives. The annals of Burton, written
during the reign of Henry III, provide a detailed account of the interdict
dispute.63 The annals describe an encounter between King John and the papal
envoys Pandulf and Durand, at the royal court at Northampton in 1211. John
observed that, even in the case of Becket, the archbishopric of Canterbury
had been conferred by the king. In seeking to deprive him of this role when
choosing the successor to Hubert Walter, John argued, Innocent III sought
to deprive him of rights traditionally exercised by his predecessors.64 Such an
argument was consistent with the king’s outlook on the dispute as a whole. He
is said also to have cited the example of St Wulfstan of Worcester, collated
to his see by Edward the Confessor, but whom William the Conqueror had
allegedly attempted to depose. Wulfstan responded by plunging his staff into
the tomb of the Confessor and, miraculously, proved to be the only person
capable of removing it. Thus he was allowed to retain his see.65 The story was
invented in the 1130s, but had found acceptance. For John, it resonated with
his view of the extent of royal authority over episcopal appointments.
However, such a viewpoint was unlikely to find favour with the papal envoys,
who are said to have denounced John’s interpretation in no uncertain terms.
Pandulf argued that the king was wrong. St Edward had been the protector
of the Church; John was its destroyer. Thus, the latter’s refusal to accept
Langton’s appointment to Canterbury was akin to William the Conqueror’s
refusal to accept Wulfstan’s status. Likewise, although Henry II had engineered
the election of Becket, the latter had resigned his see to Pope Alexander III.
Following the martyrdom, Pandulf added, Henry had conceded to the monks
of Canterbury, for the remission of all his sins, that forevermore the archbishop
should be elected according to the will of God, without input from the bishops,
and with the assent of the king, earls and barons in attendance.66 If so, it was

62 Selected Letters of Pope Innocent III, 142 (no. 49).

63 A. Gransden, Historical Writing in England, c. 500 to c. 1307 (Ithaca, NY, New York and
London, 1974), 408–9; Annales de Burton, 209–23.
64 Annales de Burton, 211–12.
65 Annales de Burton, 211. For the legend, see ‘La Vie de S. Edouard le Confesseur par Osbert
de Clare’, ed. M. Bloch, Analecta Bollandiana, 41 (1923), 5–131 at 116–20; P. Draper, ‘King John
and St Wulfstan’, Journal of Medieval History, 10 (1984), 41–50, at 46–7; E. Mason, ‘St Wulfstan’s
Staff: A Legend and its Uses’, Medium Aevum, 53 (1984), 158–79, at 157–71.
66 Annales de Burton, 214–15.

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not a commitment that Henry II’s successors had felt bound to observe, but
discussion on this point is not recorded.
John may also have followed in the footsteps of the murderers of St Thomas.
In 1210, the king spent Easter at Knaresborough. The occasion is remembered
as the first known commemoration of Maundy Thursday by an English king,
in turn suggesting that John went on to mark the other holy days of the
Easter festival.67 However, this was two years into the general interdict and
the first Easter since John’s excommunication. The location was significant.
Knaresborough was the castle to which Becket’s murderers had fled from
the scene of their crime in 1170. Maundy Thursday (1171) was the day on
which Pope Alexander III had excommunicated Becket’s killers and all who
had lodged or advised them.68 Did King John make this link, and could this
have been a conscious statement of defiance of what Becket, and latterly
Innocent III and Stephen Langton, were seen to stand for? The evidence is
not sufficient to sustain such a conclusion, but the coincidences of timing are
at least noteworthy.
In addition, it is important to question whether John’s opponents sought to
portray themselves as Thomas Becket’s heirs. Nicholas Vincent has observed
that ‘a sense of identification with Becket is crucial to any understanding
of Langton’s archiepiscopal career’.69 This can be seen in Stephen’s Bible
commentaries, in his letters after he became archbishop and in the portrayal
of his exile (the period when John refused him permission to enter England).
Such allusions reflected the image of Becket constructed in the minds of the
schoolmen of Paris in the decades since the martyrdom.70 Langton followed
the example of his predecessor, Hubert Walter, in choosing an image of the
martyrdom for his counter seal. His successors would follow suit.71
Stephen Langton further sought to achieve coincidences of timing between
the events of his archiepiscopate and seminal dates in the career of Archbishop
Thomas.72 Langton’s consecration took place on Trinity Sunday (17 June)
1207; Becket’s had taken place on Trinity Sunday (3 June) 1162. Further
similarities were invoked when Langton sought to travel to England. In 1209,
he questioned the adequacy of royal safe-conducts, a conscious evocation of

67 A. Kellett, ‘King John in Knaresborough: The First Known Royal Maundy’, Yorkshire
Archaeological Journal, 62 (1990), 69–90.
68 Vincent, ‘Murderers’, 251–2 and n. 172.
69 Vincent, ‘Langton’, 67, and for the material in this paragraph, unless otherwise stated see
also 67–73 (Langton: The New Becket?) and 81–2. As this issue has been covered by Professor
Vincent, only brief coverage is given here.
70 In addition to Vincent’s discussion, see Smalley, Becket Conflict.
71 Duggan, ‘Cult’, 30. See also K. B. Slocum, ‘Martir quod Stillat Primatis ab Ore Sigillat: Sealed
with the Blood of Becket’, Journal of the British Archaeological Association, 165 (2012), 61–88, esp.
63–6.
72 For this paragraph, unless otherwise stated see Vincent, ‘Langton’, 82, 90.

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the threats which had faced Thomas Becket. In 1213, Langton crossed the
channel on a Tuesday, in emulation of his predecessor in December 1170,
although Stephen was not on a path that would lead to martyrdom.
Meanwhile, echoes of what St Thomas had said to Henry II can be found
in the arguments made by Stephen Langton. Just as Becket referred to the
excommunication of Emperor Frederick I, Langton referred to Barbarossa’s
demise in the waters of the river Saleph (1190) as a fitting punishment for
the latter’s sins.73 When peace was proposed in 1209, Langton was to swear
to uphold the rights of the king, but said that he would do this ‘saving the
honour of the Church’: very much a phrase that would have been used by
his martyred predecessor, and which had caused deadlock in the 1160s.74 It is
also noteworthy that Langton, along with at least one of the executors of the
interdict, Bishop Mauger of Worcester, spent part of his exile at the Cistercian
abbey of Pontigny. Mauger died there in 1212. As the former refuge of Thomas
Becket in France, the choice can only be seen as a conscious association with
recent conflict between crown and Church.75
Direct invocation of St Thomas was not the only way in which the Church
tried to keep King John under control. Analysis of papal letters issued during
the Canterbury dispute suggests that Innocent III went to great lengths to
stress his desire to avoid imposing sanctions and that he wished the king to
remain (or return to being) part of the congregation of the faithful. In assessing
the pope’s words, there is much to be gained from considering the language
he used, in particular in the lengthy preambles to his letters. Instances in
which the letters make direct reference to Thomas Becket have already been
discussed. In this context it is noteworthy that Innocent III, prior to becoming
pope, might have been present when Alexander III canonised Becket and is
thought to have made a pilgrimage to the tomb in the crypt of Canterbury
Cathedral. He also made gifts in honour of the saint to the cathedral at Anagni
in 1200.76 Furthermore, there was much in Innocent III’s approach to dealing
with John that we can compare with the dispute of Henry II’s reign.
In an attempt to persuade the king to fall into line, Innocent presented
the major players in the dispute – King John, Stephen Langton, the English

73 Vincent, ‘Langton’, 69–70. For Langton’s letter drawing the comparison, which, as Vincent
notes, ‘leaves us in no doubt as to Langton’s self-identification with Becket’, see Acta Stephani
Langton Cantuariensis Archiepiscopi A.D. 1207–1228, ed. K. Major, Canterbury and York Society,
50 (Oxford, 1950), 2–7 (no. 2).
74 English Episcopal Acta 26: London 1189–1228, ed. D. P. Johnson (Oxford, 2003), 97 (no. 99).
For a similar parallel, see Duggan, ‘Cult’, 37.
75 On Langton, see Acta Stephani Langton, 73–4 (no. 55); Vincent, ‘Langton’, 82; F. M.
Powicke, Stephen Langton (Oxford, 1928), 75–6. On Mauger: English Episcopal Acta 34: Worcester
1186–1218, ed. M. Cheney, D. Smith, C. Brooke, and P. M. Hoskin (Oxford, 2008), xxxvii.
76 Moore, Pope Innocent III, 7–8; Sayers, ‘Peter’s Throne and Augustine’s Chair’, 265; Smalley,
Becket Conflict, 139.

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bishops or the English magnates – with a series of examples drawing on

biblical parallels.77 A common theme emerges: a warning to John of the
dangers to which he was exposed, both during his lifetime and after his death.
The openings to papal letters could be seen as formulaic expressions of the
pope’s claims to authority over the issue at hand: ‘doctrine and logic required
the pope to write as though all Christians would rush to obey or submit at
once when censured. … Christians did not always carry compliance so far, and
the pope knew it.’78 Nonetheless, at each stage of the dispute, the examples
deployed in the preambles to papal letters were tailored to suit the circum-
stances confronting the pope.
In the period before he imposed sanctions on John and his kingdom,
Innocent III emphasised to the king the consequences of going against God’s
will. In particular, the pope drew a parallel between John’s behaviour and
that of the Old Testament kings.79 The comparison was probably familiar
to the Plantagenet kings.80 The pope argued that the fate that befell the
Old Testament rulers would be similarly reserved for John. ‘We invoke the
testimony of Him who is a faithful witness in Heaven’, wrote Innocent,
alluding to a lamentation that God turned against the line of King David.81
Elsewhere, the pope noted how David’s servant, Uzza, ‘was smitten by the
Lord’ for acting ‘piously indeed but unworthily’ in daring to touch the Ark of
the Covenant. Innocent drew the parallel that John had reached out to take
over ecclesiastical rights such as the election of an archbishop, a role he was
not worthy to fulfil.82
Meanwhile, the English magnates were encouraged to provide John with
wise guidance so that he did not ‘walk in the path of Rehoboam nor forsake
the counsel of the older men’. Rehoboam, the son of King Solomon, rejected
the advice of his father’s ministers to lighten the yoke of the Children of Israel.
Instead, he favoured the young men he had grown up with, who proposed
that the burden be increased. The ensuing revolt forced Rehoboam to flee

77 Innocent was not the only figure involved who possessed the intellectual skills to write such
letters. For Stephen Langton’s use of biblical metaphors in his first letter to the English bishops,
in 1207, see Vincent, ‘Langton’, 83–7.
78 Cheney, Pope Innocent III, 271–2.
79 This was not the only context in which Pope Innocent used such parallels in writing to
John. For instance, in 1198, he wrote to John protesting at his treatment, as lord of Ireland, of
the Irish Church. Innocent recalled the fate of King Uzziah, smitten with leprosy for daring to
assume priestly duties in the Temple: Cheney, Pope Innocent III, 281–2; cf. 2 Chronicles 26:19.
All biblical references are to the Vulgate, unless otherwise stated.
80 See Vincent, ‘Strange Case of the Missing Biographies’, 245–7.
81 Selected Letters of Pope Innocent III, 91 (no. 30); Psalm 88:38–53. For discussion of King David
as a model for the behaviour of medieval rulers, in particular for their penitential activity, set
in the context of eleventh-century France, see S. Hamilton, ‘A New Model for Royal Penance?
Helgaud of Fleury’s Life of Robert the Pious’, Early Medieval Europe, 6 (1997), 189–200.
82 Selected Letters of Pope Innocent III, 98 (no. 32); 1 Chronicles 13:10.

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Jerusalem.83 Here, the parallel Innocent drew is striking. Rehoboam has been
described as the archetype of the puerile king in the minds of the biblical
exegetes – the schoolmen with whom Innocent III had been trained.84 In
addition, there is a clear implied threat to John’s throne. On the other hand,
contemporary writers portrayed John as favouring the company and advice of
younger men in his entourage, rather than experienced figures such as William
Marshal, who had served the king’s father and brothers.85 It is tempting to
think that an English envoy at the curia had told the pope about this royal
character trait. However, this was clearly an analogy familiar to medieval
writers. Orderic Vitalis, in an implicit condemnation of William Rufus,
observed that when Henry I came to the throne in 1100, he ‘did not follow the
advice of rash young men as Rehoboam did, but prudently took to heart the
experience and advice of wise and older men’. The comparison was also made
in writing on the fourteenth-century kings of England.86
The emphasis was sometimes more forthright. If John continued to oppose
the Church he would die. Innocent reminded John of ‘the judgement of the
hand that wrote: “Mene, Tekel, Peres”’: the writing on the wall recorded in
the Book of Daniel, which pre-figured the seizure of Belshazzar’s kingdom by
the Medes and Persians, the fall of the kingdom of Babylon and the death of
Belshazzar. John’s attempt to ‘humiliate’ the Church would anger God in a
similar way.87 When these threats failed, and interdict was imposed, Innocent
sought further examples from the lives of the Old Testament kings. King John
had ‘stretched forth his sacrilegious hands wickedly to seize the property of
churches’. Here, the allusion was to King Herod, who ‘stretched forth his
hand to vex certain of the Church’, a decision which resulted in the biblical
tyrant being smitten by an avenging angel.88 This parallel bears comparison

83 Selected Letters of Pope Innocent III, 98 (no. 32); 1 Kings 12:8–20; see also 2 Chronicles
10:8–19.
84 Buc, ‘Pouvoir royal’, 693.
85 See, for example, Magna Vita Sancti Hugonis, ii, 144; History of William Marshal, ed. A Holden,
trans. S. Gregory, with historical notes by D. Crouch, Anglo-Norman Text Society, Occasional
Publications Series, 4–6, 3 vols (London, 2002–2004), ii, 161 (lines 13188–90); W. L. Warren,
King John (London, 1974), 114–15.
86 The Ecclesiastical History of Orderic Vitalis, ed. and trans. M. Chibnall, OMT, 6 vols (Oxford,
1969–80), v, 298–9; C. Given-Wilson, Chronicles: The Writing of History in Medieval England
(London and New York, 2004), 166, 170; C. Fletcher, Richard II: Manhood, Youth and Politics,
1377–99 (Oxford, 2008), 19, 75, 159–60.
87 Selected Letters of Pope Innocent III, 98–9 (no. 32); Daniel 5:25–31. A similar allusion was
made in the contemporary satire known as the ‘Song on the Bishops’: Thomas Wright’s Political
Songs of England: From the Reign of John to that of Edward II, ed. P. Coss (Cambridge, 1996), 6–13,
at 8.
88 Selected Letters of Pope Innocent III, 103 (no. 34); Acts 12:1. Nicholas Vincent also concludes
that John was ‘addressed as a latter-day Herod’ in this period: Vincent ‘Master Simon Langton’.
John was also compared to Herod in papal letters about the king’s treatment of the archbishopric

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with the portrayal of Henry II, both by Becket in describing the treatment of
his followers, and after the murder in depictions of the martyrdom.89 Further
parallels are suggested by the idea that ‘the bow is at the stretch’ and that John
should ‘avoid an arrow which turns not back’. Here, the allusion was to the fall
of the mighty King Saul and his son Jonathan.90
Pope Innocent’s allusion to the writing on the wall chimes with other ideas
apparently in circulation at the time of the Canterbury dispute and ensuing
period of interdict and royal excommunication: the idea of prophecy of
the death of kings. According to a vision said to have been experienced by
Archbishop Langton’s brother, Simon, in 1207, a Cistercian monk celebrating
mass saw a ‘mystic hand writing prophecies’. These included the demise of a
king.91 In 1213, Peter of Wakefield (or Pontefract), ‘that most unwise, because
most specific, of prophets’ came to King John’s attention, and was ultimately
executed, after forecasting the end of the reign.92 Coupled with the rumour
that the pope would declare (or had declared) John deposed, there is a sense
of a current of opinion predicting that the king’s intransigence would cost him
his throne.93
Innocent III also referred to the actual or impending fall of past sinners and
current wrongdoers. Before he excommunicated John he drew on the Bible to
allude to God’s decision to destroy all men apart from Noah and his family,

of York, when his half-brother Geoffrey refused to contribute to the thirteenth levied in 1207:
Cheney, Pope Innocent III, 296–7.
89 CTB, ii, 938–51 (no. 216, at 938–41). On iconographic parallels in portrayals of Henry II
and Herod, see S. Lutan-Hassner, Thomas Becket and the Plantagenets: Atonement Through Art
(Leiden, 2015).
90 Selected Letters of Pope Innocent III, 113 (no. 37); 2 Samuel 1:22.
91 Vincent, ‘Langton’, 87–8. See also Vincent ‘Master Simon Langton’. For the account of the
vision: Chronicon de Lanercost. MCCI–MCCCXLVI, ed. J. Stevenson, Bannatyne Club, 65, and
Maitland Club, 46 (Edinburgh, 1839), 3.
92 For the description quoted, see Vincent, ‘Strange Case of the Missing Biographies’, 240.
For narrative accounts, see Annals of Stanley, in Chronicles of the Reigns of Stephen, Henry II and
Richard I, ed. R. Howlett, RS 82, 4 vols (London, 1884–89), ii, 514–15; Walter of Coventry,
Memoriale, ed. W. Stubbs, RS 58, 2 vols (London, 1872–73), ii, 208–12; Annales Prioratus
de Dunstaplia (A.D. 1–1297), in Annales Monastici, ed. H. R. Luard, RS 36, 5 vols (London,
1864–69), iii, 34; The Chronicle of Bury St Edmunds, ed. and trans. A. Gransden, NMT (London,
1964), 1; Annales Monasterii de Waverleia (A.D. 1–1291), in Annales Monastici, ed. H. R. Luard,
RS 36, 5 vols (London, 1864–69), ii, 278; Liber Gaufridi Sacristae de Coldingham de statu Eccelesiae
Dunhelmensis, ed. J. Raine, Historiae Dunelmensis Scriptores Tres, Gaufridus de Coldingham, Robertus
de Graystanes, et Willelmus de Chambre, Surtees Society, 9 (London, 1839), 3–31, at 27–8. For
further discussion, see J. C. Russell, ‘The Development of the Legend of Peter of Pontefract’,
Medievalia et Humanistica, 13 (1960), 21–31. For links between Peter of Wakefield, the Invectivum
contra regem Johannem and the career of Simon Langton, see Vincent, ‘Master Simon Langton’.
93 Cheney, Pope Innocent III, 326–8; C. R. Cheney, ‘The Alleged Deposition of King John’, in
Studies in Medieval History Presented to Frederick Maurice Powicke, ed. R. W. Hunt, W. A. Pantin,
and R. W. Southern (Oxford, 1948), 100–16.

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to divine warnings that Babylon would be attacked and to New Testament

warnings that the end of all things was at hand.94 The message to John was
clear: remember the fate of biblical tyrants and sinners and submit before it
becomes too late. However, the king was not to be swayed. Neither interdict
nor excommunication proved effective. It was not until the later months of
1212 that John returned to the negotiating table, as he found that he was faced
with the threat of domestic revolt, a possible papal sentence of deposition and
with it the prospect of French invasion.95 Innocent’s response was initially
suspicious. He was prepared to negotiate but unsure whether the king was
serious. Here, papal letters invoked the example of God’s dealings with Moses
and the Children of Israel, in no uncertain terms:96

behold! We set before you a blessing and a curse after the example of Him who
by his servant Moses set before the Children of Israel blessings and curses, that
you may choose which you prefer, either a blessing leading to salvation if you
make reparation, or a curse leading to ruin, if you show contempt.

The emphasis was now on John’s soul: he faced a choice between salvation
and damnation. Four barons were to swear oaths, on peril of the king’s soul,
that John would obey the proposed terms. Here, the pope returned to parallels
with biblical tyrants. If the king did not comply, he would be treated like the
pharaoh who ignored the seven plagues of Egypt: ‘by the example of Him who
with a strong arm freed His people from the bondage of Pharaoh, we intend
with a mighty arm to free the English Church from your bondage’. To reinforce
the point that he was actively considering deposing John, Innocent added that
‘repentance will be useless after your downfall’.97
Between 1207 and early 1213, therefore, the papal letters regarding the
Canterbury crisis put forward a clear and consistent viewpoint: the king’s
actions would lead to severe temporal and eternal consequences. However,
even Pope Innocent III could be persuaded to change his mind. There was
a marked change in tone once the pope was convinced that the king was

94 Selected Letters of Pope Innocent III, 110, 112 (no. 37); Genesis 6:6; Isaiah 14:27; 1 Peter 4:5.
95 For the events that persuaded John that he needed the pope as an ally: Warren, King John,
199–205. See also Cheney, ‘The Alleged Deposition’. Roger of Wendover even suggested that the
pope authorised a crusade against England: Rogeri de Wendover liber qui dicitur Flores Historiarum
ab anno domini MCLIV annoque Henrici Anglorum Regis Secundi Primo, ed. H. G. Hewlett, RS 84,
3 vols (London, 1886–89), ii, 63–4.
96 Selected Letters of Pope Innocent III, 130 (no. 45); Deuteronomy 11:26–8. That such parallels
were also in the minds of English chroniclers is shown in the work of the Durham writer Geoffrey
of Coldingham: Liber Gaufridi Sacristae de Coldingham, 25–9.
97 Selected Letters of Pope Innocent III, 132 (no. 45). The freeing of the Children of Israel is
found variously in the Bible: Exodus 6:1; Deuteronomy 6:21, 7:8; Psalm 135:10–15. If Innocent
considered deposing John, he never pronounced sentence: Cheney, ‘Alleged Deposition’, 100–16.

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serious in seeking settlement. John demonstrated this through his complete

climb down. He surrendered his kingdom of England and lordship of Ireland
to Innocent, so that he and his heirs would continue to hold them as fiefs
of the papacy.98 The papal letters now used biblical metaphor to emphasise
redemption, rebirth, turning away from evil and the new bond between
kingdom and Church. Innocent referred to Joseph’s response to his brothers
when they sought forgiveness after the death of Jacob and the example of
Christ awaking to calm a storm that had terrified his disciples.99 The parable
of the Good Samaritan was invoked, as the pope emphasised his own role,
acting ‘by the example of Him who poured wine and oil into the wounds
of the injured traveller’ in restoring the king to his senses.100 Innocent also
described John as having ‘so far progressed by your good beginning as to give
promise of an excellent ending’. Here, there were two possible parallels: the
first with Job, whose sufferings resulted in his ‘latter end’ being blessed ‘more
than his beginning’; the second with Solomon’s proverb, ‘Better is the end of a
prayer than the beginning’.101 In either case, the emphasis was on the temporal
rewards of following the word of God.
If the language used in the arguments put forward by Pope Innocent III did
not always directly invoke the memory of St Thomas, it is nonetheless worth
noting that it bears strong similarities with the sentiments raised during the
Becket crisis, in particular the arguments put forward by Thomas himself. Like
Innocent III when writing to John, Becket warned Henry II of the danger he
was creating for his soul’s prospects of salvation:102

98 Cheney, Pope Innocent III, 332–7; The Letters of Pope Innocent III (1198–1216) Concerning
England and Wales: A Calendar with an Appendix of Texts, ed. C. R. Cheney and M. G. Cheney
(Oxford, 1967), 156 (no. 941), 160 (no. 962); Rotuli Chartarum, 195a–b; Rotuli Litterarum
Clausarum, 153b–154a; W. E. Lunt, Papal Revenues in the Middle Ages, 2 vols (New York, 1965),
ii, 45–8; Selected Letters of Pope Innocent III, 177–83 (no. 67).
99 Selected Letters of Pope Innocent III, 149 (no. 53), 198 (no. 76); Genesis 50:20; Psalm
106:29–30; Matthew 8:26.
100 Selected Letters of Pope Innocent III, 168 (no. 63); Luke 10:34. Medical analogies (a regular
feature of Pope Innocent’s letters on all themes – an observation I owe to Dr Herwig Weigl)
were frequently deployed by the pope in his letters during the dispute: Selected Letters of Pope
Innocent III, 94 (no. 30), 98 (no. 32), 111–12 (no. 37), 118 (no. 39), 168 (no. 63). The analogy
of the Good Samaritan had previously been used by Innocent in describing the interdict imposed
on France in 1200 on account of King Phillip II’s repudiation of Ingeborg of Denmark. Here,
the pope argued that the interdict acted as the oil and the wine used to sooth the injured man’s
wounds: G. Conklin, ‘Ingeborg of Denmark, Queen of France, 1193–1223’, in Queens and
Queenship in Medieval Europe, ed. A. J. Duggan (Woodbridge, 1997), 37–52, at 46.
101 Selected Letters of Pope Innocent III, 151 (no. 53); Job 8:7, 42:12; Ecclesiastes 7:9.
102 CTB, i, 328–43 (no. 82, at 340–43). For a similar reference, see CTB, ii, 1032–43 (no.
241a–b at 1034–41).

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We are not saying these things to put you to shame, or to provoke you to greater
indignation and rage … but to make you more cautious in making provision for
the care of your soul, and to avoid the danger which is already on the doorstep,
and because it is our special concern to look after your soul.

Becket made the same point in writing to those he hoped would influence
Henry, for instance the Empress Matilda, emphasising that he was concerned
for Henry’s soul, and that the king’s mother should help in ‘calling him back to
the right path’.103
Becket’s warnings to Henry also prefigured those of Innocent III to John
in recalling the fate of the Old Testament kings. A letter of July 1166, from
Archbishop Thomas to the bishops of the province of Canterbury, exhorted
them to: ‘Read the scriptures, and you shall find how perished the kings who
were seen to usurp the priestly office for themselves and how many they were’.
The bishops should consider King Henry II’s best interests, ‘lest, which God
forbid, he and his entire house should perish as did those who were found guilty
of a similar offence’.104 Similar ideas were later highlighted by Innocent III in
writing to John. By 1169, however, Becket had taken the idea further, suggesting
that Henry II surpassed the rulers of history in the scale of his oppression:105

turn over pages of the histories of olden times, consider again the deeds of the
ancient tyrants, re-read the records of the newly born Church: you will not
readily find among all its persecutors one who so pursued one man that he strove
to perpetrate so great slaughter of innocents by so many skilful tricks.

Sometimes, the resemblance between ideas used by Becket and Innocent

is particularly close. Both drew parallels with Moses dealing with straying
members of the Children of Israel.106 Both used the example of Uzza and,
whilst acknowledging that he was not a king, both Thomas and Innocent saw
the example of laying hands on the Ark of the Covenant, which ‘belonged
not to him but to the servants of the temple’, as one that applied to a king
who interfered with Church affairs or property.107 Similarly, King Saul, whose
fate was alluded to by Innocent III in writing to John, was named during the
Becket crisis by John of Salisbury as a description of Henry II.108 However,

103 CTB, i, 154–9 (no. 40).

104 CTB, i, 388–425 (no. 95, at 401). For further examples, see also CTB, i, 266–71 (no. 68),
292–9 (no. 74).
105 CTB, ii, 938–51 (no. 216, at 940–41). See also CTB, ii, 1108–16 (no. 258, at 1112–13).
106 For Becket, see CTB, i, 108–17 (no. 32, at 112–13). Here, Thomas’s sufferings are also
compared to those of Joseph when betrayed by his brothers.
107 For Becket, see CTB, i, 328–43 (no. 82, at 337).
108 CTB, i, 468–83 (no. 101, at 479). Saul’s son Jonathan is also mentioned in this earlier
parallel – perhaps an allusion to Henry the Young King.

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here there is a striking difference of approach. Innocent used the example in

the build-up to excommunicating King John. John of Salisbury made it clear
that he would never advise Becket to impose excommunication on Henry II or
interdict on his kingdom.109
This highlights that the sentiments expressed during the two disputes could
be used in very different ways – unsurprisingly, given the range of biblical
material at the disposal of the letter writers and the myriad ways it could be
interpreted. Further examples reinforce this point. As a metaphor for dispute
resolution, Innocent III referred to the calming of the storm after the terrified
disciples had awakened Christ. Becket used this imagery to portray himself
as a frightened disciple with no course left but to awaken Christ.110 Likewise,
Innocent wrote of John’s reconciliation as a good beginning that promised a
better conclusion. John of Salisbury, by contrast, had adapted the Solomonic
proverb in the summer of 1166 to suggest that ‘the end of this’ would be ‘worse
than the beginning’.111
Finally, a comparison can be drawn between Pope Innocent III and Pope
Alexander III. Innocent was keen to avoid recourse to sanctions, and after
the Canterbury crisis he engaged in diplomacy on King John’s side. In some
ways, Alexander’s care in his diplomatic engagement with kings and princes
was similar, in terms of his unwillingness to resort to sanctions. However, the
latter’s methods were not those of the intransigent stand-off that developed
between Henry and Thomas, or at times between John and Innocent. Peter
Clarke has written of Alexander’s ‘concern to foster a modus vivendi’ that
characterised his policy towards lay rulers, pursuing a delicate balancing act in
an effort also to safeguard the liberties of the Church.112 Thus, Alexander urged
Archbishop Thomas to make every effort to regain Henry II’s goodwill, but
not at the expense of caving in. The pope was equally clear that the freedoms
of the Church should be preserved, making small concessions to the king but
seeking to bolster the archbishop’s authority.113 His was ‘an extended and subtle
exercise in extremely delicate diplomacy’, balancing the threat (of which
Alexander admitted he was terrified) that Henry II would switch his support to
the imperial anti-pope.114 Such a threat was not an issue for Innocent III.

109 CTB, i, 468–83 (no. 101, at 481).

110 CTB, i, 30–33 (no. 12, at 31), 592–5 (no. 124, at 595).
111 CTB, i, 456–69 (no. 100, at 457).
112 P. D. Clarke, ‘Introduction’, in Pope Alexander III (1150–81): The Art of Survival, ed. P. D.
Clarke and A. J. Duggan (Farnham, 2012), 1–12, at 11.
113 A. J. Duggan, ‘Alexander ille meus: The Papacy of Alexander III’, in Pope Alexander III
(1150–81): The Art of Survival, ed. P. D. Clarke and A. J. Duggan (Farnham, 2012), 13–49, at
25–32. Duggan concludes that ‘the strategy worked’. See also Nicholas Vincent’s quotation of
Alexander’s observation to Becket that ‘“the desire of princes should be respected and their will
accommodated as far as possible”’: Vincent, ‘Beyond Becket’, 263–4.
114 Duggan, ‘Alexander ille meus’, 29, 48.

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Even without the schism, Alexander was aware that precipitate action
would jeopardise the delicate balance that characterised royal-papal relations.
This awareness was also seen in the years after the murder. For Alexander,
repeated dispute between the English crown and the papacy was not an agenda
he seemed prepared to entertain.115 His legates even acknowledged that the
election of bishops needed to take into account the needs of the kingdom,
much as Innocent III would later instruct his legate, Nicholas of Tusculum,
that if John made ‘proper petitions’, candidates ‘loyal to the king and useful to
the state’ could be appointed.116 The tools of Alexander’s diplomacy were ‘the
prestige of the papal office, the honeyed words of his envoys and the persuasive
rhetoric of his letters’.117 This was also true for Innocent III, but in the case
of John (and others) Innocent attempted to turn that rhetoric into applied
authority.
In considering Alexander III’s relationship with Henry II, we are not blessed
with the abundance of surviving papal letters found for Innocent III’s dealings
with England. Much of what does survive was preserved in sources favourable
to Archbishop Thomas.118 In terms of their language, Alexander frequently
reminded Henry of the instructions of St Paul on the duties owed to Caesar
and to God.119 Such exhortation was also used by Innocent III, for instance
in instructing the executors of the interdict that the sentence was to be
imposed if John continued to refuse to accept Langton.120 Similarly, Alexander
frequently deployed Old Testament metaphor to reinforce exhortation that
the impious mend their ways.121 Nicholas Vincent highlights a further possible
parallel between Alexander’s dealings with Henry and Innocent’s relations
with John: ‘in 1172, Henry II entered into a new phase of relations with the
papacy, marked by his recognition of some form of homage or subjection for
his English realm’.122 The idea that John’s decision in 1213, to turn England
and Ireland into fiefs of the papacy, in some way emulated his father’s actions
as part of the Compromise of Avranches, requires further research, but remains
an intriguing possibility.
The Canterbury dispute, the interdict and John’s excommunication created
the most dramatic rift between crown and Church since the Becket conflict,
and it has been shown that there are many comparisons and contrasts that can
be drawn, and which were drawn at the time, between the interaction between

115 Duggan, ‘Alexander ille meus’, 31–7.

116 Cheney, Pope Innocent III, 160–61.
117 Duggan, ‘Alexander ille meus’, 37.
118 On Alexander, see Vincent, ‘Beyond Becket’, 258–60. Contrast for Innocent: Selected Letters
of Pope Innocent III; Letters of Pope Innocent III.
119 Vincent, ‘Beyond Becket’, 263–5.
120 Selected Letters of Pope Innocent III, 92 (no. 30).
121 Vincent, ‘Beyond Becket’, 263–5.
122 For fuller discussion, see Vincent, ‘Beyond Becket’, 277–81.

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Church and king during these disputes. As with the secular political turbulence
of John’s reign, reconciliation largely took place during the minority of King
Henry III. Archbishop Langton played a crucial role, particularly in 1220.
First, he performed the second coronation of Henry III at Westminster Abbey
on Whitsunday (17 May) 1220, at some expense to the royal coffers. Here, the
king laid the foundation stone for a new Lady Chapel. A few weeks later, with
Henry III in attendance, Langton presided at the first jubilee of St Thomas,
7 July 1220, when the saint’s relics were translated to their new tomb in the
Trinity Chapel at Canterbury Cathedral. The celebrations, at the archbishop’s
expense, included feasting akin to that of a royal coronation. The date of the
translation also coincided with the anniversary of the burial of Henry II.123
The two ceremonies perhaps impressed upon the king the compatibility
of the cults of St Edward the Confessor and St Thomas, whilst reminding
Henry III, still a boy, of examples to keep in mind in the quest to rule well.
The reign would mark a return to royal association both with royal saints and
canonised figures central to the English Church. Henry is famously linked to
promotion of the cult of St Edward, and his devotions to the cult and shrine
of St Thomas are often overlooked. However, he regularly came to Canterbury
and made offerings there. His marriage to Eleanor of Provence was celebrated
in Canterbury Cathedral in 1236.124 Even in a period in which the martyr’s
successors, Stephen Langton and Edmund Rich, were seen by contemporaries
as saints (and in Edmund’s case, canonised), Becket again held a prominent
place alongside royal saints in the king’s devotions.125

123 R. Eales, ‘The Political Setting of the Becket Translation of 1220’, in Martyrs and Martyrologies,
ed. D. Wood, SCH, 30 (Oxford, 1993), 127–39; Duggan, ‘Cult’, 38–9; Vincent, ‘Langton’,
100, 103–4, 107; ‘Matthaei Parisiensis, Vita sancti Stephani archiepiscopi Cantuariensis’, in
Ungedruckte Anglo-Normannische Geschichtsquellen, ed. F. Liebermann (Strasbourg, 1879), 328–9.
The 1220 translation is also discussed in the article by Anne J. Duggan (chapter 2) in this
volume.
124 Duggan, ‘Cult’, 31; P. Binski, Westminster Abbey and the Plantagenets: Kingship and the
Representation of Power 1200–1400 (New Haven, CT, and London, 1995), 4. For some of Henry’s
gifts in honour of Becket, see Calendar of the Liberate Rolls Preserved in the Public Record Office:
Henry III. Vol. I. A.D. 1226–1240, ed. W. H. Stevenson, HMSO (London, 1916), 356, 404,
488; Calendar of the Liberate Rolls Preserved in the Public Record Office: Henry III. Vol. II. A.D.
1240–1245, ed. J. B. W. Chapman, HMSO (London, 1930), 17; Close Rolls of the Reign of
Henry III Preserved in the Public Record Office: A.D. 1237–1242, HMSO (London, 1911), 175–81,
208, 227.
125 On Langton: ‘Matthaei Parisiensis, Vita sancti Stephani’, 318–29. On Edmund: C. H.
Lawrence, St Edmund of Abingdon: A Study of Hagiography and History (Oxford, 1960). For the
argument that Becket, Stephen and Edmund were venerated as ‘anti-royal’ saints, see J. C.
Russell, ‘The Canonisation of Opposition to the King in Angevin England’, in Anniversary Essays
in Medieval History by Students of Charles Homer Haskins, ed. C. H. Taylor (Boston, MA, 1929),
279–90. For a critique of this view, see Eales, ‘Political Setting’, esp. 138–9; Webster, ‘Crown,
Cathedral and Conflict’, 208.

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 9.

The St Thomas Becket Windows at Angers

and Coutances: Devotion, Subversion
and the Scottish Connection1

ALYCE A. JORDAN

The dramatic life and spectacular demise of Thomas Becket engendered an

expansive discourse in both text and image. Depictions of the archbishop’s
murder appeared in manuscripts soon after his death and were widely dissemi-
nated on enamelled reliquaries produced in Limoges.2 While this first generation
of Becket imagery focused almost exclusively on the saint’s murder, a shift to
more elaborate renderings occurred at Canterbury Cathedral, where twelve aisle
windows depicting Thomas’s life and miracles encircled the magnificent shrine
to which his relics were translated in 1220.3 Four windows appeared before and
soon after the Canterbury glass installation, in the French cathedrals of Sens,
Chartres, Coutances and Angers. They are among the earliest surviving works of
public, narrative art devoted to Becket outside of Canterbury. All four expand the
visual biography of Becket’s life beyond his murder and vary dramatically in form

1 I am grateful to Madeline Caviness and Michael Cothren for their careful readings and
invaluable critiques of this essay, and to Lindy Grant for sharing with me her expertise in Anglo-
Norman history, genealogy and architecture. I am also indebted to Catherine E. Karkov, Eva
Frojmovic, Marie-Pierre Gelin and Michael Staunton, who chaired conference sessions (College
Art Association, 2010, and the International Medieval Congress, Leeds, 2008, respectively) in
which I presented preliminary versions of this study. This essay is dedicated to Meredith Parsons
Lillich, who introduced me to the miracle of medieval stained glass.
2 Borenius, Becket in Art; Enamels of Limoges 1100–1350, ed. J. P. O’Neill et al., The Metropolitan
Museum of Art (New York, 1996), 14, 162–4. Fifty-two reliquaries, produced between 1180 and
1220, are known to exist. Sédières contains numerous articles supplementing Borenius’ compi-
lation of Becket iconography. See also C. T. Little, ‘The Road to Glory: New Early Images of
Thomas Becket’s Life,’ in Reading Medieval Images: The Art Historian and the Object, ed. E. Sears
and T. K. Thomas (Ann Arbor, MI, 2002), 201–11.
3 M. H. Caviness, The Early Stained Glass of Canterbury Cathedral circa 1175–1220 (Princeton,
NJ, 1977), 83–97, 146–50; Caviness, The Windows of Christ Church, 157–214, for the Becket
windows.

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 ALYCE A. JORDAN

and content from one to the other.4 Finally, all were produced in a short period of
time surrounding the translation of the saint’s relics in 1220. The windows thus
compose intriguing case studies of the ways in which stories of Thomas Becket
were re-presented and re-told at a seminal moment in the expansion of his cult.
This essay explores the diverse, even oppositional, stories crafted around
the archbishop’s life and death in the Coutances and Angers Becket narratives.
The windows of Coutances and Angers differ from those of Sens and Chartres
in significant ways. With its emphasis on quotidian episcopal duties, such
as preaching, confirming children and celebrating Mass, the Sens window
inscribes the final weeks of Becket’s life within a paradigm of exemplary eccle-
siastical activities.5 At Chartres, the ideological conflicts between Church and
State which drove the archbishop into exile, and for which he ultimately died,
are foregrounded through a series of recurrent encounters between prelates,
pontiffs and monarchs.6 While the windows of Sens and Chartres offer distinct
versions of Becket’s life, both fall within the framework of the saint’s venerable
and venerated legacy.7 The windows of Coutances and Angers, by contrast,
proffer more ambiguous biographies, accounts I seek here to illuminate through
recourse both to historical contextualisation and theoretical interpretation.
My approach to this project draws on a method of ‘triangulation’ pioneered
by Madeline Caviness, who has demonstrated that the addition of contem-
porary theories to the traditional art historical toolbox of formal analysis,
iconography and historical context can assist in the process of ‘pressuring’ and
‘prying open’ works of medieval art. The complex, ambivalent readings this
triangulatory approach enables offer more nuanced understandings of how
images functioned – and continue to function – on multiple hermeneutic
planes. Caviness’s work has focused on investigations of images by, of and for
medieval women, engaging contextual history in concert with contemporary
feminist theories.8 In this study, I triangulate the rich nexus of historical

4 C. Brisac, ‘Thomas Becket dans le vitrail français au début du XIIIe siècle’, in Sédières, 221–31;
M.-P. Gelin, ‘Heroes and Traitors: The Life of Thomas Becket in French Stained-Glass Windows’,
Vidimus, 14 (2008) [http://vidimus.org/issues/issue-14/feature/, accessed 13 January 2015].
5 A. A. Jordan, ‘Rhetoric and Reform: The St Thomas Becket Window of Sens Cathedral’, in
The Four Modes of Seeing: Approaches to Medieval Imagery in Honor of Madeline Harrison Caviness,
ed. E. Staudinger Lane, E. Carson Pastan, and E. M. Shortell (Farnham, 2009), 547–64.
6 For the Sens and Chartres windows, see http://www.medievalart.org.uk/Chartres/18_pages/
Chartres_Bay18_key.htm, accessed 13 January 2015, and http://www.medievalart.org.uk/
Sens/23_Pages/Sens_Bay23_key.htm, accessed 14 January 2015. On the Chartres Becket window,
see C. and J.-P. Deremble, Les Vitraux de Chartres (Paris, 2003), 128–33.
7 Natalie A. Hansen has argued that both the Sens and Chartres windows are grounded in
the liturgies devoted to St Thomas. N. A. Hansen, ‘Making the Martyr: The Liturgical Persona
of Saint Thomas Becket in Visual Imagery’ (unpublished M.A. thesis, University of Illinois at
Urbana-Champaign, 2011).
8 Caviness first articulated her method of triangulation in M. H. Caviness, ‘The Feminist
Project: Pressuring the Medieval Object’, Frauen Kunst Wissenschaft, 24 (1997), 13–21. She

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 THE BECKET WINDOWS AT ANGERS AND COUTANCES

connections I have found linking the life and legacy of Thomas Becket with
the respective patrons of the Coutances and Angers Becket windows, and with
the discourses of frontier studies and postcolonial theory.9
I begin with discussions of the historical, religious and, in the case of
Angers, genealogical landscapes which underpin these Becket narratives,
thereby establishing a contextual field for their inclusion in these cathedral
ensembles. Adding critical theory to this project, I then seek to articulate more
subtle understandings of the particular iterations of Becket’s life each window
proffers. This method yields analyses that are dense and textured. They speak
at once to the power of images to articulate heterogeneous ideas, and to give
form to oppositional – even contradictory – motivations and identities.10 More
significant, perhaps, in the context of the present anthology, these windows
reveal the particular significance of Thomas Becket as both subject and object
– a character of contemporary history and a lieu de mémoire – and a vehicle by
which a constellation of historical, cultural, even familial, associations might
be channelled, conjured and reified.

Thomas Becket at Coutances and Angers

Three windows devoted respectively to St Thomas, St George and St Blaise
appear in the north transept of Coutances Cathedral in Normandy.11 The

developed her approach further in her book: M. H. Caviness, Visualizing Women in the Middle
Ages: Sight, Spectacle and Scopic Economy (Philadelphia, PA, 2001); and in her e-book: M. H.
Caviness, Reframing Medieval Art: Difference, Margins, and Boundaries (Tufts University, MA,
2001), 16–20 [http://dca.lib.tufts.edu/caviness/abstract.html, accessed 14 January 2015], in which
she also provides a diagrammatic depiction, placing the medieval object at the apex of a triangle
of unequal sides, historical analysis on the shorter side, theory on the longer side, and the modern
viewer/scholar along the bottom. For additional discussion and application of Caviness’s method-
ological model, see C. Schleif, ‘Introduction/Conclusion: Are We Still Being Historical? Exposing
the Ehenheim Epitaph Using History and Theory’, Different Visions: A Journal of New Perspectives
on Medieval Art, 1 (2008), 1–46 [http://differentvisions.org/issue-one/, accessed 14 January 2015].
Schleif guest-edited this inaugural edition of Different Visions, which was dedicated to Caviness’s
approach and contains articles employing her method. These papers were the result of a series of
sessions also devoted to Caviness’s triangulatory model, co-organised by Dr Schleif and myself for
the forty-first International Congress on Medieval Studies in Kalamazoo, MI, in 2006.
9 Pertinent bibliography for medieval applications of frontier studies and postcolonial theory
appears below at nn. 59–60.
10 Caviness and others have cited the particular utility of postmodern theories to expose
tensions and contradictions in works of cultural production without the pressure to harmonise
them into a unified ‘master narrative’: Caviness, Reframing Medieval Art, 16–18; Schleif,
‘Introduction/Conclusion’, 7.
11 On the Coutances windows, see K. Boulanger, ‘Les Vitraux du XIIIe siècle’, in La Cathédrale
de Coutances: art et histoire. Actes du colloque organisé au Centre culturel international de Cerisy
du 8 au 11 octobre 2009, ed. F. Laty, P. Bouet, and G. Désiré dit Gosset, with photographs by

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 ALYCE A. JORDAN

St Thomas window now contains six scenes, disposed in circular medallions

interspersed with demi-medallions housing single standing figures who
turn inward and gesture toward the narrative panels. Becket converses with
Henry II in the bottom-most medallion before departing for Canterbury by
boat in the scene above. The third panel, which must have originally occupied
one of the window’s lower registers, presents Thomas kneeling before Pope
Alexander III. Archbishop and pope met in France, where both lived in exile
under the protection of King Louis VII. The narrative moves directly to the
archbishop’s murder, entombment and the transport of his soul to heaven [Figs
9.1–9.2].12
Several contextual elements could have contributed to Thomas’s
appearance in the Coutances transept. Becket’s parents were both Norman
by birth, and his cult was exceptionally strong in Normandy.13 All three of
the saints featured in the north transept windows were associated with
healing miracles, and all three windows have been attributed to the patronage
of Coutances’s bishop (1208–38), Hugh de Morville, who took a particular
interest in the health of his congregation, founding a hospital not far from the
cathedral.14 The cathedral itself boasted a well in the south transept, directly
opposite the three windows, which dispensed healing waters. St Thomas,
St George and, to a lesser extent, St Blaise, were all associated with miracles
involving water. Blaise is perhaps best known for having saved a child from
asphyxiation by placing two lit candles in a cruciform position against the

A. Poirier (Bayeux, 2012), 99–105; M. Callias Bey and V. David, Les Vitraux de Basse-Normandie,
Corpus Vitrearum: France-Recensement VIII (Rennes, 2006), 129–30, 136–7; Nilgen, 198–9;
V. Chaussé, Les Verrières de la cathédrale Notre-Dame de Coutances, Itinéraires du patrimoine,
210 (Caen, 1999), 16–19; J. Fournée, ‘Les Vitraux de la cathédrale’, in Coutances, ville d’art et
d’histoire, Art de Basse Normandie, 95 (1987), 93–6; J. Lafond, ‘Les Vitraux’, in La Cathédrale de
Coutances, ed. P. Colmet-Daage (Paris, 1967), 44–7; Abbé E.-A. Pigeon, Histoire de la cathédrale
de Coutances (Coutances, 1876), 207–12.
12 Details of the Coutances windows can be found at http://cathedralecoutances.free.fr/
vitraux1.htm, accessed 14 January 2015. A fourteenth-century renovation of the chapter house
located above the sacristy, which abuts the north transept façade, resulted in a reduction in the
height of the three lancets and the loss and rearrangement of panels from each: Boulanger, ‘Les
vitraux du XIIIe siècle’, 99–100.
13 The cult of St Thomas Becket in Normandy has been extensively studied: R. Foreville, ‘Le
culte de saint Thomas Becket en Normandie: Enquête sur les sanctuaires anciennement placés
sous le vocable du martyr de Canterbury’, in Sédières, 135–52; R. Foreville, Thomas Becket dans
la tradition historique et hagiographique (London, 1981). See also Duggan, ‘Cult’; and the essay by
Elma Brenner in this volume (chapter 4).
14 F. Neveux, ‘Hugues de Morville et l’épiscopat normand des XIIe–XIIIe siècles’, in La
Cathédrale de Coutances: art et histoire. Actes du colloque organisé au Centre culturel international
de Cerisy du 8 au 11 octobre 2009, ed. F. Laty, P. Bouet and G. Désiré dit Gosset, with photo-
graphs by A. Poirier (Bayeux, 2012), 47–56, at 52–3; M. Lelégard, ‘L’Hôtel-Dieu de Coutances’,
in Coutances, ville d’art et d’histoire, Art de Basse Normandie, 95 (1987), 42–9.

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 THE BECKET WINDOWS AT ANGERS AND COUTANCES

boy’s throat, miraculously dislodging the fishbone stuck therein.15 The Golden
Legend recounts that after George slew the dragon, the king whose subjects
the dragon had terrorised built a church in the saint’s honour, within which
‘flowed a spring whose waters cure all diseases’.16 Becket’s healing powers were
manifest through ‘St Thomas’s water’, a tincture of water mixed with a drop
of the saint’s blood.17 The Coutances window may thus visualise Becket’s
popularity as both healing saint and native Norman son.
The encounter between Henry II and the archbishop prior to the latter’s
departure for Canterbury constitutes a standard element in Becket iconog-
raphy, appearing in all four French Becket windows. The windows of Sens
and Chartres, however, depict this conversation in the context of a visual
opposition between Henry, the evil king who drove Thomas into exile, and
the good king, Louis VII, who gave the archbishop refuge on French soil.18
Henry’s inclusion at Coutances is more ambiguous. Though holding a sword,
the king exhibits no overt signs of evil intent, while Thomas, for his part,
inclines his head toward the king, and seems to raise his hand in a gesture of
benediction [Figs 9.1–9.2].19
In 1171, Henry II had been universally condemned for his tacit, if not
active, role in the archbishop’s murder. Pope Alexander III had placed his
continental lands under interdict and Henry was forbidden from entering a
church. By 1172, however, Henry had made peace with the pope and had

15 Other water-themed events in the life of St Blaise include an account of seven women who
threw idols into a lake, where they immediately sank, and sixty-five pagans who walked into
the lake and immediately drowned. By contrast, St Blaise, when thrown into the same lake, was
able to stand upon the water: Jacobus de Voragine, The Golden Legend, trans. W. G. Ryan, 2 vols
(Princeton, NJ, 1993), i, 152–3. For further discussion linking the cults of Becket and Blaise, see
the essay by Colette Bowie in this volume (chapter 6).
16 Jacobus de Voragine, The Golden Legend, i, 240.
17 P. A. Sigal, ‘Naissance et premier développement d’un vinage exceptionnel: l’eau de saint
Thomas’, CCM, 44 (2001), 35–44; A. A. Jordan, ‘The “Water of Thomas Becket”: Water as
Medium, Metaphor and Relic’, in The Nature and Function of Water, Baths, Bathing and Hygiene
from Antiquity through the Renaissance, ed. C. Kosso and A. Scott (Leiden, 2009), 479–500. These
collect much of the bibliography on the archbishop’s prolific healing abilities and explore some of
the textual and visual articulations of his miraculous tincture.
18 The Chartres Becket window makes this dynamic especially clear through the inclusion
of a grimacing devil perched on Henry II’s shoulder during the king’s conversation with his
archbishop. See http://www.medievalart.org.uk/Chartres/18_pages/Chartres_Bay18_key.htm,
accessed 14 January 2015. For the Sens window, which begins with a scene in which Louis VII
negotiates peace between Thomas and Henry, see http://www.medievalart.org.uk/Sens/23_Pages/
Sens_Bay23_key.htm, accessed 14 January 2015. Details of the Coutances windows can be found
at http://cathedralecoutances.free.fr/vitraux1.htm, accessed 14 January 2015.
19 The left half of this conversation panel is a modern restoration, and I do not assume
Henry II’s stance here reproduces the medieval original. St Thomas’s relatively benign pose, and
the fact that Henry II is the only king appearing in the window, nonetheless distinguishes this
Becket narrative from those of Sens and Chartres.

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 Figure 9.1. Life of
St Thomas Becket,
Coutances, Notre-Dame
Cathedral, c.1230–40,
Bay 217, left lancet.

Opposite:
Figure 9.2. Life of
St Thomas Becket,
Coutances, Notre-Dame
Cathedral, c.1230–40:
detail, Thomas converses
with Henry II; Thomas
leaves France for England.

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2276 (Boydell - St Thomas Becket).indd 177 20/09/2016 8:46 pm
 ALYCE A. JORDAN

agreed to numerous acts of atonement. The final settlement between king

and pontiff transpired in Avranches, not far from Coutances, and several of
Henry’s major penitential foundations were located in Normandy, then part
of his continental territories. In 1174, Henry made a high-profile pilgrimage
to Becket’s tomb to do penance for his role in the saint’s murder and to invoke
his aid in suppressing a widespread rebellion spearheaded by his son, the Young
King Henry.20 The elder Henry credited his decisive victory later that year
to Thomas’s intervention. David Knowles observed that Henry II affected ‘a
remarkably successful recovery’ in the decade following Becket’s death,21 and
it is perhaps this gentler assessment of the English king that the Coutances
window depicts. That Henry might have received more generous scrutiny,
pictorial or otherwise, in a Norman church, is not surprising. Philip II’s
conquest of Normandy in 1204 had made the region part of a rapidly expanding
French realm. Frequent uprisings against French domination, however,
remained a visible sign of the conflicted loyalties of its inhabitants. Henry’s
ambiguous depiction in the Coutances Becket window offers a counterpoint
to the divergent political allegiances of Normandy itself. The inclusion of this
lancet within a larger glass ensemble devoted to saints prominently associated
with both England and the former Angevin empire amplifies its iconographic
and contextual ambivalence.22
The Becket window at Angers resembles that of Coutances in its simplified
arrangement of quadrilobe medallions disposed in a single column [Fig. 9.3].23
While retaining only five of its original eight medieval panels, the Angers
window offers yet another distinct interpretation of Becket’s life. Two panels
mirror those of other windows: the archbishop conversing with Henry II, and
his entombment. The three other scenes, to my knowledge, appear nowhere
else in surviving monumental Becket cycles. The first may reference either the

20 D. Knowles, Thomas Becket (London, 1970; repr. London, 1971), 152–4; Barlow, 260–62,
269–70; Lives of Thomas Becket, 215–19; Duggan, Thomas Becket, 221–2, 254. Henry II had his
son, Henry, crowned king in 1170 by Roger of Pont l’Évêque, Archbishop of York. Following his
coronation, Henry II’s namesake son is identified as ‘the Young King’ to distinguish him from his
father.
21 Knowles, Thomas Becket, 153.
22 While firm evidence for the import of St George in England appears only in the late
thirteenth century, documentation of relics and miracles attributed to George are found in
Normandy and Maine as early as 585. Blaise’s cult was widespread, but he enjoyed particular
veneration in England as the patron saint of wool-makers. See below at nn. 91–93.
23 On the thirteenth-century windows of Angers, see L. Grodecki, Les Vitraux du centre et des
pays de la Loire, Corpus Vitrearum: France, Recensement II (Paris, 1981), 287–91; J. Hayward and
L. Grodecki, ‘Les Vitraux de la cathédrale d’Angers’, Bulletin Monumental, 124 (1966), 29–53;
K. Boulanger, ‘Les Vitraux du chœur de la cathédrale d’Angers: commanditaires et iconographie’,
in Anjou: Medieval Art, Architecture, and Archaeology, ed. J. McNeill and D. Prigent, British
Archaeological Association Conference Transactions, 26 (2003), 196–209; K. Boulanger, Les Vitraux
de la cathédrale d’Angers, Corpus Vitrearum: France, Recensement III (Paris, 2010).

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 THE BECKET WINDOWS AT ANGERS AND COUTANCES

coronation of Henry the Young King in June 1170, or the Young King’s refusal
to meet with Becket following his return to England later that year.24 Two
additional panels are devoted exclusively to Becket’s murderers, who appear
on horseback and traversing the English Channel by boat. This window also
contains the heraldic blazon (or six chevrons gules) of the Beaumont family,
repeated four times in the lancet’s borders [Figs 9.3–9.5].
I have been drawn to explore connections between these unusual scenes
and the Beaumont family, not only because the very presence of their heraldry
inscribes the Beaumonts into the window’s narrative, but because other
evidence for the veneration of Thomas Becket at Angers is conspicuous in its
absence. Thomas wisely avoided the region during his exile, since it lay in the
heart of Henry’s continental holdings, and Raymonde Foreville determined
that, with the exception of Normandy, the archbishop was not particularly
honoured within the hereditary domains of the Plantagenet empire, even after
the regions came under French control.25 Angers possessed no relic of the saint,
a point of some import, since the Becket lancet is one of only two windows in
the twelfth- and thirteenth-century glass programmes lacking complementary
representation amongst the altars and relics housed in the cathedral treasury.26
And while Guillaume de Beaumont (bishop of Angers 1202–40) is credited
with overseeing the entire choir glazing campaign, the family’s heraldry
appears only here and in one other window dedicated to St Julien of Le Mans,
the patron saint of Le Mans Cathedral, where Guillaume had once served as a
canon.27

24 Knowles, Thomas Becket, 127–8, 136–7; Barlow, 206–7, 228–9; Lives of Thomas Becket, 172–4,
185–6; Duggan, Thomas Becket, 181–3, 202–3. A scene of Henry’s coronation, in which the
youthful prince sits frontally disposed, flanked by the archbishop of York, Roger of Pont l’Évêque,
Gilbert, bishop of London, and other attending bishops, appears in The Becket Leaves, dated
c.1220–40: J. Backhouse and C. de Hamel, The Becket Leaves (London, 1988), 31 and fol. 3r.
25 R. Foreville, ‘Le Culte de saint Thomas Becket en France: bilan provisoire des recherches’, in
Sédières, 163–87, at 168. A planned conference between Henry II and his estranged archbishop
at Angers in 1166 did not occur, although Henry did meet with three of Thomas’s clerks who
had followed him into exile, including John of Salisbury: Barlow, 140–42; Lives of Thomas Becket,
142–4. Henry II financed projects in Angers and Le Mans as part of his atonement for his role
in Becket’s murder. He did so, however, through intermediaries, such as his seneschal, Etienne
de Marsay, and these penitential foundations, most notably the Hôpital Saint-Jean-l’Evangeliste in
Angers and the Hôpital-Dieu de Coëffort in Le Mans, were not named in honour of St Thomas.
26 Three thirteenth-century lists of relics survive for the cathedral. See L. de Farcy, Monographie
de la cathédrale d’Angers, 4 vols (Angers, 1901–26), i, 159–63; Boulanger, ‘Les Vitraux du chœur’,
202. In 1211, Bishop Guillaume de Beaumont gifted a large golden chasse filled with relics to his
cathedral. L’obituaire de la cathédrale d’Angers, ed. C. Urseau, Mémoires de la Société nationale
d’agriculture, sciences, et arts d’Angers, 7 (1930), 10–11, reprints the inventory of Guillaume’s
bequest.
27 The lowest register of the St Julien of Le Mans window depicts a bishop, identified by
inscription as Guillaume, kneeling opposite a shield bearing the Beaumont arms charged with
two croziers – a likely reference to Guillaume and his uncle, Raoul de Beaumont, who held the

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 Figure 9.3. Life of
St Thomas Becket,
Angers, Cathedral of
St-Maurice, c.1230–35,
Bay 108a, left lancet.

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 Figure 9.4. Life of St Thomas Becket, Angers, Cathedral of St-Maurice, c.1230–35:
detail, the murderers of St Thomas Becket on horseback; the murderers of St Thomas
Becket sail across the Channel; heraldry of the Beaumont family, viscounts of Maine.

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 ALYCE A. JORDAN

Bishop Guillaume’s family history offers compelling links to the Angers

Becket window. Guillaume’s ancestors were the hereditary viscounts of Maine
and vassals of the Plantagenet kings until the territories of Maine, Touraine
and Anjou were conquered by France. The Beaumonts were blood relations
of Henry II by virtue of their common descent from the king’s grandfather,
Henry I. Henry II’s son John had helped secure Guillaume’s elevation to the
bishopric of Angers, even while embroiled in hostilities with the king of
France.28 These ancestral and political bonds were fractured, however, when
Guillaume’s brother, Raoul, viscount of Maine, switched allegiance to Philip
Augustus in 1203, just months after Guillaume’s episcopal election. Philip’s
conquest of the western territories soon followed, and the Beaumonts became
subjects of the French Crown.29 My analysis investigates the Angers Becket
window through this web of political and genealogical ties.
Indeed, each panel proffers a connection between Archbishop Thomas,
Henry II and the Beaumont family. Even a scene as generic as Thomas
conversing with Henry assumes a particular resonance within the context
of Beaumont history. Like the panel at Coutances, the Angers scene depicts
Henry seated on the left and Thomas standing before him on the right [Figs
9.2 and 9.5]. Here, Thomas raises his right hand in a gesture of address, with
his cross-bearer, Edward Grim, standing behind him. As cousins of Henry II
and one of the most prominent families in the Normandy-Maine marches,
members of the Beaumont clan could well have met Thomas Becket during
his tenure as Henry’s chancellor.30 Thomas travelled with Henry II through

bishopric of Angers before him (1177–97). Hayward and Grodecki, ‘Les Vitraux de la cathédrale
d’Angers’, 9–10; Boulanger, ‘Les Vitraux du chœur’, 199. Boulanger, Les Vitraux de la cathédrale
d’Angers, 36, has identified two bishops depicted at the foot of the Virgin and Child window now
in the nave, but originally part of the choir programme, as another likely depiction of the two
Beaumont bishops.
28 Seminal works for the history of the Beaumonts of Maine include: E. Hucher, ‘Monuments
funéraires et sigillographiques des Vicomtes de Beaumont au Maine’, Revue historique et
archéologique du Maine, 11 (1882), 319–408; Abbé A. Angot, Généalogies féodales mayennaises du
XIe au XIIIe siècle (Laval, 1942).
29 The best recent scholarship on the Beaumonts of Maine appears in Daniel Power’s numerous
studies of the frontiers of Angevin Normandy. See especially: D. Power, ‘What did the Frontier of
Angevin Normandy Comprise?’, Anglo-Norman Studies, 17 (1995), 181–201; D. Power, ‘King John
and the Norman Aristocracy’, in King John: New Interpretations, ed. S. D. Church (Woodbridge,
1999), 117–36; D. Power, ‘The End of Angevin Normandy: The Revolt at Alençon (1203)’,
Historical Research, 74 (2001), 444–64; D. Power, ‘“Terra regis Anglie et terra Normannorum
sibi invicem adversantur”: les héritages anglo-normands entre 1204 et 1244’, in La Normandie et
l’Angleterre au Moyen Âge, ed. P. Bouet and V. Gazeau (Caen, 2003), 189–209; and D. Power, The
Norman Frontier in the Twelfth and Early Thirteenth Centuries (Cambridge, 2004).
30 On Roscelin de Beaumont, viscount of Maine c.1145–75, who married Henry I’s illegit-
imate daughter Constance c.1130, see Angot, Généalogies féodales mayennaises, 29–31, 80–81.
Documentation of Roscelin’s activities is minimal. More evidence of Henry II’s regard for, and
interactions with, Roscelin’s son Richard, exist. Between 1181 and 1183, Viscount Richard

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 Figure 9.5. Life of St Thomas Becket, Angers, Cathedral of St-Maurice,
c.1230–35: detail, the coronation of Henry the Young King or Young
King Henry refuses to meet with Thomas?; Thomas converses with
Henry II; entombment (or translation?) of Thomas Becket.

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 ALYCE A. JORDAN

the Angevin territories in 1156–57, and from Normandy on to Toulouse in

1159–62.31 Richard, viscount of Maine 1175–1200/1201, numbered among
Henry II’s closest allies, his loyalty evinced by Henry’s gift to Richard of Bourg-
le-Roi, a strategically-situated castle Henry built overlooking the primary
route between Normandy and Maine.32 Henry II’s largesse included the
arrangement of profitable marriages for the viscount’s daughters, Constance
and Ermengarde.33 The more high-profile of these transpired in 1186 between
Ermengarde de Beaumont and William I, the Lion, king of Scots. The
Beaumont family’s most intimate connections to Henry II and Thomas Becket
may well have derived from the addition of William of Scotland to the family
circle.

The Scottish Connection

William I, king of Scots (reigned 1165–1214), and his ancestors boasted their
own dense network of historical ties with the kings of England. In 1100, Henry I
of England wed Matilda (also known as Maud, or Edith), sister to a succession
of three Scottish kings, Edgar (reigned 1097–1107), Alexander I (reigned
1107–24) and David I (reigned 1124–53); the second of these, Alexander,
married one of Henry I’s illegitimate daughters, Sybilla. King David I knighted
the future Henry II, and he, in turn, knighted the future king of Scots,
Malcolm IV (reigned 1153–65), and, in 1158/59, his younger brother, William
the Lion. Malcolm and William attended Henry II’s court at Woodstock in
1163, an event at which the recently consecrated archbishop of Canterbury,
Thomas Becket, was also present, and King Malcolm IV intervened the
following year in an attempt to facilitate a reconciliation between Henry and
his estranged prelate.34 Upon his accession to the Scottish throne in 1165,
William was often in Henry II’s company. He purportedly took part in Henry’s

witnessed Henry II’s charter for the Hôpital d’Angers. Richard’s brother Raoul was elected bishop
of Angers in 1177: Angot, Généalogies féodales mayennaises, 81–2.
31 Duggan, Thomas Becket, 18; Nilgen, 191–3.
32 Power, Norman Frontier, 341, 397, 402. King Richard I later renewed this gift.
33 Viscount Richard’s daughter Constance married Roger IV, lord of Tosny and Conches as
well as extensive holdings in England, an old Norman family with ties dating back to William
the Conqueror (from whom its English holdings derived). This marital alliance thus brought
together two families situated at strategic points of Normandy’s southern and eastern borders. See
Power, Norman Frontier, 487. An intriguing manifestation of this familial alliance appears in the
John the Baptist window adjacent to that of Thomas Becket. See below at nn. 101–104.
34 On the life of William the Lion, see A. A. M. Duncan, The Kingship of the Scots, 842–1292
(Edinburgh, 2002), 98–126; D. D. R. Owen, William the Lion, 1143–1214: Kingship and Culture
(East Linton, 1997). On Malcolm’s efforts to negotiate between Henry II and Thomas Becket,
see Duncan, Kingship of the Scots, 74; Regesta Regum Scottorum I: The Acts of Malcolm IV King of
Scots, 1153–1165, ed. G. W. S. Barrow (Edinburgh, 1960), 21, 287 (no. 313).

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 THE BECKET WINDOWS AT ANGERS AND COUTANCES

1166 suppression of a rebellion in Maine and may have accompanied Henry

and Eleanor of Aquitaine to Angers, where the king and queen spent Easter,
during which Henry met with some of Thomas Becket’s clerks. William
Marshal’s thirteenth-century biographer noted that King William distin-
guished himself at a tourney held at Valennes, near Le Mans, the same year.35
William the Lion and his younger brother David, later earl of Huntingdon,
appeared at a council convened by Henry II in April 1170 at Windsor, and
in May of that year, David, like his brothers before him, was knighted by
Henry. The following month Henry II had his son, Henry, crowned king by
the archbishop of York, in direct defiance of the prerogative of Canterbury.
William of Scotland and his brother attended young King Henry’s coronation,
and both pledged their allegiance to the Young King the following day.36 The
singular inclusion at Angers of a panel depicting Henry’s coronation may
reference the attendance of King William at that significant event and (or) his
subsequent act of homage to the Young King [Fig. 9.5].37
William’s hitherto loyal service to Henry II faltered grievously in 1174 when
he joined the Young King’s rebellion against his father, enticed by the junior
Plantagenet’s promise to restore to him the lands of Northumberland, once
held by the kings of Scots but long under Henry II’s control. In response to this
broad-based rebellion, Henry II called upon his murdered – now canonised
– archbishop, doing penance at Becket’s tomb and beseeching the saint to
preserve his reign.38 According to the chronicler Jordan Fantosme, Henry II’s
forces defeated William’s army and took the Scottish king prisoner on the same
day as the Angevin king’s penitential performance at Canterbury. William was
transported across the Channel and imprisoned first at Caen, then at Falaise.
There, in December 1174, he submitted to the humiliating terms of the Treaty
of Falaise, which stipulated that he pay homage to Henry for Scotland and that,
henceforth, the Scottish Church be subject to that of England. Additionally,
Henry took possession of five of William’s most prominent castles, among
them Edinburgh and Stirling, and twenty-one hostages, including his brother
David and his constable, Richard of Moreville.39

35 Owen, William the Lion, 35.

36 Owen, William the Lion, 42.
37 Regesta Regum Scottorum II: The Acts of William I King of Scots 1165–1214, ed. G. W. S.
Barrow (Edinburgh, 1971), 4.
38 Knowles, Thomas Becket, 153; Barlow, 269–70; Lives of Thomas Becket, 217–19; Duggan,
Thomas Becket, 220–21. Also discussed in the essays by Anne J. Duggan (chapter 2), Michael
Staunton (chapter 5), Colette Bowie (chapter 6) and José Manuel Cerda (chapter 7) in this
volume.
39 Duncan, Kingship of the Scots, 99–102; Owen, William the Lion, 44–56. William’s constable,
Richard de Moreville, was brother to one of Thomas Becket’s murderers, Hugh de Moreville. The
position of Scottish constable was a hereditary one and had been held by the Moreville family
since at least 1150. Discussion of the genealogy of the Morevilles and their connections to the

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Thus humbled, William of Scotland thereafter remained Henry II’s loyal ally
and, by the time Henry II arranged his marriage to Ermengarde de Beaumont,
had demonstrated himself sufficiently trustworthy to warrant Henry’s return
of Edinburgh Castle as part of Ermengarde’s dowry. A lavish state affair
financed by Henry, held at the royal chapel at Woodstock and attended by
English and Scottish upper nobility, the marriage of William and Ermengarde
was performed by Archbishop Baldwin of Canterbury on 5 September 1186.
In addition to Edinburgh Castle, Ermengarde’s dowry comprised land valued
at a hundred marks and forty knights’ fees.40 Scholars have suggested that
William might well have expected Henry to provide him with a wife of higher
station than the daughter of the viscount of Maine.41 Viewed from another
perspective, Henry’s choice of Ermengarde might instead speak to the high
esteem in which the Plantagenet king held his Manceau cousin and ally.
By 1186, King William might himself have attributed Ermengarde’s
generous dowry and Henry’s easing of the onerous terms of the Treaty of
Falaise to the benevolent intervention of Thomas Becket. For William had
taken seriously the widely-held belief that Henry’s appeal to St Thomas at
the height of his son’s rebellion and his penitential acts before Becket’s tomb
at Canterbury were responsible for the Plantagenet king’s victory in 1174. In
1178, William founded Arbroath Abbey in Thomas Becket’s honour, with
munificent endowments that he amplified throughout his reign. The first
foundation devoted to Becket in Scotland, Arbroath became the country’s
second richest monastery and a pilgrimage site of major significance, a
distinction it held until the Reformation. William’s foundation charter states
that he established Arbroath ‘in honour of God and St Thomas archbishop
and martyr’ for ‘the salvation of my soul and those of my ancestors and succes-
sors’.42 In addition to founding Arbroath Abbey, William made a pilgrimage
to Canterbury in the company of Henry II. The Scottish king journeyed to
Becket’s shrine once again in 1189, where he surely gave thanks to the sainted
archbishop for King Richard I’s annulment of the Treaty of Falaise in what
came to be called the Quitclaim of Canterbury.43 William appears early on to

Scottish Crown appear in G. W. S. Barrow, The Anglo-Norman Era in Scottish History (Oxford,
1980), 70–79. For further discussion of Hugh de Moreville see below at n. 45.
40 K. J. Stringer, Earl David of Huntingdon, 1152–1219 (Edinburgh, 1985), 36; Owen, William
the Lion, 72; Acts of William I King of Scots, 14.
41 Duncan, Kingship of the Scots, 102; Owen, William the Lion, 72.
42 Acts of William I King of Scots, 250–51 (no. 197); Owen, William the Lion, 60.
43 Owen, William the Lion, 63. William and Henry travelled to Canterbury together in the
summer of 1181, on their return to Britain from Normandy. On the 1189 quitclaim charter,
which rescinded all of the punitive terms of the Treaty of Falaise, see Owen, William the Lion,
78–9; Duncan, Kingship of the Scots, 105 n. 28; M. Penman, ‘The Bruce Dynasty, Becket and
Scottish Pilgrimage to Canterbury, c. 1178–c. 1404’, Journal of Medieval History, 32 (2006),
346–70, at 348–50. Penman notes that William’s most lavish patronage of Arbroath occurred

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have selected Arbroath for his final resting place, where he was duly interred
upon his death in 1214.44

Devotion and Subversion

The Angers Becket window places particular emphasis on events surrounding
the archbishop’s death. Although a scene depicting the saint’s murder has not
survived, it comprised a requisite component of the story and its prior existence
is supported by a medieval panel depicting the saint’s entombment, or possibly
his 1220 translatio, since the ritual is overseen by a bishop rather than a monk
[Figs 9.3 and 9.5]. The two images devoted to Thomas’s murderers would thus
have brought the total number of death-related scenes to four out of eight.
This narrative elaboration can again be linked with Bishop Guillaume’s family
history. The devotion to Thomas Becket evinced by Guillaume’s brother-in-
law, William the Lion, may have derived not only from the king’s hope of
expiation for his ill-fated rebellion against Henry II, but also from a certain
guilt-through-association stemming from the intimate connection between
the Scottish monarchy and the family of one of Becket’s assassins, Hugh de
Moreville. The Morevilles held lands in both England and Scotland, as well as
territories in Normandy, from whence the family originally hailed. William’s
father, David, had bestowed upon Hugh de Moreville (Hugh the assassin’s
father) the hereditary position of constable, whose primary responsibility
involved assembling the king’s military forces when the king required them.
Richard de Moreville (Hugh the assassin’s brother) succeeded to the post of
constable in 1162, following the death of their father, and served King William
in this capacity until his own death in 1189.45 Beyond offering another

after 1189. The Quitclaim of Canterbury is also discussed in the essay by Anne J. Duggan in this
volume (chapter 2).
44 R. L. Mackie et al., Arbroath Abbey (Edinburgh, 1982); D. Perry, ‘A New Look at Old
Arbroath’, Tayside and Fife Archaeological Journal, 4 (1998), 260–78; R. Fawcett, ‘Arbroath
Abbey: A Note on its Architecture and Early Conservation History’, in The Declaration of
Arbroath: History, Significance, Setting, ed. G. Barrow (Edinburgh, 2003), 50–85; R. Fawcett,
The Architecture of the Scottish Medieval Church (New Haven, CT, and London, 2011), 72–9.
On the sustained popularity of Arbroath as a pilgrimage site, and the traffic of Scottish pilgrims
to Canterbury, see Penman, ‘Bruce Dynasty, Becket and Scottish Pilgrimage to Canterbury’,
346–70. For exploration of Arbroath’s centrality in the political history of Scotland and
as a vehicle for the construction of William’s monarchy, see K. Stringer, ‘Arbroath Abbey in
Context, 1178–1320’, in The Declaration of Arbroath: History, Significance, Setting, ed. G. Barrow
(Edinburgh, 2003), 116–41.
45 Vincent, ‘Murderers’, 223–8. On the longstanding connections between William and the
Morevilles, see Barrow, Anglo-Norman Era, 70–84. Another of Becket’s murderers, Reginald Fitz
Urse, witnessed an act of William the Lion early in the latter’s reign: Barrow, Anglo-Norman Era,
78–9.

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contextual rationale for the inclusion of a lancet devoted to Thomas Becket

in the Angers choir glazing, King William’s intimate connection with one of
the archbishop’s assailants could account for the window’s general emphasis on
Thomas’s death and the men responsible for his murder. It does little, however,
to elucidate the specific depictions those assailants assume, depictions which,
by virtue of their compositional parallels to Becket iconography had, by the
1230s, become visual tropes central to the saint’s own cult.
From the moment of his death in 1170, Thomas Becket distinguished
himself as a prolific healer. His miraculous cures were frequently affected by
the consumption or application of water mixed with a drop of the archbishop’s
blood, which the Canterbury monks had assiduously collected following his
murder. Long before his canonisation, the curative powers of ‘St Thomas’s
water’ drew hundreds of pilgrims to Canterbury, whose monks quickly wrote
up accounts of the archbishop’s miraculous healings, the copiousness of which
surely facilitated his speedy canonisation.46 By the time of the translation of
Becket’s relics to their new shrine in 1220, an expansive verbal and visual
discourse had developed around the saint’s miraculous water, which accounted
for approximately one in five of his preternatural healings. In addition to curing
people with water, a substantial number of reports reveal that St Thomas
maintained a certain sub-specialty in saving people from water. Seafarers
delivered from tempests and children rescued from accidental falls into rivers,
streams and wells comprise the majority of such miracles.47 The Canterbury
windows showcased the efficacy of the archbishop’s wondrous tincture as well
as his ability to save victims from drowning.48 His liturgies shimmered with
watery metaphors.49 Thomas’s skill at effecting water rescues was connected not
only to his miraculous elixir but also to salient details of his own life. Two key

46 Benedict of Peterborough was the first custodian of Becket’s tomb and, in 1171, commenced
an account of the miracles that occurred there, as well as miracles attributed to Thomas’s water
that occurred elsewhere and were reported to Canterbury in letters. Benedict was joined in this
task by another Canterbury monk, William, who began his own compilation of miracles in 1172.
After Benedict left Canterbury to become abbot of Peterborough, William continued recording
miracles on his own. Both authors added to their collections in 1178–79. Benedict’s accounts
appear in MTB, ii, 21–279. William’s compilation appears in MTB, i, 155–545.
47 MTB, i, 354–7; MTB, ii, 50–53, 134–5, 188–92.
48 Caviness, Early Stained Glass of Canterbury Cathedral, 146–50; Caviness, Windows of Christ
Church, 195–6, 206.
49 On the liturgies devoted to St Thomas: S. Reames, ‘Liturgical Offices for the Cult of
St Thomas Becket’, in Medieval Hagiography: An Anthology, ed. T. [F.] Head (New York, 2000),
561–93; S. Reames, ‘Reconstructing and Interpreting a Thirteenth-Century Office for the
Translation of Thomas Becket’, Speculum, 80 (2005), 118–70; K. B. Slocum, ‘Optimus Egrorum
Medicus Fit Thomas Bonorum: Images of Saint Thomas as Healer’, in Death, Sickness and Health
in Medieval Society and Culture, ed. S. Ridyard, Sewanee Mediaeval Studies, 10 (Sewanee,
TN, 2000), 173–80; Slocum, Liturgies; Jordan, ‘Water of Thomas Becket’, 485–8. See also the
discussion of ‘The Liturgical Becket’ in the essay by Anne J. Duggan in this volume (chapter 2).

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events in Becket’s biography involved his own crossing of the English Channel.
While chancellor, Thomas made this voyage many times. As archbishop,
however, Thomas crossed the Channel on only four occasions, once in 1163
to attend Pope Alexander’s council at Tours, again in 1164 when he fled
England for France, and in returning to Canterbury in 1170 to resume his post
as archbishop, an office he held barely a month before his death.50 These latter
voyages assumed prominent positions in the saint’s posthumous legacy. They
numbered as two of the five events in Becket’s life known as ‘Thomas Tuesdays’
because, together with his birth, flight from Northampton and death, they
transpired on the third day of the week.51 Canterbury Cathedral and Arbroath
Abbey commemorated the archbishop’s fateful return from exile with a special
liturgical office known as the Regressio of St Thomas.52
Whether because of their significance as exempla of the voyage undertaken
by many Canterbury pilgrims, as links to Thomas’s special skills in protecting
people from drowning, shipwrecks and stormy seas, or as a material connection
to ‘St Thomas’s water’, these particular Thomas Tuesdays also became
canonical elements in Becket iconography. The windows at Sens, Chartres and
Coutances [Figs 9.1 and 9.2] all contain scenes of the archbishop crossing the
Channel, and Thomas travelling by ship comprised one of the standard types
of ampullae in which his miraculous water was dispensed [Fig. 9.6]. Thomas
appeared also on horseback, for instance at Chartres and in manuscript illumi-
nation, a reference both to the overland portion of his flight from England
and his return to Canterbury.53 At Angers, however, these voyaging scenes
showcase not the Canterbury saint but rather his aristocratic assassins, who
cross the Channel by boat and journey overland on horseback, just as they did
in December 1170 [Fig. 9.4].54 The Angers panels invert this prevalent Becket
imagery, proffering scenes that appropriate totemic iconographies of Thomas’s
life in ambiguous, destabilising, even subversive ways.
The Angers window thus posits an ambivalent account of St Thomas’s life
and death, one which invokes the martyred archbishop primarily as a vehicle
to memorialise – even valorise – the Beaumont family’s Scottish and Angevin

50 Knowles, Thomas Becket, 30–49, 79, 104; Barlow, 84–7, 115–16; Duggan, Thomas Becket,
16–32.
51 Duggan, ‘Cult’, 23 n. 8, 40 n. 105; Slocum, Liturgies, 247–53.
52 Duggan, ‘Cult’, 23 n. 7. Keith Stringer observes that the Regressio constituted a rare festival
which was celebrated only at Canterbury and Arbroath: Stringer, ‘Arbroath Abbey in Context’,
116.
53 See above, n. 18, for details of the Sens and Chartres windows. St Thomas appears on
horseback in the The Becket Leaves: Backhouse and de Hamel, The Becket Leaves, fol. 2v. On
Becket ampullae, see B. Spencer, Pilgrim Souvenirs and Secular Badges, Medieval Finds from
Excavations in London, 7 (London, 1998), 37–133; B. Spencer, Salisbury and South Wiltshire
Museum. Medieval Catalogue, Part 2: Pilgrim Souvenirs and Secular Badges (Salisbury, 1990), 16–24.
54 Knowles, Thomas Becket, 139–41; Barlow, 235–8; Duggan, Thomas Becket, 208–9.

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 ALYCE A. JORDAN

Figure 9.6. St Thomas Becket ship-shaped ampulla, c.1250,

drawing of obverse, Museum of London.

connections. While Bishop Guillaume’s elder brother, Raoul, viscount of

Maine, ultimately joined forces with Philip Augustus in the French king’s quest
for control of the Angevin territories, ample evidence exists that Guillaume
himself sought to preserve the Beaumont family’s venerable connections to its
Plantagenet relatives and ancestry long after John’s loss of Anjou, Maine and,
in 1204, Normandy.55
Abbé Angot describes Guillaume as ‘toujours sous l’influence anglaise’,
citing as evidence the bishop’s entreaty of his brother not to contest a grant
made by Richard I to the abbey of Mélinais lest he disgrace the honour of
the Beaumont family name.56 Guillaume engaged in sustained patronage of
both Beaumont and Plantagenet religious sites, while Raoul dutifully served

55 On the internecine battles between John and his nephew Arthur following the death of
Richard the Lionheart (1199), and John’s escalating conflicts with Philip Augustus leading up to
the desertion of Count Robert d’Alençon, Juhel de Mayenne and Viscount Raoul de Beaumont
in 1202–1203, see Power, Norman Frontier, 432–40; Power, ‘End of Angevin Normandy’.
56 Angot, Généalogies féodales mayennaises, 41, 91. Angot twice quotes Guillaume’s 1209 exhor-
tation to Raoul to honour Richard’s bequest, ‘si vestram vultis nobilitatem et honorem ab infamia
evitare’.

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 THE BECKET WINDOWS AT ANGERS AND COUTANCES

in the military campaigns of Philip Augustus and those of his son, the future
Louis VIII.57 Guillaume proved an impassioned proponent of his episcopal
diocese, enhancing his cathedral’s collection of relics, financing the rebuilding
and decoration of its transept and choir, largely out of his own resources, and
advocating for reparations to his cathedral for damages inflicted by the Capetian
monarchy during the revolts that plagued the early years of Louis IX’s reign.58

Postcolonialism and Frontier Studies

Postcolonial theory and frontier studies offer tools beyond historical contex-
tualisation that facilitate interrogation both of the Angers window’s equivocal
narrative and the ambivalent saintly triumvirate (Thomas, George and Blaise)
who grace the lancets of Coutances Cathedral’s north transept [Figs 9.1–9.5].
Long employed in the fields of anthropology, literature and modern history,

57 Raoul pledged fealty to Philip in 1210 and led a contingent of men on the side of Philip
Augustus in the battle of Bouvines (1214). He swore homage to Philip again in 1216 and
exhorted the chatelains of his castles to do the same. In 1216, Raoul participated in Louis of
France’s invasion of England. Philip, for his part, appears to have rewarded Raoul for his loyalty
by allowing him to retain control of Bourg-le-Roi, which his father, Richard, held from Henry II
and Richard I. The French king subsequently made Raoul lord of La Flèche, which Power notes
had been ‘a comital castle since the end of the eleventh century’: Angot, Généalogies féodales
mayennaises, 89, 91–3; Power, Norman Frontier, 443.
58 Beginning in 1209, Bishop Guillaume funded the building and glazing of Anger Cathedral’s
transept and choir in addition to providing for the refurbishment of church ornaments, tapestries
and liturgical books. In 1230, a substantial quantity of building materials amassed to complete
the choir were confiscated by the French crown for the building of a new castle and fortification
wall, executed between 1232 and 1240. Following the revolt of several western barons in 1227,
Louis IX had turned control of Angers over to Pierre de Dreux, duke of Brittany. Pierre, along
with several Poitevin barons, supported Henry III’s invasion of France in 1231, at which point
Louis IX’s forces occupied the city. Louis and his mother, Blanche, thus had excellent reasons
for wanting to strengthen the fortifications of Angers, a highly convenient vantage point from
which to observe, or intervene in, the machinations of the Poitevin nobility, the English king
and the duplicitous Pierre de Dreux. The wall and castle – both fabulously large structures – were
demolished under orders of Napoleon between 1809 and 1815. The castle’s construction neces-
sitated the destruction of numerous churches, chaplaincies and vineyards, as well as lay and
ecclesiastical residences belonging to the cathedral of St-Maurice and other diocesan churches.
Guillaume undertook demands for reparations for the buildings destroyed and materials confis-
cated. His 1232 letter to the French court states that Louis’ officers confiscated ‘lapides et calcem
et multam aliam materiam ad opus fabrice nostre ecclesie preparatem’, and estimated the value of
these in excess of fifteen hundred pounds: Layettes du trésor des chartes, ed. A. Teulet et al., 5 vols
(Paris, 1863–1909), ii, 238–9 (no. 2200). Thanks to Guillaume’s efforts, the affected individuals
and churches received at least a dozen indemnities from the crown, ‘pro damnis et deperditis,
quae ob clausuram fortalitiae Andegavensis passus est’, although at least two of these recipients
(the church of St-Aubin and Angers Cathedral) stated that the monies received ‘longe insuf-
ficiens esset ad predicta dampna congrue restauranda’: Layettes du trésor des chartes, ii, 238–9 (nos.
2200–2204), 242–3 (nos. 2215–20); Layettes du trésors des chartes, iv, 34 (no. 4741), 47 (no. 4792).

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postcolonial theory has more recently been engaged by medieval scholars such
as Jeffrey Jerome Cohen, Ananya Jahanara Kabir and Deanne Williams, who
have demonstrated the applicability of such seminal postcolonial concepts as
hybridity, disparate temporality and the existence of heterogeneous, localised
discourses to medieval studies. Applications of postcolonial theory in art
history have focused on the nineteenth century, although some postcolonial
explorations of medieval art have begun to appear.59 More fully integrated
into the theoretical toolbox of medievalists, frontier studies have sought to
deconstruct traditional monolithic understandings of the Christian medieval
west through exploration of specific geographic areas in which divergent
political, military, social and cultural institutions interacted. As Nora Berend
has observed, a frontier in the Middle Ages comprised not a linear demar-
cation in the modern sense of a border, but rather a region or zone – a fluid
spatial entity containing comparably fluid institutions and structures which, in
turn, enabled and encouraged the construction of multiple loyalties and multi-
valent identities.60 Meanwhile, the work of Daniel Power has done much to
articulate the complex, often contradictory, dynamics animating the Angevin
marches of Normandy. His excavation of religious and charitable donations,
marital records and dowries, and traditions of standing surety has illuminated
the extent to which the families inhabiting these regions operated according
to complex patterns of local loyalties and historical customs within the larger
contingencies of Capetian and Plantagenet agency.61
The Beaumonts of Maine are a prime example of the dense, often conflicting
tapestry of identities and allegiances realised by the aristocratic inhabitants of
the Angevin territories in the period encompassing the coalescence and disso-
lution of the Plantagenet empire in western France.62 In the span of scarcely

59 J. J. Cohen (ed.), The Postcolonial Middle Ages (New York, 2000); A. J. Kabir and D. Williams
(eds), Postcolonial Approaches to the European Middle Ages: Translating Cultures (Cambridge,
2005). For an informative analysis of postcolonial theory as applied to medieval art, see K. E.
Overbey, ‘Postcolonial’, in Special Issue: Medieval Art History Today – Critical Terms, ed. N. Rowe,
Studies in Iconography, 33 (2012), 145–56. Eva Frojmovic and Catherine Karkov have signalled
the centrality of postcolonial interrogations of medieval art in a series of conference sessions, and
in their founding of a research network, ‘Postcolonising the Medieval Image’, at the University of
Leeds [http://post-col-med.leeds.ac.uk, accessed 15 January 2015].
60 N. Berend, ‘Medievalists and the Notion of the Frontier’, The Medieval History Journal, 2/1
(1999), 55–72, with extensive bibliography. Seminal early applications of frontier studies to
medieval history appear in R. Bartlett and A. Mackay (eds), Medieval Frontier Societies (Oxford,
1989).
61 See above at n. 29. Power, ‘What did the Frontier of Angevin Normandy Comprise?’, 186–91,
describes the south and south-west borders between Normandy and Maine as especially fluid.
62 The conundrum of conflicted loyalties that faced the noble families of the Angevin empire
during and after John’s loss of Normandy and the western territories emerges as a recurrent theme
in Daniel Power’s studies of this period. See, for example, Power, ‘King John and the Norman
Aristocracy’, 127–33.

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three generations, the Beaumonts were transformed from a Manceau family

of moderate import to intimate, loyal relations of the Plantagenet dynasty.
Richard de Beaumont, his brother, Bishop Raoul, and his sons, Raoul and
Bishop Guillaume, enjoyed close contact with Henry II, Richard I and John,
and could claim the king of Scotland as a brother-in-law.63 The Beaumont
lands expanded from one castle along the Normandy-Maine border to a cluster
of castles that protected the primary north-south route between Normandy
and the southern Plantagenet domains of Maine and Anjou, together with
holdings in Normandy and, via marriage, northern England and Scotland.64
The family became the viscounts of Maine and boasted two generations of
bishops in the diocese that had been a comital holding of Henry II. In far less
time than it took for the Beaumonts to rise to prominence, the family endured
a dramatic diminution in status concomitant with that of the Angevin terri-
tories themselves. The prolonged Plantagenet-Capetian wars decimated the
region. Raoul de Beaumont’s desertion of King John severed the royal connec-
tions upon which the family’s prestige rested. Maine and Anjou themselves
shifted from central territories of the Plantagenet empire to subjugated
colonies at the periphery of Capetian France.65
Jeffrey Cohen has observed that geographies transformed by war, occupation
and conquest give rise to contiguous cultures which ‘in their difference and
overlap struggle not simply over space as patria and colony, but over time’.66
The Plantagenet-turned-Capetian territories of western France comprised
just such topographically and temporally contested sites. Their conquest by
Philip Augustus engendered a cataclysmic reconfiguration, fracturing families,
properties, identities and histories. Bishop Guillaume de Beaumont embodied
what Cohen has called the ‘impossible simultaneity’ such political upheaval
engenders.67 An ardent supporter of the Plantagenet monarchy, Guillaume de
Beaumont’s identity was predicated on a dense matrix of genealogical, cultural,
political and spiritual ties. Forced to disavow the very king to whom he owed
his episcopal appointment, Guillaume dedicated the rest of his long tenure as

63 Angot, Généalogies féodales mayennaises, 83–8, records numerous instances of Viscount

Richard, his brother, Bishop Raoul, and his son, Raoul, the future viscount, witnessing acts of
Henry II, Richard I and John. In one such document Henry II describes Bishop Raoul as ‘dilectum
cognatum nostrum’.
64 Angot, Généalogies féodales mayennaises, 47, describes the string of Beaumont castles, running
in a longitudinal orientation north-east to south-west over a distance of seventy kilometres, as
‘the most complete system of defence’ between Maine and Normandy.
65 For a concise and cogent history of the rise and fall of the Plantagenet continental territories,
see J. Gillingham, The Angevin Empire, 2nd edn (London and New York, 2001).
66 J. J. Cohen, ‘Introduction’, in The Postcolonial Middle Ages, ed. idem (New York, 2000), 1–17,
at 2.
67 J. J. Cohen, ‘Hybrids, Monsters, Borderlands: The Bodies of Gerald of Wales’, in The
Postcolonial Middle Ages, ed. idem (New York, 2000), 85–104, at 85.

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bishop to the cathedral and city that had once stood at the epicentre of the
Angevin dynasty’s hereditary domains but which, by the 1230s, had become a
marginalised French backwater.
On the other side of the Channel, however, Guillaume’s sister, Ermengarde,
and her descendants continued to thrive within the orbit of Plantagenet life.
In 1212, Ermengarde took part in a meeting at Durham between her aged
husband and King John, during which the two monarchs renewed their mutual
allegiance to the other, swore that each would do whatever necessary to secure
the inheritance of the other’s son to his respective throne, and agreed upon
a timetable for the marriage of William and Ermengarde’s son, Alexander, to
John’s daughter, Joan. John knighted Alexander in London later that year.
Between 1212 and 1214, Ermengarde and Alexander assumed heightened
profiles in Scottish royal administration and, upon William’s death in 1214,
Alexander assumed the Scottish throne as Alexander II.68 The genealogical
and political bonds between the Beaumonts of Maine and the Plantagenet
monarchy endured – via the progeny engendered by Bishop Guillaume’s sister
and brother-in-law – into the fourteenth century. The vehicle by which Bishop
Guillaume might reify the illustrious linkage of the Beaumont and Plantagenet
families, and articulate its present and future (if politically and geographically
disjointed) continuation, lay in the life of Thomas Becket.

The Practice of Theory

Like most visual narratives, the Angers Thomas Becket window encourages
interpretation on multiple levels. As Karine Boulanger has shown, it functions
as part of a larger programme devoted to the celebration of bishops, which
emerges as an overriding theme throughout the choir glass ensemble. It
operates more specifically as part of a visual dialectic on positive and negative
episcopal-royal relationships, situated as it is across the choir from the window
devoted to St Eloi, who, in contrast to St Thomas, enjoyed the support of
his monarch, Clotaire.69 On a personal level, Guillaume’s inclusion of Thomas
Becket among the saints of his cathedral choir served to visually link the

68 R. D. Oram, Domination and Lordship: Scotland 1070–1230 (Edinburgh, 2011), 174–5,

describes Ermengarde as having ‘mediated’ the 1212 meeting between William and John. A
similar description of Ermengarde’s role appears in A. A. M. Duncan, ‘John King of England
and the Kings of Scots’, in King John: New Interpretations, ed. S. D. Church (Woodbridge, 1999),
247–71, at 263–5, though with the caveat that Ermengarde’s role might have been limited to
that of translating between French and Early Scots. In May 1212, Ermengarde presided over a
special court comprising the curia regis and numerous Scottish bishops: Acts of William I King of
Scots, 58.
69 Boulanger, ‘Les Vitraux du chœur’, 200–202; Boulanger, Les Vitraux de la cathédrale d’Angers,
390.

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bishop with his sister Ermengarde, queen of Scots, and her royal family, whose
veneration of St Thomas Ermengarde’s husband, William, had established
with his foundation of Arbroath Abbey. William’s son and heir, Alexander II,
continued his father’s tradition of benefactions to Arbroath, albeit on a lesser
scale, a pattern sustained by Scottish monarchs even after their specific
dynastic linkage to William the Lion had come to an end.70 St Thomas, for his
part, repaid the family’s devotion by bestowing miraculous cures on numerous
Scots, including Robert, a servant of King William’s brother, David, earl of
Huntingdon.71
The Angers window’s eccentric collection of scenes, prominent display of
Beaumont heraldry and emphasis on Becket’s assassins, proffers still another
vector in its reconfiguration of the narrative. The window could have served,
in part, as an expiatory offering for the role played by Beaumont relations and
associates in the saint’s death. In addition to Hugh de Moreville, the brother of
William the Lion’s constable, it is possible that another of Becket’s murderers,
Reginald Fitz Urse, was, like the Beaumonts of Maine, descended from Henry I
and thus a blood relation. A third assassin, William de Tracy, held a baronage
in England as well as extensive lands in Maine. Nicholas Vincent has
described William as perhaps ‘the most remorseful’ of St Thomas’s assassins,
making penitential gifts of his English holdings to Canterbury and founding
a leper hospital in Maine at Couesmes-en-Froulay, near Ambrières, the site of
his family’s estates. William de Tracy and the Beaumonts made donations to
some of the same Maine religious establishments and, given their shared status
as Manceau nobility, would surely have known each other.72 Hugh, the most
‘socially exalted’ of the four knights, had been raised in the Scottish court
and was intimately associated with the court of Henry II. He witnessed the
Constitutions of Clarendon in 1164, as well as many of Henry II’s charters
in England, Normandy and Anjou. Thus, in addition to his connection to
William the Lion, Hugh de Moreville, like William de Tracy, could have had
direct contact with the Beaumonts of Maine. Hugh may also have had close
ties with Thomas Becket, who addressed him by name during the altercation
at Canterbury. Having positioned himself at the door to the cathedral to deny

70 Penman, ‘Bruce Dynasty, Becket and Scottish Pilgrimage to Canterbury’, 354–7. Robert I
(Robert Bruce, king of Scots 1306–29) lavishly patronised Arbroath during his reign and was
most likely responsible for the impressive early fourteenth-century tomb sculpture of William the
Lion excavated from the abbey ruins in 1816: G. S. Gimson, ‘Lion Hunt: A Royal Tomb-Effigy at
Arbroath Abbey’, Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, 125 (1995), 901–16.
71 Stringer, ‘Arbroath Abbey in Context’, 117; Penman, ‘Bruce Dynasty, Becket and Scottish
Pilgrimage to Canterbury’, 349–50. Penman cites thirteen Scots cured through St Thomas’s
intervention.
72 Vincent, ‘Murderers’, 232–8, 242; Angot, Généalogies féodales mayennaises, 94. The abbey of
St-Pierre de la Couture in Le Mans is among the institutions patronised by both William de
Tracy and the Beaumonts.

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entrance to the crowd of people attempting to get inside, Hugh was the only
knight not to strike the archbishop, although one of his men, Hugh of Horsea,
brutally distinguished himself by stamping on the slain archbishop’s neck and
scattering his brains across the cathedral’s paving stones.73
While all of these connections exist at some remove from the Angevin
bishop and his family, in the Middle Ages, guilt by association, like family
honour and memory, could exert a long reach. Although all the archbishop’s
killers appear to have died c.1173 on pilgrimage to the Holy Land, Nicholas
Vincent has traced the penitential foundations dedicated to St Thomas by
Hugh de Moreville’s brother, Richard, and Reginald Fitz Urse’s grandson,
William de Courtenay, both of which were patronised by descendants of
Richard Brito (the fourth assassin) and Hugh of Horsea.74 Barlow observed
that ‘Many of [Henry’s] knights … must have felt that they were in some way
involved in the tragedy for which four of their members were responsible’,
and Vincent found that several knights who participated in Henry’s 1171–72
Irish campaign subsequently made pilgrimages to Canterbury, perhaps out
of a sense of ‘shared guilt’ that fellow members of the king’s military retinue
could have committed so heinous an act.75 If, as Daniel Power has said, ‘a
nobleman’s war was the concern of his whole lineage to the seventh degree’,
how far might a nobleman’s murder of a sainted archbishop reverberate in the
consciousness – and conscience – of even distant relatives and associates?76
This reading posits the Angers window, with its repetition of Beaumont
heraldry and emphasis on St Thomas’s murderers [Fig. 9.4], as a penitential
gesture for the Beaumont family’s myriad connections to those responsible for
the archbishop’s death, an interpretation supported by the survival of several
ampullae in which Becket’s murderers appear comparably foregrounded [Fig.
9.7].77 At the same time, a window honouring a saint favoured by Angers’ new
French rulers, whose own patronage of Becket amplified the collective sanctity

73 Vincent, ‘Murderers’, 226; Knowles, Thomas Becket, 148; Barlow, 247; Lives of Thomas Becket,
203; Duggan, Thomas Becket, 212. Hugh of Horsea’s actions are also noted at the beginning of
Anne J. Duggan’s essay in this volume (chapter 2).
74 Vincent, ‘Murderers’, 262–3.
75 Barlow, 257; Vincent, ‘Murderers’, 257.
76 Power, Norman Frontier, 226. A telling demonstration of the longevity of guilt by association
appears in the Lanercost Chronicle’s account of the defeat by Edward I (in 1296) of John Balliol,
who had claimed the crown of Scotland following Margaret of Norway’s death (in 1290). The
chronicler observed that Balliol’s July 1296 surrender, ‘by divine ordinance … [was] accomplished
on the morrow of the translation of St Thomas the Martyr, in retribution for the crime of Hugh
de Moreville, from whom that witless creature [Balliol] was descended’: Chronicon de Lanercost
MCII–MCCCXLVI, ed. J. Stevenson, Bannatyne Club, 65, and Maitland Club, 46 (Edinburgh,
1839), 179; quoted in translation in Penman, ‘Bruce Dynasty, Becket and Scottish Pilgrimage to
Canterbury’, 353.
77 Spencer, Pilgrim Souvenirs, 37–133; Spencer, Salisbury and South Wiltshire Museum. Medieval
Catalogue, Part 2, 16–24; Jordan, ‘Water of Thomas Becket’, 489–95.

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 THE BECKET WINDOWS AT ANGERS AND COUTANCES

Figure 9.7. St Thomas Becket ampulla, c.1200–50, obverse, St Thomas

flanked by knights. British Museum, #1921,0216.62.

of the Capetian monarchy by memorialising Louis VII’s efforts to defend the

archbishop – a point foregrounded in the Sens and Chartres Becket windows –
could be construed as a gesture of support on the part of Bishop Guillaume for
his region’s French conqueror and king.78
Such an expiatory and honorific reading, however, appears at odds with the
visual evidence of the stained-glass panels themselves [Figs 9.3–9.4]. Nothing
ignoble defines these images, quite the opposite. These knights are visually
arresting. They impress by their scale, their compositional sophistication

78 Louis VII’s role in protecting the archbishop is recounted in the third lesson of the
rhymed office Studens livor, which was widely adopted throughout the Continent to celebrate
St Thomas’s feast day: ‘Louis, the most Christian king of the French, received him [Archbishop
Thomas] with the greatest honour when he was driven from Pontigny, and he sustained him most
kindly until peace was restored’: Slocum, Liturgies, 215. St Thomas Becket appears among the
martyrs decorating the dado of Louis IX’s famous Parisian palace chapel, the Sainte-Chapelle:
R. Branner, ‘The Painted Medallions in the Sainte-Chapelle’, Transactions of the American
Philosophical Society, ns 58 (1968), 5–41; and E. D. Guerry, ‘The Wall Paintings of the Sainte-
Chapelle’ (unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, University of Cambridge, 2013).

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 ALYCE A. JORDAN

Figure 9.8. Seal of Richard de Beaumont, viscount of Maine, c.1240.

– evident in the frontal, foreshortened rendering of the equestrian knight and

his mount – and the attention lavished upon their aristocratic trappings, in
particular the minute articulation of their chain mail. The artistic engagement
with such noble signifiers resonates with the recurrent inclusion of Beaumont
heraldry in the lancet’s borders. This pictorial articulation of knightly status
extends beyond the Becket lancet to the viscounts of Maine themselves, who,
in the second quarter of the thirteenth century, adopted a seal bearing with, on
its reverse side, the Beaumont arms and, on the obverse, an equestrian, chain-
mailed knight brandishing an outstretched sword [Fig. 9.8].79 The renderings
of Becket’s murderers, in other words, evince a visual valorising of aristocratic
accoutrements comparable to and contemporary with that of the Beaumont
family itself.
A postcolonial reading of the Becket lancet in light of these details proffers
something more complex, ambivalent and provocative than a penitential
offering: a life of Thomas Becket that engages, manipulates and subverts
prevalent Becket iconography in ways that reify – even celebrate – the
fierce loyalty of Henry II’s knights, the nexus of immediate and extended

79 Hucher, ‘Monuments funéraires et sigillographiques des vicomtes de Beaumont au Maine’,

357–8, with images.

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 THE BECKET WINDOWS AT ANGERS AND COUTANCES

genealogical and historical ties that bound the Beaumonts of Maine to the
Plantagenet dynasty, and the links of family and patronage that, as late as the
1240s, sustained those auspicious connections. All four of Becket’s assassins
were ‘knights conspicuous for their birth’ and ‘familiar companions to the
King’.80 If, by the 1230s, the Beaumonts of Maine could no longer claim a
comparable stature in the eyes of their former or current monarchs, the
foregrounding of Henry’s knights in the Angers Becket window might at least
establish for posterity the family’s historic prominence within the constel-
lation of Plantagenet court life.
A modern observer might well question the likelihood, not to mention the
efficacy and decorum, of such a shame-turned-fame-by-association strategy to
exalt a family’s import. However, as Nicholas Vincent observed, ‘Links to a
king, even to a King who countenanced the murder of an archbishop, were
to be prized and cultivated’.81 That Henry’s knights undertook their heinous
odyssey as an act of loyalty to their Plantagenet monarch appears clear in their
repeated shouts of ‘king’s men, king’s men’ before and after Thomas’s murder,
something Henry himself acknowledged when he said that ‘it was certainly
“for” him, if not “by” him … that the murder was committed’.82 Bishop
Guillaume’s invocation of Becket’s murderers could have served to realise
his own connections to the king in whose name that murder was committed.
Guillaume’s invocation of a saint venerated by his French rulers for the purpose
of articulating a linkage and loyalty to their English rivals suggests the sort of
understated, subversive mimicry that Homi Bhabha has dubbed ‘sly civility’.
The interpretive lens of postcolonialism thus illuminates the Becket lancet
as a subtly transgressive response to the French conquest of Plantagenet terri-
tories and its concomitant erasure of Beaumont prominence.83
The life of Thomas Becket proffered a narrative scaffold upon which Bishop
Guillaume could construct his own family’s story of Plantagenet allegiance.
Reference to the archbishop’s murderers visualised the long shared history
of the Beaumonts of Maine with the Plantagenets. Guillaume’s inclusion of
a St Thomas Becket lancet in his cathedral choir, personalised through the
display of Beaumont heraldry, comprised a devotional act paralleling those of
his royal Scottish relations. In this sense the Thomas Becket window spoke
simultaneously to the past, present and future of Beaumont-Plantagenet

80 Vincent, ‘Murderers’, 214, quoting the descriptions of Gervase of Canterbury and Edward
Grim.
81 Vincent, ‘Murderers’, 215. Vincent emphasises this point in his description of Henry II’s
arrival in Canterbury to do penance at Becket’s tomb in July 1174, where the king ‘had forcefully
to remind [the Canterbury prior and monks who met him] that he had come as a penitent pilgrim
to be scourged; not as an honoured guest to be received in procession’.
82 Vincent, ‘Murderers’, 243–5, quoting Herbert of Bosham.
83 Cohen, ‘Hybrids, Monsters, Borderlands’, 86–7; H. K. Bhabha, The Location of Culture
(London, 1994; repr. 2008), 132–44.

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 ALYCE A. JORDAN

history. By the 1230s, when the Angers choir glazing was underway, both
Guillaume’s brother-in-law, William the Lion, and his sister, Ermengarde, were
long dead. However, Guillaume’s nephew, Alexander II, ruled Scotland and
had established himself as a close ally of Henry III of England. Alexander II’s
marriage to Henry’s sister, Joan, and Alexander III’s marriage to Henry III’s
daughter, Margaret, established a complex range of family ties. Alexander II
honoured his father’s memory in his continued patronage of Thomas Becket
and Arbroath Abbey, perhaps securing some of the saint’s relics for the abbey
during his reign.84 Other Scottish relations sustained the family’s veneration
of St Thomas. In one of many devotional acts performed by this branch of the
Beaumont clan, Alexander II’s cousin (a niece of William and Ermengarde)
attended the saint’s spectacular translation ceremony at Canterbury in July
1220 and, with her husband Lord Robert Bruce, made a grant ‘of one Scottish
mark per annum in perpetuity for themselves and their heirs to “St Thomas,
Martyr”’.85 Though he didn’t attend the translation, Alexander II undertook
his own pilgrimage to Canterbury in 1223. His wife, Queen Joan, visited
Canterbury in 1237. A third generation of Scottish royal devotion is attested
by a letter from the abbot of Arbroath to Canterbury Cathedral documenting
the abbey’s annual payment of monies to Canterbury ‘to enable the latter to
feed thirteen poor people every Tuesday on behalf of King Alexander III in
honour of St Thomas’.86

Coutances Revisited
The Thomas Becket lancet at Coutances, with its equivocal depiction of
Henry II conversing with his archbishop and its deployment within a larger
ensemble of saints favoured in England and the former Angevin empire, also
encourages a postcolonial reading [Figs 9.1–9.2]. I have already discussed the
dense tapestry of contextual connections that might account for the inclusion
of a Becket window in this Norman cathedral, but I do not think that is neces-
sarily the end of the story.87 Coutances Cathedral embodied an illustrious

84 Stringer, ‘Arbroath Abbey in Context’, 125; Penman, ‘Bruce Dynasty, Becket and Scottish
Pilgrimage to Canterbury’, 356 n. 54.
85 Penman, ‘Bruce Dynasty, Becket and Scottish Pilgrimage to Canterbury’, 351. Might this
event be referenced in the scene traditionally identified as the archbishop’s entombment [Fig.
9.5], but which is anachronistically depicted at Angers being presided over by a bishop (Stephen
Langton)?
86 Stringer, ‘Arbroath Abbey in Context’, 121; G. W. S. Barrow, ‘A Scottish Collection at
Canterbury’, Scottish Historical Review, 31 (1952), 16–28. Barrow traces a continuous connection
between Canterbury and the Scottish royal line from the early twelfth century until the reign of
Alexander III.
87 The Coutances Becket window is discussed above beginning at n. 11.

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history. The Romanesque cathedral was consecrated in 1056 by Archbishop

Maurilius of Rouen in the presence of William, duke of Normandy, the future
William the Conqueror, and survived intact into the early thirteenth century,
despite having been set ablaze by Philip Augustus in 1194. Its reconstruction
as a gothic edifice – described as the finest in Normandy – occurred primarily
under the auspices of its bishop, Hugh de Morville (1208–38), with substantial
financing from the same king responsible for its earlier vandalism. Thus, soon
after Philip’s conquest of Normandy, he sought to ameliorate ecclesiastical–
monarchic relations in this Cotentin diocese through a lavish monetary gift
to rebuild its cathedral. Bishop Hugh de Morville oversaw construction of the
nave, choir and transepts.88
Scholars have long debated the potential familial connections between
Hugh de Morville, bishop of Coutances, and the infamous Hugh de
Moreville, who numbered among Archbishop Thomas’s assassins. Nicholas
Vincent, whose assiduous research on Becket’s murderers comprises by far
the most thorough genealogical analysis, has traced two Moreville lines
deriving from a common Norman ancestry. Vincent characterised the two
branches as ‘closely related’, noting that, prior to Henry II’s 1174 confis-
cation of Hugh-the-murderer’s properties, the Morville/Moreville clans held
the adjacent Cumberland baronies of Burgh by Sands and Appleby.89 Bishop
Hugh de Morville’s connection to Hugh, Becket’s assassin, is sometimes cited
in the Coutances literature to account for the inclusion of a Becket lancet in
the cathedral’s north transept.90 And, as I have argued for Angers, Becket’s
vitreous presence at Coutances could certainly be explained as an expiatory
gesture on the part of Bishop Hugh for the sins of his distant ancestor. Three of
the Becket window’s six surviving panels at Coutances include scenes related
to the saint’s death [Fig. 9.1]. And while these commonplace episodes of the

88 L. Grant, Architecture and Society in Normandy, 1120–1270 (New Haven, CT, and London,
2005), 168–79.
89 Vincent, ‘Murderers’, 224–5. Many sources (although not Vincent) distinguish the Scottish/
English Morevilles from the Norman Morvilles by including an ‘e’ in the middle of the former’s
names. While far from consistent in the scholarship, I have adopted that practice here to help
distinguish discussions of Hugh de Moreville, Becket’s murderer, from Hugh de Morville, bishop
of Coutances.
90 The genealogy of Bishop Hugh de Morville established by René Toustain de Billy in his
Histoire ecclésiastique du diocèse de Coutances, 3 vols (Rouen, 1874–86), i, 311, identified him as
a descendent of Hugh de Moreville, Becket’s assassin, providing an expiatory motive for Bishop
Hugh’s inclusion of a window and altar dedicated to the archbishop in his new transept, as
Pigeon, Histoire de la cathédrale de Coutances, 184–5, suggested. Lafond, ‘Les Vitraux’, 46, who
follows Pigeon in mistakenly identifying Becket’s murderer as ‘Simon de Morville’, described
the purported genealogical connection between the archbishop’s assassin and Bishop Hugh as
‘aujourd’hui abandonnée’. Fournée, ‘Les Vitraux de la cathédrale’, 93, considered the genea-
logical connection ‘contestée’. Grant, Architecture and Society in Normandy, 171, described the
bishop of Coutances as ‘probably distantly related’ to Hugh, Becket’s murderer.

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archbishop’s murder, entombment and apotheosis do not share the Angers

window’s peculiar emphasis on Thomas’s murderers, their general emphasis on
Thomas’s death is consistent with a penitential donation.
A postcolonial reading might look more broadly to Bishop Hugh’s Anglo-
Norman heritage and to the larger iconographic context in which the
Coutances Becket lancet appears. Archbishop Thomas shares company with
St George and St Blaise. Veneration of George in regions of what became
the Angevin empire dated to the sixth century. Gregory of Tours records
the presence of George’s relics in Limoges and Le Mans (the birthplace of
Henry II) and notes the especial powers manifested by the saint’s relics at this
latter site, where ‘the blind, the lame, those with chills, and other ill people
are often … rewarded with the favour of health’.91 Nineteenth- and twentieth-
century historians attribute the Cotentin cult of St George to the miraculous
arrival of his relics in 747 on the coast of Portbail (near Cherbourg) and their
equally miraculous journey to the town of Brix, where a church was built in
his honour.92 St Blaise’s particular identification with Plantagenet England
derived from the tortures he endured, one of which involved the tearing of
his flesh from his body with iron combs. The perceived similarity of the iron
combs to those used by wool-makers made Blaise a subject of veneration
among those who worked in that trade. A primary source of the nation’s
wealth, the medieval English wool industry also occasioned the augmentation
of Blaise’s cult, as evidenced in the 1222 declaration of his feast day as a public
holiday.93 Thomas Becket’s significance for England requires no elaboration.
Beyond their common import, in current and former regions of Plantagenet
rule, this saintly triumvirate shared other similarities: Blaise and Thomas were
both episcopal martyrs; all three saints were ultimately beheaded; and all three
were credited with miracles and (or) miraculous healings involving water.
I have found no pattern of sustained Plantagenet loyalty on the part of
Bishop Hugh comparable to that of Bishop Guillaume. It is, however, not
implausible that Bishop Hugh, a member of a Norman family of high rank,
elected as bishop of a Norman see whose cathedral had sustained damage at

91 Gregory of Tours, Glory of the Martyrs, trans. R. Van Dam (Liverpool, 1988), 123–4.
92 Gesta Abbatum Fontanellensium, ed. S. Loewenfeld, MGH SS rerum Germanicarum 28
(Hannover, 1886), 40–42; A. Lecanu, Histoire des évêques de Coutances depuis la fondation de
l’évêché jusqu’à nos jours (Coutances, 1839), 75–7; Fournée, ‘Les Vitraux de la cathédrale’, 94.
On the cult of St George in England, see H. Summerson, ‘George (d. c. 303?)’, ODNB (Oxford,
2004; online edn, 2010) [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/60304, accessed 19 December
2015]. Summerson persuasively critiques the association of Richard I with the cult of St George.
I am grateful to Paul Webster for bringing this source to my attention.
93 B. Williams, ‘St Blaise’s Well, Bromley, Kent’, Source: The Holy Wells Journal, 6 (1998) [http://
people.bath.ac.uk/liskmj/living-spring/sourcearchive/ns6/ns6bw1.htm, accessed 16 January 2015];
J. P. Kirsch, ‘St Blaise’, in The Catholic Encyclopaedia [http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/02592a.
htm, accessed 16 January 2015].

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the hands of the French king in a territory that king subsequently conquered,
might have entertained some lingering fealty to his former Plantagenet
monarchs.94 In his important study of Anglo-Norman history between 1204
and 1240, Daniel Power persuasively demonstrates that, if modern scholars
have accepted 1204 as the clear temporal demarcation of Normandy’s fall to
France, its significance as a definitive marker in the minds of the Plantagenet
kings and the region’s inhabitants is far less apparent. Decades following the
loss of Normandy, John and his son Henry III can be found offering their
English subjects gifts of Norman lands and the restitution of hereditary
properties confiscated by Philip Augustus, in exchange for their support.95
And, despite the fact that both Philip and John ordered the confiscation of
English or continental holdings depending upon which monarch a family’s
titular head had decided to pledge their allegiance to, in actuality, many
families sought, and found, ways to retain control of lands on both sides of the
Channel in the hope that the former Angevin territories would one day be
reunited. Henry III urged the inhabitants of Normandy to renew their fealty
to England following Philip’s death in 1223. The untimely death of Philip’s
heir, Louis VIII, in 1226, which left France under the rule of a child-king and
a female, foreign-born regent (Blanche of Castile), offered another promising
opportunity for Plantagenet reconquest. Indeed, numerous western rebellions
transpired between 1224 and 1227, culminating in Henry III’s expedition to
the Continent in 1230. Henry III hoped particularly for the secession of the
dioceses of Coutances and Avranches so as to provide a corridor by which he
could penetrate the southern domains of Maine, Anjou, Poitou and Touraine,
a hope at least partially realised by a 1230 Cotentin uprising orchestrated by
Henry himself.96
Though clear in light of history, the futility of these events to effect the
reunification of former Plantagenet domains with England could not have
been evident to those Angevin supporters living through them. In such times,
might a bishop descended from an old Norman family long loyal to the kings
of England perhaps take the opportunity to erect a visual paean to his former
monarchs in the guise of a luminous glazing campaign showcasing three
holy figures of particular Angevin import? George and Blaise, like Thomas,
were, of course, popular saints on both sides of the Channel. As at Angers,

94 D. Power, ‘The Norman Church and the Angevin and Capetian Kings’, JEH, 56 (2005),
205–34, effectively challenges the ‘historiographical tradition’, due in part to the murder
of Thomas Becket, ‘that not only depicts the Plantagenet dukes as oppressors of the Norman
Church, but also suggests that they alienated the higher clergy to the point where they preferred
to be ruled by Philip Augustus’. Power argues that most Norman Church support was, in fact,
local, and that there is minimal evidence that the Norman Church would have found Capetian
rule preferable to that of the Plantagenets.
95 Power, ‘“Terra regis Anglie et terra Normannorum”’, 193–4.
96 Power, ‘“Terra regis Anglie et terra Normannorum”’, 189–99.

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Becket’s inclusion at Coutances could be seen as a nod toward the central role
Louis VII played in securing the archbishop’s protection, a gesture certainly
appropriate for a Norman bishop looking to secure the continued favour of his
French overlord. And, as at Angers, a postcolonial lens can illuminate these
windows as a manifestation of ‘sly civility’, a subtly subversive act of mimicry,
in which Bishop Hugh invoked a saint favoured by his French conquerors for
the express purpose of destabilising their conquest.97 Like Bishop Guillaume,
Bishop Hugh was obliged to renounce his Plantagenet allegiance and swear
fealty to his new French monarch. That Hugh employed Capetian largesse to
construct a splendid new transept celebrating three saintly icons of Anglo-
Norman devotion expands the interpretive field of both the bishop’s motiva-
tions and allegiances and the role of Thomas Becket in their articulation.98

Conclusion
The myriad conditions and events that sustained hopes of reunification would
surely not have been lost on Guillaume de Beaumont. Indeed, Guillaume
seemed to articulate just such aspirations following Philip’s death, when he
swore allegiance to Louis VIII ‘sous la réserve que si le comté d’Anjou était
séparé de la couronne, il ne serait pas tenu de faire ce serment au comte’.99
Bishop Guillaume numbered among those who had managed to retain
possession of lands on both sides of the Channel long after 1204, selling his
English properties to the bishop of Winchester, Peter des Roches, only in
1233.100 Daniel Power has employed the extended Beaumont family as a case
study of the myriad connections that fuelled such aspirations on both sides
of the Channel. In 1175, Bishop Guillaume’s sister, Constance, wed the
powerful lord Roger de Tosny, whose extensive properties included four castles

97 See above, n. 83. The subtlety of Hugh and Guillaume’s gestures is attested by the number of
scholars who have interpreted Thomas Becket windows donated by these bishops as comparable
to those of Sens and Chartres in their condemnation of Henry II: Brisac, ‘Thomas Becket dans
le vitrail français’, 230–31; Boulanger, ‘Les Vitraux du chœur’, 200; Boulanger, Les Vitraux de la
cathédrale d’Angers, 119, 122–3, 160, 401–2; Chaussé, Les Verrières de la cathédrale Notre-Dame de
Coutances, 18.
98 Overbey, ‘Postcolonial’, 153, underscores the ability of postcolonial analyses to reveal ‘more
possibilities, more heterogeneity, and a medieval viewer whose subjectivity is not solely or wholly
determined by his religious identity’.
99 Angot, Généalogies féodales mayennaises, 95. I have wondered if Viscount Raoul’s renewal, the
same year, of a gift to La Flèche by Richard I might have stemmed from a like motivation: Angot,
Généalogies féodales mayennaises, 95.
100 Power, ‘“Terra regis Anglie et terra Normannorum”’, 202 n. 65. I suspect Guillaume’s long-
delayed sale of his English properties at this time was prompted by the need for additional revenue
to continue construction of Angers Cathedral and to replace the building materials confiscated
by Louis IX. See above, n. 58.

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in Normandy and vast territories in England, to which the Tosnys relocated

after Philip Augustus confiscated the family’s Norman holdings. Constance,
however, remained in contact with her brothers, Raoul and Guillaume, and,
after the death of her husband in 1208/1209, returned to Maine, where she
lived until her own death in 1234. Again resident in her birthplace, Constance
sustained communication with her English and Scottish relations on the other
side of the Channel. Power observes that until her death Constance styled
herself ‘dame de Conches’, despite Philip’s confiscation of her husband’s
ancestral lands thirty years earlier.101
The contacts between the Beaumonts of Maine and their English and
Scottish relations continued into the next generation. Roger and Constance
de Tosny’s daughter, Marguerite, married Malcolm I, earl of Fife, a venerable
Scottish family long numbered among the closest allies of the Scottish
kings, a match surely enhanced by Marguerite’s status as queen Ermengarde’s
niece.102 In 1235, Raoul, viscount of Maine, gifted Marguerite a parcel of land
near the Beaumont ancestral chateau of Ste-Suzanne where, the following
year, Marguerite established a Carthusian priory in memory of her mother,
Constance, the sister of Raoul and Bishop Guillaume.103 Throughout her life,
Marguerite also made donations to Angers Cathedral, whilst her brother,
Richard, served as treasurer there during his uncle Guillaume’s tenure as
bishop. Yet another thread, this one visual, can be added to Daniel Power’s
meticulous tracking of this dense web of cross-Channel familial connections.
The lancet adjacent to that of Thomas Becket in the Angers Cathedral choir
contains a life of John the Baptist, its borders embellished with the Tosny arms
(argent, à maunch, gules). Karine Boulanger’s conclusion that the appearance of
the Tosny heraldry, repeated multiple times in the lancet’s borders, signalled a
donation by Anger’s treasurer and Guillaume’s nephew, Richard, is logical.104
Angers Cathedral’s possession of a relic of John the Baptist provides a straight-
forward explanation for the saint’s inclusion in the glazing programme.
The placement of these lancets side-by-side and their shared heraldic
proclamation of Beaumont-Tosny ancestry, however, suggests a further associa-
tional register. Like Becket, John the Baptist was linked with acts of healing

101 Power, ‘“Terra regis Anglie et terra Normannorum”’, 200.

102 Power, ‘“Terra regis Anglie et terra Normannorum”’, 200–202; B. A. McAndrew, Scotland’s
Historic Heraldry (Woodbridge, 2006), 37–8. The centrality of the Fife dynasty in Scottish royal
politics is evinced by the inclusion of the family arms adjacent to those of the Scottish king on a
seal believed to have been used during the reign of Alexander III. The earl of Fife is one of two
figures flanking the seated king at his coronation: Gimson, ‘Lion Hunt’, 913.
103 As Constance had done with her own donations, Marguerite’s gift in memory of her mother,
and related acts witnessing Marguerite’s donation, consistently identify Constance as ‘dame de
Conches’: Angot, Généalogies féodales mayennaises, 97–9.
104 Boulanger, ‘Les Vitraux du chœur’, 199; Boulanger, Les Vitraux de la cathédrale d’Angers,
36–7, 122.

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 ALYCE A. JORDAN

involving water. Simon de Tosny, a former monk at the Scottish monastery of

Melrose and later bishop of Moray, had effected a miraculous cure employing
the water of St Thomas. Arbroath Abbey was built on the site of a local chapel
dedicated to St John the Baptist, and the abbey’s foundation charter estab-
lished four annual fairs, two of which occurred on the feast days of Thomas
Becket and John the Baptist respectively. John the Baptist was the patron
saint of a hospital added to Arbroath Abbey, in addition to being the patron
saint of the nearby town of Perth (known during the Middle Ages as St John’s
Town), which was given the status of a royal burgh by William I because of
its proximity to Scone Castle, site of the Scottish kings’ coronation.105 The
aligned lancets devoted to St Thomas and St John the Baptist, then, proffered
a visual compendium of interconnected histories, a tribute to two powerful
families related by blood, one of which had severed its ties to the Plantagenet
monarchy to retain its ancestral properties, the other of which had sustained
its ancestral allegiance at the cost of its ancestral lands. Thirty-five years after
each had fallen victim to the vagaries of King John and the tactical acumen of
King Philip, the bonds of family, history and memory resonated in a resounding
hagiographic and heraldic display from Bishop Guillaume’s choir windows.106
Prior scholarship has described the four French Becket windows as uniformly
emphasising Thomas’s sojourn in France and commemorating Louis VII’s role
as the protector of the exiled prelate. Scrutiny of the narrative crafting specific
to each window, however, reveals a phenomenon less clear-cut. A martyred
defender of Church rights, Thomas Becket was also a figure of recent history,
a Norman who, in life, had enjoyed the favour of his Plantagenet king and,
in death, was credited with securing that king’s victory over his enemies. The
saint’s import to the monarchies of both England and France facilitated his
invocation in both countries, even for the purpose of garnering his help in one
to advance the aspirations of the other. Evidence exists that St Thomas’s inter-
vention was sought on at least one occasion in support of a political uprising.107
In those parts of the former Plantagenet empire that Capetians viewed as

105 Perry, ‘A New Look at Old Arbroath’, 269–70; Penman, ‘Bruce Dynasty, Becket and
Scottish Pilgrimage to Canterbury’, 356, 360.
106 Power, Norman Frontier, 226–7, observes that: ‘Memories within a lineage could be long,
particularly where claims to land were concerned … and … could be perpetuated and proclaimed
publicly through heraldry’. While the Beaumont arms appear four times in the Becket window,
the Tosny arms appear no fewer than nine times in that of John the Baptist. Boulanger, Les
Vitraux de la cathédrale d’Angers, 40, figs 269–70, identifies and accounts for the addition of
Chaumont family heraldry (repeated five times) in the John the Baptist window as evidence
that the Chaumonts financed an early fourteenth-century restoration of the lancet. Might the
Chaumonts, a Norman family with hereditary connections to both the Beaumonts and the
Tosnys, have perceived the particular import of these windows to their Anglo-Norman ancestors?
107 Duggan, ‘Cult’, 32, details the ‘surprising’ association of Becket patronage with baronial
conspiracy evinced in a hymn to the saint ‘[invoking] his aid for the earl of Leicester and the
Young King in his 1173–74 rebellion against Henry II’.

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conquered French territories but which many of their inhabitants perceived

as estranged Angevin lands awaiting reunification, the martyred archbishop of
Canterbury may himself have comprised what postcolonialism calls a ‘resistant
site’.108 Between Church and State, and between the realms of England and
France, the life of Thomas Becket composed a capacious discursive field, across
which many stories might be told.

108 Cohen, ‘Introduction’, 12; bell hooks (G. Watkins), ‘Marginality as a Site of Resistance’, in
Out There: Marginalization and Contemporary Cultures, ed. R. Ferguson et al. (Cambridge, MA,
1990), 341–3. A resistant site can find its origin in a subject, object or place, but in postcolonial
discourse is more accurately understood as a concept or space ‘where authority is deformed and
subverted’. In his own inherent hybridity – chancellor and archbishop, worldly warrior, shrewd
politician, saintly martyr, Norman and English, or English and French, depending on one’s
perspective – Thomas Becket offers a space, or site, within which heterogeneous, even contra-
dictory, identities and loyalties might find articulation. A possible early manifestation of Thomas
Becket’s invocation as resistant site – and a source of connection between the inhabitants of
Angers and their Angevin monarch – may be found in the many donations made to the Hôpital
St-Jean in Angers (founded and enlarged by Henry II) in the years immediately following the
fall of Anjou and Maine in 1204: Angot, Généalogies féodales mayennaises, 82, 89–90, 94. The
concept of Thomas Becket as a resistant site is the topic of my current research, provisionally
entitled ‘Remembering Thomas Becket in Normandy’.

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 Bibliography

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Webster, P., ‘Crown, Cathedral and Conflict: King John and Canterbury’, in
Cathedrals, Communities and Conflict in the Anglo-Norman World, ed. P. Dalton,
C. Insley and L. J. Wilkinson (Woodbridge, 2011), 203–19
Weiler, B., ‘Bishops and Kings in England, c. 1066–c. 1215’, in Religion and Politics
in the Middle Ages: Germany and England by Comparison, ed. L. Körntgen and
D. Wassenhoven (Berlin and Boston, MA, 2013), 87–134
Williams, B., ‘St Blaise’s Well, Bromley, Kent’, Source: The Holy Wells Journal, 6
(1998) [http://people.bath.ac.uk/liskmj/living-spring/sourcearchive/ns6/ns6bw1.
htm, accessed 16 January 2015]
Willis, R., The Architectural History of Canterbury Cathedral (London, 1845)

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 BIBLIOGRAPHY

Woodman, F., The Architectural History of Canterbury Cathedral (London, 1981)

Woodruff, C. E., ‘The Financial Aspect of the Cult of St Thomas of Canterbury’,
Archaeologia Cantiana, 44 (1932), 13–32
Yvernault, M., ‘Reading History in Enamel: The Journey of Thomas Becket’s
Experience from Canterbury to Limoges’, in Canterbury: A Medieval City, ed.
C. Royer-Hemet (Newcastle-upon-Tyne, 2010), 137–59

Additional online resources

‘Becket (1964)’, Internet Movie Database [http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0057877/,
accessed 24 July 2015]
The British Museum Collection Online [http://www.britishmuseum.org/research/
collection_online/search.aspx, accessed 3 October 2015]
Chartres windows [http://www.medievalart.org.uk/Chartres/18_pages/Chartres_
Bay18_key.htm, accessed 13 January 2015]
Coutances windows [http://cathedralecoutances.free.fr/vitraux1.htm, accessed 14
January 2015]
Mould for the production of a pilgrim’s badge [https://sketchfab.com/models/707ca
a9c575c4c7cb981e305dac61bdb, accessed 3 October 2015]
Museum of London pilgrim badges [http://collections.museumoflondon.org.uk/
online/search/#!/results?terms=pilgrim%20badge%20Thomas%20Becket,
accessed 3 October 2015]
Portable Antiquities Scheme pilgrim badges [https://finds.org.uk/database/search/
results/objecttype/PILGRIM+BADGE/description/thomas+becket, accessed 3
October 2015]
‘Postcolonising the Medieval Image’, at University of Leeds [http://post-col-med.
leeds.ac.uk, accessed 15 January 2015]
Sens windows [http://www.medievalart.org.uk/Sens/23_Pages/Sens_Bay23_key.
htm, accessed 14 January 2015]

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 Index
Abel ​30, 31 Anglo-Saxon royal saints ​122
Abelard, Peter ​31 Angot, Abbé Alphonse-Victor ​190
Acre, military order of St Thomas of ​41 Anjou, Geoffrey of ​87
Adelard of Bath ​53 n.3 Annales Toledanos ​136
Aelfric, archbishop of Canterbury Anonymous I ​35 n.51, 97
(995–1005) ​60 n.27 Anouilh, Jean ​23
Aethelhard, archbishop of Canterbury Anselm, archbishop of Canterbury. See
(790–805) ​58 n.20 St Anselm
Agincourt, battle of ​44 Appleby, Cumberland ​201
Aizier, leper hospital ​81, 82, 89–93 Aquitaine, clergy ​137 n.14
archaeological excavation ​91 Aquitaine, Eleanor of. See Eleanor of
Albert, papal chancellor ​134 Aquitaine
Alberti, Durante ​49 Arbroath Abbey ​41 n.84, 46, 186, 187,
Alcabón ​136, 138, 142 195, 200, 206
Alençon, Count Robert d’ ​190 n.55 Arden, Robert of ​25 n.3
Alexander II, king of Scots ​194, 195, 200 Ardres ​97
Alexander III, king of Scots ​200 Argentan ​114
Alexander III, pope (1159–81) ​26, 28, hospital ​88
40, 41 n.88, 85, 114, 155, 157, 159, 160, Arthies, leper hospital ​83
167–8, 174–5 Arundel, Thomas, archbishop of
Alfonso VIII, king of Castile ​16, 44, 133, Canterbury (1397–1414) ​5
135–6 Athelstan, king of England ​124 n.45
Almazán, church of S. Miguel de ​140 Avilés (Asturias) ​142
Alphege, archbishop of Canterbury. See Avranches, settlement of ​2, 39–40, 105,
St Alphege 134 n.4, 155, 168, 178. See also Henry
Amesbury nunnery ​149 II, Avranches penance
Amiens, Hugh of, archbishop of Rouen
(1130–64) ​90 Bailey, Richard ​125 n.49
ampullae. See pilgrim badges and ampullae Baldwin, archbishop of Canterbury
Anagni Cathedral ​16, 98, 160 (1184–90) ​41, 65 n.44, 66, 78–9, 103,
Andres, William monk of ​32 n.33 104, 106–8, 151, 186
Andreu, Richard ​90 Baldwin, count of Boulogne ​36
Angers ​185 Baldwin II of Guines ​97
bishops of. See Beaumont, Guillaume Bale, John ​21
de; Beaumont, Raoul de Balliol, John, king of Scots ​196 n.76
Cathedral ​14, 74 n.79, 205 Barcelona Cathedral ​142
stained glass ​74 n.79, 171–3, Barfleur ​84
178–9, 181 (Fig. 9.4), 182, 183 Barlow, Frank ​2, 39, 40, 196
(Fig. 9.5), 187–9, 191, 194, 196, Barre, Richard, royal clerk ​25 n.3
200, 201–6 Bartlett, Robert ​19, 20
treasurer. See Tosny, Richard Bath, Reginald of ​45
Hôpital St-Jean-l’Évangeliste ​179 Battle Abbey chronicle ​97
n.25, 207 n.108 Bayeux Cathedral ​89

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 INDEX

Beaumont, Constance ​204–5 intransigence ​156

Beaumont, Ermengarde de, wife of William negotiations with Henry II ​97
I, king of Scots ​184, 186, 194–5 nominal abbot of Christ Church
Beaumont family ​179, 181 (Fig. 9.4), 182, Canterbury ​54
187, 189, 190, 192–6, 198, 200, 204, opposition to the Constitutions of
206 Clarendon ​150
Beaumont, Guillaume de, bishop of Angers reconciliation with Henry II (1170) ​
(1202–40) ​179, 182, 190, 191, 193–4, 105, 160
197–8, 202, 204–6 relations with Canterbury monks ​
Beaumont-le-Roger, Rotrou de, archbishop 54
of Rouen (1165–84) ​26, 83–4, 85 return from exile (1170) ​53, 97–8,
Beaumont, Raoul de, bishop of Angers 109, 160, 174 (Fig. 9.2), 179, 189
(1177–97) ​179 n.27 royal servant ​54
Beaumont, Raoul de, viscount of Maine ​ seeks canonisation of Anselm ​54
182, 190 n.55, 191 n.57, 193, 205 sermons preached by ​53, 69 (Fig.
Beaumont, Richard de, viscount of Maine 3.1)
(1175–1200/1) ​182 n.30, 184, 198 sufferings ​166 n.106
(Fig. 9.8), 204 n.99 threats faced by ​160
Beaumont, Roscelin de, viscount of Maine trial at Northampton ​97, 99
(1145–75) ​182 n.30 arrest, attempts before murder ​110
Becket, Thomas art. See Becket, Thomas, iconography
altars dedicated to ​20, 90, 93, 134, biographers
136–8, 140, 143, 201 n.90 medieval ​1, 2, 53, 54 n.8, 68, 114,
Anglican attitudes to ​23 154
anti-Royal saint ​169 n.125 modern ​1, 118
as archbishop of Canterbury (1162–70) ​ birth in London ​6, 8, 43, 50, 189
1, 5–7, 11, 12, 24–6, 40, 53–4, 65, blood of ​7–8, 13, 18, 30, 40, 45, 54,
68, 72, 79, 82, 85–7, 97–100, 103–5, 106, 157, 175, 188
144, 147, 149, 155, 165–8, 171–3, See also Becket, Thomas, head of;
175, 178–9, 189, 194, 199, 200, 202, Becket, Thomas, water of
204, 206–7 body of ​54, 56 n.14, 107
appointment as archbishop ​158 bones ​21, 49
arguments put forward by ​165 breviaries ​140
austere habits ​54 burial ​54, 174, 178, 182 (Fig. 9.5),
censure of those crowning Henry the 187, 200 n.85, 202
Young King ​98 canonisation ​1–2, 12, 27–8, 40, 45,
consecration as archbishop ​159 55, 56 n.14, 67, 81, 84, 98, 113, 120,
Council of Tours (1163) ​97 134, 141, 160, 185, 188
defends freedoms of the church ​96, Chancellor of England (1154–62) ​1,
98, 103, 108, 133, 145, 154, 157 12, 96–8, 100
defends monastic community of clerks of ​26, 179 n.25, 185
Christ Church Canterbury ​151 codex related to ​143
dispute with Henry II ​40, 41, 54, cult of ​1–6, 8–11, 13, 15, 17–21,
72, 85, 97 n.10, 98–9, 101, 103, 24, 44, 54–7, 66, 78–9, 81–3, 85,
105–6, 114, 118, 135, 147, 154, 89, 92–3, 96, 106 n.56, 111, 116,
165, 167–8, 172 118–20, 122 n.39, 124–5, 129–31,
doubts that his life entitled him to 134–5, 137, 139–42, 144–5, 147,
sanctity ​67 169, 172, 174, 188
exile ​10, 26, 41, 53, 74, 85, 87, 96, criticism of ​20
102, 103, 106, 109, 147, 160, 172, in Castile ​135 n.11, 139, 141, 144
175, 179, 189, 198 in Europe ​134 n.7

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 INDEX

in France ​10 manuscript illuminations ​13, 24,

in German Empire ​45 n.110 120, 171, 179, 189
in Hungary ​45, 141 n.33 martyr ​68, 72
in Iberia ​11, 45–6, 49 medallions ​22, 101
in Iberian poetry ​142 miracle worker ​68
in Latin America ​135 modelled on Dunstan and Alphege,
in Normandy ​10, 11 n.39, 81, 89, 78
174 mosaic ​45, 141
in Sicily ​141 painting ​13, 18, 22 n.86, 128, 139,
in Spain ​135–7, 141 140, 142, 197 n.78
political significance of ​17, 20 plaques ​17
propaganda against ​21, 22 psalters ​35, 43
royal involvement ​19 religious equipment ​16, 17
spread ​3, 9, 10, 11 reliquaries (Limoges enamel) ​15,
suppression ​41, 67 n.59 16, 42 n.95, 45
death of ​1–7, 9–11, 15, 18, 21, 23–31, sculpture ​13, 20, 24, 89, 140
34, 36–7, 40, 44, 47–9, 53–6, 61, seals ​47, 50
68, 70–4, 77–9, 81, 83, 85, 88–9, stained glass ​7, 8, 13–15, 20, 21,
95–100, 102–5, 109–11, 113–18, 24, 42 n.95, 43–4, 48, 49 n.136,
128, 133–4, 138–42, 145, 147, 150, 50, 58, 65–72, 74, 76 (Fig. 3.5),
153, 155, 157–9, 163, 168, 171–2, 77, 79, 89, 171–5, 176 (Fig. 9.1),
174–5, 178, 179 n.25, 185, 187–9,
178, 179, 180 (Fig. 9.3), 184
195–6, 199, 201–2, 203 n.94, 206–7
n.33, 187–9, 191, 194–204, 206
dedication of chapels to ​83–5, 89, 90,
standing on a peacock ​7
93, 136–7, 142
travelling by ship ​189
dedication of churches and hospitals
vestments ​16
to ​8, 13, 45 n.110, 46, 49–51, 78,
wall painting. See Becket, Thomas,
81, 83–5, 88, 93, 106, 134, 137, 142,
149, 186, 196 depictions, painting
defacing of name ​22 n.86 woodcuts ​13
defender of church freedoms ​11, 206 wood panels ​13
depictions ​67, 110, 134 n.7 devotion to ​113–16, 119, 129, 130–1,
alabaster ​13 135, 138, 141, 143–4, 179, 187, 195,
altarpieces ​49, 119 200
apparition ​76 (Fig. 3.5) in Saxony ​129
books of hours ​34, 35, 43 education ​87
brasses ​13 estates ​26
breviaries ​35 as an exemplar ​11, 20
chronicles ​24 father (Gilbert) ​11, 81
defender of the church ​68, 72 feast days ​6, 11, 12, 28, 31–2, 47, 53,
diptychs ​17 57, 64, 129, 197 n.78, 206
effigies ​7 Feast of martyrdom (29 December) ​
enamel ​142, 171 11, 12, 28–9, 32, 35, 48, 64, 103,
good shepherd (bonus pastor) ​11, 129, 142 n.38
12, 30, 32–3, 68, 72 text and music for ​28–36, 48
Gospel books ​119, 120, 122, 130, Feast of return from exile (Regressio) ​
131, 141 6, 12, 41, 64, 189
Helmarshausen Gospels ​44 Feast of translation (7 July, from
horseback ​189 1220) ​11–13, 29 n.22, 42, 48,
ideal prelate ​72 64, 196 n.76
liturgical combs ​17 sermons for Feast ​31

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friends and followers ​3, 10, 15, 27, 87, St-Martial-de-Limoges ​27

137 n.14, 179 n.25, 185 legacy ​96, 104, 106, 110, 111, 147,
garments ​54 172–3, 189
Archiepiscopal vestments ​54, 74, 77 leper hospitals. See Becket, Thomas,
blood-stained ​45 dedication of churches and
cowl ​45 hospitals to
hair shirt ​45, 54, 88 lepers, patron of ​81–3
rochet ​88 letters about ​27
shirt ​45 letters of ​2, 26, 54 n.3, 87, 95, 97, 111,
shoes ​45 155, 163, 166–7
stole ​88 letters to ​87, 167
guardian of realm or dynasty ​118, 122, literature, theatre and film representa-
125, 130, 131 tions ​2 n.5, 23, 24
hagiography ​68. See also Becket, liturgy relating to ​2 n.5, 12, 21, 27–36,
Thomas, Lives of 53, 55, 67, 68, 110, 172, 188, 189,
head of ​106–7 197 n.78
healer ​82, 83, 175, 188, 195, 202, 205 Canterbury liturgy ​29 n.22, 34–5,
historical writing on, medieval ​95–111 67 n.59
hospitals. See Becket, Thomas, Cistercian ​35
dedication of churches and Hereford liturgy ​33
hospitals to Salisbury liturgy ​29 n.22, 34, 35, 48
iconography ​2 n.5, 4–5, 13–15, 17, n.130, 67 n.59
21–2, 55, 68, 72, 79, 89, 171, 175, Spain ​135 n.11
188–9, 198 translation liturgy ​29 n.22, 42
in Iberia/Spain ​135–6 n.11, 140 York liturgy ​32, 33, 34 n.44
identification with ​159, 160 n.73 Lives of ​2, 10, 12, 13, 22 n.86, 29,
illness ​86, 89 32–3, 43 n.102, 46, 55 n.9, 67–8,
influence ​48, 49 95, 97, 104–5, 108–9, 111, 115 n.11,
people’s saint ​49 117 n.18, 118, 134–5, 140. See also
intercession of ​88, 101, 105, 117, 134, Anonymous I; Becket Leaves;
136, 144, 178, 185–6, 206 Benedict; Bosham; Canterbury,
interpretation of life and fate of ​155 William of; Fitz Stephen;
invocation of ​160 Grim; Lansdowne Anonymous;
Jubilees ​5, 42, 43, 57 n.16, 66 n.53, Pont-Sainte-Maxence; Quadrilogus;
169 Salisbury, John of; Tewkesbury
Indulgences for ​43 London, protector of ​6, 8–10, 50
largesse to the poor ​11 martyrdom of. See Becket, Thomas,
lectionaries death of
Cîteaux ​27 Mass of ​33, 36
Clairvaux ​27 memory of ​147, 149, 151, 154, 157–8,
Clermond-Ferrand ​27 165
Jumièges ​27 military order of. See Acre
Heilingenkreuz ​27 miracles associated with ​1–3, 5, 8–12,
Hereford ​33 14, 24, 26–8, 51, 55 n.9, 67, 79, 82,
Hyde Abbey ​33 95–6, 102, 105, 110, 111, 115, 133,
Lyre (Normandy) ​27 171, 174, 188, 195, 202
Marchiennes ​27 involving water ​174, 188, 189,
Moissac ​27 202, 205
Paris ​27 mitres (Becket Mitres) ​6, 16–17
Pontigny ​27 mother (Matilda) ​81
Reims ​27 murder of. See Becket, Thomas, death of

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murderers of ​2, 6, 15, 25–6, 35, 102, Corona ​51

107, 115, 140, 159, 179, 181 (Fig. Crypt tomb ​4, 7
9.4), 185, 187–9, 195–6, 197 (Fig. Customary of ​5
9.7), 198–9, 201–2 destruction ​2, 8, 21, 22, 29 n.22,
excommunicated ​26 43, 47–9, 50
See also Horsea; Moreville, Hugh de; Head Shrine ​4, 6, 7, 35
Tracy; Urse income from ​4, 5, 20, 50 n.138
nephews ​107 offerings at ​57 n.16
offerings ​79. See also under Becket, principal shrine ​1, 4, 5, 6, 7, 14,
Thomas, shrines 21, 22
opponents ​84–5, 99, 106, 155 shrine keepers/custodians ​7, 16, 50
parallels with Christ ​12, 15, 68, 72 n.138, 188
parents ​11, 20, 30 n.23, 43, 81, 85, shrine site candle ​1
174 See also Becket, Thomas, tomb
patron saint Society of (Chile) ​135
Brunswick Cathedral ​129 soul of ​6
Saxony ​129 student ​10
persecution of ​1–7, 108 supporters ​87
portrayal of ​2 symbol
posthumous image ​2 of church resistance to temporal
posthumous reputation authority ​12, 15, 17, 18, 38,
as a doctor/healer ​8, 12 48, 50
personal protector of Angevins ​148 for Counter Reformation ​22–3
presentation in heaven ​43 for English Catholics ​22
prophecies ​102 tomb ​26–8, 37, 40–2, 47–8, 56, 65–7,
recusant works defending ​22 79, 88, 93, 100, 101, 105, 109,
Regressio (return from exile) ​44. See 115–18, 120, 131, 133, 148, 153,
also Becket, Thomas, feast days; 160, 178, 185–6, 199 n.81. See also
Becket, Thomas, liturgy Becket, Thomas, shrines
relics of ​3, 4, 8, 10, 42, 45, 48, 49 translation of relics (7 July 1220) ​1, 4,
n.131, 51, 55, 57, 66, 74, 88–9, 142, 5, 9, 12, 14, 15, 24, 42, 48, 56 n.14,
169, 171–2, 179, 200 57 n.16, 63–4, 66, 88, 169, 171–2,
goblet ​88 182 (Fig. 9.5), 187, 188, 200
See also Becket, Thomas, garments; planned (1186) ​3
Becket, Thomas, translation of Tuesdays (Thomas Tuesdays) ​160, 189
relics veneration. See Becket, Thomas,
reliquaries ​15, 143 devotion to
reputation visions of ​18, 97, 104, 107, 151
place in spiritual hierarchy ​67 water of ​7, 8, 13, 79, 135, 175, 188–9,
relationship with predecessors ​68 206
royal devotions ​169 Welfs, patron of ​44
Saga of, Thómas Saga Erkibyskups ​30 Wine of St Thomas (gift of Louis VII) ​
Saviour 47 n.127
from drowning ​13 ‘winner of battles’ ​136, 137, 145
from peril on the sea ​13 Becket Leaves, illustrated verse life ​179
of the sick ​83, 86, 93 n.24, 189 n.53
seal ​84, 85 Becket Mitres ​16
sermon model ​11 Bela III, king of Hungary ​19, 45, 141
shrines ​1, 4, 6, 7, 56, 66, 82, 134, 171, Benedict, monk of Canterbury, Prior
188 (1175–77), Abbot of Peterborough
candles ​42 (1177–93) ​1, 2, 8, 9 n.33, 16, 25 n.1,

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 INDEX

28, 29, 32–3, 36, 67, 82 n.6, 95, 188 Buc, Philippe ​154 n.41
n.46 Budny, Mildred ​66
Benefit of Clergy ​40 Burgh by Sands, Cumberland ​201
Berend, Nora ​192 Burgos Cathedral ​142, 143
Berenguela, queen of León ​137, 145 tomb of Leonor Plantagenet ​139
Bertau, Karl ​121 tomb of one of Leonor’s children ​140
Berwick ​41 Burton Annals ​158
Béziers ​100 Burton Lazars (Leics) ​92
Bhabba, Homi ​199 Burton, Richard ​23
Binski, Paul ​22 Bury St Edmunds ​116 n.13
Blanchemains, William aux, archbishop of
Sens (1168–76)  ​25–6 Caen ​81, 88
Blick, Sarah ​7 Avranches settlement confirmed ​2,
Blois, Henry of, bishop of Winchester 115 n.9
(1129–71) ​102 leper hospital ​83, 85, 86
Blois, Mary of ​47 n.125 Calix, William of ​85–6
Blois, Peter of ​39 n.70, 134 Canterbury ​16, 36–7, 195
Blois, Theobald of ​26 n.7 Archbishops of. See Aelfric; Aethelhard;
Boissy-Lamberville, leper hospital ​83 Baldwin; Becket; Bregwine;
Borenius, Tancred ​13, 22, 24, 141 n.35 Courtenay; Cranmer; Cuthbert;
Borszörcsök, church of St Thomas the Deane; Dover, Richard of; Lanfranc;
Martyr ​46 Langton, Stephen; Morton; Oda;
Bosham, Herbert of ​15, 97, 104–5, 108–9, Plegmund; Pole; St Alphege;
114 n.6 St Anselm; St Dunstan; St Edmund
Boulanger, Karine ​194, 205 of Abingdon; Walter; Warham;
Boulogne, Matthew, count of ​46, 47 Winchelsey
n.125 Cathedral (Christ Church) ​21, 28
Bourg-l’Abbesse. See Caen, leper hospital n.19, 56–7, 60, 105–8, 169
Bourg-le-Roi ​191 n.57 annuity of wine from Louis of France ​
Bowie, Colette ​19 106
Braga Cathedral ​16 archiepiscopal election disputed
Bregwine, archbishop of Canterbury under John ​153
(760–64) ​58 n.20 Calendars ​64
Bremen ​45 Corona Chapel ​4, 56
Brewood (Staffs), leper house ​91 fire of 1174 ​56
Brinton, Thomas, bishop of Rochester income from shrine and relics ​4, 5,
(1373–89) ​31 50 n.138, 57 n.18
Brisac, Catherine ​15 letter collection ​104
British Museum ​7 Prior Conrad’s choir ​59 n.24, 63
Brito, Richard ​196 reconstruction after fire ​56, 59,
Brix ​202 66, 79
Brotonne, forest ​89 relic collection ​57 n.17, 58
Bruce, Robert, king of Scots (1306–29) ​ scriptorium ​62
195 n.70 stained glass ​58–9, 65, 67–8, 73
Brunswick ​45, 126 (Fig. 3.3), 75 (Fig. 3.4), 76 (Fig.
Agidienkloster ​120 3.5), 77–9, 171, 188
annals of ​114 n.4 Trinity Chapel ​1, 8, 14, 21, 56,
Basilica of SS John and Blaise ​44, 113, 66–8, 72, 77, 79, 169
120, 128, 130 Gervase, monk of. See Gervase
Brunswick, Henry of, son of Henry the Lion ​ John, Andrew, monk of ​107
113, 114, 128, 131 John of. See Poitiers

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leper hospital, later alms houses. See Constance, illegitimate daughter of

Harbledown Henry I, king of England ​182 n.30
quitclaim of (1189) ​41, 186 Couesmes-en-Froulay (Maine), leper
St Augustine’s Abbey ​57, 104, 105 hospital ​195
St Dunstan, Chapel ​37, 48 Courtenay, William, archbishop of
St John’s church ​57 Canterbury (1381–96) ​5
William of ​1, 2, 3, 8, 28 n.19, 37, 67, Courtenay, William de ​196
82 n.6, 95, 104, 115 n.11, 188 n.46 Coutances Cathedral ​14, 74, 79, 174,
Cantilupe, Thomas, bishop of Hereford 200, 201
(1275–82) ​18 stained glass ​74, 79, 171–5, 176 (Fig.
Canville-les-Deux-Églises, leper hospital ​ 9.1), 177 (Fig. 9.2), 178, 182, 184,
83 189, 191, 200, 201–4
Castello, Hugh de ​38 Cranmer, Thomas, archbishop of
Castile, Blanche of ​203 Canterbury (1533–56) ​22 n.86
Catalonia, church of S. Maria de Terrasa ​ seal ​5–6
140 Criel, leper hospital ​83
Catherine, daughter of Charles VII, king of Cromwell, Thomas ​2
France, wife of Henry V, king of England ​ Crook, John ​9
34 n.47 Csanád, bishop of ​42 n.93
Caudron, Simone ​16 Cuenca ​136, 137, 138
Caviness, Madeline ​14, 65, 66–7, 172, Cuthbert, archbishop of Canterbury
173 n.9
(740–60) ​57, 58 n.20
Caxton, William ​35 n.52
Celestine III, pope (1191–98) ​140, 145
Dassel, Rainald of ​100
Celle, Peter abbot of ​27
David, earl of Huntingdon, brother of
Chantry records ​20
William I (the Lion) ​185
Charlemagne ​126
Davidson Cragoe, Carol ​65 n.47
Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor ​21, 44
Deane, Henry, archbishop of Canterbury
Chartres Cathedral ​14, 15, 68, 70–1 (Fig.
(1501–1503) ​5
3.2), 72, 171, 172 n.7
stained glass ​70, 71 (Fig. 3.2), 72, 74, Denmark, Ingeborg of, queen of France ​
175, 189, 197, 204 n.97 165 n.100
Chaucer, Canterbury Tales ​5, 49–50 Devizes, Richard of ​109, 110, 153 n.10
Chaumont family ​206 n.106 Diceto, Ralph de, dean of St Paul’s London ​
Cherbourg, leper hospital ​83, 84 38, 41, 99, 100, 101
Chester ​16 Series causae inter Henricum regem et
Earl of ​36, 38 Thomam archiepiscopum ​99
Chronicles ​95–111 Ymagines Historiarum ​99
Cistercians ​35 Dijon, Abbey of St-Bénigne ​10
Clarendon Dover
Assize of ​105 Richard of, archbishop of Canterbury
Constitutions of (1164) ​85, 105, 150, (1174–84) ​103–4
195 St Martin’s Priory ​109, 110
Clarke, Peter ​167 Draco Normannicus ​97
Clotaire II, king of the Franks ​194 Dreux, Pierre de, duke of Brittany ​191
Cnut, king of England, Denmark and n.58
Norway ​60 Dublin, Augustinian priory ​88, 149
Coggeshall, Ralph of ​96, 100 Duffy, Eamon ​22
Cohen, Jeffrey Jerome ​192, 193 Duggan, Anne ​2, 10, 54 n.6, 55 n.9, 100,
Coldingham, Geoffrey of ​164 n.96 115 n.7, 116, 119, 130, 141 n.31
Combe (Warks) ​33 Duggan, Charles ​100

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Dunstan, archbishop of Canterbury. See Fernández, Teresa, wife of Nuño Pérez de

St Dunstan Lara ​136, 137
Dunwich (Suffolk), leper house ​91 Fernando II, king of León ​137
Durand, papal envoy ​158 Ferrers, William Earl ​38 n.66
Durham ​16, 38 n.66, 150 n.19, 194 Fife, earl of ​205
Finchale, Godric of, hermit ​97
Eadmer ​62, 66, 77, 108 Finland ​32
Eadwig, king of England ​60, 66, 74, 75 Finucane, Ronald C. ​4 n.11
(Fig. 3.4), 77 Fitz Nigel, William ​107
Eadwine Psalter ​64 n.44 Fitz Stephen, William ​95, 99
Eastry, Henry of, prior of Christchurch Flanders, Philip, count of. See Philip I
Canterbury (1285–1331) ​57 n.17 Foliot, Gilbert, bishop of London
Edith, wife of Otto the Great of Saxony ​ (1163–87) ​84, 99, 106, 179 n.24
123–4 Fontevraud Abbey ​147
Edward I, king of England ​34 n.47, 43, grant by Alfonso and Leonor of Castile ​
44, 196 n.76 144
Edward II, king of England ​19, 43 Ford, Baldwin of. See Baldwin, archbishop
Edward III, king of England ​43 of Canterbury
Edward, the Black Prince ​44 Forest ​106
Edward, the Confessor, king of England and Foreville, Raymonde ​10, 81, 91, 134 n.7,
saint ​4 n.12, 19, 49, 148, 158, 169 179
Egidio, chancellor of Leonor of Castile ​ Fournée, Jean ​81, 83, 84
138 Foxe, John ​21, 22
Egres (Igriş, Romania), Cistercian Frascati. See Tusculum
monastery ​46 Frederick I, Emperor ​155, 160
Eleanor, daughter of King Henry II of French rulers, patronage of Becket ​196
England. See Leonor Fréteval, Peace of (1170) ​155 n.26
Eleanor of Aquitaine ​36, 41, 88, 121 Frojmovic, Eva, 192 n.59
Eliot, T. S. ​23
Elizabethan Settlement ​22 Galván Freile, Fernando ​140
Ely, Eustace, bishop of (1198–1215) ​150, Gameson, Richard ​16 n.59, 119 n.25, 131
156 Gandersheim, Hrotsvita of ​123 n.45
Ely, William, bishop of. See Longchamp Geoffrey, son of Henry II, Chancellor
Ephraim ​107 (1181/2–89), archbishop of York
Erdő, Cardinal Professor Peter ​46 n.118 (1189–1212) ​36, 109, 110, 153
Esztergom Gerald of Wales. See Wales, Gerald of
Archbishop Lukás ​46 Gerberga, abbess of Gandersheim ​123
Church of Szent Tamás ​46 n.45
John, bishop of ​42 n.93 Gervase, monk of Canterbury ​56–9, 63,
Eu, Henry, count of (1170–91) ​83 65–6, 79, 104–9, 111, 148, 157 n.56,
Eugenius, archbishop of Armagh (1206–16) ​ 199 n.81
151 Actus Pontificum ​58 n.19
Évreux, dean of. See Neufbourg, Robert of Gesta Ottonis ​123 n.45
Évreux, Giles, bishop of (1170–79) ​25 n.3 Gilbert, bishop of London. See Foliot
Exeter, Bartholomew, bishop of (1161–84) ​ Gmunden Gospels ​33, 44, 114, 119, 123,
40 n.76, 102 126, 130–1, 141
Eynsham, Adam of ​98 Golden Legend ​175
González, Julio ​137 n.15
Falaise, Treaty of ​185–6 Gorron ​115 n.9
Faversham, ​104 Graham, Timothy ​66
Fécamp, Abbey ​82, 86, 89 Gravelines ​38

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Gray, John de, bishop of Norwich penance ​1, 8, 36–40, 48, 78, 85, 88,
(1200–14) ​153 100, 101, 134
Gray, Walter de, Chancellor (1205–14), reconciliation with pope ​115
later archbishop of York (1215–55) ​ Windsor Council (1170) ​185
151 Henry III, king of England ​42, 49, 157,
Great Rebellion (1173–74) ​36, 40, 88, 169, 200, 203
100, 101, 105, 116–18, 121, 134 n.6, Henry IV, king of England ​44
157, 178, 185–6, 206 Henry V, Count Palatine ​44–5
Gregory I. See St Gregory the Great Henry V, king of England ​44
Grim, Edward ​35 n.51, 95, 101, 104, 115 Henry VI, Emperor ​110 n.74
n.11, 117 n.18, 134, 182, 199 n.81 Henry VI, king of England ​18, 117 n.17
Grosseteste, Robert, bishop of Lincoln Henry VII, king of England ​20
(1235–53) ​18 Henry VIII, king of England ​5, 21, 44,
47–8
Hackington ​78, 98 n.14, 106–8, 151 Henry, bishop of Winchester. See Blois,
Halberstadt (Saxony) ​45 Henry of
Hamburg ​45 Henry the Lion, Duke of Saxony and
Cathedral ​119 Bavaria ​44, 106, 113, 119, 120–3,
Hamo, bishop of León ​100 126–30, 141
Hansa ​45 pilgrimage to Canterbury ​120
Hansen, Natalie A ​172 n.7 relations depicted ​120, 121
Harbledown, St Nicholas leper house ​37, See also Gmunden Gospels
38, 89, 92 Henry, the Young King ​36, 40, 41, 88, 98,
Harcourt, leper hospital ​83 100, 105–6, 116, 166 n.108, 178–9, 183
Harcourt, Robert II, lord of  ​83 (Fig. 9.5), 185
Helmarshausen ​44, 119, 126 Hereford ​16
Henry I, king of England ​87, 162, 182 Hermann the Lame of Reichenau ​124
Henry II, Emperor, reliquary ​126 Hertzburg ​113
Henry II, king of England ​1, 10, 19, 25, Hildersheim ​123, 124, 125
38, 49, 72, 81–2, 86–8, 100, 102–3, reliquary ​122, 125 n.49
105–8, 110, 120, 130, 147, 150, 167, Historia Selebiensis Monasterii ​9
169, 174–5, 182, 183 (Fig. 9.5), 184–5, Horsea, Hugh of (alias Mauclerc) ​25, 195
195, 202, 206 Houts, Elizabeth van ​121, 124 n.47
aristocracy of ​84 Howden, Roger of ​97, 101
Avranches penance (May 1172) ​36, Howsham, Lincs ​149
102, 115–16, 118, 148, 178 Hugh, archbishop of Tarragona ​100
Canterbury pilgrimages ​2, 39, 115–17, Hugh, bishop of Durham. See Puiset
134, 136, 148–9, 178, 185 Hugh, bishop of Lincoln. See St Hugh
daughters ​19, 44, 114 n.5, 118, 135, Hugh, earl of Norfolk ​38 n.66
141, 142 n.36, 182 n.30 Hugucio, Cardinal-Legate ​106
embassy to pope ​25–6 Hungary ​32
failure to go on crusade ​102
family connections ​184 Igriş. See Egres
grant to Canterbury ​37 Ilchester, Richard of, later bishop of
Interdicts threatened and imposed ​26, Winchester (1173–88) ​99, 103
39 n.69, 115, 155, 157 indulgences ​43
king dei gratia ​118 Innocent III, Pope (1198–1216) ​32 n.33,
knights ​196, 198–9 145, 151, 153, 157, 160–1, 165, 167–8
marriage ​100, 102 Deeds of Innocent III ​156–7
papal absolution ​85 England and Ireland as a papal fief ​168

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excommunicates King John (1209–13) ​ contested election of ​66, 153–4, 157–8

154, 156 seal ​159
use of biblical examples in letters ​ Lansdowne Anonymous ​114 n.6, 115
159–67 Lara, Count Nuño Pérez de ​136–8, 140–1
Interdict (1208–14) ​147, 154, 156 Las Huelgas ​140, 142–4
Ireland ​102, 105 Lateran Council
Isabella of France, queen of England, wife Third (1179) ​81, 150
of Edward II ​43 Fourth (1215) ​11
Israel ​31 Leicester, Robert, third earl of ​38
Le Liget (Touraine) ​149
James II, king of England ​23 Le Mans ​202
Jamison, Evelyn ​141 Hôpital-Dieu ​179 n.25
Jehoash (Joas) of Judah ​30 Leonor (Eleanor, daughter of Henry II),
Jeremiah ​31 wife of Alfonso VIII, king of Castile ​
Jerusalem, church of the Holy Sepulchre ​ 16, 45, 133–45
113 leper hospitals. See Aizier; Arthies;
Joan, daughter of King John, wife of Boissy-Lamberville; Brewood; Caen;
Alexander II, king of Scots ​200 Canville-les-Deux-Églises; Cherbourg;
Joanna (Joan), daughter of Henry II, wife of Couesmes-en-Froulay; Criel; Dunwich;
William II, king of Sicily ​19, 45, 141 Harbledown; Harcourt; Mont-aux-
John, king of England ​41–2, 116 n.12, Malades; Oxford; Vesley; Vittefleur
147–69, 182, 190 n.55, 194, 203 Le Valasse, Richard Abbot of ​25 n.3
Jordan Fantosme ​37 n.64, 39, 100, 101, Lewes, Cluniacs of ​32
117, 118, 134 n.6, 185 Liber Eliensis ​96
Jordan, Karl ​121 n.38, 123 n.42, 126, 127, Limoges ​202
129 n.80 enamels ​15, 16
Jordan, river ​92 Lincoln, bishops of. See Grosseteste;
Joscius, bishop of Acre ​106 St Hugh
Jumièges, Abbey archives ​90 Linkoping (Sweden) ​32, 34 n.44
Lisieux
Kabir, Ananya Jahanara ​192 Arnulf, bishop of (1141–81) ​25 n.3,
Karkov, Catherine ​192 n.59 84–5
Knaresborough ​159 bishop, election of (1200) ​151
Knowles, David ​178 Cathedral ​14
Koopmans, Rachel ​11, 20, 21, 42 n.95, hospital ​83, 84, 89
67 n.58 Robert, archdeacon of ​25 n.3
liturgical combs ​17
Lacy, Hugh de ​103 liturgy, Becket inspired ​12, 189. See also
Lambert, chaplain of Ardres ​97 Becket, Thomas, liturgy
Lambeth ​98 n.14, 106, 151 Llewelyn, Alexander ​103
Lambeth Palace ​20 Lollards ​20
Lancaster, Thomas earl of (d.1322) ​18, London ​41 n.88
117 bishops of. See Foliot; Ste-Mère-Église
Landshut. See Seligenthal Chapel of St Thomas (London Bridge) ​
Lanercost Chronicle ​196 n.76 50
Lanfranc, archbishop of Canterbury hospital of St Thomas ​51
(1070–89) ​53, 62, 63, 77 martyrdom of St Alphege ​61
Langton, Simon ​163 Museum of ​6 n.20
Langton, Stephen, archbishop of Longchamp, William de, Chancellor and
Canterbury (1207–28) ​4, 5, 17, 48, 66, bishop of Ely (1189–97) ​109, 110
153, 155–6, 159, 160, 169, 200 n.85 n.74, 150

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Loquet, Richard ​90 Melrose, chronicle of ​98

Louis VII, king of France ​19, 26, 36, 47, Merseburg (Saxony) ​45
72, 88, 105–6, 115–16, 175, 197, 204, Merton, Augustinian priory ​87
206 Milford Haven ​102
Louis VIII, king of France ​191, 203–4 Monreale ​45, 141
Louis IX, king of France ​191, 203, 204 Mont-aux-Malades (outside Rouen), leper
n.100 hospital ​81–2, 84, 86–90, 93, 149.
Louvain, Albert, bishop of (1166–92) ​110 See also Nicholas
n.74 Montfort, Simon de, eighth earl of
Lübeck ​45 Leicester ​17, 116
Lucca Cathedral ​16 n.59 More, Thomas ​22, 48
Luttrell Psalter ​35 n.52 Moreville family ​187
Lydgate, John ​50 n.137 Moreville, Hugh de, Becket assassin ​
195–6, 201
Maclou-de-Folville ​84 Moreville, Richard de ​185, 187, 196
Maddicott, John R. ​155 n.48, 156 n.49, Morimondo ​36 n.56
157 nn.55–7 Morton, John, archbishop of Canterbury
Magán, near Toledo ​144 (1486–1500) ​5
Magdeburg ​124 Morville, Hugh de, bishop of Coutances
Magna Carta ​48, 152, 157 (1208–38) ​174, 201–2, 204
Magus, Simon ​97 Morville, Simon de ​201 n.90
Mandeville, William de ​105
Mowbray, Roger de ​38 n.66
Mantes ​87
Marcombe, David ​92
Naaman the Syrian ​92
Margaret, daughter of King Henry III, wife
Namur, Nôtre-Dame ​16
of Alexander III, king of Scots ​200
Neufbourg, Robert of, dean of Évreux ​25
Margaret of Navarre, queen of Sicily ​45
n.3
Margaret, sister of King Philip IV of France,
Newburgh, William of ​98, 99, 100, 101
wife of Edward I, king of England ​34
Newstead, Lincs ​149
n.47, 43
Margaret, wife of Henry the Young King New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art ​
and King Bela III of Hungary ​19, 45
45–6, 141 Nicholas, prior of Mont-aux-Malades ​82,
Marlborough, Oath of (1209) ​155 n.48, 86–7
157 Nidaros ​32
Marsay, Etienne de ​179 n.25 Niel, Cécile ​91
Marshal, William ​162, 185 Niger, Ralph ​100
Martínez, García ​144 n.45 Nilgen, Ursula ​81, 85
Matilda, abbess of Essen ​124 n.47 Nilson, Ben ​4, 50 n.138, 57 n.16
Matilda, abbess of Quedlinburg ​124 n.47 Nordhausen ​124
Matilda, eldest daughter of Henry II, Norham ​38 n.66
king of England, Duchess of Saxony ​ Northallerton ​38 n.66
113–31, 141 Northampton ​158
Matilda, Empress ​87, 88, 90, 120, 166 Assize of (1176) ​157
Matilda, wife of Henry I, king of England ​ Council (1164) ​108
184 trial of Becket ​97
Mauger, bishop of Worcester (1200–12) ​ Northampton, Henry of, royal clerk ​25
150, 156, 160 n.3
Maundy Thursday commemoration ​159 Northeim, monastery ​113
Mayenne, Juhel de ​190 n.55 Nuño, Count. See Lara
Mélinais, Abbey ​190 Nuremburg Hours ​34, 43

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Oda, archbishop of Canterbury (942–58) ​ Pipe Rolls ​143, 149

58 n.20 Piroyansky, Danna ​20
Odo, prior of Canterbury ​105 Pizzetti, Ildebrando ​23 n.97
Oexle, Otto Gerhard ​120 n.27, 121 Plegmund, archbishop of Canterbury
Oldenburg ​119 (890–923) ​57 n.17
Olivalla, Bernat d’, archbishop of Tarragona ​ poetry, Castilian ​142
16 Poitiers, John (of Canterbury), bishop of
Oppitz-Trotman, Gesine ​3 Poitiers (1162–82), later archbishop of
opponents of the crown as heirs of Becket ​ Lyons ​27, 137 n.14
159 Pole, Reginald, Cardinal Archbishop of
Orderic Vitalis ​87, 162 Canterbury (1555–58) ​22
Ordo Nidrosiensis ​32 seal ​5
Ó’Riain-Raedel, Dagmar  ​123, 124 n.46 political saints ​116
Osbern, monk of Canterbury ​62, 66, 77 Pontigny, Abbey ​10, 46, 160
Oswald, king of Northumbria. See Pontigny, Roger of. See Anonymous I
St Oswald Pont l’Évêque, Roger of, archbishop of York
Oxford (1154–81) ​106, 178 n.20, 179 n.24
Oriel College ​89 Pont-Sainte-Maxence, Guernes of ​95,
St Bartholomew’s leper house ​89 136
Portable Antiquities Scheme ​6
Palencia, Cathedral ​16 Portbail (near Cherbourg) ​202
Becket reliquary ​142 Power, Daniel ​182 n.29, 190 n.55, 192,
Palermo, Walter, archbishop of (1168–91) ​ 196, 203–5
39 n.70, 134 Pray Codex ​45
Pandulf, papal envoy ​158 Provence, Eleanor of, queen of England ​
Paris ​101 169
Sainte-Chapelle ​197 n.78 Psalter, Arundel, 61 n.35
Paris, Matthew ​9 Psalter, Queen Mary ​13, 43
Peltzer, Jörg ​150 Puiset, Hugh du, bishop of Durham
Penman, Michael ​195 n.70 (1153–95) ​38 n.66
Percy Rebellion (1405) ​18
Pereira, Dom Gonçalo, archbishop of Braga Quadrilogus II ​30 n.23
(1326–48) ​16
Pérez Rodríguez, Estrella ​142 n.39 Rachel ​31
Pest, church of St Thomas ​46 Radó, Fr Polycarp ​46
Peterborough. See Benedict Ralph the Jew, burgess of Rouen ​88
Petersohn, Jürgen ​45 Ratzeburg ​45, 129
Peter the Chanter ​154 Reading Abbey, hand of St James ​9
Philip I, count of Flanders ​36, 105, 116 Reames, Sherry ​68
Philip II (Augustus), king of France ​165 Regensburg ​125 n.49
n.100, 178, 190 n.55, 191, 193, 197, Conrad of ​126
201, 203–4 Diet ​121 n.37
Pierleone, Cardinal Hugh ​40 Regimina sanitatis ​92
pilgrim badges and ampullae ​6, 7, 18, 41, Reginald, sub-prior of Canterbury ​153
49 n.136, 189, 190 (Fig. 9.6), 196, 197 Regressio. See Becket, Thomas, Regressio
(Fig. 9.7) Reichersberg ​96
pilgrims and pilgrimage ​1–8, 10, 14, 15, Reims, Henry of ​47 n.125
20, 32 n.32, 37, 40, 47, 49, 50 n.137, Rich, Edmund. See St Edmund of Abingdon
55–7, 65, 115–16, 133–5, 147–9, 160, Richard I, king of England ​36, 41, 108,
169, 178, 186, 187 n.44, 188–9, 196, 109, 116 n.12, 148, 150–1, 153, 190
199 n.81, 200 Richard II, duke of Normandy ​90

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Rievaulx ​36 n.56 St Dunstan, archbishop of Canterbury

Ringelheim, Matilda of, wife of Emperor (959–88) ​53, 55, 57–60, 63–6, 68, 72,
Henry I ​124 74, 75 (Fig. 3.4), 77–9
Roberts, Peter ​21 Lives of ​59 n.26, 60, 62, 66, 68, 77
Roberts, Phyllis B. ​11 St Edmund, king of the East Angles and
Roches, Peter des, bishop of Winchester martyr ​49, 89, 116 n.13, 148
(1205–38) ​150–1, 204 St Edmund of Abingdon, archbishop of
Rochester ​31 Canterbury (1234–40) ​17, 169
Roland, Chanson de (or Rolandslied) ​126–7 St Edward (the Confessor). See Edward, the
Rome Confessor
Church of S. Costanza ​51 St Eloi ​194
English hospice ​10 St Frideswide ​9
Jesuit College ​49 St George ​173–5, 178 n.22, 202–3
Porta Flaminia ​49 relics ​202
St Giovanni in Laterano ​16 n.59 St-Gervais, Benedictine priory ​86, 87,
Roper, Margaret (daughter of Thomas 89, 90
More) ​48 St Giles ​81
Roscelin, chamberlain of Henry II ​84 St Godric. See Finchale
Rouen ​81, 83, 86, 88 St Gregory the Great ​32–3, 44
archbishops of. See Amiens; St Hugh, bishop of Lincoln (1186–1200) ​
Beaumont-le-Roger 98, 110, 153
St James ​81
burgesses ​90
St John, gospel ​32
Cathedral ​89
St John of Beverley ​9
hospitals ​88 n.38
St John the Baptist ​205, 206
St-Ouen ​89
St Julian ​81
Stephen of ​97
St Julian of Le Mans ​179
See also Mont-aux-Malades; St-Gervais
St Ladislas
Roxburgh ​41 St Lawrence ​16, 45, 82
Russell, Josiah Cox ​17 St Lazarus ​81, 92
St Magnus the Martyr, church ​50 n.143
St Albans ​9 St Margaret of Hungary ​46
St Alphege, archbishop of Canterbury St Mary Magdalene ​81
(1006–12) ​53, 55, 57–61, 63–6, 68, St Matthew ​31
72, 73 (Fig. 3.3), 74, 77–9 Ste-Mère-Église, William de, bishop of
as bishop of Winchester (984–1006) ​ London (1199–1221) ​150, 156
61 St Michael-le-Belfrey ​20 n.80
Lives of ​62, 66, 68 St Nicholas ​81
St Anselm, archbishop of Canterbury St Oswald, king of Northumbria ​122,
(1093–1109) ​53–4, 58 n.20, 63, 74 124–5, 131
n.76, 77, 106, 155 n.48 cult ​123
Ste-Barbe-en Auge, Augustinian Priory ​ relics ​123–4
89 St Paul ​98
St Bartholomew ​82, 89 St Peter ​89, 98, 107
St Benedict ​96 St-Pierre-des-Ifs ​83
St Blaise ​122, 173–4, 175 n.15, 178 n.22, St Richard of Wyche, bishop of Chichester
202–3 (1245–53) ​18
relics ​126 St Silvester ​45
St Catherine ​107 St Stephen ​16, 46, 106
St Cuthbert ​9 Ste-Suzanne, chateau and priory ​205
St David’s, bishopric ​151 St Thomas Cantilupe. See Cantilupe

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St Thomas’ Water. See Becket, Thomas, Canterbury Cathedral; Chartres;

water of Coutances; Sens
St William of York, archbishop of York Staunton, Michael ​2, 68
(1143–54) ​9 Stavelot-Malmedy ​32 n.34
St Wulfstan, bishop of Worcester Stralsund, St Nicholas ​119
(1062–95) ​158 Strängnäs (Sweden) ​32, 34 n.44
Salamanca, San Tomás Cantuariense ​45, Stubbs, William ​56 n.12
137, 142 Sully, Henry de, abbot of Fécamp
Salisbury, John of, bishop of Chartres (1139–88) ​90
(1176–80) ​15, 27, 29, 33, 35 n.53, 68, Summerson, Henry ​202 n.92
87, 95, 97, 106, 155, 166, 167, 179 n.25
Salisbury, Reginald, archdeacon of ​25 n.3 Talbot family ​84
Salisbury Breviary ​67 n.59 Tarragona, Cathedral ​16
Sandwich ​41 Tennyson, Alfred Lord ​23
San Lorenzo in Lucina, Albert, Cardinal Terrasa (Catalonia) ​142
priest of ​28 nn.17 and 19 Tewkesbury, Alan of ​95
Santiago, Chile. See Becket, Society of Thames boatmen ​20
San Vitale, Theodwin, Cardinal priest of ​ Thames mudlarks ​6
28 nn.17 and 19 Theobald, archbishop of Canterbury
Sausseusse, Augustinian priory ​89 (1139–61) ​1, 27
Savigny ​115 n.9 Theodinus, bishop of San Vitale ​134
Scone ​206 Thérouanne, bishop of ​47 n.125
Scotland, royal crown of ​43 Toledo Cathedral ​136–8
Scrope, Richard, archbishop of York Torigni, Robert of, chronicler, abbot of
(1398–1405) ​18, 117 Mont St Michel ​133, 145
Sédières ​10 Toro (León) ​142
Sées, Sylvester, bishop of (1203?-20) ​151 Tosny
Selby ​9 family ​205, 206 n.106
Seligenthal, Cistercian monastery ​16 Marguerite, wife of Malcolm I of Fife ​
Sens 205
Cathedral ​14, 68, 69 (Fig. 3.1), 171, Richard, treasurer of Angers Cathedral ​
172 n.7 205
stained glass ​68, 69 (Fig. 3.1), 72, Roger de ​204, 205
175, 189, 197, 204 n.97 Simon de, monk of Melrose, bishop of
Council of ​25 Moray ​206
William, archbishop of. See Tours
Blanchemains Council of (1163) ​97, 189
Shadis, Miriam ​138 Gregory of ​202
Sigüenza ​140 Tracy, William de ​102, 195
Jocelin, bishop of ​137 n.14, 140 triangulation ​172
Rodrigo, bishop of, breviary ​140 Trincavel, William ​100
Silva ​97 Tristan und Isolde ​126
Slocum, Kay Brainerd ​8, 19, 68, 135, 142 Trondheim ​32
n.36 Truc, Marie-Cécile ​91
Smalley, Beryl ​100 n.24 Tusculum (Frascati)
Soria, Castile ​139, 140 Nicholas of, papal legate ​168
Southern, Robert ​54 n.5 papal court ​26
Speaight, Robert ​23 Tyndale, William ​21
Spencer, Brian ​8 Tyre, William of ​96
stained glass. See under Becket, Thomas,
depictions; Angers Cathedral; Uppsala ​32

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 INDEX

Urse, Reginald fitz ​35 n.51, 195 Westminster ​108

Council of (1176) ​106
Vác ​45 William, bishop of London. See
Vange (Essex) ​84 Ste-Mère-Église
Vann, Theresa M. ​138 William, chaplain to Count Nuño Pérez de
Várad, Alexander, bishop of ​42 n.93 Lara ​136, 137
Vauclair ​35 William, chaplain to Ralph de Diceto ​41
Vegas di Matute (Segovia) ​142 William, monk of Canterbury. See
Vesley, leper hospital ​83 Canterbury, William of
Vézelay, censures ​99, 105 William I, the Conqueror, king of England ​
Vieux-Port (near Aizier) ​90 87, 158, 201
Vigeois, Geoffrey of, Limoges chronicler ​ William I, the Lion, king of Scots ​36, 38,
95 41, 46, 101, 116–17, 134, 148, 184–8,
Vincent, Nicholas ​3, 44, 118, 159, 162 194–5, 206
n.88, 168, 195–6, 198, 201 William II, Rufus, king of England ​162
Viterbo ​153 William II, king of Sicily ​44, 141
Vitry, Jacques de, Cardinal Bishop ​16 William the Englishman ​14
Vittefleur, leper hospital ​83 Williams, Deanne ​192
Vladislav I, duke of Bohemia ​121 n.37 wills ​20
Vogt, Caroline ​16
Winchelsey, Robert, archbishop of
Canterbury (1294–1313) ​17
Wakefield, Peter of ​163
Winchester
Wales, Alexander of, clerk of Becket ​26
annals ​110 n.74
Wales, Gerald of ​101, 102, 103, 104, 109,
153 n.10 bishops of. See Blois, Henry of; Ilchester;
De Principis Instructione ​101 Roches; St Alphege
De Vita Galfridi ​109 Gunther of, clerk of Becket ​26
Expugnatio Hibernica ​101 Newminster Abbey ​120 n.28
Vita S. Remigii ​102–3 Windsor, Council (1170) ​185
Walter, Hubert, archbishop of Canterbury Wiseman, Cardinal Nicholas ​49 n.134
(1193–1205) ​104, 106–7, 148, 150–1, Wismar, St Jürgen ​119
153 Worcester, bishops of
seal ​5, 159 Roger (1164–79) ​25 n.3, 102
Waltham Holy Cross, Augustinian priory ​ See also Mauger; St Wulfstan
148 Worksop ​16
Warham, William, archbishop of Wyche, Richard of. See St Richard
Canterbury (1503–32) ​5, 48 Wyclif, John ​20
seal ​5
Warren, W. Lewis, ​39 York
Welf archbishops of. See Geoffrey; Gray,
mausoleum ​44 Walter de; Pont l’Évêque;
power ​123 St William; Scrope
Treasury ​126 n.56, 128 n.80 Minster ​14, 20 n.80
Wells, cathedral ​51
Wendover, Roger of ​164 n.95 Zachariah ​30

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 plantagenet world, c.1170-c.1220
the cult of st thomas becket in the
Thomas Becket - the archbishop of Canterbury cut down in his own cathedral
just after Christmas 1170 - stands amongst the most renowned royal ministers,
churchmen, and saints of the Middle Ages. He inspired the work of medieval
writers and artists, and remains a compelling subject for historians today. Yet many
of the political, religious, and cultural repercussions of his murder and subsequent
canonisation remain to be explored in detail.

This book examines the development of the cult and the impact of the legacy of
Saint Thomas within the Plantagenet orbit of the late twelfth and early thirteenth
centuries - the "Empire" assembled by King Henry II, defended by his son King
Richard the Lionheart, and lost by King John. Traditional textual and archival
sources, such as miracle collections, charters, and royal and papal letters, are used
in conjunction with the material culture inspired by the cult, to emphasise the
wide-ranging impact of the murder and of the cult's emergence in the century
following the martyrdom. From the archiepiscopal church at Canterbury, to
writers and religious houses across the Plantagenet lands, to the courts of
Henry II, his children, and the bishops of the Angevin world, individuals and
communities adapted and responded to one of the most extraordinary religious
phenomena of the age.

dr paul webster is currently Lecturer in Medieval History and Project Manager

of the Exploring the Past adult learners progression pathway at Cardiff University;
dr marie-pierre gelin is a Teaching Fellow in the History Department at
University College London.

contributors: Colette Bowie, Elma Brenner, José Manuel Cerda, Anne J. Duggan,
Marie-Pierre Gelin, Alyce A. Jordan, Michael Staunton, Paul Webster.

Marie-Pierre Gelin the cult of st thomas becket

Paul Webster
edited by in the plantagenet world,
Cover image: Pilgrim badge of the second half of the fourteenth
century, showing the martyrdom of St Thomas Becket by four
knights, witnessed by Edward Grim. Excavated from the Thames
c.1170-c.1220
foreshore at Dowgate, London. Neish Collection of British Pewter,
SBT 1996-44/910. Photo courtesy of The Neish Collection of British
Pewter at The Stirling Smith Art Gallery and Museum.

COVER DESIGN: LIRON GILENBERG | WWW.IRONICITALICS.COM

edited by
Paul Webster
an imprint of Boydell & Brewer Ltd
PO Box 9, Woodbridge, Suffolk IP12 3DF and Marie-Pierre Gelin
668 Mt Hope Ave, Rochester NY 14620, USA
www.boydellandbrewer.com