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At 08:21 AM 10/8/97 -0400, Dawn Marie Hayes wrote: >After reading Ralph of Diss, I am of the impression that Canterbury >Cathedral was reconciled in 1171, just short of one year after Becket's >murder. Can anyone confirm this? I am curious because the _Decretum_ >specified that a church defiled by violent bloodshed was to be >reconsecrated. Could it be that the specialness of the martyr's blood >prevented it from losing its consecration, as it would have under normal >circumstances? (I recall one of the eyewitnesses (Grim?) saying that the >cathedral had been consecrated in Becket's blood.) Does anyone know if >this has been discussed anywhere? The question of Becket's martyrdom and the reconciliation of Canterbury cathedral was actually the subject of my first ever conference paper, so you can imagine my delight at seeing your question on this list. Unfortunately, I don't have all of my references at hand right now (I just moved, and the paper is still in a box somewhere), so I can only give you some general information. First of all, the reconciliation of the cathedral was ordered by Pope Alexander III himself, in a letter to the officials he sent to England to investigate the case for Becket's canonization. The text of this papal letter can be found in: Walther Holtzmann, _Studies in the Collections of Twelfth-Century Decretals: From the Papers of the Late Walther Holtzmann_, ed., rev., and trans. by C. R. Cheney and Mary G. Cheney. (Citta del Vaticano : Biblioteca apostolica vaticana, 1979). However, as you surmise, this reconciliation was soon seen as problematic from a legal point of view. By the 1180s, commentators on Gratian's _Decretum_ began asking, as a general question: "Given that a saint's blood is sacred, and can in fact be used to dedicate a church (in the form of a relic), does a church where a saint is martyred need to be reconciled?" The early answer was generally no, but beginning with the great Bolognese canonist Huguccio (d. 1210), a different argument gained the upper hand. Huguccio, and those who followed him, argued that a church is desecrated by the act of violence itself, not by the blood shed by that act of violence. Thus, while Becket's blood may have been holy, the way in which it was shed was not, and hence Canterbury cathedral was polluted. In at least one later source (can't remember which one, sorry), the point is made that the spots on the church floor where Becket's blood fell did not need to be reconciled because the blood had already purified them, but the rest of the church still required ritual cleansing. This question still appears in legal commentaries, and even in a quodlibetal question, well into the fifteenth century. Hope this satisfies your curiosity. Stephen A. Allen The Medieval Institute University of Notre Dame Notre Dame, IN 46556 [log in to unmask] %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%