medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture

A Londoner, Thomas Becket was successively archdeacon of Canterbury, chancellor of England under Henry II, and (from 1162) archbishop of Canterbury. In the latter post his defence of ecclesiastical rights soon led to a falling out with Henry and to Thomas' withdrawal to France, where he remained until 1170. His return to Canterbury in that year had papal backing but only grudging acceptance from the king. The two were still quite unreconciled when Thomas was assassinated in his cathedral on 29. December 1170 by knights who thought that they were doing Henry a favor. Thomas' life of penitence and self-mortification while archbishop contributed to his image as a saintly martyr. He was canonized in 1173 and Vitae (with miracle accounts) soon followed.

Today (29. December) is the feast day of St. Thomas Becket (Thomas of Canterbury) in the Roman Catholic Church and in the Church of England.  Other churches in the Anglican Communion also commemorate him today.


Some period-pertinent images of St. Thomas Becket:

a) as depicted (with three monks; martyred by three knights) in a later twelfth-century psalter and hymnal for the Use of the abbey of Saint-Fuscien in Amiens (Amiens, Bibliothèques d'Amiens Métropole, ms. 19, fol. 8r):
http://www.enluminures.culture.fr/Wave/savimage/enlumine/irht3/IRHT_058200-p.jpg
Detail views:
http://www.enluminures.culture.fr/Wave/savimage/enlumine/irht3/IRHT_058202-p.jpg
http://www.enluminures.culture.fr/Wave/savimage/enlumine/irht3/IRHT_058201-p.jpg

b) as depicted (martyrdom) in a later twelfth-century wall painting in the iglesia de San Nicolás in Soria (Castilla y León). The painting is exceptional in that it shows Thomas being stabbed in the back rather than struck in the head or the neck (for a similar instance see below at item dd). Linked to here are two news reports from 2009 with different views of it:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/8029320.stm
http://iconosmedievales.blogspot.com/2009/11/csi-soria.html
A view showing more of the image:
http://sorianoticias.com/e-img/1329844479.jpeg
Two grayscale views (from 1977?) showing greater detail:
http://tinyurl.com/zpnymlp
http://tinyurl.com/hwgaea4
An illustrated Spanish-language account:
http://elige.soria.es/santo-tomas-beckett-en-san-nicolas-de-soria-y-san-miguel-de-almazan/

c) as depicted (martyrdom scenes) on a later twelfth-century reliquary chest from Limoges (ca. 1173-1180?) in the British Museum in London:
http://tinyurl.com/zqkh4d3
NB: In dating this object to "1170 (circa)", the British Museum broaches the intriguing possibility of its manufacture in 1169, the year before Thomas' martyrdom.  One does sometimes see cult images adorned with a halo in anticipation of the subject's impending canonization or beatification.  But ordering up a reliquary for someone still alive and apparently healthy, especially one that depicts the manner of that someone's death, bespeaks foresightedness of a rather different order.  For another instance of such clairvoyant anticipation, see Wikipedia's dating of the pilgrim's badge linked to at item y), below.

d) as depicted (martyrdom scenes) on a later twelfth-century reliquary chest (ca. 1173-1180) in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York:
http://tinyurl.com/27s42cx

e) as depicted (martyrdom) in a perhaps later twelfth-century fresco (after 1173; alternatively: after 1220) in the chiesa dei Santi Giovanni e Paolo in Spoleto:
http://www.atlantedellarteitaliana.it/immagine/00022/15077OP24079.jpg

f) as depicted (martyrdom) in a later twelfth-century full-page miniature (betw. 1175 and 1200) inserted into an earlier thirteenth-century psalter of English origin (London, BL, Harley MS 5102, pt. 2, fol. 32r):
https://www.bl.uk/catalogues/illuminatedmanuscripts/ILLUMIN.ASP?Size=mid&IllID=16609
https://www.bl.uk/catalogues/illuminatedmanuscripts/ILLUMINBig.ASP?size=big&IllID=16609

g) as depicted (martyrdom scenes) in a later twelfth-century copy of Alan of Tewkesbury's _Collectio epistolarum sancti Thome Cantuariensis_ (ca. 1180; London, BL, Cotton MS Claudius B II, fol. 341r):
http://imageweb-cdn.magnoliasoft.net/britishlibrary/supersize/a80136-48.jpg

h) as depicted (enthronement, martyrdom, and burial) in a late twelfth- or perhaps early thirteenth- century fresco (variously dated to ca. 1180 and to ca. 1200) in the iglesia de Santa María (sometimes called, after the locality, Santa María d'Egara) in Terrassa (Vallés Occidental) in Cataluña:
http://tinyurl.com/ngs6w9k
Detail view:
http://tinyurl.com/j3gexrm

i) as depicted on a late twelfth-century silk mitre with English embroidery (ca. 1180-1200; from the abbey of Seligenthal) in the Bayerisches Nationalmuseum in Munich:
http://tinyurl.com/o6dp6g7

j) as depicted (at center) in the late twelfth-century apse mosaics (ca. 1182) of the basilica cattedrale di Santa Maria in Monreale:
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3164/2575093180_0101779142_b.jpg

k) as depicted (martyrdom) in one of four panels of a full-page illumination in the late twelfth-century so-called Bible of Saint Bertin (ca. 1190-1200; Den Haag, KB, ms. 76 F 5, fol. 28v, sc. 2B):
http://manuscripts.kb.nl/zoom/BYVANCKB%3Amimi_76f5%3A028v_min_b2

l) as portrayed in relief (martyrdom scenes) on the late twelfth-century baptismal font (ca. 1190-1200) in the church at Lyngsjö (Skåne län):
http://www.biopix-foto.de/lyngsjoe-kyrka-skaane_photo-47118.aspx
Detail views:
http://www.biopix-foto.de/lyngsjoe-kyrka-skaane_photo-47130.aspx
http://www.biopix-foto.de/lyngsjoe-kyrka-skaane_photo-47127.aspx
http://www.biopix-foto.de/lyngsjoe-kyrka-skaane_photo-47128.aspx
http://www.biopix-foto.de/lyngsjoe-kyrka-skaane_photo-47123.aspx

m) as depicted (martyrdom) on some of the numerous Becket reliquary chests made at Limoges in the later twelfth and early thirteenth centuries:
1) Ornamental reliquary châsse (ca. 1180) in the British Museum in London:
http://tinyurl.com/3ykvus6
2) Another (ca. 1180-1190), in the Victoria and Albert Museum in London:
http://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O80222/the-becket-casket-casket-unknown/
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Becket_casket.jpg
http://tinyurl.com/c6lz8gz
3) a long side of another (late twelfth-century), in the Musée du Louvre in Paris:
http://tinyurl.com/3a362o7
4) Two more whole chests (ca. 1190-1200 or a little later), in the Musée national du Moyen Âge (Musée de Cluny) in Paris:
http://tinyurl.com/3xmjq6b
and
http://tinyurl.com/2uvzkvj
5) Another (ca. 1200), in the Musée municipal de l'Évêché in Limoges:
http://www.culture.gouv.fr/emolimo/thomas1.htm
6) Another (ca. 1200), in the Museum Schnütgen (St. Cäcilien) in Köln:
http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2354/2127843870_2dcb1823bb_o.jpg
7) Another (ca. 1205-1215), in the Musée d'Art et d'Archéologie (musée des Beaux-Arts) in Guéret (Creuse):
http://www.culture.gouv.fr/emolimo/thomas2.htm
8) Another (ca. 1210), in the Musée des beaux-arts in Lyon:
http://tinyurl.com/35c4jgs
9) Another (ca. 1210), in the British Museum in London:
http://tinyurl.com/jmzraod
10) Another (earlier thirteenth-century), in the Museo della Cattedrale / Museo diocesano in Lucca (in the second view seen through tinted glass):
http://www.museocattedralelucca.it/img/pics/scrigno.jpg
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3522/3837386490_88c39bba7c_o.jpg

Can't get enough?  Images of these objects and a few others of their kind will be found here:
http://tinyurl.com/9jz8ll
Still can't get enough? Links to images of these objects and many others of their kind will be found here (scroll down to "The Legend of Becket's Mother as the Daughter of a Saracen Emir":
http://conclarendon.blogspot.com/2015_09_01_archive.html

n) as portrayed (martyrdom) in a late twelfth- or early thirteenth-century copper gilt relief (ca. 1200) in the Kunstgewerbemuseum in Berlin:
http://tinyurl.com/j9kz8l8

o) as depicted (martyrdom) in a thirteenth-century fresco in Pavia's chiesa di San Lanfranco:
http://www.sanlanfranco.it/uploads/pics/w_assasinioTomasBecket.png

p) as depicted (at center; at left, St. Stephen, protomartyr; at right, St. Nicholas of Myra) in a thirteenth-century fresco in the lower church of the monastero di San Benedetto at Subiaco:
http://tinyurl.com/zmncd69

q) as portrayed (scenes) on an early thirteenth-century liturgical comb from England in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York:
http://tinyurl.com/q6mno6r

r) as depicted (scenes) in the earlier thirteenth-century Becket Leaves in the British Library (ca. 1220-1240; four leaves from an illustrated rhymed Passio of Thomas of Canterbury in French; all eight sides headed by an illumination suggestive of the work of Matthew Paris):
http://www.angelfire.com/pa4/becketleaves/

s) as depicted (martyrdom) in the mid-thirteenth-century Carrow Psalter (Baltimore, Walters Art Museum, ms. W.34, fol. 15v):
http://thedigitalwalters.org/Data/WaltersManuscripts/W34/data/W.34/sap/W34_000038_sap.jpg

t) as depicted (martyrdom) in a later thirteenth-century fresco (ca. 1260) formerly in the episcopal place at Treviso and now in that see's diocesan museum:
http://tinyurl.com/pqhgtum
Note the domes in the representation of Canterbury cathedral. It's thought that the artist was familiar with San Marco in Venice.

u) as depicted (martyrdom) in a late thirteenth-century copy of French origin of the _Legenda aurea_ (San Marino, CA, Huntington Library, ms. HM 3027, fol. 12v):
http://digitalassets.lib.berkeley.edu/ds/huntington/images//000975A.jpg

v) as depicted (martyrdom) in the late thirteenth-century Livre d'images de Madame Marie (ca. 1285-1290; Paris, BnF, ms. Nouvelle acquisition française 16251, fol. 81r):
http://tinyurl.com/ybuwf3e

w) as portrayed (martyrdom) on a fourteenth-century roof boss, with modern polychromy, in the Cathedral Church of St Peter in Exeter:
http://tinyurl.com/ybwmumk

x) as depicted in some of the numerous Becket-related scenes in the earlier fourteenth-century Queen Mary Psalter (ca. 1310-1320; London, BL, Royal MS 2 B VII):
1) enthronement (fol. 291r):
http://www.bl.uk/catalogues/illuminatedmanuscripts/ILLUMIN.ASP?Size=mid&IllID=53337
2) disputing with the king (fol. 291v):
http://www.bl.uk/catalogues/illuminatedmanuscripts/ILLUMIN.ASP?Size=mid&IllID=53373
3) dining with the pope (fol. 295r):
http://www.bl.uk/catalogues/illuminatedmanuscripts/ILLUMIN.ASP?Size=mid&IllID=53346
4) returning to England (fol. 297r):
http://www.bl.uk/catalogues/illuminatedmanuscripts/ILLUMIN.ASP?Size=mid&IllID=53350
5) martyrdom (fol. 298r):
http://www.bl.uk/catalogues/illuminatedmanuscripts/ILLUMIN.ASP?Size=mid&IllID=39444

y) as portrayed (in the shrine for his head at Canterbury) in a fourteenth-century pilgrim's badge (after ca. 1320) in the Museum of London:
http://collections.museumoflondon.org.uk/online/object/37288.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Becket-pilgrim-badge.jpg
One may safely disregard Wikipedia's dating of this object to "c.1120-70".

z) as depicted in an earlier fourteenth-century copy, of Parisian origin, of the _Legenda aurea_ in a French-language version once attributed to Jean Beleth (ca. 1326-1350; Paris, BnF, ms. Français 185, fol. 87r):
http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b84260029/f177.item.zoom

aa) as depicted (martyrdom) in an earlier fourteenth-century copy, of Parisian origin and with illuminations attributed to the Fauvel Master, of the _Legenda aurea_ in a French-language version once attributed to Jean Beleth (ca. 1327; Paris, BnF, ms. Français 183, fol. 195v):
http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b8426000g/f404.item.zoom

bb) as depicted (martyrdom) in a mid-fourteenth-century copy, from the workshop of Richard and Jeanne de Montbaston, of the _Legenda aurea_ in its French-language version by Jean de Vignay (1348; Paris, BnF, ms. Français 241, fol. 26v):
http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b84260044/f56.item.zoom

cc) as portrayed (in his shrine) in a later fourteenth-century pilgrim's badge in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York:
http://tinyurl.com/nzulhg9

dd) as depicted (third row from the top, second from left; image expandable) in one of twenty-six window late fourteenth- or early fifteenth-century glass window panels (ca. 1400) from the Marienkirche in Wismar (Mecklenburg-Vorpommern) re-mounted in the same city's Kirche Heiligen Geist:
http://tinyurl.com/c8ey5rw

ee) as depicted (martyrdom) in an early fifteenth-century copy of the _Legenda aurea_ in its French-language version by Jean de Vignay followed by the _Festes nouvelles_ attributed to Jean Golein (ca. 1401-1425; Paris, BnF, ms. Français 242, fol. 22r):
http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b8426005j/f59.item.zoom

ff) as depicted in an earlier fifteenth-century psalter for the Use of York (Rennes, Bibliothèque de Rennes Métropole, ms. 22, fol. 17v):
http://tinyurl.com/grcx482

gg) as depicted (martyrdom) in the earlier fifteenth-century Châteauroux Breviary (ca. 1414; Châteauroux, Bibliothèque municipale, ms. 2, fol. 226v):
http://www.enluminures.culture.fr/Wave/savimage/enlumine/irht2/IRHT_054065-p.jpg

hh) as depicted (martyrdom) in an early fifteenth-century copy of the _Elsässische Legenda aurea_ (1419; Heidelberg, Universitätsbibliothek, Cod. Pal. germ. 144, fol. 274r):
http://digi.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/diglit/cpg144/0571

ii) as depicted by Meister Francke in two earlier fifteenth-century panel paintings (mid-1430s; from his dismembered earlier fifteenth-century altarpiece of St. Thomas Becket) in the Kunsthalle in Hamburg:
1) entry into Canterbury:
http://tinyurl.com/yb3q3o
2) martyrdom:
http://tinyurl.com/yarm7y

jj) as depicted (martyrdom) by the court workshop of Frederick III in a mid-fifteenth-century copy of the _Legenda aurea_ (1446-1447; Vienna, ÖNB, cod. 326, fol. 22v):
http://tarvos.imareal.oeaw.ac.at/server/images/7006821.JPG

kk) as portrayed (martyrdom) in a later fifteenth-century alabaster panel (ca. 1451-1500) in the British Museum, London:
http://www.warfare.altervista.org/15/Murder_of_Becket-Alabaster_panel.jpg
https://www.flickr.com/photos/roelipilami/7004390475
http://tinyurl.com/jldpd66

ll) as portrayed in two later fifteenth-century alabaster panels, from a dismantled altarpiece with Becket scenes, in the Victoria and Albert Museum in London:
1) meeting the pope:
http://tinyurl.com/l85rrdy
http://tinyurl.com/333fg4b
2) landing at Sandwich:
http://tinyurl.com/lynhjlw
http://tinyurl.com/gwwv36f

mm) as portrayed (enthronement) in another later fifteenth-century alabaster panel in the Victoria and Albert Museum in London:
http://tinyurl.com/lbym68y
http://tinyurl.com/yaq6kgr

nn) as depicted (martyrdom) in a later fifteenth-century copy of the _Legenda aurea_ in its French-language version by Jean de Vignay (ca. 1480-1490; Paris, BnF, ms. Français 244, fol. 29bis,v):
http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b8442920n/f80.item.zoom

oo) as depicted (right margin at bottom) in a hand-colored woodcut in the Beloit College copy of Hartmann Schedel's late fifteenth-century _Weltchronik_ (_Nuremberg Chronicle_; 1493) at fol. CCIIr:
http://www.beloit.edu/nuremberg/book/6th_age/right_page/105%20%28Folio%20CCIIr%29.pdf

pp) as depicted (at right, after St. Roch and St. Anastasia of Sirmium) in a late fifteenth-century fresco (1493; restored in 1990) in the cappella di Sant'Anastasia in Sale San Giovanni (CN) in Piedmont:
http://archeocarta.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/sale-3-anastasia.jpg
Why is Thomas here accoutered as a pilgrim?

qq) as portrayed in a polychromed statue in a compartment of the probably earlier sixteenth-century altarpiece (betw. 1501 and 1526) in Härads kyrka in Härad, Strängnäs kommun (Södermanlands län):
http://www.flickr.com/photos/7909590@N08/6268730290/

Best,
John Dillon

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