This event forms part of the public programmes for the exhibition Chaucer Here and Now at the Weston Library. It's on until Sunday the 28th of April
so do come and see it if you can.
We will be discussing the life and death of Thomas Becket and how Canterbury became a significant pilgrimage destination,
including, of course, for Chaucer's pilgrims in The Canterbury Tales.
Our speakers today are Dr Alison Ray, Archivist at St Peter's College, and Dr Andrew Dunning,
RW Hunt Curator of Medieval Manuscripts here at the Bodleian.
So now I'll hand over to Andrew. Thank you very much, Helen.
I'm so excited to have you here, Alison. Because, uh, because this, this whole event is inspired by the Chaucer Here and Now exhibition.
And the wonderful thing about that exhibition is that it shows Chaucer in all sorts of different facets.
It shows Chaucer the the father of the nation, Chaucer the, Chaucer the devout Catholic, Chaucer, the proto-Protestant.
And we can see in Chaucer Here and Now and especially I think uh, last week, Marion Turner,
we had her here showing the inspiration behind that exhibition that she put together. In that exhibition
you see pilgrims on horses, you see Chaucer with his, um, dressed up as a pilgrim himself.
But we never actually got into this wonderful opening to The Canterbury Tales.
And this is we, we by they way, we have so many copies of The Canterbury Tales that we didn't actually even get them all into the exhibition.
And so here we have another one that didn't quite make it.
And this is a famous general prologue at the beginning of The Canterbury Tales.
And he says that the pilgrims went, 'And specially, from every shires ende, Of Engelond, to Caunterbury
they wende, The hooly blisful martir for to seke, That hem hath holpen whan they were seeke.'
Helped them when they were sick.
Now, Alison, can you tell us more about who this unnamed, holy blissful martyr was?
Yes. So this is such an exciting session today to explore Saint Thomas Becket. He's the Archbishop of Canterbury
and at this point, he's essentially such a famous saint and a famous figure in English history that they don't even need to name him in the prologue,
that they can just say he's like Madonna. They're like, the holy blissful martyr
So this is so exciting is, that they see this, that they're seeing this superstar essentially in action, going to see his shrine in Canterbury.
That's absolutely brilliant.
And so we're going to move on quickly from this Canterbury Tales manuscript to, we have a manuscript here that Thomas Becket himself owned.
Yes. So I can tell you a little bit about Becket's life while we're setting this up.
And Thomas Becket was so interesting. He was born in Cheapside in London in 1120, to a prominent kind of merchant family.
So his father was the Sheriff of London, which was really interesting.
He was really well educated. And then he quickly rose in kind of prominent political and church circles.
And then by 1162, or 1155, he was actually made the Chancellor of the Exchequer by King Henry II
which is the most important administrative position in England in that day.
And Henry trusted him so much by 1162 he made him the Archbishop of Canterbury, the head of the church in England.
And it was essentially a role to kind of keep control of the church.
So Henry wanted his friend there. But to everyone's surprise, Thomas actually took his role seriously and became a serious religious figure.
And so he quickly got into fights and political conflicts with Henry.
And even within two years, he went into exile to France.
So this manuscript is so fascinating because it was made for Thomas Becket in his exile between 1164 and 1170, in northern France.
And we have this beautiful opening at the start, where you can see an inscription that Andrew's just setting up for you
now, that you can see that this book was marked by the medieval Library of Canterbury to show it was owned by Saint Thomas the Martyr.
Right. So that's what we have here - Sancti Thome martiris.
And this is essentially a note not to mark the book as a relic or an important religious book,
but just to show whose it was in the library, because that's how they organise the medieval library by the donor names.
So it's really fun. Right, okay so he had this book with him in exile.
Yes. That's it, absolutely. Right. So it's this beautiful, illuminated, high status, what we call Romanesque manuscript made in the 12th century.
And it has this gorgeous kind of, um, gold illuminated initial.
And this is manuscript is what we call a Pentateuch.
It contains the first five Bibles, uh, five books of the Bible or the Hebrew Bible.
So Genesis is obviously creation. And then we have, um, Exodus, Leviticus, numbers, and Deuteronomy.
And we're going to see the lovely openings for Exodus.
And it's you can see it's also what we call a glossed commentary.
So it's this main text of the Bible with a commentary alongside in a smaller script,
and it's just you can see these beautiful, playful figures and critters kind of in between the interleaves and things.
It's interlaced. It's a really gorgeous manuscript, this fine leaf decoration.
And just to give you a sense, this is, this is an enormous manuscript.
You can see, you know, this is the tip of my finger.
And, uh, I mean, this is, this this this manuscript is why heavy lifting is part of my job description.
Absolutely. And so can you just tell us, explain this,
So why would - we have this huge manuscript? It's not,
I mean, this is this is, um, this is some serious exile here.
Yes. And in this period in the 12th century, books of the Bible weren't in a single manuscript.
Yeah? So that didn't happen til much later, actually.
So that the books of the Bible, were these separate huge volumes and I kind of call them the Cadillacs of Bibles
they're so big. And people just loved them.
And then you can see it's made for this high status figure. So it's made for an important person as well, it's such a high quality as well.
So it's for Becket the Archbishop and especially for his religious duties.
And so he's taking his faith seriously while in exile.
Yes. Let's let's zoom out a bit here. And so here we have the, this is the beginning of the book Exodus, big initial showing you where it is.
And what do we have. We have some some writing that's bigger and some writing that's smaller. Why is that?
Yes. That looks like it's um, inter linear gloss as well.
And then, so that means that it's just kind of commentary in between the main text as well as on the side.
And it's just how they organise this book. And so kind of, it's almost like medieval graphic design,
just kind of getting that layout correct to get all of the information you need, to find what you need quickly as a reference text
absolutely for preaching and studying these works.
So Thomas would have had, perhaps not had this book in his hands, but he would have had this book on a desk in front of him,
and he would have used this to, uh, to maintain his focus, perhaps,
while in exile. Absolutely. Yeah. So sadly, it doesn't have any notes that we can say were his, but we do know that it was his book.
So that's it. Absolutely. He's likely using it as a study aid while he was away.
That's incredible. I love it so much. So now I think, and
but so he was in exile, going to get another manuscript, he was in exile
but then. What happened that led to such a tragic end?
Yes. So essentially by 1170, by December 1170, the king had decided it's time to come to a compromise.
So he made efforts with Becket to bring him back to England.
But Becket stirred things up almost straight away when he came back.
So he straight away, he, um, excommunicated bishops that were, he had seen as disloyal to the church.
And that really miffed the king.
So on Christmas Day, the king was actually in France for Christmas, and he was sounding off to kind of his court that
Can you believe Becket is kind of at it again? So what happened is that four knights basically took it upon themselves to travel to England,
and they decided they wanted to arrest Becket for what he had done.
And by the 29th of December, 1170, they stormed Canterbury Cathedral.
They started, and Becket was not an easy man, so he immediately started a fight with them.
They got angry, and they were drunk
and they murdered Becket in front of witnesses in front of the community of Canterbury Cathedral.
And it is absolutely shocking. So it sent complete shockwaves throughout Europe.
And what we're about to see is the iconic theme of his martyrdom.
And because he was essentially, because this is such a shocking event, and he was seen immediately as somebody who had stood up to authority
so he became really important very quickly and he was very quickly made a saint within three years by 1173, which is completely unheard of.
So it just shows that his popularity and what we call his devotional cult spread almost immediately across Europe.
And so this is a very important scene.
And because he was a new saint as well they had to design this new iconography for him.
So most saints are depicted in manuscripts and are instantly recognisable to readers by their death.
And so this is a really interesting scene where we see Becket kneeling in front of the altar as a pious figure being assaulted by these knights,
and his death was incredibly violent. So the sword actually cut into the crown of his skull, which sent it flying.
And it was just kind of extremely violent blood and brains everywhere.
But it's really important to know that is how he died. So this is, this, this sent through such shockwaves, it's said that.
So this this is a, this is a prayer book, a Book of Hours that was made probably about 300 years after that event.
And people are still, this is a, this is a personal prayer book.
And somebody wants to remember this so clearly that they've commissioned, alongside lots of other lovely illustrations
they've commissioned this, uh, and this, this reproduction of that scene.
Yes. And this is a wonderful manuscript that was made in the 15th century in the Netherlands, but for an English user.
So you can tell by the prayer cycle in it that it's been English use.
And his martyrdom of the 29th of December became what we call a major feast, where calendars a red letter day.
So it was really important for English and those across the continent to actually remember his feast day and pray on it.
So he became a very important saint alongside other saints that we know.
So it's really interesting to see how quickly this spread and how he remained important throughout the Middle Ages.
Absolutely.
And so you've gone, from so we have this figure who's gone from being a simply an important bureaucrat to, that if he had perhaps obeyed the rule
of the king he probably would've been forgotten within ten years.
Who knows? Yeah. To becoming this extraordinary figure who, who obviously was like the royal he commissioned these incredible, huge books.
But because of the way, because of the way he was seen to have stood up to authority
and because he died in this
this incredibly theatrical way people
people wanted to remember him, and they wanted to view him as, as a as a source of inspiration.
Absolutely. Yeah. That's it. And when he was murdered, essentially,
the monks at the time of Canterbury still didn't really trust him because they still saw him as a royal plant at the cathedral.
But when they uncovered him, they found he was wearing what we call a hair shirt.
And that's like, see a holy man, where you wear them to be uncomfortable, to pray.
So they're like, my God, he's actually so pious. So that's what, they've killed a pious man.
So this is really important to the community so they learn to love him very quickly.
And that also helped spread his cult across. Absolutely.
Isn't that an incredible story? Yeah. I think that we have a break now for a few questions.
Certainly. Thank you. Yes, we've had a couple of questions come in but we have got a little bit of time.
So if you do have a question please do add it to the Q&A. But I'll start off with this one.
So you mentioned that it was Becket's book. And I think you have said it was commissioned by him, himself so
And who would actually have written it out? Would it have been an anonymous scribe, or would it have been someone who would have done a lot of this work?
so can you say anything more about who actually put pen to paper?
Yeah, absolutely. So at this time in the late 12th century, it was still very common for manuscripts like this to be made in a monastic setting.
So it would have been made in a monastery that was probably caring for Becket at the time as well.
So he was in several monasteries throughout northern France, and it's very well recorded.
So they would have been highly trained scribes of the monastery where he was staying, most likely making these manuscripts for him.
And Christopher de Hamel has a wonderful study of the books of Becket as well, where he goes into detail where they were made as well.
Lovely, thank you. We're just waiting for, sort of a query about some other things about our programmes
but I just wonder if anyone else has any queries about the manuscripts we've seen so far
please do add them. I would like to ask something.
Those kind of Books of Hours, with Becket in and others, was that very common then that they would include lots of different saints
and was the purpose that people would be remembering their saints and praying to those saints, how would it be used kind of day to day?
Yeah, that's such a great question. And this Andrew, Andrew's showing these Books of Hours.
So Hours are different prayers said at different times or hours of the day.
And these were very personal, individualised prayer books. So yes, absolutely
owners would personalise their books and choose which saints they wanted to appear in them as, alongside kind of a regular cycle.
And they normally include calendars as well. So the calendars would put up the feasts not only of major saints, but saints that they're interested in.
So maybe more local saints to their area. And they'd even put in family members names and things to remember then.
So they're very personal books and they're for private prayer
absolutely. So then that that's how you could see if it's for an English user or a French user, those kinds of things.
And sometimes people put in their whole family names of them absolutely.
So and in this book, by the way, we can see say Saint Thomas being put alongside some very prominent figures.
So here we have Saint John the Evangelist here at one of the opening pages
shows, shows the Trinity. So I mean Thomas is in very good company in here.
Absolutely, it's so fantastic. So we've got a couple more questions.
Is it known what became of the knights who killed Becket? Yeah.
So they're very famous. And so their names are, I have in front of me.
They are Reginald Fitzurse, Hugh de Morville, Richard Brito and William de Tracy.
And my favourite story from this actually, is that, well, they were all punished severely.
They all had their lands, their money taken away from them.
They were sent to exile themselves to France and punishment.
So there is a big thing where Henry was completely penitent for this.
He did a whole pilgrimage to Canterbury to essentially apologise where the monks kind of whipped him and things like that.
And William de Tracy sent an amazing charter to Canterbury apologising for murdering Becket.
But then he says, but if you think about it, you wouldn't have a martyr without me.
So he's still thinking like, am I in the wrong? So he's really funny.
It's a really interesting history. And we still have that charter today at Canterbury, so I really love it.
And Becket originally, remind us, had gone to France in exile because the King was unhappy with him?
Or, could you just refresh what you said. Yes he went to exile because if he stayed in England, he would have been arrested and prosecuted.
So he couldn't be arrested in France, so it's kind of like when you flee the law to another country.
That's essentially what he did. And it continued. There's other archbishops who also flee to France and things in exile.
So a lot of kind of hostility between King and Church in the Middle Ages.
And one more question
I think for this section. We hear a lot about annotations that book owners make in their volumes, is it quite unusual Becket didn't annotate the volume that we saw?
That's why it's quite interesting. So I think he may have used them as, because they're such a high status book, maybe as display copies,
or he had them just to study and had something else
he was making notes in, and because there's other manuscripts we know he owned from library lists of the Canterbury Cathedral,
where he also owned lots of civil legal texts and things, that those that don't survive
maybe he made notes in, but the ones that do survive, unfortunately, we just don't have notes
in them so it could be just he might have written in ones that we lost and that's really it.
Yeah. Thank you. So we've got a couple more general questions, which I think I'll save for a bit later. So I'll pass back to you and Andrew.
So Thomas had as we saw, he had an incredible impact across centuries, across time and so I was like I'll bring along a manuscript that,
of course, you, of course, since you've worked at Canterbury Cathedral
you have, you know absolutely everything about Thomas Becket
so there's no way for me to trip you up. But I thought, if I want to surprise you with something, I might bring along something from Oxford.
Now one of the, there's of course, lots of stories about what happened to people who went to visit Thomas, who went on a pilgrimage like,
like Chaucer's pilgrims to, to report their experiences, to perhaps suggest that maybe you should consider going there, too.
And people would collect these stories in books called miracle collections, which are really popular in the late 12th century.
One of the people went to Thomas was somebody named Robert of Cricklade, who used to be called the first chancellor of the University of Oxford.
If you look in old Victorian books, he's not really considered that, to have that status anymore, but nonetheless, he was a real person.
He was the prior of Saint Frideswide's Priory in Oxford, which was, it's now it's now Christ Church Cathedral.
And the, it was it's his house, that had, you know, it's been sort of, its origins are lost in the mists of time.
There was and, you know, whether it's the Viking invasion, there was the, uh, probably all its records were destroyed when the Danes were, burned in it
in the 11th century.
But, uh, and so but they had this Saint Frideswide who had, who was some sort of destination for pilgrims and, but but Robert was the prior.
He was the second prior of of this,
we found this recreated house of Saint Frideswide and he went on a book hunting trip to Sicily to track down Greek medical books.
There's this wonderful letter trying, imploring Robert to stay in Sicily and say, well, we've got all the books here.
We have Greek learning. Why would you ever want to leave here? But he went home and probably regretted it, because he writes in a letter saying,
well I've, you know, I'm on my way, walking from Sicily all the way back to Oxford.
He caught some sort of, some sort of infection.
And he says that by the time he, by the time he got back to Oxford, his leg gets swollen up.
He says that, a couple of Easters later, he was so he was so sick that he had to preach seated, which was the ultimate shame, I think, for him.
But then he visited Thomas shortly after, after the martyrdom, in 1171.
And he says that he then, he writes a letter to Benedict of Canterbury, whom we'll see in a moment, saying that he actually,
that by the time he, he got some of the water of Saint Thomas, which was water that was filtered with the blood of Saint Thomas.
So tiny particles, and he bathed his foot in it
And then he didn't notice, I think, but by the time he got, but then he was going back to Oxford, he
noticed the swelling went down, and by that time he was home he was cured.
And obviously they thought that this is a fantastic idea for for bringing home in another way,
because we see that soon after that there is a there's a lot of activity around, there's building activity around Saint Frideswide's Priory.
And then they had a grand translation of Saint Frideswide in 11,
in 1180 and this so they they created a new shrine of Saint Frideswide and which is something this is something you would do a translation,
You'd move the relics, the saint, from one place in a, in a church or somewhere else to another place.
So it's from the Latin words just moving it across.
And, uh, so this is, this is how they were trying to signal Saint Frideswide
is here for for pilgrims. And we have this book that was made between 1180 and 1183, The Miracles of Saint Frideswide.
So this is a really this is a very typical miracle collection for that period.
And, and it's a really wonderful collection of what happened to pilgrims who who came to Oxford.
And we can see from these stories that, uh, it's a lot of it's women,
actually, more than half the people in this book are women. There's children.
The writer of this book says that he wanted to reach both the rich and the poor.
The, you know, the highest and the lowest people.
And, so there's, you know, there's only one student of this book, and it's not as if this is just addressing, you know, rich people.
And, although he's obviously very pleased when he did get nobility.
But the really funny thing is that in a number of these stories,
the pilgrims are successful because they went to Saint Thomas's first and then they weren't healed.
Or maybe there's one, one woman who was, who was then able to see in one eye, then finally went to St Frideswide and then was able to see fully again.
And so there's this obvious tension between, between Oxford and Canterbury and, and probably other local cults as well.
Is that? Have you have you seen other any other examples of this sort of thing?
Yes, absolutely. This is amazing. And as you mentioned, the shrines are such an important business as well.
So you really want to draw in kind of these visitors and as well as noble people to visit them,
who will donate money so that to help with the upkeep of these shrines and churches.
So one big competitor, as well was York with Canterbury, where they have William of York as a saint,
but they never get enough attention and they're always kind of jealous of Canterbury and things like that.
And they're like, no, we can also have miracles, come visit us. So it's really, really interesting.
Absolutely. And like I said, it's so interesting that a lot of these figures are women and that these are people who are
just ordinary people coming to these shrines looking for spiritual and medical guidance.
So they're really fun, fantastic stories, absolutely. Yes so people like Chaucer's pilgrims.
Yes. That's it. That's why it's such an amazing variety of society that you see in The Canterbury
Tales really reflects the real people that are going to these places,
definitely from all walks of life. They're all interested in visiting these places.
Absolutely, as you mentioned, from spiritual guidance all the way to as holiday destinations.
So it's a medieval tour of England and Europe, they're going to these amazing places like Oxford,
Canterbury, the Holy Land, Rome, and one famous pilgrim,
as well as, is of course, Margery Kempe, who goes around to all these places and she writes amazing stories about where she's visited.
And we'll see in a bit what kind of happens when you go to these places.
But it's really exciting and I love these stories so much. In fact, it's there's even a, you know, in, in Oxford,
there's even a church of Saint Thomas Becket that was, uh, that was, is probably built about ten years after this
this manuscript was made, and it was, you can imagine that it was it was built by a,
a rival, a rival abbey to Saint Frideswide, Osney Abbey.
And you can imagine that them creating this church of Saint Thomas was on one hand,
it was it was making it much easier to get to the relics of Saint Thomas.
But on the other hand, you can imagine that this is them thumbing their nose at the would-be competitors to Canterbury.
Absolutely and Canterbury even had its own college at the time in Oxford as well
for a lot of monks, who'd come out to Oxford to study so big, major religious houses had other kind of places to study in Oxford as well.
So these students are in Canterbury, they're coming up to Oxford too.
So it would have been a great space for them to come and pray as well.
They would have loved it. Right of course. And so it's this really strong little interlinked world.
Yeah, absolutely. So it's really interesting. And then that all just changed at the Reformation.
And now Canterbury College is part of Christ Church College as well.
Yeah. So it's really really fun. So now I think you know we have a copy, we have a copy of
Oh yeah so this is an amazing copy of another miracle collection by a monk, actually at Canterbury called Benedict of Peterborough.
And Benedict was actually a contemporary of Becket, and he may have even witnessed his murder.
We know that he wrote A Passion of Becket, which is actually kind of the story of his martyrdom,
and it kind of really reflects the other eyewitness accounts.
And Benedict made the largest miracle collection relating to Becket at the time.
So really similar timeline as the Saint Frideswide manuscript.
And he wrote the miracles chronologically, as people were reporting them to him.
And so monks were actually positioned in the Cathedral looking at the tomb of Becket to witness miracles being performed and writing them down.
And as you mentioned Robert, people would write in to them to say these miracles would be completed later.
And these are such fascinating recordings.
So they've everything from a girl had lost her cheese,
so a big piece of cheese, and so she had a dream that she prayed to Becket and had a dream
Becket showed her where it was in a barrel, and she found her cheese.
So it made it into the collection. To an amazing story of a man who was castrated for a theft
and then by miraculous, you know, intervention of Becket, his parts grew back,
and he had also had been stabbed in an eye, and his sight came back as well.
And this also is reflected in his story in stained glass at Canterbury as well.
So we love this story so much. So really, these are kind of not just your everyday oh, you know, my leg hurts,
So there's really fun things as well happening. And Benedict took them all seriously from the cheese to people's limbs and everything
so it's so much fun. And then basically by 1220, 50 years after Becket's death,
was when Archbishop Stephen Langton, and people may know, his recognise his name from his involvement with Magna Carta.
He was also kind of seen as an anti-authority figure standing up to the king.
And so he really took Becket as a personal mascot as well.
So he had this huge celebration, again at translation, where they moved Becket's body from this very simple tomb town that was down in the basement,
or crypt of the cathedral up to a major spot right in the nave of the cathedral,
in Trinity Chapel, right at the top, this huge,
beautiful gold shrine that got decorated with jewels and tapestries and everything so that everyone could come.
And this ceremony basically became one of the largest celebrations that England had ever seen in the Middle Ages.
Thousands of people came, including King Henry III, Henry's grandson, Henry II's grandson,
and delegates from Hungary and things and all of the local people of Canterbury were all there to see this happen.
And at that also became a major feast day as well for the translation on the 7th of July.
And so from then on, Canterbury was really a major pilgrimage destination for Europe as well as England.
And so it's really fascinating absolutely. And as we have this, we have this ex-politician who has by by standing up to authority, by dying,
he has managed to, he has created this entire movement of, in which people have actually become part of the story I suppose in which
so we have books such as this Benedict of Canterbury. It's not just, so this manuscript,
this manuscript, in fact, tells the story of Saint Thomas as a martyr, led by John of Salisbury.
Yeah. And but, but then we have Benedict of Canterbury, and people are distributing these stories.
And this is a way, I suppose, for, for even your little girl or the Wife of Bath, for that matter, to become a part of, of this entire story.
Yes. And this manuscript itself was made around 1200.
But we know at the time of the translation and other,
so every 50 years it became known as the Jubilee, where they would celebrate the translation and Becket all over again at the Cathedral.
And they would read out miracles from this collection as well, to celebrate him and remember his life and his miracles as a saint.
So it's really interesting how they kind of kept it going as an active movement.
Absolutely. Hmm. Speaking of which, Helen, have we had any more questions?
We've had several questions about the general making of manuscripts.
So I'm just going to put them together. So someone was asking about the ink that was used and what happened if scribes made a mistake
if they made a mistake, did they have to kind of remove a page and start over?
And then also about the kind of guidelines that you see in somw manuscripts to help them write on straight lines and so on.
So was that regularly done? Could a scribe write without them and so on.
So a kind of general question about how these manuscripts were created.
Well, every manuscript is. That's an excellent question, I should say. Every manuscript is a, is a fundamentally collaborative product.
It's and so we we see here, that we have this Benedict of Canterbury manuscript here that somebody would have been responsible for,
for, for, for, for preparing this parchment, which is a really, as I think you know this is a really smelly job.
Yes, absolutely. You don't want to be a parchmenter. So there probably would've been somebody who, as you say,
this, they're not quite so visible in this manuscript, but we can see these nice guidelines here to,
to set up the manuscript, make sure that it's all, because, of course, you know, you can see how straight these lines are.
And I've tried to I have tried to write like this.
It's so hard, yeah.
So it's really fun to actually have a go yourself with calligraphy classes, because it makes you realise how skilled these scribes actually are.
Yes. And I'm left handed, so you can only imagine, because we know left handed scribes did exist,
but they would write notes to say my hand hurts, so that's really tricky.
So it's really great to see how expert they were and how well-trained they were at writing.
Yes. Yeah and you can see their amazing standard scripts and then different scripts are popular across different time
frames. Absolutely. Yes. And since we're talking the hand, there's in fact,
you probably know, there's a wonderful calligrapher named Patricia Lovett who has a fantastic website where we can, you can see how it was made,
she, she shows you how to how to cut a pen, how to,
And she, she has books showing you how to, she did a collaborative book with another, with a paleographer named Michelle Brown,
in which they show you how you can actually write this script.
Um, and it's really hard, impossible. Yes.
Yeah. And I made, I was lucky enough to make a series of videos with her that are up on the British Library YouTube channel,
when we worked there and but recreating a manuscript from the 11th century, just one page.
And it took her about 50 hours just to do one page and decorate it.
So these take a long time and it's a lot of hard work
absolutely. And I was there in the background balancing everything for her
so I did that. So it's definitely, like you say, a team effort. It's not just one person doing this.
Absolutely. And now the the advantages of parchment to, to address the other half of that question,
are that it's really easy once you've gone to all that trouble
it's incredibly durable. I mean, we have, my my attitude as a, as a curator of medieval manuscripts is that,
well, this book, okay, this book is about what 800 years old, but in, but in a sense,
I feel that we should be treating this as a relatively young book,
because there's no reason why a 1000 year old manuscript shouldn't last for another thousand years.
And that's why it's so important that we treat, that
we treat them well, for one thing, because I mean it because, it's probably going to be more, if you think about there's probably
going to be more people in the future who will see this book than have seen this book so far,
which is, and this book is, you know, if you think about, this book has gone through every war you can think of, it's just sitting in front of us.
I mean, that is incredible to me. So parchment is amazing stuff.
All of this is, everything that you see is, is a natural pigment
and so it's, it's and it's, it's kept closed so it doesn't, it doesn't really deteriorate in a, in a serious way.
You can see here, by the way, that this is a slightly unusual form of correction, that they've actually struck this out in red,
that does happen occasionally, but other scribes had other techniques to to keep the page nice and tidy.
Sometimes people would just because parchment so thick, you could sort of just use a,
use a razor to, to actually scratch the ink off the page.
You could do that. You could cross it out in red. That's, I think, a bit more unusual in my experience, but,
or you could put little dots under lines to, to keep it neat.
But, show you don't need to read this.
So they had all these techniques to, to keep these books in good shape.
This book probably would have been a bit larger originally, and,
so that they could trim it down to get rid of the maybe damage around the edges, without actually losing the book.
So they also designed these to last for hundreds of years in the first place.
This is just a huge project in in the long term.
And a quick question about the binding. Is that original, I'm guessing probably not?
Yeah, this one is, I don't think it's, this one actually has a medieval binding.
I don't think it's original, but you can see that, you can see that has a big, thick probably oak board there and you can see all the concealed,
although the, probably worms that have gone through, actual bookworms are not, are a real thing.
So this is definitely a medieval binding.
I would, I guess you can also see, by the way, right here where, this have been where the chain staple was so
it would have been chained to the shelves of the Bodleian at one time.
You can also see if I just flip it over you can see how it's been
each section of it's been, uh, been sewn together.
This is really a work of art in itself, that lovely
sewn, and bound right there. So they've probably used bits of, I guess they probably reuse bits of the original binding in this,
but this is, this, leather covering is probably much newer.
So yes and no. Thank you and just before we move on to the next manuscript, someone had,
a question about one of the first folios you showed in that manuscript, the title page with the heading in red,
they just wondered if you could translate it. That would probably say here begin. He said it's something about miracles I think
and then someone else has very helpfully put the Latin into the Q&A box.
Let's see if we can get this on line.
This is definitely a collection of different lives of Becket by different relevant authors who are contemporary to Becket.
So that's why it's an important collection together. Right. Absolutely, yeah.
Thomas fan publishing. Yes. That's it. Yeah. It's by people who knew him
so it's really interesting. Yes. Here we go. Incipiunt Miracula Sancti Thome Archiepiscopus et Martyris.
Here, begin the miracles of Saint Thomas, the archbishop and martyr.
That's what they wanted to know, thank you very much. I think we'll go on to the next section and we'll pick up any other questions at the end.
Thank you. So we've heard all about Thomas Becket
I think we need more about the cult of the person. Yes, absolutely.
So as we were talking about that, pilgrimage was such a multifaceted experience and really individual for the person going on this journey.
So everyone could be doing anything from they're visiting shrines for spiritual or physical healing,
as well as praying for the souls of, you know, deceased loved ones.
And as well as a holiday destination. So this is really important tourism for churches as well as holy sites.
And so it's really fun to see what pilgrims did.
And they would do things like bring home souvenirs from these places as well.
So that includes they write eyewitness accounts and draw maps of their own journeys to share with their friends and families and circulate them.
And then we'd also see different items that people would purchase as well.
And one of these really fun things was what we call pilgrim badges or tokens.
And normally pilgrim badges are made of, they could be made of anything from just cheap lead all the way up to gold,
depending on who's visiting and with the cheap lead ones, they be bought by anybody.
So you can think of them as modern day kind of political or music badges for your favourite band,
and you'd put them on your clothes, on your hats, on your walking sticks and your bags and things.
And so, for example, Saint James of Compostela would have a shell that everyone recognises.
So these are very distinct badges that are personal to each saint or place that they're from.
And this is an amazing little 15th century, another Book of Hours actually.
And this is made in Flanders, but it was owned by a family in Bordeaux.
And whoever owned this manuscript had a personal devotion to the Virgin Mary.
And this amazing page shows little tokens sewn into their prayer book with scenes of the Virgin Mary beside prayers of the Virgin Mary.
So you can see this little sign of the crucifixion beside a scene of the Virgin holding her son's body, the Pieta scene.
So while this person is using this prayer book they're thinking about, they're reciting the words of the prayer.
They're contemplating the images of the prayer,
and they're also thinking about the physical places they've been to and probably touching these images and the tokens at the same time.
So it's really deeply personal and really moving to see these in a book together.
And it kind of reflects the entire pilgrim experience in one little book.
So it's not just the experience of going on this big trip, but then every time you use this book, which probably would have
been every day, probably several times a day,
you would have, you would have had the opportunity to remember that little trip and, and re-enacted it in your mind.
Yeah, absolutely. And remember, why you're there, the loved ones you're praying for.
So it's a whole process and it's really, really wonderful and very moving to see these kind of survive together.
And that's how you say they survived together as it was stored closed.
So it keeps them safe. And you can see that they would have sewn these little tokens physically onto the page.
So it holds it there. And, so it's really lovely to see somebody doing that.
So this is somebody with a deep faith to the Virgin Mary keeping these in their book.
So it's really lovely, absolutely.
And of course this is also an I mean I think that you can see a really good understanding too that of why it,
why pilgrimage is still so important to, in Islam for example. Yes, absolutely.
So it's just kind of I think this experience definitely transcends kind of time and space.
So it's really wonderful. So you can still see why this person did this.
So it's really special. And then we also have some very special tokens as well that reflect Thomas Becket.
So there's so many badges that survive across kind of Europe.
And my favourite badges are, of course, Thomas Becket badges.
And these are really wonderful little badges here.
These are replicas that I have with me of ones that we know that survive.
So definitely you can look up online ones from the British Museum, the Museum of London and things.
So these are really special and really lovely.
And you can see just how small they are. And these badges would have been pinned to your clothing.
And so these, they're images of Becket's head and his mitre, his archbishop's mitre,s hat and his
bust, but it's not, actually, we don't think it's an image of Becket himself.
So if you remember how he died, that the crown of his skull was cut off.
That was a very important relic to the Cathedral that they kept in a
reliquary shaped like Becket's head. So this is actually,
and it was kept near the shrine that we know from eyewitness accounts of visitors to Canterbury Cathedral, in what we call the Corona Chapel.
And the corona, of course, in Latin means head.
So not only is this chapel at the head of the Cathedral, it's at the very top, but it also reflects Thomas Becket's own head.
So it has this double meaning in the Cathedral,
and they would have had this beautiful decorated reliquary that looked like Becket, that kept his skull fragment in it.
And we know from the surviving, book of the Shrine Keepers that the reliquary only came out on very special occasions for very important visitors.
So not everybody got to see this and it's only on important feast days,
Like his martyrdom and and things that they make a big performance
so bring it out and people could pray to it. And then outside in the precincts they would make these in lead, blacksmiths
would be selling them probably hundreds a day to people for really cheap,
but they'd all be buying these little badges to take home with them of what they'd seen in the Cathedral of his reliquary.
And there's also amazing ones that survive that depict his shrine itself,
as well as even the boat that he sailed back to England on and his martyrdom as well.
So they're really imaginative, really fun badges, absolutely.
So they're essentially trying to, using these delightful puns to communicate,
This is the ultimate say that, well, everybody, you know, every martyr receives the the crown of martyrdom, the corona martyris,
But but here you can see the actual corona.
of Thomas. Yeah. And it's, you can tell this is Thomas as well, because a lot of archbishops would be wearing their mitre's hat
but this actually says Thomas on it to reflect his name as well.
And it'd be like when I was a teenager I'd wear badges of my favourite bands
so this is very much, you can show to others when you're on pilgrimage
like, yeah, Becket's my saint. So it's really, really fun, yeah.
And I really love these badges absolutely. That's brilliant.
So it's another, so again and it's, it's looking at it's, it's really in the same vein as that Benedict of Peterborough miracles that we saw.
It's all sorts of, it's a multimedia way of promoting
you should go to Canterbury. Yes and that's why the kind of, the material culture around Becket and his cult is fantastic.
So it's from medieval manuscripts to badges to even the stained glass in the Cathedral that survives.
They did, they're called the miracle windows because they still reflect all of the miracles of Becket.
And they're worth looking up online, and they're basically massive advertisements for Becket as well.
So if you like going to a hockey game and you see giant billboards of your favourite players and things,
they're all depicting, scenes of Becket curing others, chasing demons from people who pray to him and things.
So it's a really amazing multi kind of sensory experience going to the Cathedral and seeing all of this.
And this isn't just of course, for literary literate people. This is, this is for everybody.
Yes. But that's why it's so great to see the images and the, you would have music performed
and we know that in the later Middle Ages, texts were read out in Middle English as well as Latin.
So it's for all walks of life to come to see the Cathedral and to hear everything.
Definitely. Um, yeah. So we had, so that
I think that gives us a really good sense of what, why Chaucer used these pilgrims to create this amazing work of English literature.
Yeah. Yeah. So it's so fantastic
and that's really kind of the high point in literature for Becket is hm mentioned in the text that he is the final destination for this fantastic work.
But, so because obviously Chaucer really was interested in like Dante and things where his journey is to heaven and these people,
their journey is to Canterbury. So I think it's like a little bit of heaven in England.
So it's really exciting to see it. And that's how they don't even need to name him, that
they're, they just know they're on their way to see Becket at the end of the journey.
But you said this is a high point. Yeah. What happens after that? And then it's a low point so it's like
oh no. So then what happens is everything comes to a halt under the Reformation, under King Henry the Eighth and King Henry the Eighth,
he not only had obviously issues with the Catholic Church, but he took serious issue with Becket himself,
as Becket was still such a powerful symbol within the Church
against authority, that there was no space in Henry, Henry's world for another rival, even dead.
So he made a proclamation in 1538, essentially to unsaint Becket,
and that every mention of Becket in text had to be erased, and every image of him also had to be destroyed.
So this was kind of the end of Becket's cult for the Middle Ages.
And even his physical shrine was destroyed, and his, um, and the Cathedral's library was destroyed.
So even all the written sources about him don't survive from Canterbury today, and only bits and pieces like Becket's books are scattered around.
And this is a very powerful kind of sign of it in this manuscript, because, as you mentioned, erasing texts.
It's not just a basic process. It's a real process of physical destruction that you have to get in there and scrape it out.
And this is an amazing prayer book that had short prayers to Becket.
Yeah. And you can see where the owner, to follow the rule of Henry,
he actually scrapes out Thomas's name and out of it so you can't see who it's dedicated to anymore.
And then there's also other works in this manuscript that it referred to indulgences that are also scraped out as like traditional Catholic practices.
So people really had to comply with the proclamation.
So some people, it varies so greatly. So some people will just do a technical tiny little cross through so that they can still read the text
but this person has taken a knife and physically taken that time to scrape his name out of the book.
So this is a really interesting manuscript that shows that process.
And as you say, like as a, curator, one thing that manuscript researchers look out for are these signs,
because then that will tell you that this book was in England at the time of the Reformation,
and then a lot of the calendars that would have had Becket's feast day,
it's crossed out or erased as well, as well as the titles of popes and things with Henry's other proclamations.
So nonetheless, it does, so this is, so in some ways, this this act of destruction is useful in some ways to us. For us to locate it
yes. And then it's just, it's kind of great in a way that it shows us what happened to this book
And in another way, we know that we've lost so much about Becket that
we know that a lot of these manuscripts we've looked at today,
that they're copies of originals that would have been at Canterbury, but just don't simply survive anymore.
So it's kind of just this permanent reminder of how destructive the dissolution of the monasteries actually was.
And this, yeah, this is a 15th century prayer book that is also made for English
use so that's why somebody is like, if I don't do it, I'll be punished,
yeah absoutely. But you but you have to wonder what was going through their minds that, you know, they're crossing this out but you can actually still read it pretty well.
Yeah so it could be someone who's like, I'm just doing it to technically comply,
Wink, wink but then some people, they cover the whole pages with ink and things so you can't see through it so
it's all different levels of deception. Right.
And for that matter, in Oxford, the I mentioned there's that there's a saint, Church of Saint Thomas Becket,
that was renamed to the Church of Saint Nicholas. Oh. But of course, Nicholas was another rebellious bishop who was not exactly known for,
and I mean, his his name actually means victory of the people.
And so it sort of begs the question, you know, who was actually getting the the last word there?
Was it actually the king or was it was it a victory of the people?
Yeah. And then obviously Becket's memory still survives today.
And even at Canterbury, where the shrine was located, they still have permanently a single candle lit on the site.
So pilgrims can still come today to still see where Becket was.
So he's still an important figure for us today so it's really fascinating.
Well, what an incredible story. Alison it's been an absolute pleasure to, to have the chance to share these manuscripts together.
Oh it's fine, absolutely. Yes. Thank you both.
And we have got a couple of questions in a few minutes just to finish up, if that's okay.
So, a couple of questions about the Douce manuscript. Looks very very beautiful.
Would it have been very expensive? Would it have to have been someone wealthy who would own a manuscript like that? And they were saying just the act of
sewing the pilgrim tokens in just feels like quite a damaging thing to do.
And any idea of how much that sort of book might cost in terms of an average salary? Would it just be beyond most people at that time?
Yeah, so manuscripts are interestingly not as expensive as you think today.
So someone
did an amazing kind of study of this that the a nice Book of Hours like that would have cost the same as about like a silver goblet or something.
So it's still a luxury item to have, but sometimes a big manuscript might be the same price as a small car or something.
But yes, absolutely, that a lot of kind of wealthier people would have had the more decorated Books of Hours, because later as print comes in,
then people are buying the cheaper Books of Hours and as you mentioned, actually personalising it with the sewing.
They wouldn't have seen that as damaging the book because it's a private book.
So it's kind of like you adding in your own personal things
and these tokens are so spiritually important to that person that they're worth sewing
into the book because they're helping them in that book's function as the prayer book.
So that's why that that's really interesting that they're doing that.
And there's a great study by an academic called Kate Rudy on personalising these manuscripts and as a show of their piety.
So they are kind of like individual, kind of really expensive notebooks.
Yeah that people that have gotten decorated.
And if you have your pilgrim tokens in your book and it sort of helps you re-enact the experience, was the physical act of going on pilgrimage
extremely important, or could you just have a book which had those in and not actually be there yourself?
That's another question. Was it really important personally to go to the site and have that spiritual experience yourself?
Yes, I think that's a really interesting question. And one thing that's really important in Canterbury is you mentioned the water relic,
the water and blood relic, so you could only get that on site as a cure.
And they were produced in kind of pilgrim tokens called ampulla, and they look like little flasks.
And that you hold this little water that was mixed with a tiny, probably minuscule bit of Becket's blood.
And so you could only get that on the site.
They'd sell it to you and you drink it as a cure, and they'd even say things in the miracle stories, like we told them to go home for three days.
If it doesn't work, come back again. So it is really important.
And there's one funny story I wish I could remember which king this was, but a king of France whose son was very sick.
He actually travelled to Canterbury from France to pray for his son at Becket's shrine, and his son recovered, and as thanks for,
his son recovering and making this huge physical journey, so it would be seen as like if I'm putting in the physical effort
the Saint sees that as well. And as a thank you, this King for, I think several kings in a row kept sending wine annually to Canterbury,
and they didn't have to pay tax on it because they're so grateful his son recovered.
They got this amazing French royal wine, and it lasted all the way up to the Hundred Years War.
So this amazing token. So it's really fascinating.
And as you mentioned, it was very important that going to Canterbury
butit doesn't work so they go to Oxford instead. So physical journey is very important as well as the spiritual remembering.
Right. I mean it is intensely physical. Not only that it was also common that people would actually sleep overnight at shrines.
Of course this goes back to, what's called intubation, goes back to ancient Greece.
And so there's a story in the miracles of St Frideswide in which there there's, you know,
there's this woman who wakes up in the middle of the night is having a dream about
Frideswide going and mopping the brows of all the pilgrims in their church.
You suddenly have this idea of, you know, I remember reading that and having this image of this very sort of scrubbed,
clean church, and then suddenly realising, wait, this is overnight.
There's actually people sleeping everywhere and vomiting.
And I mean, this is this is real life.
Yeah, it's really interesting.
And I mentioned that shrine book and they do say how often they need to clean because of how many pilgrims are coming in and they're dirty,
so it's really funny. And just to finish off, did any of his relics survive such as his skull?
Yeah. Or were they destroyed with the books during the Reformation? It's really fascinating because a lot of relics actually survive on the continent.
And so for one example, for the, one, his tunic that he supposedly died in is now in the Vatican, so that later king also gave that.
I think Henry the Fourth gave that to the Vatican as a sign of his devotion to the Church, he'd be like, I'm not like Henry the Second.
Yeah, here's something lovely. And there's even like, bones that are attributed to Becket that still survive and things like that.
So there are relics still relating to Becket, and most recently,
there's only one book of Becket's that was treated as a relic that we know was displayed by his shrine, a prayer book.
And it's listed in an inventory of Canterbury Cathedral.
And most recently, Christopher de Hamel possibly identified it in a manuscript that survives in the Parker Library in Cambridge.
So that book may survive as well. So there's different kind of materials. As you say
it's such a material, physical thing, the sainthood and the relics and pilgrimage process.
So there's a lot of evidence for all of this. Thank you.
I think we're going to have to wrap it up there but any questions we haven't got
to we will send in a follow up email so thank you to everybody that's asked a question.
Thank you to everyone for joining us today. I know we've had people from all over the world and it's wonderful to have your curiosity and enthusiasm with us.
Thank you to Alison Ray and to Andrew Dunning and our behind the scenes technical team Greg.
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