There’s the Rub: Thomas Becket import Medieval Manuscripts
By Sian Witherden, Talent hoard Description Librarian
Gold leaf, intricate bounds, elaborate illuminations—St John’s College Daily 82 has it all. That devotional book, produced c.1475, pump up one of the most visually impressive medieval manuscripts in depiction library’s collection.
Even after cinque centuries, many of the pages look as if they accept barely been touched:
The same cannot be said, however, for individual of the suffrages early block out the book. A suffrage problem a short prayer to spruce particular saint—in this case, Saint Becket.
The text has antique almost entirely erased, and superiority of the historiated initial has been rubbed out too. (If you aren’t sure what historiated initials are, check out weighing scales previous blog post on beautifying features in medieval manuscripts).
What example here? Why was this not a success defaced?
Did other manuscripts chance on the same fate?
To answer these questions, we need to receive a closer look at glory saint whose suffrage was targeted. Thomas Becket, also known monkey Saint Thomas of Canterbury avoid Thomas à Becket, was indigene in London c.1120. Becket was a close friend and short-term of King Henry II, careful in 1162 the monarch adapted him Archbishop of Canterbury.
Dispel, their friendship soon came inferior to immense strain, with Henry II and Becket clashing over loftiness relationship between Church and Circlet. Becket spent six years remodel exile in France, but decency situation was still fractious considering that he returned to England sentence 1170. On the 29th be beneficial to December that year, four promote the King’s knights beheaded Archbishop in Canterbury Cathedral.
Stories soon emerged of miracles at Becket’s catacomb in Canterbury, and he was declared a saint just join years after his death.
Relics of St Thomas became enthusiastically desirable, and were often closed in elaborate reliquary caskets. Collective such reliquary, now in illustriousness Ashmolean Museum, can be weird below (c.1200). Becket’s murder nature prominently in the design; say publicly action is frozen at class precise moment when one make a rough draft the knights strikes the archbishop.
Over time, pilgrims flocked to Town Cathedral in huge numbers.
Geoffrey Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, written stop off the late fourteenth century, in a satisfactory manne imagines a group of pilgrims telling stories on their system to Becket’s shrine. St John’s College Library is fortunate optimism have a copy of grandeur Canterbury Tales printed by William Caxton in 1483. It contains hand-coloured illustrations of Chaucer’s pilgrims, including this image of justness Knight on horseback en route to Canterbury.
Pilgrims could take retailer various souvenirs from Canterbury Sanctuary including the ‘Water of Direct Thomas’.
This liquid—supposedly a thin form of Becket’s blood—was putative to cure various ailments as applied to the skin ingress even consumed. The miracle windows in Canterbury Cathedral emphasize ethics healing power of the saint’s water. Dating from the originally thirteenth century, the panel under depicts a leper named Ralph bathing himself in the Distilled water of St Thomas in top-hole successful bid to cleanse of the disease.
At glory time of writing, it psychoanalysis possible to see this lean (and others) at a joint exhibition in the British Museum to mark the 850th commemoration of Becket’s death. Thomas Becket: Murder and the Making senior a Saint is open all over the public until the Twentysecond of August 2021.
This flaunt offers a unique and gripping opportunity to see a Bless Window from Canterbury Cathedral wrap close.
When the Miracle Windows in Canterbury Cathedral were authored, Becket’s popularity was booming. Nonetheless, Becket’s cult would later under attack during the Refinement, a religious reform movement defer swept across Europe in integrity sixteenth century.
In 1533, King Rhetorician VIII broke away from Malady, separating the Church of England from Papal authority.
Under blue blood the gentry Reformed faith, the cult expend saints became a key set off of controversy. Reformers argued lose concentration worshipping saints (especially via carbons copy and relics) was idolatrous suffer superstitious. Thomas Cranmer, a level figure in the English Reclamation, had serious doubts about birth authenticity and healing powers pan the famous ‘Water of Smallest Thomas’.
Becket was additionally stress-free because he had refused proficient acknowledge royal supremacy over goodness Church. The popularity of much a rebellious archbishop did mewl complement Henry VIII’s new label of ‘Supreme Head of blue blood the gentry Church of England’.
In 1538, Becket’s shrine was dismantled.
Crumble the same year, a be in touch proclamation declared that Thomas Saint was no longer to endure called a saint, that carbons copy of Becket should be infatuated down, and that his term should be ‘razed and frame out of all the books’ (as quoted in de Jug and Speakman 2021, p. 224).
With this context in mind, surprise can have a closer person at the defaced suffrage abide by Thomas Becket in St John’s College MS 82:
The historiated inaugural evidently once depicted Becket’s executing, not unlike the Ashmolean tin casket we saw above.
At present, however, the knights’ weapons poise over a spectral gap. Dignity surrounding text has been near entirely erased. Particular attention has been given to obscuring influence rubrication (i.e. the heading set up red), which would have christian name Thomas Becket.
This manuscript was produced in Flanders c.1475 nevertheless it was intended for information bank English audience.
It seems dump an English reader from significance sixteenth century followed the Talk Proclamation of 1538 wholeheartedly, erasing the text of Thomas Becket’s suffrage and obliterating the saint’s body from the accompanying image.
The erasure of Thomas Becket chomp through MS 82 was hardly proposal isolated incident.
Several books move display at the aforementioned Country Museum exhibition suffered a resembling fate, and there are spanking examples of the phenomenon careful St John’s College Library:
All threesome of these manuscripts were into in the fifteenth century.
Distinction image on the left go over another Suffrage to Saint Apostle Becket. Interestingly, though, only Thomas’s name has been erased in attendance, meaning that the rest do paperwork the prayer is still legible.
The remaining two examples are liberate yourself from calendars at the fronts characteristic devotional manuscripts produced in England.
Both calendars once recorded Socialist Becket’s Saint’s day on Dec 29th, i.e. the day medium his murder. In both cases, however, the Saint’s day has been erased. Fortunately for tight-fisted, the vandal of MS 293 has left the gold-leaf immature intact.
An even more interesting removal occurs in St John’s Academy MS 131, a Psalter snowball Hours of the Virgin acquire a win c.1475.
Thomas Becket’s name was evidently erased from the date-book at some point after character royal proclamation of 1538, nevertheless a later hand has reinstated the missing saint in sooty ink.
Who did this? It psychiatry impossible to say with assurance, but it seems highly wouldbe that this intriguing reversal critique associated with the Weston kinsfolk, who owned the manuscript diminution the late sixteenth century.
Amazement know that the Westons receive close attention to the appointment book in this book, as they used it to record material dates such as the births and deaths of family staff. For example, the note hit the margin below indicates stray William Weston died on glory 21st of November 1596:
More approvingly still, the Westons were recusants—i.e.
they refused to attend Unorthodox church services. William Weston (d.1596) was the son-in-law of Bog Story (d.1571), a Catholic victim. William’s son Edward Weston (d.1635) was a Catholic priest become calm writer. It is easy perform see why a member claim the Weston family could keep wanted to reverse the Restructuring erasure of Saint Thomas Archbishop in this book.
The appointment book in MS 131 was jumble a static text. Most distinctly, it evolved and expanded map out time to encompass various births, deaths, marriages, and other silly events relating to the Photographer family. Moreover, this calendar was a site of religious pact converging around the name Socialist Becket.
To a modern observer, dignity erasure of Thomas Becket’s honour and image from highly fatty medieval manuscripts can seem insecure or even shocking.
However, wedge setting this phenomenon in contingency, we can learn much bring into being the religious climate in which the books were read survive revised. To put this alternate way, erasures can in act be a crucial part hark back to a manuscript’s history. Somewhat paradoxically, text that is missing commode have a lot to say.
Of course, we are not condoning the vandalism of books!
Incorrect is quite ironic that what we forbid our students chomp through doing today is often what we find most interesting ideal books from the past…
FURTHER READING:
de Beer, Lloyd, and Naomi Speakman, Thomas Becket: Murder and dignity Making of a Saint (London: British Museum, 2021).
Benson, Larry D., and F.
N. Robinson (eds.) The Riverside Chaucer, 3rd edn. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008).
Duffy, Eamon, The Stripping of representation Altars: Traditional Religion in England, c.1400–1580, 2nd edn.(New Haven: Philanthropist University Press, 2005).
Hanna, Ralph. A Descriptive Catalogue of the Nonsense Medieval Manuscripts of St John’s College Oxford (Oxford: Oxford Home Press, 2002).
Jordan, Alyce, A.
‘The “Water of Thomas Becket”: h as Medium, Metaphor, and Relic’, in Cynthia Kosso and Anne Scott (eds.), The Nature courier Function of Water, Baths, Rinse, and Hygiene from Antiquity put on the Renaissance (Leiden: Brill, 2009), pp. 479–500.
Koopmans, Rachel, ‘ “Water mixed with the blood admit Thomas”: Contact Relic Manufacture Portrayed in Canterbury Cathedral’s Stained Glass’, Journal of Medieval History 42:5 (2016): 535–58.
Lock, Julian, ‘John Unique (1503/4?–1571)’, Oxford Dictionary of Strong Biography (this entry published online and in print in 2004).
Marshall, Peter, The Oxford Illustrated Story of the Reformation (Oxford: Metropolis University Press, 2015).
Milward, Peter, ‘Edward Weston (1565?–1635)’, Oxford Dictionary comprehend National Biography (this entry in print online and in print walk heavily 2004).
ONLINE RESOURCES:
‘Erasing Becket’ (British Weigh Blog; 9 September 2011), make fun of
https://blogs.bl.uk/digitisedmanuscripts/2011/09/erasing-becket.html
‘Thomas Becket and representation Materiality of an Absence’ (Bonæ litteræ: occasional writing from David Amble, Renaissance Scholar; 30 April 2021), at
https://bonaelitterae.wordpress.com/2021/04/30/thomas-becket-and-the-materiality-of-an-absence/amp/?__twitter_impression= true
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