Part One

The choice of the monastery of Christ Church may well have been made for Benedict by his family. It was one of two celebrated monasteries in Canterbury. The other was the monastery of St. Augustine, located just outside the city walls. St. Augustine’s had its own abbot, but Christ Church, as a so-called “monastic cathedral,” claimed the Archbishop of Canterbury as its abbot. Because archbishops were often elsewhere and had much to occupy their attention as the head of the English Church, the prior of Christ Church took on nearly all the day-to-day administration of the monastery and cathedral. It was a prestigious and powerful position that Benedict himself would hold. Nevertheless, monks who entered the community made their professions to the archbishop, not the prior, and the archbishop had the right to intervene in the monastery’s affairs.

Benedict likely became a monk at Christ Church around the time that Theobald served as Archbishop of Canterbury (1139–61). The writer Gervase of Canterbury made his profession as a Christ Church monk to Becket in 1163, while the miracle collector William of Canterbury was ordained a deacon by Becket in 1170, facts they carefully noted in their writings.1 See The Historical Works of Gervase of Canterbury, ed. W. Stubbs, RS 73 (London 1879–80) vol. 1, p. 231 and William of Canterbury, Vita Sancti Thomae Cantuariensis Archiepiscopi et Martyris, MTB, vol. 1, 1–136, p. 119. Benedict made no such statement in his works, and there are other indications that he was older than either Gervase or William. Starting in 1173/74, Benedict was rapidly promoted. In the space of a few years, he became the chancellor of Becket’s successor, Archbishop Richard of Dover, then the prior of Christ Church, and finally, in 1177, the Abbot of Peterborough, a position he held until his death in 1193. It does not seem likely that he was a young man when these promotions began. Perhaps he was in his thirties or early forties. King Richard I (b. 1157) would warmly refer to Benedict as his “father,” adding weight to the idea that Benedict was in his thirties or early forties in the 1170s.2 The Chronicles of Peterborough Abbey, Volume Two: Robert of Swaffham and Walter of Whittlesey, ed. and trans. Edward King (Northampton, 2022), pp. 64–107, at pp. 73 and 75. Benedict died on Michaelmas (September 29) 1193, perhaps, if these accountings are accurate, when he was in his fifties or sixties.3 For the date, see Swaffham, p. 75. Michaelmas is also recorded as Benedict’s death day in British Library Arundel MS 68 f.43v. The Peterborough chronicler Robert of Swaffham wrote that Benedict was prevented by death from finishing a building project near Peterborough Abbey’s brewhouse.4 Swaffham, p. 71. This, along with the fact Swaffham never describes him as elderly, suggests that he had not reached a great age.

We know much more about Thomas Becket’s early life.5 For scholarly biographies of Becket, see Frank Barlow, Thomas Becket (London, 1986), and Anne Duggan, Thomas Becket (London, 2004); for a work more aimed at a general audience, see John Guy, Thomas Becket: Warrior, Priest, Rebel: A Nine-Hundred-Year-Old Story Retold (New York, 2012). The son of a merchant named Gilbert Becket, he was born in London. The date of his birth is not certain, but is generally assumed to be c.1120.6 In the Passion (see Extract XI below), Benedict stated that Becket was fifty-three when he died, putting his birthdate c.1117. He went to Paris for schooling, and joined Archbishop Theobald’s household in Canterbury by 1146. He was then in his later twenties and was one of many clerks. At this point, monks of Christ Church (probably including the young Benedict) would have had only passing acquaintance with him, if any. Theobald made Becket the archdeacon of Canterbury in 1154. A short time later, in January 1155, Becket had a major career break – the newly crowned King Henry II chose him to be his chancellor.7 On Becket’s early life up to his appointment as chancellor, see Barlow, Thomas Becket, pp. 24–40. The Christ Church monks must have been cognizant of Becket at this point, but they probably had next to no personal contact with him. Becket continued to hold the post of archdeacon while serving as the king’s chancellor, but all the indications are that he held the role in absentia and spent very little time in Canterbury.8 See Barlow, Thomas Becket, p. 38.

When Theobald died, in 1161, Henry II was eager for Becket to be elected archbishop. Few Christ Church monks could have wanted him to receive this post.9 For analysis of the monks’ attitude to Becket, see Michael Staunton, “The Lives of Thomas Becket and the Church of Canterbury,” in Paul Dalton, Charles Insley, and Louise J. Wilkinson (eds.), Cathedrals, Communities and Conflict in the Anglo-Norman World (Woodbridge, 2011), 169–86, esp. 172–5. Theobald had been a monk, as had all but one of the archbishops appointed since the Norman Conquest. Becket was a secular clerk, a man who enjoyed luxurious clothing, fine dining, hawking, and all the trappings of wealth and power. He was no scholar, and betrayed few signs of spiritual depth before he became archbishop;10 For discussions of Becket’s character, see Michael Staunton, “Thomas Becket’s Conversion,” ANS 21 (1999): 193–211 and Hanna Vollrath, “Was Thomas Becket Chaste?” ANS 27 (2004): 198–209. but King Henry’s will prevailed and Becket was consecrated Archbishop of Canterbury in 1162, so becoming the abbot of the Christ Church monks as well. Shortly after his consecration, Becket scandalized his monks by wearing secular clothing when he entered the choir of Canterbury Cathedral, the place where the monks sang their daily services. Such a sartorial gaffe suggested that Becket had no respect for his new position. Multiple chroniclers record that the Christ Church monks grumbled over this faux pas, and it is safe to assume that Benedict was one of them. The new archbishop did change his clothing – warned to do so, as some chroniclers had it, by the vision of a Christ Church monk.11 On this incident, see Grim, Vita, p. 368; William of Canterbury, Vita, pp. 10–11; Anonymous I, Vita S. Thomae, in MTB, vol. 4, pp. 1–79, at p. 21; and Guernes de Pont-Sainte-Maxence, La Vie de saint Thomas Becket: A Life of Thomas Becket in Verse, trans. Ian Short (Toronto, 2013), pp. 37–8. He also changed his attitude towards Henry II. No longer the king’s right-hand man, Becket began to tangle with him over various matters of the rights and interests of the Church. Becket would spend little time at Canterbury before his dispute with the king became hot. In the fall of 1164, he fled England for France. Though many of his clerks and family members went into exile with him, not a single Christ Church monk did.12 For Becket’s early tenure as archbishop and the growing dispute with Henry II, see Duggan, Thomas Becket, pp. 33–83, and Guy, Thomas Becket, pp. 139–213.

During his long years of exile in France, Becket expressed the thought that his monks back in Canterbury were selfish, myopic, and possibly even traitorous. One of Becket’s most important clerks, John of Salisbury, wrote letters in which he excoriated the Christ Church monks for failing to send funds to support the archbishop: “Where has your charity been, I ask you? Where your love and your affection for your father?”13 Letters of John of Salisbury II: The Later Letters (1163–1180), ed. W. J. Millor and C. N. L. Brooke (Oxford, 1979), no. 300, p. 703. See also letters nos. 243–4, 292–5, and 299. Becket himself turned to threats. In a letter sent to the subprior of Canterbury in June 1169 (sent to the subprior because Becket refused to acknowledge the election of Prior Odo in 1168 because it had been done without his permission), Becket complained that “you have not so far made contact with us in our needs and those of Christ’s poor, exiled in him with us.” He urged the monks to support his campaign against his hated enemy, Gilbert Foliot, bishop of London, warning them to no longer “dissimulate” or “serve two masters,” because “we shall certainly spare no one in the future, but full vengeance will be taken according to the nature of the fault.”14 The Correspondence of Thomas Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury, ed. and trans. A. J. Duggan, OMT (Oxford, 2000), vol. 2, no. 209, pp. 910–21, at pp. 911 and 917.

This frustration should be counterbalanced by a consideration of the difficult position of the Christ Church community. In Becket’s absence, Henry II had put Ranulf de Broc in charge of Canterbury’s estates, and Ranulf in turn entrusted some of the work to his nephew, Robert de Broc. The one thing about life at Canterbury during Becket’s exile that Benedict makes very clear is how much he loathed and feared the de Brocs, whom he terms “sons of perdition” in both the Passion and in the Miracles.15 See Biographical Notes, Ranulf de Broc and Robert de Broc; Extracts I and VIII of the Passion; and I.14, I.18, and III.17. A picture of the situation at Christ Church is found in Book I of the Miracles, where Benedict describes the de Brocs as “men who mocked the name of the exiled martyr, detested his works and hated his person,” being so terrifying that “no one dared even to mutter against them. But they could speak, inflict harm on everything to do with us, and do nothing to promote the business of the lord of Canterbury” (I.18). In this “tempest,” Benedict writes, a Christ Church monk named Ralph was sent out of Canterbury, to Colchester, because he “was zealous in his resistance to the enemies, even though his zeal profited neither himself, nor us, nor his father.” When Benedict wrote this telling passage, he believed Becket to be a martyr and miracle-working saint, yet he still thought that Ralph’s full-throated support of the exiled archbishop was wrong. It had put “us,” the Christ Church monks, in too much danger.16 A later copyist, no doubt startled at the idea that anyone could display excessive zeal against Becket’s enemies, would cut out this passage. See Robertson’s comment in MTB, vol. 2, p. 51 n. 3.

Whether Benedict blamed Becket, the king, the de Brocs, or all of the above for this perilous situation is hard to tell. By choosing to write a short Passion rather than a full Life of Becket, Benedict avoided many minefields. He did not have to describe Becket’s life as a clerk or chancellor, delve into the ramifications of his dispute with Henry II, or discuss the venomous quarreling that came with it. He decided to describe just “the end and what happened after the end,” as the compiler who extracted parts of Benedict’s Passion put it.17 MTB, vol. 4, p. 425. This diplomatic decision may well have aided Benedict’s later political fortunes, but it makes it difficult to know what he thought about Becket’s actions during his lifetime. Writing in the 1180s, Gervase of Canterbury praised Becket in that he “did nothing in prejudice to the convent [of Christ Church] but showed them all favour and love.” However, he also stated that Becket “promised he would do them greater honor than any of his predecessors. But he was prevented by martyrdom, and God absolved His glorious athlete of his promise.”18 Gervase vol. 1, p. 48. Translation from Staunton, “The Lives of Thomas Becket and the Church of Canterbury,” pp. 172–3. The best Gervase could say, in sum, was that the balance was even. Becket did not actively work against the rights and interests of Christ Church when he was their abbot, but he did not do anything for them either, before his life was cut short. Benedict may well have agreed.

When the archbishop returned to England in late 1170, he was in Canterbury for less than a month before he was killed. In his Life of Becket, William of Canterbury described that month in some detail. Becket’s reunion with his monks was not rapturous. Although he greeted the monks with tears and the kiss of peace, absolved monks who had had contact with men he had excommunicated, and also accepted new monks into the community (including William himself), he also initially excluded some monks who had entered the community without his permission during his exile.19 William of Canterbury, Vita, pp. 102 and 119. There was very little time for the monks and the archbishop to get reacquainted or to sort out the mess caused by the de Brocs before four of the king’s knights arrived in Canterbury and confronted Becket in the archbishop’s palace. The date was Tuesday, December 29, 1170.

The surviving extracts start with the rancorous conversation between Becket and the king’s knights in the archbishop’s chamber late in the afternoon of December 29 and the knights’ departure to arm themselves (Extract I). Next comes Becket’s reluctant retreat from the archbishop’s palace into the cathedral, the arrival of the knights, an angry exchange of words, and then the blows that killed Becket (Extracts II–VI). Benedict provides an especially interesting and important account of the immediate aftermath of the murder, describing the knights’ looting of the archbishop’s palace, the appearance of Becket’s dead body, the collection of his blood, and the stunning discovery of a hair shirt on the archbishop’s corpse (Extracts VII–X). He concludes with a careful accounting of exactly when Becket died (Extract XI).

This basic chronology and structure of the events accord well with other contemporary descriptions of the murder, but there are some items and emphases that are unique to Benedict. First, while all of the chroniclers of Becket’s martyrdom drew parallels with Christ’s passion,22 See Staunton, Thomas Becket, p. 51. Benedict did so more than most, even proclaiming to his readers that “it would not be easy to find a passion of any other martyr that would seem to accord with such similarity to the Lord’s passion” (Extract X). He described Becket as “the lamb of God” and “the Lord’s anointed” (terms used for Christ in the Bible), compared Christ’s and Becket’s attempts to protect their respective followers, and noted Christ’s and Becket’s foreknowledge of their deaths (Extracts II, III and X). He also drew parallels between what Christ and what Becket said to their persecutors (Extracts III and IV), the mocking words of the soldiers at Christ’s crucifixion and those of Becket’s killers (Extract V), and the seizure of Christ’s clothing with the looting of the archbishop’s palace (Extract VIII).

Benedict also emphasized the actions of Christ Church monks on that last day of Becket’s life, describing how the knights attempted to sway the monks to their side until “the kind father responded for his sons,” and how the monks forced open a door for Becket and “urged their unwilling father to be led away” (Extract I). Benedict named the monks Richard and William, the cellarers of Christ Church, as the ones who unbolted a door for Becket (other writers state that the bolted door opened miraculously), and it is “some monks” who left vespers that bring Becket into the cathedral itself (Extract II). Benedict was also the only chronicler who portrayed Becket as trying to save some of his monks and followers by pulling them through a door into the cathedral (Extract II).

Becket’s fearless actions in his last hours made a strong impression on Benedict. His portrait of Becket is of a man who was aggrieved, weary, and despairing of justice for himself, a man who knew that death was coming even as he refused to register the physical danger he was in, a “father” who displayed concern for his “sons” just before his death. The only faintly critical note comes in Benedict’s description of the angry interview at the archbishop’s palace. He reported John of Salisbury’s criticism of Becket’s retorts to the knights: “Would it not have been better to take council with those present here, and to give them a more mild response?” In general, though, Benedict’s archbishop is a second Christ on the way to his death.

Contemporary writers agree that, of Becket’s company, only the clerk Edward Grim remained with him as the knights struck him down. That Benedict was probably in the near vicinity, though, is suggested by his description of what the murderers shouted as they left the monastery (“The king’s knights, the king’s!” (Extract V)), and his vivid description of the looting of the archbishop’s palace and the theft of archives (Extract VII). He likely saw for himself the slaughtered archbishop sprawled on the cathedral’s floor. In Extract VIII, he described the appearance of Becket’s dead face, stating that he had blood around his head like a crown, but that his face was marked only by a single line of blood running across his face. He stated that a small iron hammer and an axe were found underneath Becket’s body, and frankly confessed that for a time after the murder “everything was disordered and confused,” so much so that “each person could do as he liked” and take away mementos stained with Becket’s blood. The monks themselves collected this blood in a “most clean vessel,” and gave away some of Becket’s clothing to the poor on behalf of his soul, two decisions that would have long-term consequences.

Alone among the chroniclers, Benedict describes the trauma of the murder for those at Canterbury, writing that the night of the murder ‘was passed in suffering, groans and sighs’ (Extract IX). On the next day, the monks were forced to bury Becket immediately to preserve his corpse from mutilation and desecration. Herbert Bosham notes that “many of [the monks], just as the men of this world, had doubted the man’s sanctity,” but that their minds were changed by what they found: a hair shirt on the dead man’s corpse.23 Herbert Bosham, Vita Sancti Thomae Cantuariensis Archiepiscopi et Martyris, MTB, vol. 3, pp. 155–534, pp. 521–2. On the hairshirt, see Karen Bollermann and Cary J. Nederman, “Dirty Laundry: Thomas Becket’s Hair Shirt and the Making of a Saint,” in Clare Frances Monagle (ed.), The Intellectual Dynamism of the High Middle Ages (Amsterdam, 2022), pp. 131–46. Rough and coarse, a hair shirt – often made of goat’s hair – caused irritation when worn next to the skin, and so was worn by the religious as a form of penance. It was not what one would expect to find on the body of a man known for his fine clothing and luxurious living. The monks, Benedict writes, were “stunned by the sight of such hidden religion beyond what would have been believed, and with their reasons for mourning so multiplied, their tears began again” (Extract X).

Very few people, including Becket’s closest companions, had thought of Becket as a saint before his death. Minds had to be changed, and for the Christ Church monks, change happened much faster than for most. There is no reason to doubt that the violence within their beloved church traumatized the Christ Church monks, and that their discovery of the hair shirt on Becket’s corpse came as another shock. Even after this, there was at least one monk at Christ Church who thought that Becket merited his exile and laughed at the idea that he would be performing miracles, as we know from an account in William of Canterbury’s miracle collection.24 William of Canterbury, Miracula, I.9, p. 148; see also Grim, Vita, p. 440. The majority of the monks, though, no doubt reacted to the murder the way Benedict did: with tears, horror, and a new way of thinking about their now dead archbishop and abbot. In the next six months, they would take a series of actions – including the beginning of the Miracles – that would put Becket on course to being recognized as England’s greatest saint.25 In some scholarship, there is a perception that Christ Church community was resistant to Becket’s cult for months if not years after the murder, with Prior Odo in particular being against it: see R. W. Southern, The Monks of Canterbury and the Murder of Archbishop Becket (Oxford, 1985); Barlow, Thomas Becket, p. 265; Peter Kidson, “Gervase, Becket, and William of Sens,” Speculum 68 (1993): 969–91; and James Barnaby, Religious Conflict at Canterbury Cathedral in the Late Twelfth Century: The Dispute between the Monks and the Archbishops, 1184–1200 (Woodbridge, 2024), p. 49 (though see also ibid., pp. 116–19). Duggan rightly dismissed this notion, noting that the monks’ delay in thinking of Becket as a martyr “lasted short of 12 hours” after his death: see Duggan, Thomas Becket, p. 214. Prior Odo and the living Becket had a strained relationship, but I see no evidence that he was opposed to Becket’s cult. For letters about miracles addressed to Prior Odo, see IV.11, IV.85, and William no. 12 below.

Becket’s murder did not mean that the dispute with Henry II was resolved in his favor, or that he was straightaway hailed as a saint. Nearly all those in power took a wait-and-see approach, a potent symbol of which is the fact nothing was done to reconsecrate Canterbury Cathedral, defiled by Becket’s death, for almost a year. Until December 21, 1171, when the building was finally reconsecrated, the liturgical round of services could not be performed. This deprived the Christ Church monks of their raison d’être, a suspension Benedict felt keenly. He brings up this enforced liturgical silence more than once in the early parts of the Miracles, arguing that it made the monks’ mourning all the worse, as they alone had to suffer this consequence of the murder.26 See the Prologue, II.1, and II.6.

Miracles would have made them feel better, but for months, as Benedict made clear, they were few and far between. He used the evocative phrase “the first days of miracles” – by which he meant days without many miracles – to describe this time, which stretched to from the murder into May 1171.27 See below, III.18, III.21, and III.64. In III.18, he gives a specific date for a vision (namely May 2, 1171) that he places in “the first days of miracles.” Gervase also referred to a “prelude” period in which the martyr “began to shine forth in minor miracles,” while William of Canterbury spoke of the “first” or “primitive” light of miracles appearing around Easter week 1171.28 See Gervase vol. 1, p. 230, and William of Canterbury, Miracula, I.9, p. 148. Ralph Diceto also dated the beginning of Becket’s miracles to Easter 1171: see Ralph de Diceto, Ymagines Historiarum, Historical Works, ed. W. Stubbs, RS 86 (London, 1876), vol. 1, pp. 346–7: “Circa Pascha Dominus Jesus Christus… gloriosissimi martyris sui… crebris coepit irradiare miraculis.” Especially telling is the first story in the Miracles, Benedict’s account of his own visions of the archbishop. He began seeing Becket in his sleep the very night of the martyrdom. Eventually, he found the courage to speak, asking a question that would seem impertinent if it were not so despairing. If he were truly a martyr, Benedict asked, why wasn’t he performing any miracles? The archbishop lifted up a lantern in response, and Benedict saw that a dense cloud was obscuring its light. He interpreted this as a “cloud of persecution” (I.1).

That there were serious consequences for anyone speaking of Becket as a saint in the aftermath of the murder is confirmed by numerous sources besides the Miracles. William FitzStephen wrote that the de Brocs were keeping watch by day and by night in Canterbury so that they “might carry off anyone speaking good of the archbishop and drag him before their court. And so the faithful did not dare at first to speak of the great works of God.”29 William FitzStephen, Vita Sancti Thomae Cantuariensis Archiepiscopi et Martyris, MTB, vol. 3 (London, 1887), pp. 1–154, at p. 151. John of Salisbury, too, noted that “wicked men” had a “hate for [Becket that] was beyond sating” and they “forbade, on the government’s authority, that anyone dare publish the miracles which were being performed.”30 LJS no. 305, pp. 724–39, at p. 735. See also The Lansdowne Anonymous, MTB, vol. 4, p. 160. There were people who claimed to have experienced miracles in this early period, but, as Benedict notes frequently, they were often too fearful to come to Canterbury to give thanks for them. Most of the earliest miracles that Benedict describes in his collection were ones that the monks first heard about weeks or months after the fact.31 See below, Book I.

Some of the most historically valuable chapters of Benedict’s Miracles are those in which he describes the response of the Christ Church monks to this perilous situation. Not everything he writes should be taken at face value, but it is nevertheless clear that decisions the monks made during these “first days” had long-term implications for the nascent cult. When the monks had to bury Becket on the day after the murder, a marble sepulchre, sunk into the floor of the easternmost chapel of the crypt, was empty and available. The monks placed the body inside a wooden coffin, then the coffin into the sepulchre, and barred the doors to the crypt. Except for a few individuals the monks secretly admitted, no-one could visit the burial site in January, February, or March 1171. In early April, though, they took the brave decision to unbolt the doors and allow free public access to the crypt. Benedict supplies a precise date – the Friday following Easter (that is, April 2, 1171) – for this major milestone (II.6). Interestingly, he presents this decision as largely the result of public pressure: he states that “the people” told the brothers they were “sinning,” and they needed to open up the crypt, “lest it be said that we envied the martyr’s glory and begrudged the infirm their health” (II.6).

The monks had given the nascent cult its natural physical focal point, and with this came a spurt of people claiming miracles at the tomb. The monks’ nightmare seemed to be coming to an end: “our spirit was first greatly revived, and, as if we were awoken from a bad dream, so we were consoled” (II.6). Politically speaking, though, this was a dangerous decision. In a set of remarkable chapters in Book II, Benedict describes how the monks heard that there was “a multitude” of armed men planning “to seize the martyr” on the following night (II.26). The monks decided to remove the wooden coffin that held Becket’s body from its marble sarcophagus and to hide it behind the altar of St. Mary. The attack the monks feared never came, but when they returned the coffin to the sarcophagus, they reinforced the site to make it more secure: “Around the marble sarcophagus, a wall of great hewn stones was set up and bound together most solidly with cement, iron and lead. The wall had two windows in each side through which people could insert their heads in order to kiss the sarcophagus. A large slab of marble was placed on top. There was a hollow space between the top of the sarcophagus and the slab which was hardly a foot high” (II.29).

Benedict did not think it important to provide dates for the feared attack or the reinforcing of Becket’s burial site, and it is now impossible to pinpoint exactly when these events occurred. What can be said, though, is that the cemented-together stone structure with windows in its side would be the focus of pilgrims’ devotions for the next fifty years, long after the political threat to the cult had ended.32 On this tomb and the shrine to which Becket would be translated in 1220, see William Urry, “Some Notes on the Two Resting Places of St Thomas Becket at Canterbury,” in Raymonde Foreville (ed.), Thomas Becket: Actes du colloque international de Sédières 19–24 août 1973 (Paris, 1975), 195–209. In a remarkable chapter, Benedict described their enemies’ new line of attack: they were saying that miracles at the tomb were being “feigned by diabolical art.” The monks were casting incantations such that people felt sick, and when they came to the tomb, they would release them: “In this way, with the diabolical influence lifted, they would seem to be cured when they had not actually been ill” (II.43). According to Benedict, this problem was solved by another cultic growth spurt, this time well outside of Canterbury: “suddenly, the number of prodigies and signs was multiplied… so many witnesses to the truth came to us from all corners of England that our enemies could not resist or contradict them” (II.43).

An early decision made by the Christ Church monks about Becket’s blood was a major factor – probably, in fact, the most crucial factor – that drove up the number of people claiming Becket miracles in “all corners of England.” They started to give out the blood they had collected from the martyrdom site, diluted with water, to people seeking miracles. Benedict provides an exact and very early date for when the monks began to do this, namely the eighth day after Becket’s death, Tuesday, January 5, 1171. The story concerns a speechless priest of London named William. After William spent a night in vigil at Becket’s tomb, the monks put a drop of blood on his tongue, plus “a drink of water made holy by a similar drop… which was without doubt begun by the divine will and is done frequently to the present day.” Benedict proclaims that William “was the first of all to taste the blood of the martyr” (I.12).

We must be cautious with Benedict’s spin on this story. While William may well have been the first person to whom the Canterbury monks gave a drink of Becket’s blood, it is unlikely that he was the first, as Benedict would have it, to try drinking the blood in pursuit of a miracle. A great deal of blood left the cathedral the night of the martyrdom. Tests of its potency as a medicine probably began all but immediately. There are six other surviving accounts of William of London’s miracle, and only one of them, written by the monk Gervase, attributed the miracle to a drink of Becket’s blood provided by the Christ Church monks (other accounts stressed the priest’s vigil at the tomb).33 See Gervase vol. 1, p. 229. For the other accounts, see Biographical Notes, William priest of London. For further discussion of the water relic, see Alyce A. Jordan, “The ‘Water of Thomas Becket’: Water as Medium, Metaphor, and Relic,” in Cynthia Kosso and Anne Scott (eds.), The Nature and Function of Water, Baths, Bathing, and Hygiene from Antiquity through the Renaissance (Leiden, 2009), pp. 479–500; Pierre-André Sigal, “Naissance et premier développement d’un vinage exceptionnel: L’eau de saint Thomas,” Cahiers de civilisation médiévale 44 (2001): 35–44; and Rachel Koopmans, “Water Mixed with the Blood of Thomas: Contact Relic Manufacture Pictured in Canterbury Cathedral’s Stained Glass,” Journal of Medieval History 42:5 (2016): 535–55. Benedict, though, was determined to see William’s miracle as the beginning of the use of the blood, and to place the origins of the mixing of Becket’s blood and water in the hands of the Christ Church monks. He knew that his readers might think that the monks had been too audacious. Should they have encouraged this practice, so similar to the drinking of the blood of Christ in the form of wine in the Eucharistic ritual? He assured them that “this was not begun without great fear; but, seeing that it gave profit to the ill, fear receded, and little by little security came” (I.12: see also I.23).

The truth behind the beginnings of drinking a mixture of Becket’s blood and water was likely a good deal more complicated than Benedict makes it. What is clear, though, is that the monks decided very early on to distribute such a mixture to people seeking miracles. The consequence was that anyone who could make the trip to Canterbury could tap into a free supply of a very powerful and portable relic. Once the water relic began to filter back into the homes of pilgrims far outside of Canterbury, many miracles were claimed within those homes, resulting in more pilgrims heading to Canterbury to give thanks, more bringing the water relic home, and so on. Had the monks chosen instead to jealously guard their supply of Becket’s blood and to continue to restrict access to Becket’s tomb, the story of the cult could have been very different indeed. As it was, the “first days” began to give way to days with more reports of miracles, and with that, the monks took another decisive step: one of their number, Benedict, began to write down miracle stories.

“The task assigned to me” and the “burden” “compelled” upon him by his brothers must have been one and the same: miracle collecting, which Benedict began around Pentecost, or put another way, in the late spring of 1171. In contrast to the tears and silence of the winter months, the monks were now witnessing electrifying scenes. In his accounts of a miracle on the Invention of the Cross (May 3, see II.33) and another on the day after Pentecost (May 17, see III.2), Benedict describes how throngs of people were present in the cathedral. When candles relit in the crypt without any human intervention on May 17, the crowd was thrilled: “It would be most difficult to relate how great was the exultation of all, how many showers of tears they shed, and how many thanks were rendered to God” (III.2).

As more scenes like this occurred and the numbers of stories brought to the monks rose, it must have become clear that miracles would forgotten if they were not written down. Someone needed to “commend them to the memory of letters.” To convince Becket’s enemies and detractors, this record had to be unimpeachable. Benedict assured his readers that stories of miracles “are doubted by us, lest they be doubted by others: we showed ourselves hard and as if unbelieving in the examination of the truth, so that the adversaries of the truth might be ground down into believing, or proved wrong by a strict examination of the truth and so confounded” (I.9, see also II.32, III.77, and IV.63).

The monks’ resolution to record Becket’s miracles was a bold move on the post-martyrdom chessboard. Miracle collecting was an unambiguous signal that they considered the dead archbishop to be a saint. Why was Benedict, among so many brothers, chosen for this “examination of the truth”? Was he eager – or reluctant – to take on this role? He does not tell us, but however he came to his task, he was clearly determined to do it well and to confound “the adversaries of the truth.” He and his brothers were not alone in thinking this was a critical undertaking. Abbot Peter Celle, a great friend of the Becket camp, implored Prior Odo in a letter “with all supplication and earnest request” that “all those of you who will transmit to posterity the memory of the miracles of your and our martyr” would not write anything “about him or his miracles except what has been examined, purified, and sieved seven times.”34 The Letters of Peter of Celle, ed. and trans. Julian Haseldine, OMT (Oxford, 2001), p. 522 (Haseldine’s translation). Benedict transcribed part of this letter (see IV.87). Haseldine mistakenly dated this letter to Benedict’s priorate rather than Odo’s.

A lot was riding on the Miracles for Becket’s budding cult, for the Christ Church monks, and for Benedict himself. As far as we know, none of the authors of the Becket Lives started working so early. The only well-known hagiographic account of Becket that has been dated earlier is a long letter composed by John of Salisbury that was sent to the bishop of Poitiers. This letter, which John later expanded into a short and widely circulated Life is, generally dated “early 1171.” However, there are very good reasons to think that John’s letter, which alludes to copious and widespread miracles “in both English provinces,” cannot have been written before Benedict began miracle collecting around Pentecost or the late spring of 1171.35 For the letter (sent to John of Canterbury, the bishop of Poitiers), see LJS no. 305, pp. 724–49. For a dating of this letter to October 1171–April 1172, see Karen Bollermann and Cary J. Nederman, “John of Salisbury and Thomas Becket,” in Chrisophe Grellard and Frédérique Lachaud (eds.), A Companion to John of Salisbury (Leiden, 2015), pp. 63–104, at pp. 81–5. For disagreement with this date, see Michael Staunton, “John of Salisbury and the Church of Canterbury,” in Christophe Grellard and Frédérique Lachaud (eds.), Jean de Salisbury, nouvelles lectures, nouveaux enjeux (Florence, 2018), pp. 185–207. Staunton concedes that “a date after Easter [is] more plausible” (p. 203), and Anne Duggan has stated that it dates “certainly after Easter 1171”: see Anne Duggan, “Becket is Dead! Long Live St Thomas,” in Paul Webster and Marie-Pierre Gelin (eds.), The Cult of Thomas Becket in the Plantagenet World, c.1170–c.1220 (Woodbridge, 2016), pp. 25–51, at p. 27. In my view, summer 1171 is the earliest possible date for the letter, and it could easily have been written later than this. John’s letter deserves notice as the earliest known description of Becket’s murder, but Benedict started collecting miracles before it was written. When we think of Benedict taking up his pen, we need to think of him as the pioneer he was, the first to embark on a major writing project devoted to portraying the dead archbishop as the great new martyr and saint of the age.36 For a summary of the generally accepted dating for the Becket Lives, see Staunton, Thomas Becket, pp. 3–7. No modern edition of any of the Becket Lives has yet been published, and much remains to be worked out concerning their dating and interrelationships.

Not long after Benedict started collecting, the monks made another move to boost Becket’s cult. They sent one of their brothers to petition Pope Alexander III to canonize Becket. In 1171, papal canonization had almost none of the characteristics that we are familiar with today. The vast majority of people celebrated as saints in the late twelfth century had been acclaimed by local populations and confirmed by local ecclesiastical authorities. There was as yet no “canonization process,” no need of a “canonization dossier,” and none of the bureaucratic machinery that so characterized papal canonization procedures in the late medieval period.37 See Christian Krötzl and Sari Katajala-Peltomaa (eds.), Miracles in Medieval Canonization Processes: Structures, Functions, and Methodologies (Turnhout, 2018). The monks’ canonization request needs to be understood as an attempt to gain political help and pressure from one of the very few places where the dead Becket’s supporters hoped they could find it.

We know of this early petition from two sources: first, a statement in an anonymous author’s Life of Thomas that a first petition had failed (this author is thought to have been a Christ Church monk),38 Anonymous II, Vita S. Thomae, MTB, vol. 4, pp. 80–144, at p. 143. On Anonymous II, see Staunton, Thomas Becket, pp. 39–43. and a second, particularly revealing source: a letter written by Pope Alexander himself. Dated to the late summer or early autumn of 1171, the letter was directed to the papal legates Albert and Theodwin.39 For the letter, see Decretales Ineditae Saeculi XII, ed. by Stanley Chodorow and Charles Duggan, Monumenta Iuris Canonici Series B: Corpus Collectionum (Vatican City, 1982), vol. 4, no. 36, pp. 36–7. Anne Duggan dates the letter to the late summer or early autumn of 1171: see her discussion in Duggan, Thomas Becket, pp. 217–18. The pope informs his legates that the Christ Church monks “have sent to us a certain one of their brothers” as well as “letters” requesting that Becket be “inscribed in the catalogue” of saints.40 Decretales Ineditae Saeculi XII, vol. 4, no. 36, pp. 36–7 (my translation). Given the travel time to Rome, this brother must have left Canterbury carrying the letters sometime in the summer of 1171. Alexander writes to instruct his legates to “seek to know the truth of this more fully from bishops and other secular persons concerning those miracles which are said to happen in the church. Write to us about the miracles and make known to us the certainty of the thing with all diligence… such that we are able to give assent to the petition of the aforesaid brothers securely and confidently, if it ought to be approved.”41 Ibid.

This passage strongly suggests that the letters the Christ Church monk brought to the pope must have contained some kind of account of miracles within Canterbury Cathedral, an account that the monk would no doubt have supplemented with his own oral testimony. While Benedict was the obvious person to compose such an account, it would be a mistake to try to tie a section or sections of the Miracles we now have before us to the 1171 petition. Not much of the Miracles would have existed at this stage, and what did exist was not necessarily identical to the text we now have before us. Benedict would not write the Prologue until 1172–3, and most if not all of Book I, too, appears to be a later composition.42 The dating of the Prologue and Book I is addressed in more detail below, pp. 50 and 52. The letters that the Christ Church monk traveling to Rome carried with him were likely just that: letters written by the prior and community of Christ Church that included accounts of a number of miracles within Canterbury Cathedral. The most likely candidates for these miracles are some of those that now appear in Book II, but it is impossible to say which or how many might have been recounted.

Alexander’s reaction to the petition was not what the monks had hoped. He wanted more testimony and wondered aloud “if [their petition] should be approved.” In a precarious political situation due to an ongoing papal schism, Alexander dealt with Henry II very gingerly in the immediate aftermath of Becket’s death.43 On Alexander’s cautious dealings with the Becket dispute and its aftermath, see Anne J. Duggan, “Alexander ille meus: The Papacy of Alexander III,” in Peter D. Clarke and Anne J. Duggan (eds.), Pope Alexander III (1159–1181): The Art of Survival (Farnham, 2012), 13–49, at pp. 25–37. For Alexander and Becket’s canonization, see Donald S. Prudlo, Certain Sainthood: Canonization and the Origins of Papal Infallibility in the Medieval Church (Ithaca, 2015), pp. 33–41. In late March 1171, he stipulated only that Henry had to meet with papal legates to determine whatever penance he might need to perform, and should, in the meantime, refrain from entering churches. When the Christ Church monk arrived in Rome with the canonization petition, Henry had not met with the legates, and in fact would not do so until May 1172.44 The best account of Henry II’s meeting with the legates and reconciliation at Avranches is Anne Duggan, “Diplomacy, Status, and Conscience: Henry II’s Penance for Becket’s Murder,” in Peter Herde, Karl Borchardt, and Enno Bünz (eds.), Forschungen zur Reichs-, Papst- und Landesgeschichte: Peter Herde zum 65. Geburtstag von Freunden, Schülern und Kollegen dargebracht (Stuttgart, 1998), vol. 1, 265–90.

The monks themselves likely realized that their 1171 request was a long shot. Alexander declined to canonize Becket, buying time by asking his legates to look into the miracle question themselves. Interestingly, he told Albert and Theodwin to question “bishops and other secular persons” – pointedly not the monks – about the truth of the accounts of Becket’s miracles. At Canterbury, meanwhile, Benedict was occupied with his “task” and “burden” of miracle collecting.