Book II

The day of the Resurrection of the Lord had come,1 Easter Sunday, March 28, 1171. the day which the Lord had made, the day in which the whole church rejoices and is made glad [Ps 117:24]. In that day, only the church of Canterbury wailed and wept. It heard of its daughters filled with joyful sweetness, and it was filled with bitterness.2 Canterbury Cathedral stood silent on Easter Sunday 1171 because Becket’s death had desecrated the cathedral, whereas “its daughters” – other churches in England – held Easter services, and so were filled with “joyful sweetness.” Benedict complains about this enforced silence in the Prologue as well. However, lest we be overwhelmed by overflowing grief, he who had closed our mouth opened the mouth of a mute man in the church in our presence. When he entered the church, a spirit suddenly disordered him, and he was struck down and fell to the earth. He rolled about, foaming at the mouth, injuring himself by casting about repeatedly and rending himself, until he became quiet again. In a distinct but hardly intelligible voice, he asked for a drink to be brought to him. The people were then absent because divine services had been suspended, yet almost in a moment the rumor of the new miracle attracted a multitude that was hard to number. Each of them asked who he was, where he was born, and what had happened to him. He was not able to satisfy their wishes easily because they hardly understood his stammering: he was often compelled to repeat what he had said. He said that he had been born in the region of Oxford and had lost his speech five years before while sleeping in a meadow. He had gone to sleep in good health, and woke a mute.3 On waking ill after sleeping outside, see also II.28, III.63, and IV.76. Recently, he had had a vision in which two men of venerable appearance told him that he should hurry to Canterbury to the new martyr of Christ, saying that if he asked in faith without hesitation, he would recover his speech there: in no other place in the world would he regain his health more quickly. To those wishing to know his name, he said his name was Samson.

Many of the hearers had faith in his words, but others doubted. Although he had no witnesses to his assertions, we nevertheless obtained considerable support of their truth. He spent many days with us, and every day, little by little, he became more proficient in forming words and expressing himself, though he never was able to speak perfectly. We sent to the city of Rochester, where he had stayed for some time, and did not find anything that would undermine his claims. Afterwards, I spoke with his innkeeper, with whom he had stayed many days. He said that he had often seen him inebriated, and yet he was never able to draw a single word out of the drunk lad. The old proverb is true that it is only possible to gain the truth from children and drunkards.4 Benedict is echoing a well-known proverb, “the drunkard, the fool, and the child speak truth”: see The Oxford Dictionary of Proverbs, ed. by Jennifer Speake, 6th ed. (Oxford, 2015), p. 51. And so, we were able to exclaim, as did the other churches, though in a different way and from a different cause, “This is the day that the Lord has made, let us rejoice and be glad in it” [Ps 117:24].

On the same day of the Lord’s Resurrection, the martyr called back to life the dying son of a servant of the church of Canterbury. Geldewin, the son of Godefrid the baker,5 See Biographical Notes, Godefrid, baker of Christ Church, Canterbury. had been enfeebled for more than four months by a grave illness. He was thought to be at the point of death, for he had gone three days and nights without food or drink, and lay as if he were insensible, without voice or feeling. His father, returning from church after receiving the Eucharist, had acquired a scrap of cloth stained with the blood of the martyr. He sat down by the little boy, washed and wrung out the cloth in water, and was about to bring that water to the ill one and in fact was on the point of pouring it into the dying boy’s mouth. Marvelous to relate, as his father sat next to him, it was as if (as in truth it was) that the boy was recalled by the power of the presence of the relic. Beyond all hope, he opened one of his eyes, and said to his father, who was not a little amazed, “Am I to drink this, father?” He drank the drink given to him, and in a short time he tasted food. Within five or six days, his strength was restored and he was seen at play with his playfellows.

This same man had two more sons who were both weakened by the force of fevers, one of them in longer intervals, the other in shorter. When the father saw that the power of the relic brought perfect health to the first son, he divided the cloth and hung it round the neck of each of the others. These sons too were immediately freed from the bane of fevers. After four or five weeks, when the father no longer feared the return of the disease, he unfastened the relic hanging from one son’s neck. Hardly had he taken it away and was turning to go, when the boy was seized by revived fevers and his whole body shook. Marvelling at the new event, the father took up the medicine and hung it around the neck of the feverish boy again. Immediately, and not without the amazement of those seeing this, he stopped trembling and was released.

As the miracles gradually became frequent and the martyr’s fame grew, the rest of the ill people of Canterbury, little by little, fled to the aid of the martyr. Among them was the lame Manwin, who, though he was a pauper, was nevertheless very well known in the city. He had been blind for nearly two years. Sometimes his son and sometimes his wife led him about in order to beg. Taking measures such that he would not need to depend on someone else’s sight, he asked for and received a drop of the sacred blood from a certain person. When he returned home, he had just applied it to his eyes when his infant son, who was not yet entirely able to walk, fell to the ground and began to cry and wail. Anxious for the little boy because there was no-one to pick him up, he forgot himself, wiped the blood from his eyes, and rose to pick him up from the ground. He saw the boy before he was able to lift him up. The city of Canterbury knew him to be blind and afterwards judged him to have recovered his sight.

A certain lame woman of Canterbury, Emelina, was lifted up in the same period of Easter. Four years before, she had fallen and injured her knee. Possibly because of a lack of medicine, the nerves had contracted, and she remained crippled, not without shame. She regained the use of her feet by means of a staff, but without its support she was unable to take a single step. Roused by the fame of miracles, she came to the church of Christ in order to petition the martyr, and shortly became disordered and fell in the same place the mute man mentioned above had fallen.6 See above, II.1. Throughout the day, until evening, she rolled about in continuous torment. As the light of day was overtaken by the darkness of night, she withdrew, exhausted, but healed. In fact, she was so exhausted that we ordered her to support herself with the staff, but she refused. She felt herself to be leaving altered from how she had come, and did not wish to take up again what the saint had taken away.

The doors of the crypt were still held closed by bars and bolts. The people were not generally admitted to the tomb of the martyr. If anyone was brought in, this was done secretly. Because of this, a substantial portion of the people were upset. Many of them confronted many of us in the convent, declaring that we were sinning because the people did not have access to their father. They said that our reputation was being tarnished because we seemed to be hiding away the talent loaned to us.7 See Matthew 25:14–30 and Luke 19:12–28 for the parable of the talents, in which a servant buries the talent (an amount of money) that his master had given him. The doors of the crypt should be opened, lest it be said that we envied the martyr’s glory and begrudged the infirm their health. When we saw their faith, we determined that though the church was prevented from holding divine services, their petition should be granted. On the fourth nones of April, on the Friday of Easter week,8 April 2, 1171, the Friday following Easter Sunday. the doors of the crypt were opened, and the ill were admitted to the sarcophagus of the saint. A glorious spectacle was then to be seen every day. There you could see the font of David open for the washing of the sinner and the menstruating woman [Zec 13:1], the pool moved by the angel, and not one healed but many.9 Reference to the healings at the pool of Bethesda, John 5:2–17. You could see both the upper and the lower irrigated ground being given to Axa,10 Reference to the story of Caleb granting his daughter Axa both dry and irrigated land, Joshua 15:14–19. that is, given to those weeping for the weakness of their body and to those weeping for wounds of their souls. You could see the jar of oil not run out and mercy abounding in the saint.11 Reference to the story of Elijah and the widow’s jar of oil, 1 Kings 17:13–16. You could see the vessels brought to the prophet and the oil poured into them multiplied,12 Reference to the story of Elisha and the vessels filled with oil, 2 Kings 4:1–7. for the ill were carried and conveyed there, and they went back full of the martyr’s mercy. Then our spirit was first greatly revived and we were consoled as if we were awoken from a bad dream. And yet, pain still triumphed over joy because we were not able, as we wished, to bless the Lord in his works, and glorify him with the voice of our lips [Sir 39:19–20]. Yet we gave back the measure of our service,13 RB 1980: The Rule of St Benedict in Latin and English with Notes, ed. Timothy Fry, OSB (Collegeville, 1981), 49.5. as far as we were able, by singing and saying Psalms in our hearts to the Lord who alone does wondrous things [Ps 71:18]. For great and very wonderful things were being worked every day around the tomb of the martyr.14 A remarkable late twelfth-century panel in Canterbury Cathedral window nV shows pilgrims crowding around Becket’s tomb in the crypt. It may well have been meant to illustrate the results of the opening of the crypt after Easter: see Rachel Koopmans, “Pilgrims at Becket’s Tomb and Shrine: Stained Glass Portrayals at Canterbury Cathedral and St. Mary’s Church, Nettlestead, Kent,” in Alyce A. Jordan and Kay Brainerd Slocum (eds.), Images of Thomas Becket in the Middle Ages and Beyond: The Uses and Reception of a Celebrity Saint (Woodbridge, 2025).

A woman of Canterbury, Edilda,15 In the survey of cathedral holdings in Canterbury compiled 1163–7, four Edildas/Eadildas are mentioned: see Urry, CUAK, Rental B, pp. 234 and 243 (Edilda the daughter of Eadmeie), p. 242 (Edilda the wife of Elred Wran), p. 232 (Edilda the wife of Galfridus), and p. 241 (Edilda the widow of Osbert). was cast down there, having been carried by the help of three women. She had come to the middle of the second year in which she was not able to stand on her foot. For all of that time, she was confined to her bed and lived in the vicinity of death. The power of the disease was especially strong in her left knee. Its nerves contracted, such that she was deprived of the ability to walk with her foot. The knee could not bear a touch, even if the woman herself touched it very lightly. She was brought to the martyr by three women, as was already stated, and was leaning on a staff. With the pain receding, she returned home. In testimony of the reception of her health, in our presence she let her raised fist fall with great force upon the knee which since the second year, had been too painful to touch. The people saw her walking about and praising the Lord, and they were full of wonder and elation because of what had happened to her [Acts 3:9–10]. Why she still remained lame and not all of her health was restored, we refrain from discussing, thinking it best to remain silent concerning the secret judgments of God rather than to dare to divine them.

We know that he who strengthened her disabled knee could also have fully restored the bases and soles of her feet so that she could step correctly again, because we know without doubt that he granted this to Wlviva of Canterbury.16 In the survey of cathedral holdings in Canterbury compiled 1163–7, two Wlvivas are mentioned: see Urry, CUAK, Rental B, p. 237 (Wlviva the sister of Maria), and p. 241 (Wlviva the widow of Ingenulf). Satan had bound her for three years [Lk 13:16]. She was bent over, not able to move herself without the use of a staff. Shortly after she prostrated herself in prayer near the saint, she stood up straight without the staff. The pain was gone from her loins and she did not wish to carry the staff that once carried her.

Edmund, a youth born in Canterbury and well known there, had brought himself there as well, although he was led by the guidance of only one eye. He appeared to have a left eye, but it did not have the power of sight. In addition, something that seemed to be coagulated and very heavy had grown inside of his chest. Sometimes it felt as if it were impelled up higher, and sometimes it fell lower. He suffered terrible stabbing pain and exceeding torments from this for two years and was driven to the point of death, as his colorless and wasted appearance suggested. A drop of the most sacred blood was dropped into his eye, and he drank blood and water mixed together. The potency of this drink was amazing. After having gone some distance from the tomb, he fell flat on his face, turned upon his side, and twisted about, shouting. He often tried to get up, but was too unstable to stand. He fell down, striking his face on the pavement. He seemed to have come to harm: you would have thought him to be insane as the divine power healed him. At last, he fell into a slumber and slept supine. The saint of God stood before the sleeping man, gripped his shoulder and shook him, saying, “Rise, go.” And he suddenly awoke, and that mobile thing that had tormented his insides shifted. He felt it move up to the lower part of his throat, and, nearly suffocating, he threw his hand to his throat, wishing to touch it to find out what it was. Then, suddenly, as if a sack inside of him had ruptured, by some divine power it was expelled through his mouth. It seemed to him to have the bitter taste of gall. Quickly getting up, he threw off his cloak and went to the tomb of the martyr to give thanks, having received perfect health in his eye as well as in the rest of his body. For the love of the martyr, he soon thereafter took up the cross to go to Jerusalem, and all the people who saw this gave praise to God [Lk 18:43].

There was no less praise or glory in what we know to have happened to a woman named Muriel. Enfeebled by a grave illness for two or more years, she thought that the only remedy to her pain would be death. However, when her husband saw the glorious things that were happening by means of the glorious martyr of God, he gave his ill wife a drink of the health-giving water. She drank, and up to the third day she gradually grew more troubled than usual with weakness. On the third day, she was so debilitated that she was taken off her bed, lest she die lying on a bed of feathers, contrary to the Christian religion. A priest was summoned with great haste in order to give her last rites. But she was suddenly gripped by nausea and vomited up the material of the disease, and all that day she continued to vomit in hourly intervals. It was found that she vomited up many whole pits of cherries, plums, and acorns, and that some of them had germinated in the coolness of her stomach. Some of these were shown to us, and it was a marvel that the woman had carried the pits of the fruits in her stomach for such a long time, and also that pits could germinate in a stomach. There is no doubt that she would have died if she had not been assisted by the drink of the holy liquid. And so the woman was relieved and snatched from the jaws of death. She who was so enfeebled that, as we have said, she was not able to step beyond the threshold of her house for two years, was brought back by divine power to such strength that on the next day she walked to the martyr. And all the people rejoiced together at all the things that were gloriously done by him [Lk 13:17].

To these things the Lord added another miracle, concerning a lesser illness – though why do I say lesser? No-one thinks that the illness he or she suffers is small. We knew a certain matron Ethelburga, full of alms-giving and good works, who suffered an acute gout in her left shoulder and arm for many days. She arranged to have the length of her useless arm measured in order to make a candle to its length to the honor of the martyr. There you could see the martyr respond to the woman with the rendering of grace that the Lord promises to those who turn to him, Before you invoke me I say to you, “Behold, here I am” [Is 58:9],17 Benedict drew this from the Prologue of Rule of St. Benedict, which in turn draws on Isaiah 58:9. for hardly had she measured the wick to the length of her arm when all the pain lessened, as she felt and confessed. The candle made, she gave it to the martyr and returned to full health.

A blacksmith of the Isle of Thanet, Robert, also found the grace of healing, but his healing was preceded by a vision no less wonderful than the health granted to him. He had lost the light of his eyes for at least two years. The poverty of his household made him more anxious about losing his sight. When our venerable father had returned from his exile, and the time drew near for him to be called to heaven from his exile on earth, this man received advice in a dream: “Go, Robert, to Canterbury, to the church of Christ, and a monk will place milk in your eyes. You will receive your sight.” He thought this was a delusion at first and so did not believe the promise nor follow the command. But later, when he heard that the saint of God was shining forth with so many miracles, he remembered what he had heard. He considered that the innocent blood of a most sweet lamb was like the sweetness of milk, and began to hope for his healing. He arrived in the place he had been ordered to go to, guided by his family members, for we saw both his wife and his daughter come with him. His eyes were smeared with the desired blood of the martyr and he prostrated himself in prayer. As he was lying there, he felt his head to be in an uproar, as if beset by the sound of a great clap of thunder. Having received his sight, he got up and publicly preached the grace of God to the people.

What is easier – to give health to the mind or to the body? The one who illuminated the eyes of this man’s body also restored the mind of Henry, a youth from Fordwich.18 Henry of Fordwich’s miracle is portrayed in two panels of Canterbury Cathedral window nIV: see Caviness, Windows, p. 184. He had been insane for several days and had inflicted on his friends an unexpected wound of pain. His hands were tied behind his back and he was dragged to the saint. Though he resisted and cried out, he was presented to the saint. All that day he remained insane, and then, as the light of the sun receded, he began gradually to recover the light of rationality. He spent the night in the church and left the next day in most perfect health.

We received a woman from the vicinity of the same village who not only found it impossible to hear anything, but was also vexed with an intolerable headache. The common medicine of the sick, the water mixed with blood, was dropped into her insensible ears; she also drank it and gave herself to prayer. As she prayed, her pain became even more acute. She thought it was as if many twigs were being snapped into small pieces in her head. She asked those standing near her if they could hear what resounded in her head. While she was being oppressed in this way, she cried to the Lord, and he heard her. As she cried out, it seemed as if an interior abscess had broken, for a great deal of bloody matter began to flow out of her ears. Blood followed on the bloody matter, and after the blood, the grace of the missing hearing followed on as well.

Eilward, a man of Tenham, had lost the pleasures of smell for several years, being unable to smell anything. He entered the place where that good odor of Christ rested everywhere, that sweet sacrifice, that aromatic tree, the fragrance of which was already being wafted through the whole world. Before he had reached that fragrant flower of England, a most sweet odor met him and filled his nostrils, and he rejoiced to have received his sense of smell back again.

We do not think it is right to say nothing of the one who was patently denied among so many asking for and receiving their health. A crippled boy who was begging the martyr for the grace of walking had placed his head on the sarcophagus and happened to fall asleep. The holy father appeared to him, demanding, “Why are you lying on me? You will certainly not receive your health. Go. I will do nothing for you.” As he heard these words, he woke, and told us and his mother what he had heard with great and heartfelt anguish. He was certain that this judgment would not change, and had himself placed in a different spot. We still urged him to press on with his prayers, and he did, but as time went on there was no improvement to his health.

The reason why he refused to cure this boy though he responded to the rest, he knows who mandated a similar judgment for another boy who was blind and also resting upon the tomb. He did not hide the reason for this judgment. A certain figure appeared to the sleeping boy and said, “why are you lying here? The archbishop orders that no healing will be granted to you. Health is taken from you on account of a sin committed before you were born.” And yet, we do not believe that the son carried the iniquity of his parents,19 See Ezekiel 18:20, where it is stated that the son will not carry the iniquity of the father. but rather that that the Lord wished to chastise the parents through their son, such that the bodily loss of their son would bring the punishment of grief to the parents. After a few days, this boy departed from this light. I confess that we greatly mourned over both boys, and the denial of health to each of them saddened us, but the martyr made us rejoice in other cases.

Of these, the first that should be discussed is what the water of Saint Thomas – for so the people of the surrounding region call it, the “water of Saint Thomas” or “the water of Canterbury” – did for a certain Agnes of Canterbury.20 An Agnes, daughter of Simon the clerk, is found in the survey of cathedral holdings in Canterbury compiled 1163–7: see Urry, CUAK, Rental B, p. 226. A pain that could not be checked had invaded the woman’s face, which was disfigured by a horrible swelling. Contorted on one side, her mouth displayed a form of corruption from its normal state. A huge amount of phlegm flowed from her mouth unceasingly and copiously. This flow brought no remedy to the swelling or the pain and it caused her no little amount of shame. At length, the inner part of her face was infected as well, making it necessary for the woman to subsist on milk rather than solid food. Since she was not able to eat, she refreshed herself with little sips, until finally she was in so much pain that she abstained from this as well for three full days. You would not have been able to bear the smell of her putrid face. Five weeks passed in these torments, until the woman thirsted and took up the water of the saint. O marvelous water, which not only quenched the thirst of the drinker, but also extinguished the pain! O marvelous water, which not only extinguished the pain, but also reduced the swelling! I will tell of a wonder. In order to catch up the phlegm, the woman used to place a basin under her mouth. When she lay down flat with her mouth open, it would catch up the phlegm running from her mouth. But when she lay down again after taking a drink of the water, a worm came out of her mouth. It had a fair-sized head that was red like a live, burning coal, and its tail was like a very sharp needle. It was one and a half inches in length, crawled about on four feet, and moved with such liveliness that many said that it was from the evil side. It was thought that the worm had sunk into the phlegm, but when the bowl was placed up in an elevated window, it was not found.21 In other words, the worm could not be seen in the bowl even with the light from the window. And so all the pain ceased in the sufferer, and in a short time, with the swelling deflating, her face was returned to its original state.

Among the other miracles, there happened a certain delightful miracle that is also worthy of memory. The power of the water of Canterbury was known far and wide, and already all the region flocked to the water. Among those who came, Ralph of Sheppey brought a wooden pyx with which to receive the water, but he did not bring it back filled. He was about to leave, fearing no misfortune and moving this way and that, when the pyx split along its side. Astonished, the man paled with fear, and as the contents of the pyx were flowing out, he took pains to fill the cleft with wax. However, when he turned the pyx to its other side, he found that it had not remained whole on that side either. In order to stop all the water that was left from flowing out, he again applied wax to it. You would have seen there a remarkable thing: water rose upwards from the base through the mouth of the pyx and violently boiled over. You would think it was a cooking pot with a fire kindled under it, unable to retain the water against the force of the hostile element. However, the man thought that this came about from some natural cause, namely that the power and force of trapped air could make this happen, and so he lifted off the cover and placed it back on. When the cover was replaced, the vessel split from its base all the way to its top, and a crack appeared nearly the width of the thickness of a human finger.

This event seemed wonderful to us for three reasons. First, the pyx was made from very thick wood; second, it was old and very hard material; and third, water usually reunites cracks in wood, but here, on the contrary, it divided the whole. The man was stupefied and afraid, and wondering beyond what could be believed possible, he immediately and quickly transferred the modicum of water that remained into another pyx. But this pyx too, in another marvel, could not hold the power of the relic. The water, as if it wished to run through the pyx, opened up a path for itself in the middle across the side of the pyx. There was a marvelous combat between man and element, for, when he brought the remedy of wax to this crack, at which point the water was tilted to the other side of the pyx, the evil that he was trying to avoid occurred. The pyx was split apart from top to bottom, and so ended up exactly the same as the first. Everyone who was there was amazed, but for him, his fear and shame increased.

We were present and carefully investigated the cause of this event. Nothing appeared certain, yet we suspected either that the man who carried the water or the one to whom he carried it was unworthy. Still, so that he would not have to go both ashamed and lacking that which he desired, we kept the two pyxes and gave him a third to see what would happen with that. Joyful, he left carrying the water, but as he was going, it boiled and he lost it. Though he tried to take the lid off to see the boiling water, he was not able to remove it, nor even to budge it. One of his companions asserted that he who was not worthy either to carry the relic or to see it must be unworthy. The truth of what he said was plainly shown by what happened next, for although the lid could not be lifted while the water was present, in the end he removed it gently and without any difficulty, but found the vessel completely empty. If the man was astonished, if he mourned, if he feared for himself, he knows, who had been shown to him so that he might fear for himself. He told us later that he was so full of grief and so gripped by fear that he confessed everything that he could remember doing wrong not just to one priest, but to thirteen. Following his heart’s contrition, he filled the empty vessel with the water of the font, which also makes the ill well who drink it in faith.

Did not the martyr seem to sport with the man here, such that he at last, recognizing himself, might sport with the enemy who was sporting with him?22 What Benedict apparently means here is that the martyr made the pyxes and the water act strangely so that Ralph would realize that the devil (“the enemy”) had been sporting with him, and that he needed to “sport back” by confessing his sins and stopping his unworthy activities. Should this be called a sport or a censure of the martyr? If we wish to call it a sport, it is an honest sport, if a censure, it is of praiseworthy piety. He did not wish to blame in anger a person coming to the relic unworthily, and he did not wish to rebuke in wrath. He sustained the ill patiently; he reprimanded with mercy; he healed the converted with wonderful grace of sweetness.

We know a certain Godeliva of Canterbury to have been rebuked by means of a similar mode of piety.23 Two women named Godeliva are found in the late twelfth-century surveys of the holdings of Christ Church: the widow of Adam son of Gode (Urry, CUAK, Rental B, p. 235), and the wife of Solomon the Mercer in Canterbury (see Urry, CUAK, p. 177 and Rental F, no. 660, p. 374). She had carried away the water in a wooden vessel. As she returned home, she was passing the lodgings of a certain Jew, and entered at the request of a Jewish woman.24 Canterbury was home to a synagogue and a sizeable Jewish community in the late twelfth century. See Michael Adler’s discussion in The Jews of Medieval England (London, 1939), pp. 47–124, and for the location of some of the homes of Canterbury Jews in this period, see Urry, CUAK, pp. 119–20. For discussion of this miracle story, see Ephraim Shoham-Steiner, “Jews and Healing at Medieval Saints’ Shrines: Participation, Polemics, and Shared Cultures,” Harvard Theological Review 103:1 (2010): 111–29, at p. 116, and Matthew Mesley, “De Judaea, muta et surda: Jewish Conversion in Gerald of Wales’s Life of Saint Remigius,” in Sarah Rees Jones and Sethina Watson (eds.), Christians and Jews in Angevin England: The York Massacre of 1190, Narratives and Contexts (York, 2013), pp. 238–49, at p. 248. An expert in certain charms and incantations, she had been accustomed to say charms over the disabled foot of the Jewish woman. Hardly had she set foot in the impious house when her pyx split in three places, and by the loss of the water she recognized her interior fault of mind. Realizing that she had been rebuked for her error, she did not visit the Jewish woman any more. We should marvel even more at the cracks in the pyx because, though the foot of the pyx was large and solid, and was separated from the hollow part by the interposition of a kind of delicate neck, yet not just the hollow part, but also the solid foot of the pyx had been split.

Another woman also mourned that the water was taken away from her, though it happened in a different way. The first woman’s portion of water visibly poured out from a split pyx; this woman’s portion was invisibly taken away. She had returned carrying the water to her lodging, which was about two or three furlongs away from the tomb of the saint.25 That is, about half a kilometer away from Canterbury Cathedral. She opened the pyx after she had put it down, and she found it not only empty but dry as well.

In a similar manner, two men from Essex, Peter and Haimo, were cheated of what they desired. After they crossed the river Thames, they found that their vessels were empty, though they had taken them away from Canterbury full. One of them said to the other, “Truly, all my water is gone.” The other man, fearing that something similar had happened to him, picked up and opened his vessel. He said, “Assuredly, not a drop of mine remains.” Haimo addressed the cart-driver, who had transported them both coming and going, and said, “Check and see whether any of your relic is left, and give a gift of this great blessing to us.” But the cart-driver said, “I will not look at it until I go into my home.” His humble cottage was by the river, and once he arrived there and found his pyx full, he transferred half of his water to Haimo’s pyx and gave it to a boy to carry to him. The power of the divine will is wonderful. The boy was still standing in his house and speaking with the man, and as they were talking he opened his pyx and saw that it was empty of water. They were both stupefied: the boy went away without water. We heard about these events from the cart-driver. There are more of these delightful miracles, but I wish to place first in the text’s narration those things that preceded them in time.26 For more stories of pyxes, ampullas, and the water acting oddly, see below, II.50, III.19–25, III.51, III.52–4, and IV.38–40. For analysis of these stories, see Koopmans, “The Smallest Matters.”

The knight William of Dene in the region of Canterbury had reached old age when he was struck with paralysis, and so he suffered from two complaints, paralysis and old age.27 William of Dene’s miracle is portrayed in two panels of Canterbury Cathedral window nIV: see Caviness, Windows, pp. 182–3 (where the panels are incorrectly identified as portraying Prior Robert of Cricklade’s miracle). Though William cannot be identified in contemporary documents, a “Thomas of the Dene,” the seneschal of the curia of Christ Church, and a “Godefrid of the Dene” are known from late twelfth-century charters and rentals from Canterbury: see Urry, CUAK, pp. 306, 412–13, 428–9, 432–3, and 436–7. The illness did not affect his whole body, but his feet and legs were impaired. He was carried about by the aid of two or three men wherever his bodily needs called him. For half a year, he weakened and withered as he trusted in doctors, in the sons of men, in whom there is no salvation. Finally, realizing that there is no salvation in men [Ps 107:13], and that it would be good for him to cling to God and put his hope in the Lord God [Ps 72:28], he asked to be put on his horse and brought to Canterbury. Since his powers were not sufficient to guide himself nor his horse, he was held by other hands so that he would not fall. When he was off his horse, two young men took him up. Supported by them and also by a staff, he was brought to the tomb of the holy martyr. There he most devotedly invoked God and God’s martyr, and he felt his legs and feet coming back from insensibility, his nerves warming up, and the grace of mobility being renewed in all his body. Thinking, as was in fact the case, that by divine means he had been given the ability to stand, he cast aside his cloak and leapt up, as many stood by and watched. And so he both sensed and experienced that his health had been granted by the manifest power of God. Rejoicing, he seated himself in that place and took off his shoes. With bare feet, in great devotion and thanksgiving, he prostrated himself before the saint. He gave his staff to the saint as a sign of the reception of his health, and he left on his own feet without the help of any other support. To the joy of those looking on, he mounted his horse, and reported the reason for his great happiness to those of his house.

What are we to say of Saxeva of Dover?28 Saxeva of Dover’s miracle is portrayed in two panels of Canterbury Cathedral window nIV: see Caviness, Windows, pp. 183–4 (where the panels are incorrectly identified as picturing the miracle of Juliana Puintel). Was there less happiness for her, whose suffering had been greater? From the time of the Lord’s nativity up to the day of Easter, she had learned what the opposite of health was from continuous stomach spasms and pain in her arm. And yet, she had as much pain of the heart as of the body, for she was not able to work, and she was ashamed to beg: her soul wearied of her life. She fled to the martyr, prayed, and slept. As she was sleeping, the martyr showed his presence to her and said “Rise, offer your candle.” She woke and felt herself healed. She obeyed the command and showed herself healed and quickened, so much so that she said, extravagantly, that she felt she could fly.

May the reader pardon me if I speak at a little more length about a man with dysentery, or rather of lientery, who was marvelously healed among us. For a better knowledge of this miracle, it is necessary to begin the story a little further back. When the cause and the mode of the illness are known, the conclusion is also better understood. A scholar of Northampton, Richard, son of Walter,30 Northampton was home to a prospering school in this period: see H. G. Richardson, “The Schools of Northampton in the Twelfth Century,” English Historical Review 56 (1941): 595–605. had been exhausted by a stomach flux, which the doctors call diarrhea, for the period of a month. One night, when he had fallen asleep, a man of great height and terrible appearance terrified him with this question: “You, tell me what you would prefer – to suffer continual illness for nine years, or after nine days to satisfy nature by the debt of death.” When he rejected both, the man turned to him again and said, “Choose quickly from the alternatives, for you cannot evade both fates.” Seeing that he could neither avoid misfortune nor refrain from answering the question, he decided that it would be better to suffer illness for the whole of the fixed time with the hope of recovery than to end the sweetness of life, which cannot be brought back, by the bitterness of premature death. At that, the man struck him with his upraised fist on the top of his thigh with such force that when he woke, he had no power at all in his thigh.31 This has close similarities to a biblical story in which Jacob wrestles through the night with a mysterious man until the man touches the socket of his hip, disabling him and making him limp: see Genesis 32:22–32. For a whole year he could not walk. At times he would recover from the stomach flux, and then with the disease reviving, he would be brought to the point of death. In the second year, although he could walk again, at intervals he was exhausted by the loosening caused by the same disease. Afterwards, when he was in the region of Worcester, by this time a confirmed sufferer of dysentery, a doctor promised to give him aid and took him into his care. And while he pursued diverse medicines for dysentery, that cruel tormentor appeared again, and accosted the woman giving him lodging, saying, “Why does the doctor waste time trying to cure that ill man? His work is useless, for the foreordained conclusion has not yet come when the sick man will escape the scourge of that illness.” The woman did not know of the conclusion of which he spoke, but the young man told her about his earlier dream. And so the industry and efforts of the doctor were overcome, and he suffered from dysentery for five years, tortured by a constant death without death. Then the dysentery turned into lientery. He consumed food and drink, but would excrete it undigested. The looseness of his excretions both in the form of urine and of feces was such that he completely lost control of himself. He could not satisfy either necessity without a violent flux of the other. He was also tormented by a great swelling of his stomach, and he presented a miserable sight to those seeing him. In such misery he carried on his miserable life for nearly two years. When, therefore, it pleased Him who had separated him from his mother’s womb [Gal 1:15] that he might remove his blows from him [Ps 38:11] and the works of God might be manifested in him [Jn 9:3], a young boy, a brother born of the same womb as the ill man, saw a splendid man appear to him in a dream and say, “Advise your brother that he should not delay going to the martyr of Canterbury. Through his merits, he will be given perfect health again.”

It was now the ninth year of his illness, the year the Lord was pacified, the year of his benevolence, the year in which his athlete the most blessed Thomas was crowned with honor and glory in heaven [Ps 8:6], and he gave the glory of miracles to his church on earth. And so, the man suffering lientery was put into a cart (for he was not able to walk nor ride a horse), and the closer he came to Canterbury, the more he felt the illness recede. Leaving the cart, he walked to the martyr. I do not remember seeing anyone living who had such a destroyed and discoloured face. His skin hardly adhered to his bones, and as for his face – I would not say that it had a pallor, but rather that it was fouled by a blackish putrefaction. He looked like someone raised up after having been dead three or four days. Let the description end: it would seem to be beyond belief. He tasted the water of the saint, and he prayed prostrated on the ground. Suddenly, as if in great torment, he began to wail and shout, to twist and turn. Falling into a lassitude, he slept, and he woke healed. Both to make certain of his health and for devotion, he stayed for several days at Canterbury. He told us that on the following night he only had to get up once to answer the call of nature, whereas on the previous night his illness had compelled him to get up sixteen times. On the next day, the taste of water unexpectedly provoked a nausea. This happened so that the seeds of the illness would not remain in him. After a great deal of vomiting, the health that followed was complete. Since he seemed to be possessed from his bodily actions, we asked him whether his mind was also being held captive or if he was able to know what he did or to feel what he suffered. He answered that it was as if he were in an ecstasy. At first, it felt as if his inflated stomach was being shrunk, and then very much constricted, and the church seemed narrow to him. He remembered nothing more. We asked others about this as well, those who through similar actions gained a similar benefit, and they gave the same answer. And so he left full of joy, his devotion to the saint increased to the same degree that his misery had been long extended.

In all this, the fury of the evil ones was not turned away, but their hand was stretched out still [Is 9:12]. It was reported in the church of Canterbury that some of those who had been present at the death of the martyr had gathered together a group of powerful allies, and that they were ready to seize the martyr on the following night with a multitude of armed and well-equipped men. We heard that they were not congregated in a single group, but were dispersed in several places and had made mutual agreements according to what seemed suitable to them. For security’s sake, we assembled a contrary force. We also removed the body of the saint from the marble tomb, placed it in a wooden coffin, and hid it behind the altar of the blessed Mary. In that way, if the strength of the evil ones prevailed, they would not find the martyr in the sepulchre and would leave cheated and confused. All that night, there were nearly as many people on vigil as there were monks in the church. The Lord also stood vigil for us, he who does not slumber nor sleep [Ps 120:4], and he dispersed them by means of his power [Ps 58:12], just as one of our brothers saw in a vision. This brother was ill and entirely ignorant of what was happening in regards to the saint. Above the pinnacle of the temple, he saw an angel radiant beyond reckoning, and many monks were walking around it upon floor-boards spread there for them. When he turned to look at another part, he saw something like a fiery rope placed upon the front of the church. The head of it had split into two and was threatening to encircle the entire church. When he cast his eyes again on the angel, it looked as if a thunderbolt were hanging in the air next to it. As he stood looking at this, trembling and stupefied, a man stood next to him and said, “Why do you look? Don’t you know what this means? The resplendent angel is the archbishop. The monks, whom you see circling him, are the sons of this church who are on watch around him this night. The fiery rope, its ends lying upon different areas, is the jealousy of the evil-doers coming from diverse places and conspiring to do ill to us. The thunderbolt, which you see near the angel, is divine terror, preventing them from doing the evil they have planned.” With this, the monk woke, and as he rested in his bed he prayed to the Lord to defend the church. And suddenly there came a sound from heaven [Acts 2:2] and the air rumbled with a tremendous thunderclap and flashed with fire. There was thunder and flashing and lightening, the waters poured from heaven, and a storm of a fury not seen for many days broke out. We blessed the God of the heavens who sent forth thunder and lightening and scattered them, and we also rejoiced to be freed from fear of the enemies by means of this vision.

On the next day, the Lord cured Richard, son of Eilnold of Bearsted, who is thought to have spent thirty-four years paying the penalty for a single sin. After the death of the first King Henry, when the peace of the English was disturbed and the kingdom was divided against itself and made desolate,32 This is a reference to the period of anarchy and civil war in England after the death of Henry I in 1135 until the accession of Henry II in 1154. See Hugh M. Thomas, “Miracle Stories and the Violence of King Stephen’s Reign,” Haskins Society Journal 13 (2004 for 1999): 111–24, and for a notable study of military men’s stories in William’s collection, see Bull, “Criticism of Henry II’s Expedition to Ireland.” this Richard attached himself to a knight and worked day and night robbing and plundering the poor. For the Lord had shut up his people under the sword [Ps 77:62] and the powerful fed upon the vineyard of the Lord, and the faces of the poor were laid waste [Is 3:14–15]. Among the transgressions of his youth, this man laid waste to a field of a poor woman who had cut it in the time of harvest. The woman saw him and cursed him in the name of the Lord. After a short time had passed, his feet and shins were struck such that he was not able to run to commit such an act again. His shins were bent into a bow. His feet bent inwards and the soles of his feet faced one another. He used the joints of his feet and the nodes of his shins (which we commonly call ankles) as if they were the soles of his feet. And so, in this way he was punished for thirty-four years for what he had done in an hour.33 Assuming that Richard came to Canterbury in 1171, his crippling illness began around 1137.

Great is the martyr and great is his power, and already his miracles cannot be numbered [Ps 146:5]. A year before, a boy de Tangis,34 The place is unidentified. Ralph, slept in a meadow, and after he woke and rose to go, he could not extend his feet.35 For other stories in which sleeping outdoors results in illness, see II.1, III.63, and IV.76. The nerves of his knees were contracted, such that one of his heels was attached to his buttocks, and the other was not far from it. The big toe of his left foot was bent under the sole of his foot while the remaining four toes were bent back and adhered to the bony framework of the foot. Many pustules were on the back of the other knee. Until the time of miracles, he moved about by crawling. In pain and misery, he came to the martyr, crawling and dragging himself along the ground. As he came, he received the clemency of the martyr. His nerves were stretched out, a torture that made the boy cry out. In the midst of his cries, the pustules burst and bloody matter came out. His heels were straightened away from his buttocks, his large toe left the sole of his foot, and the remaining toes were released from the bony framework. He got up and left, but from the great pain of the extension of his nerves, he remained lame until the third week.

And so, seeing how God had multiplied his mercy for us, we knew that the abundance of signs and prodigies would act as kindling to the hatred and jealousy of the evil-doers. So they might not again attempt what they had earlier been unable to do, we placed the martyr in the former location, and made the sepulchre secure, sealing the stone and setting guards [Mt 27:66]. 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. Certain marvelous things happened regarding these windows which are worthy of being told.36 A stained glass panel in Canterbury Cathedral window nV shows a man with his head inside one of these windows: see Koopmans, “Pilgrims at Becket’s Tomb.”

We knew a woman by the name of Matilda, the wife of Ertin, a man of Flanders who was a citizen of Canterbury.37 For other residents in Canterbury in this period who were neither English nor Norman, see Urry, CUAK, p. 171. When she tried to put her head through a window to kiss the sarcophagus, she was not able to do so, even though her body was slim and narrow. As she was returning home and conversing with a matron, her lady, she asked, “My lady, were you able to kiss the tomb of the martyr?” She replied, “I kissed it not once but many times.” And she said, “How were you, a large and fat woman, able to reach the sarcophagus, when I, though I am small and thin, was not able to get through the window? I put in enough effort: I tried for a long time with no success.” Her lady said, “Examine your conscience, and ask carefully whether you may have spoken ill of the saint when he was in the flesh or living with God.” Sighing and gravely rebuking herself for her guilt, she returned to the place of the sepulchre and gave herself over to prayers and great wailings. She showed that she had obtained the forgiveness she sought by a clear sign. Approaching the window with due reverence, she was able to insert her shoulder-blades as well as her head without any difficulty, and she rejoiced that she was able to acquire the desired kisses almost from the top of the sarcophagus. When she went home and told her fellows over a meal what had happened, she heard from her husband that something similar had happened to him.

In a great and stupendous miracle, the saint who had contracted the opening in the case of these two people expanded it for someone else. A certain man from Selling of adult age and large stature, Elward by name, had gone insane. Wherever he turned, he thought the enemy of the human race confronted him. He ordered him to be gone in the name of the Lord and spat as if spitting into his face. He was led to the saint and placed next to the sepulchre, and there he saw that diabolical phantom that seemed to be striking him. Not knowing where to turn, he fled to the martyr, and in a wonderful way he thrust his whole body through the narrow aperture that was hardly able to admit a human head. Without any difficulty, he wound himself inside this very narrow space in such a way that his head was at the martyr’s feet and his feet at the martyr’s head. Once he was stretched out upon the body of the saint in this way, he became quiet for a little while. We became concerned about how he would get out, and thought that the structure would definitely have to be broken apart for him to exit. Beyond all expectation, he came out of the other opening. Later, when he was in his right mind, we ordered him to go inside again. No matter how hard he tried, he could not get his shoulders into the aperture, not even with his clothes off. We made an adolescent with a thin and boyish body also try to do it, and we saw that his attempts were useless.

Afflicted by blindness, William of London washed his eyes with the holy water of Canterbury. He could see in one eye, but the fog of blindness remained in the other. Again and again he made use of the same medicine, but he was not able to produce any further improvement. Realizing that his vision was not going to improve, he wondered, and thought it likely, as he heard his friends impartially thought as well, that the saint had given him sight in one eye and had put off the gift of the other for a time. This was in order that the recuperation of the one might inspire hope for the recuperation of the other, and that he might hasten to Canterbury and the memorial of the saint, both to give thanks for the healed eye and to offer prayers for the one without sight. Coming to the sepulchre, he made an offering, put his head inside the window, and very quickly pulled it out again, with his hand against his healed eye pressing the eyelid closed. He looked around with the eye that had been blind, and he shouted, “What is this? I can see!” Those of us who were there marvelled, and closely examined the occurrence and the truth of this event. We found everything satisfactory to our wishes, except that in his pupils, which were not fully purified, a portion of a cloudy white spot still remained. In a short time, it had entirely disappeared.

It was the feast day when the Invention of the Cross is celebrated every year [Jn 5:1],38 The Invention of the Cross, celebrating St. Helena’s discovery of the relic of the cross, is celebrated on May 3. and lying here and there in the church of Canterbury was a great multitude of the sick, the blind, the lame, the withered, those awaiting and asking for health [Jn 5:3], and the power of the martyr was there to heal them [Lk 5:17]. There was among the others a boy about ten years old, Ansfrid, the son of Edwin of Dover. Nature had denied him the gift of clear speech since his birth. This affliction seems to have come from this: he could not hear anything at all in one ear, and in the other, he could hear only a very little or nothing at all. Moreover, one of his eyes was half closed, and the other was completely hidden under its sealed eyelid, such that he barely had the use of half an eye. The nerves of his right hand were so contracted that his fingers were clenched tightly inwards and their tips were driven into their base, with his nails digging into the flesh. Three pustules had grown on one of his thighs. These had vanished, but they had left him lame.

And so on the day of the Invention of the Cross, this unfortunate and miserable boy, deprived of nearly all his senses, had been placed by his parents on the spot where the precious blood of the precious martyr had been split. While they knelt in prayer, he burst out in tears and cries. As he indicated his many torments by means of gestures as well as his wailings, many of those standing there shed tears as well. After weeping and lamenting, he fell asleep, and there before him was the venerable friend of God, dressed in his pontifical garments. He said to him, “What are you doing here? What do you want?” And he said, “Lord, I seek my health.” Then the saint grasped the boy with two fingers by the locks on the top of his head (for his head had been shaved and the hair had grown back a little), and he shook him like a kind father playing with his son, saying, “Rise, go home.” When he woke after this sweet and joyful vision, he brought no little cause of joy to the people standing round about. For God, who closes and no one opens, and opens and no one closes [Rv 3:7], kindly unlocked the mouth and ears of this boy, granting him perfect hearing. Having unbound his fettered tongue, he made him able to learn to speak clearly. Though he was laboriously imitating others, yet he was able to copy the words that people spoke. His eyes were also opened, and he received sight without any imperfection. His fingers, which before had been bent to the palm of his hand, he now could extend freely and quickly. He got up and, without the lameness he had before, he ran to the tomb of the saint along with his parents, as much as the multitude of people rushing to and crowding around him would allow. You could see the sons of piety rush to the pious spectacle, lifting their hearts and their hands to the Lord [Lam 3:41] and erupting in praise of God and the martyr. Their tears overflowed due to joy rather than the pain or loss which often furnishes the cause.39 Robertson suggested that the phrase “furnishes a cause” [ministrat opes] echoes a passage in the Epistolae ad Ponto by Ovid: Has fortuna tibi nostra ministrat opes.

Hardly had we been sated with the sight of this delightful vision when we were drawn to another no less glorious spectacle. Wekerilda, a little woman of Horton, had lain in the church for three days and nights, fasting continuously and giving notice of her terrible punishment by her cries and groans. Her left eye had been wholly darkened for about six years. For no shorter length of time, her left hand had been bowed all the way up to her arm, such that the palm of her hand nearly seemed to be joined to her arm. Her right leg had been bent almost up to her thigh for something like eleven years, and her foot was so curved that her toes and heel faced each other, her large toe seeming to join the inside of her foot below her ankle. We saw this woman improved to such an extent that she saw equally clearly with both eyes, she held both hands out equally, she extended both knees the same way, and the toes of her injured foot returned to their ordinary place, with the toes of both feet similarly straight. Yet in one matter the grace of healing was not fully granted to her. One foot was still a little curved, making her lame, and so she walked with a staff. Thus in one woman four miracles were done, to the great happiness of the confluence of people. Up to ten people recovered from various infirmities that day, but we were not able to call back those who had slipped away and we drove out those without witnesses.40 This echoes Luke 17:12–17, a story about Christ healing ten lepers, only one of whom came back to give thanks.

A woman from Beckenham near London, whose name was Elvida, had not been able to open either eye for around five years, for her eyelids were stuck together as if they were glued. Led by her son, she fled to the manifest light of the English, with the intention of receiving light herself. When she approached the place where that light was thought to have been extinguished by the hands of the savage knights, she felt, as we learned later from her own telling, that her head was in uproar, as if her brain had been violently shaken. It was as if it had been put into a lit furnace and completely set on fire. She threw back the veil from her head and ripped the clothing from her breast, and suddenly fell prone on the ground, staying there for about an hour, until she opened her eyes and got up, bursting forth with these words: “Precious lord, saint Thomas, I give thanks to you for now I see!” The people ran to the glorious and pious spectacle, as full of joy as this was worthy of wonder. Each of them tested whether she could really see, asking her what they held in their hands, how they moved their hands and their fingers, and many similar things in order to find out the certain truth of the event. She answered every question from each questioner correctly, and she inspired not only rejoicing among the bystanders, but tears of delight.

The foot of Emma of Thanington, in the vicinity of Canterbury, was flayed and eaten away by the worst kind of ulcer. Anyone who saw it, even someone with an iron heart, would have been softened to compassion. For four years she suffered such sharp pains and terrible burning that she was being undone. Her groans and colorless face told the truth of this as much as her words. When she washed the ulcer with the saintly water, the burning stopped, the pains ended, and all manner of discomfort ceased. The raw flesh of her eaten-away foot seemed to be partly covered with hardened bloody matter, but in a short time, new skin covered it over and she was entirely healed.

So too, Matilda, the wife of Geoffrey Paris of Ipswich, who had been blind and led by another’s eyes for roughly sixteen years, experienced the power of the saintly water of Canterbury in our presence. When she washed her eyes, she also, as I would put it, washed away the blindness from her eyes.

Brian de Insula42 See Biographical Notes, Brian de Insula, provost. was also brought there, lying on a bed. In his region, he held the power of a provost, and he aimed to be feared rather than loved. His chin was all but stuck to his chest and his neck was rigid and inflexible. He was not able to lift his head nor to turn it at all. He was brought on a litter, for he was unable to ride or walk. Intense pain and fear of death had made him humble and devout. He was set down at the door of the church, and it was as if the martyr met him there and said to him, “Rise, take up your bed and walk” [Jn 5:8], for he left the bed and walked to the tomb of the martyr. The sacrist of the church of Canterbury, Robert,43 See Biographical Notes, Robert, sacrist and monk of Christ Church. encircled his neck with the blood-stained belt of the martyr and sent him away improved. His chin lifted and he departed on foot, leaving the litter with the martyr, but he did not regain full health for many days.

We also saw Frodo, from the region of the holy martyr Edmund,44 That is, the region of Bury St Edmunds in Suffolk, the burial site of St. Edmund (d.869), the king of East Anglia killed by the Vikings. who had so much intolerable pain in the joints between his feet and his shins that he was not able to dig or do any other work of that kind for around twelve years. If the pain ever lessened and he was able to apply himself to work, in a short time he would have to return to his bed, and then he would be unable even to walk. He said that in his sleep he was told that he would find a remedy for this great trouble if he were to put the shoes of saint Thomas on his feet. When these were not able to be acquired, he placed them in his slipper and full health followed.

Eilmer de Beche45 The place is unidentified. In addition to Cleche and Beche, it is spelled Deche in some manuscripts: see Robertson, MTB, vol. 2, p. 88 n. 7, and Duggan, “Santa Cruz,” p. 51. and his wife Edilda, the wretched parents of a wretched child, merited to feel the delights of parental joy at Canterbury. Divine piety had brought them offspring, but the gift of offspring was marred by the imperfections of nature. Their son, Henry, was about nine years old. When his mother gave birth to him, she gained rather than deposited a burden. He never had the ability to walk, stand upright, or get to his feet. For nine years, the only way he could move from place to place was by being carried. The parents, along with the boy, fell prostrate where the martyr had been killed. After a little while, he rose with the gift of walking granted to him. An untrained and unpracticed traveller, he walked here and there with the help of a staff or by holding someone’s hand. And so the soles and base of his feet were made solid, and what nature had not given him, he recovered by means of exercise.

A woman no less unfortunate, the wife of William of Lincoln, became equally happy. An enormous swelling had grown up on the kidneys of her son William two or three years after his birth. From the swelling came pain, from the pain infirmity, and from the infirmity he was so crippled that up to the end of his fifth or the beginning of his sixth year, he could not walk. The swelling made it impossible for him to stand on his feet. Sitting was intolerable, and even when he was lying down at rest, his suffering continued. There was no human remedy because there was no cause of the illness and punishment, and also no interruption. Whatever respite there was, it did not alternate with rest: the name and the benefit of rest was removed. And so, the mother took up the little boy, and, groaning, she carried him in her arms to Canterbury, the one whom she had before laboriously carried in her womb. When they were still two days distant from the city, health started to appear in the boy. We saw him afterwards regain the ability to walk near the sepulchre of our father, and hardly anything remained of the swelling.

We know of a matron of London, Eremburga, who was so ill that both she and all her family and friends thought her case was hopeless. Bequeathing everything that seemed to be hers, she requested that she be buried with the canons at the church of the blessed Virgin and Mother.46 St. Mary Overie, a house of Augustinian canons at Southwark (now Southwark Cathedral), is probably the house referred to here. The priest of the parish to which she seemed to belong contested this and said he required either burial or five shillings for benefit of burial.47 The priest of a parish would usually receive a burial fee for a parishioner. Eremburga’s wish to be buried at a house of canons would deny him this fee. The woman’s husband, not wanting her petition to be denied, nor to satisfy the priest’s wishes, thought of a clever way to bring the lawsuit to naught. He put the woman on a ship and accompanied her as her custodian. He did this more out of fear than hope: he expected that a corpse rather than a woman would be taken to Canterbury. But she was insensible to it all, and was taken away feeling neither fear nor hope. Disembarked from the ship, she was put onto a litter, and so went to the church of Canterbury. She was carried, not led there, and she arrived being helped by many, not just one. For a short time she lay near the martyr, and she received back her mind and power of speech. Her strength returned and she sat up. She stormed the martyr with prayers, asking that she either quickly die in that place or quickly recover and be able to walk home. Those of us who were there marvelled at the presumptuous beginning of the prayer, but we marvelled no less that a prize of faith so quickly followed in response to her worthy devotion. After a short delay, she jumped up, as if the Spirit of the Lord had come upon her,48 This is a common phrase in the Bible: see Judges 6:34, 1 Samuel 16:13, Isaiah 61:1, Ezekiel 11:5, and Luke 4:18. and she speedily and with a firm step walked many times around the mausoleum of the saint until she made her way to her inn. She walked there herself as she had wished.

On the following day, she and her husband quarrelled over an issue of money. When he demanded a sum he had seen her to have, she stated that she had not had it and polluted her faith. She did not fear to call the blessed martyr Thomas as witness to her lie, and as she swore and perjured herself, she immediately became ill again and out of her mind. When she returned to a quiet state, she openly confessed her offence. She was led again to the martyr, and she again implored for pardon and health. She laboured with such severe punishment at the sepulchre of the saint that it is thought that she atoned for her perjury. By divine regard, she again departed on her feet, healed in body, though her mind was still disordered. In time, she fully recovered.

In all this, the fury of the evil ones was not turned away, but their hand was stretched out still [Is 9:12]. They sharpened their tongues like a sword [Ps 63:4] and unwisely endeavored to contradict or cleverly to distort each of God’s mighty deeds. They imitated those that said that the Lord ejected devils by means of Beelzebub, the prince of devils [Lk 11:15], and told everyone that the monks of Canterbury were engaged in magical incantations. They said that miracles were being feigned by diabolical art and so were not really happening. People arriving would be suddenly seized by their incantations, and then, at the monks’ will, would be released from insanity. In this way, with the diabolical influence lifted, they would seem to be cured when they had not actually been ill. However, their testimony did not accord with the truth nor with each other. The martyr performed great deeds in God, and so that he might bring to nothing those that afflicted us [Ps 59:14], he struck this blow to their accusation: it was necessary for them either to stop maligning our innocence or to accuse all England of this crime. For suddenly, the number of prodigies and signs was multiplied throughout England, and with the multiplication of witnesses to the truth, our innocence and reputation was vindicated. It brought grief to those wishing us evil; our glory brought them embarrassment. So many witnesses to the truth came to us from all corners of England that our enemies could not resist or contradict them.

When the Lord’s anointed was still being maligned by some of them, a knight of the region of York, Thomas of Etton,49 See Biographical Notes, Thomas of Etton, knight of the region of York. heard this, and he too did not blush to denigrate his sanctity and glory, even though he once served the saint when he was the provost of Beverley.50 Becket received the provostship of Beverley c.1154 and retained it until 1163. No sooner had he scattered poisonous words of slander upon his lord, the Lord’s anointed, than, as it is written, the Lord scourges every son whom he receives [Heb 12:6]. He was struck and nearly suffocated by a dangerous sickness, by quinsy, as it was thought.51 Quinsy is a medieval term for severe throat pain and inflammation. When he considered how suddenly he had been taken ill, he realized that he had been slanderous and at fault, and he turned to the Lord with all his heart. He did not delay to moderate the flagellation of the martyr with the flagellation of a spirit of penitence and contrition. The remarkable justice of the Lord was followed by the Lord’s remarkable pity. As soon as he had repented of his offence and the martyr granted him the gift of inward tears, the pain vanished and everything returned to normal. When an opportune time came, he hastened to the memorial of the martyr. He testified that after this happened, he also had been freed from acute fevers by means of invocation of the martyr. [See Parallel Miracles no. 1 for William’s account of this miracle.]

Juliana, a woman as lovely in appearance as she was honest in her habits, was the wife of Robert Puintel of Essex,52 A William Puintel, possibly a son or another relation of this Robert, appears in the Essex section of the 1198 Rotuli curiae regis: see Rotuli Curiae Regis, Vol. 1: Rolls and Records of the Court Held Before the King’s Justiciars or Justices, ed. Francis Palgrave (London, 1835), p. 203. a knight known to me. At one time, several days after she had given birth, she was careless about her diet and ate a noxious fish. She suddenly became ill and began to swell up. Both her husband and her family expected time to bring her a cure or alleviation, but the illness of the sick woman and their sadness both grew. Around the middle of the following night, her swelling had increased to such an extent that none of them hoped for a remedy any longer. As people despaired of her exterior health, she turned to provide for her interior salvation. She summoned a priest with the greatest haste, but before she was graced by his presence, she lost the power of speech. Now no-one had any hope of happiness whatsoever.53 Unable to speak, Juliana would be unable to confess her sins. There were no bounds to the sorrow of each of them. The nurse of the ill woman was there, and she alone called to mind the blessed Thomas, arguing that recourse should be made to his merits. A vow should be made for her, and a candle the length and breadth of her body should be made quickly in the saint’s honor. The knight acquiesced to the advice of the nurse. When she had been measured by a stretched-out cord, she suddenly turned to her side and slept for a short time, about the time in which one can walk a furlong at an easy pace.54 That being just a few minutes (a furlong was equivalent to about an eighth of a mile). When she woke, she got up immediately, showing that she was slender and wholly sound and so bringing their lost happiness back to everyone. When she came with her husband to Canterbury, she joyfully told this miracle to us, and in order to give reverence to the holy martyr, she spent a night in vigil in the church of Canterbury praying and giving thanks.

A young man of good habits, Ralph son of Ralph of the province of Lincoln, wasted away with weakness as blood poured out of his nose and continued to flow incessantly for two days. It put him in a desperate state. The efficacy of incantations, the power of herbs, the potency of stones – all were in vain. He received the sacrament of last rites and prepared to depart from his body. The martyr was brought to mind by his parents and desperate friends. Taking on both the faith and the pain of the woman of the gospel crying out for her demon-possessed daughter,56 See Matthew 15:22–8 for the story of the woman with a demon-possessed daughter. with devotion and supplication they implored the martyr, asking that by the blood that he had shed with rejoicing for the liberty of the church, he would stop the young man’s dangerous flow of blood, so keeping him from dying, obtaining an interval of life for him, and granting him the grace of health. The martyr is near to all those who invoke him in truth [Ps 144:18]. As they all rose from prayer, they saw that the nosebleed was checked and he had recovered from the illness. Though he did not have his full vigor, he recovered this later with nourishment. With his strength restored, he presented himself to the martyr with an oblation. His parents accompanied him and gave testimony to this miracle.

Matilda and Roger of London tarried together at a wine-seller’s shop, and the son born of their fornication fell ill after a few days. All the signs of approaching death were clearly evident in his face and he lay completely cold. Both parents wept, but the mother, who loved the child more dearly, wept more. She considered this thoroughly, and concluded that after her fault of neglecting chastity, she deserved to suffer swift punishment for her fornication. Mindful of the martyr, she renounced her former life. The situation reversed marvellously. No sooner had the infant and the infant’s cradle been measured for a candle in the honor of the saint, than the boy, made whole and happy, suckled at the breasts offered by his mother.

A young man of London practicing the art of shoemaking, by the name of Gilbert, was struck with the disease of fistula.57 In medieval terms, a fistula was a narrow, open sore that oozed pus or bodily fluids. He became more and more imperiled every day. The infection perforated his stomach and abdomen in five places, and one of the holes was so wide that it appeared broader than the width of three fingers. With his stomach being eaten away like this, his intestines could be seen. Despaired of by those close to him, and lacking human help, he fled to divine aid. He went, with much difficulty, to Canterbury. After he made his prayer, his wounds were daubed with the blood of the martyr. Having asked for a portion of the blood, he brought back some with him, though a small amount, to London. Each day, he anointed each of the wounds, and in a short time they healed over and he received his health. He flew back again to the saint. In order to repay the debt of thanks for the reward of his health, he ran the distance from London to Canterbury, some fifty miles, in one day. He showed his naked body to us, perfectly cured, and he did not fear to challenge others to a run.

Hugh of Bourne, the son of William, was also plagued by a fistula. After three years’ continuous suffering, he was close to death. The flesh under his armpit was eaten away to his ribs; an egg would fit in the hollow. This large opening divided itself into nine channels: one went up sideways into his chest, another went in the opposite direction to his back, the third went all the way up to his neck, the fourth went down and across to his kidneys, and I do not remember where the rest curved around him. The young man consulted a skilled doctor, from whom he heard that he was wholly incurable, leaving him desperate. He fled to the saint, asked for the water and received it. That same week, all the openings dried up. Feeling himself well and robust, he soon began to press on with a peasant’s works and labors. As he worked, the disease revived, and he again resorted to the earlier medicine and again was cured. He washed himself and left, and he saw that no fistula now flowed with bloody matter. Before eight days had passed, the flesh healed over and he was completely cured.

A certain Richard was having a banquet in Essex with his friends and acquaintances. As they were feasting, the shepherd of the house entered the house, carrying a pyx in his hand. Richard said to him, “What are you carrying, shepherd?” “I bear the water of the martyr of Canterbury,” he said. And Richard said to him, “If you have served me well in the work entrusted to you and there is no wickedness in your hands, you will have brought water; but if the saint has not left a drop for you in the vessel, he will have proved you to truly be a thief.” They both agreed to these terms. Richard took the pyx from him and opened it in the midst of the company. He found it not just empty, I declare, but dry, as if water had never been put in it. “Son,” he said, “give glory to God: confess what you have done.” He was stained as a thief and evildoer on all scores, for he did not have anything to bring to his defence. The wood was solid and not a type to absorb moisture, nor had he traveled a long way, since he had brought the water from a neighbouring house, not from Canterbury. And so, terrified, he immediately confessed that he had been less than faithful to his lord in the cheese and butter accounts. But pardon was granted to him for the love of the saint, and with his transgression transformed into jest and laughter and the glory of the martyr, the pyx was hung in the church in exhibition and remembrance of such a delightful miracle.

Robert, a canon and the chamberlain of the church of St. Frideswide of Oxford, was weakened by severe diarrhea. Once the flux had eased, he became so constipated that the new problem was worse than the earlier one. Seeking to resolve this beyond the mode of nature, his earlier illness turned into excessive vomiting. And so, returning to his bed, he was brought to such a state that all the signs of approaching death had appeared. No one thought a remedy was possible for him. One of the brothers came to the ill canon, and ardently tried to get him to call to mind the memory of the martyr Thomas. The ill man tried to say the name of the martyr, and though he managed to say the first syllable, he was too ill to say the second. The canon who had been helping him recalled that that water of holy memory was being held in the monastery. He ran and quickly brought it to him, but found on his return that the ill man’s eyes were closed and he could not speak. However, he opened his mouth and poured in several drops as he invoked the martyr with supplications. Without any delay at all, the ill man exclaimed freely and clearly, “O lord, saint Thomas, have mercy on me!” He said this, and immediately sat up, and recovered so much of his strength that day that on the next day he returned to the convent. He was not afraid to take up the rigours of the order with the others in the customary way, because he had been loosened and no longer suffered from constipation. When the prior of the church, Master Robert of Cricklade,58 See Biographical Notes, Robert of Cricklade, prior of St. Frideswide. saw this, he called two of the canons who had never had any faith in the things that were being said about the martyr. He said, “Do you believe, or do you still waver?” And they confessed that no scruples of ambiguity remained in them, bringing no little joy to the questioner. And so divine pity, by driving off a bodily ailment from one, cured the wound of disbelief in two others. We heard these things from the mouth of the venerable prior, who also fled to the martyr, suffering greatly from an ailment himself. Later, he wrote to us describing how he became ill and how he escaped it by means of the martyr, which follows below, the salutation removed.59 A version of this salutation is preserved in a copy of the letter found in a fourteenth-century Icelandic account of Becket’s life and miracles. The text (in the nineteenth-century translation) reads: “Prior Robert, the least slave among the servants of God, to brother Benedict sendeth the greeting that he may live with God. What thou didst ask of me in the strength of thy love, I have now done to the best of my power, though failing to do it as well as I should have wished, inasmuch as my clerkship sufficed not to write the miracle in such a fair fashion as duty demandeth and exacteth of me, for the honour of God and the blessed Thomas” (Thómas Saga vol. 2, pp. 93–5).

“It has been twelve years or more since I have been in Sicily. I wished to go from the city of Catania to Syracuse walking along the Adriatic sea, and so my journey took me.60 It appears that the primary purpose of Prior Robert’s trip to Italy and Sicily was to collect papal privileges from Adrian IV for the priory of St. Frideswide: see A. J. Duggan, “Cricklade, Robert of,” ODNB and Biographical Notes, Robert of Cricklade, prior of St. Frideswide. The south wind and the fluctuation of the sea, which was to my left, inflicted a swelling with a very pernicious redness to my foot and leg. In the lodging in which I stayed in Syracuse, I improved with the application of hot poultices and plasters. I became better when I returned to Rome and was cleansed by medicines there, and on my entire journey home to England I had no trouble with it at all. However, a short time after I had returned to England, the swelling returned, though not as severely as before, and I drove it away by various treatments. It is now the third or fourth year, as I make it, since that disease struck me so severely that I was not able to rid myself of it by draughts or bloodletting, when many leeches were applied, nor through plasters, poultices, ointments, or any other medication. It was a severe swelling, so much so that the swelling on the foot was thought to be thicker than the foot itself. My leg was like this all the way up to the knee. Abscesses appeared both on the inside and outside, and not just in one place but many, such that I could hardly touch them for the pain. When bloody matter came out from one of the abscesses and there seemed to be some hope of healing, before it dried up another would emerge that was just as bad or worse. With these afflictions succeeding one another, I found no rest. Where my shin had seemed smooth, itching sores appeared which, growing together, stripped off the skin. The pain was no small thing. Blisters also appeared, filled almost to the thickness of a thumb. They emitted a great deal of pus when they broke open, but this brought about only torment rather than a cure. Later, two of the abscesses upon the foot broke open. Whenever I put on or took off a shoe, the pain was excruciating.

What more? I knew that it was a chronic illness, which could not be cured by human hands, for as the physicians say, chronic diseases bring death.61 Prior Robert appears to be making a general statement here rather than quoting from a specific medical text. The people of my city are my witness. When I spoke with them on feast days, urging them, according to my custom, to take on the way of righteousness, I sat while I spoke with them, including when clerics from various places in England were present, with the excuse that I could not stand because of the pain. In the Lent now past, I languished with sorrow because I could not be present at divine services as I was accustomed to be and especially because the mystery of the Lord’s passion was coming near. I worried that I would not be able to celebrate it as I ought, and I prayed to the Lord in my heart that he would turn his face from my sins and hear me, so that at least on these days, by his gift, I might be able to do what pertained to my ministry. And though I am unworthy, he to whom salvation belongs granted that my pain so lessened from the Lord’s Supper to the Wednesday after Easter that I was able to perform everything to my desire, to my amazement and to that of the brothers who knew of my illness. After this was accomplished, the pain returned.

It came into my mind that I should go to visit the sepulchre of the most blessed martyr and archbishop Thomas because I had heard of the signs of his martyrdom. By the time I came to Canterbury, the length and great labor of the journey had made the illness worse and the swelling great. Lying at his sepulchre, I prayed to the Lord that he would free me from my infirmity by the merits of his martyr. I prayed to the martyr that he would pray for me to the Lord. Not knowing if I had been heard, I returned to my inn anxious and groaning, not knowing if I would be able get back to my own home on account of the pain. At last it came into my mind to use the saint’s water that had been given to me as an ointment for my foot. Putting my foot in a basin, I made the sign of the cross with the water over my foot and my shin in the name of the Holy Trinity and in memory of the most blessed martyr, and I anointed both of them with the water. I threw what remained into the fire, lest it be trampled underfoot. I started on my journey the next day, returning to my own country, feeling a lessening of the pain and a reduction of the swelling. When I had reached my lodging in Rochester, I took off my shoe, hoping to see the reduction I had sensed, but I could not yet see what I had felt. Having faith in the recovery of health, I again anointed it in the same way. As I went to London the next day, I felt the pain lessen and the swelling reduce even more. When I took my shoe off in London, I was able to see the difference easily. In the third stopping place, the reduction was even greater, and I felt little pain.

When I arrived at Oxford, despite having made such a journey in which I would ordinarily have grown worse as each day passed, I found myself wholly healed, such that no vestige of the abscesses, sores, or blisters remained, with the exception that the skin was still somewhat reddened. All the inflammation was gone and all the pain had vanished, such that I was not the only one who marvelled, I who did not discern how I had been cured by the hand of the mercy of God and the merits of the most blessed martyr. Everyone who had seen my disease before was amazed and glorified God and his most blessed martyr. I showed my foot and leg to many religious persons and to others wishing to see the miracle. I say to you in truth before God that all these things are as I have written. I have omitted many things so that the reader would not be bored with an account that was too lengthy. I add here that I am able to walk and stand on this foot and leg just as well, indeed I think even better, than on the foot that was not afflicted by this infirmity.”

These things, as they are put down here, we had asked the prior to write about himself. He wrote back with haste, aiming to explain the event rather than to concern himself with the phrasing of the words.

A knight of Earley, named William,62 See Biographical Notes, William of Earley. endured a very similar disease for around three years. Blisters the size of nuts appeared on his legs and feet. They were a horrible colour and burned like fire. They broke open and more and more burst out, and he miserably wasted away. In the places where they broke open, the flesh was stripped off. It would sting and burn and then become covered over with hardened bloody matter like a poultice. When the time had come when the Lord would have mercy on him [Ps 101:14] a young man appeared to him as he was lying on his bed, saying to him, “William, why do you not go to Canterbury? Vow yourself to the martyr Thomas and go there. Beware if you do not do this, whether it pleases your wife or not.” And he said, “I will go, since it pleases God.” As he said these words, sleep departed from his eyes, he immediately sat up, and the stupefied man stupefied his wife who was on watch. She asked what had happened, and he concealed it from her. He was again seized by sleep, and behold, he saw the martyr standing very near. The martyr’s eyes were fixed on him, and he had a friendly aspect that promised that he would easily grant the grace he was asked for. It seemed to the man that he went up to the saint and humbly beseeched him for sound health. Waking, he got up and told his wife what he had seen and what he wished. She assented, and he started off.

On the first day he was hardly able to travel for a mile, and this was on horseback, not on his feet. He grew better day by day and came to Canterbury. He slept in the church, where his pain grew greater than usual, but his hope of healing also grew. He gave as an oblation two wax legs weighing twenty-four pounds that were made to resemble the full size of his legs. On the next day, when we took him for a walk, he confessed that he was entirely free of pain. And so, when he went back home, he ordered that his shoes be taken off his feet. When he revealed his unshod feet, they were so free from the impediment of the disease that there was no mark, relic or sign of infirmity to be seen. Even his skin was free from any red mixed in with the white, for with the ulcers healed, his skin came back together. All redness and blackness was expelled, and his skin was left uniformly clear.

On a later occasion, we spoke with the wife of the knight at Canterbury,63 See Biographical Notes, Aziria of Earley. asking her why she too had come. She said, “I have come to give thanks and render oblations to the saint for my young son, not yet seven years old. He went out of his mind one day, shouting, ‘Look where they come! Look where they come!’ He would go silent when sudden fits came on him, and when they had passed he would burst out again with the same words, ‘Look where they come! Look where they come!’ My husband was stupefied, I was stunned, and all the family was amazed. We all rushed to implore the martyr and ask for his help. My husband ran to bring the little piece of his vestments which your liberality had granted him, and he hung it around the neck of the afflicted boy. Immediately he rested his head on his father’s knee and slept a short time. When he woke, he was sound. When we were going to bed, we removed from the boy’s neck that which had freed him from the chains of madness. Hardly had we fallen asleep when the boy was afflicted again with madness and exclaimed, ‘Look where they come! Look where they come!’ Rising from bed, we ran to him, repeated the medicine, and made promises to the martyr for the boy. Soon he was wholly restored to his senses. This is the reason I have come to this place: that I might give to the martyr what I promised him.”

A clerk of celebrated name of the church of Lincoln, Master Peter de Melida,64 See Biographical Notes, Peter de Melida. was held fast by severe fevers, worse than any he could remember having before. At the hour the fever was to return, he drank the water and evaded the fever. And so he went and preached to the people that it was Thomas who had made him well [Jn 5:15]. On account of this, many people with ailments came to his house so that they could drink of the blessed water, and they were cured there of their illnesses. The water drove out fevers from many, repressed swellings of the viscera, relieved cutting pains of the vitals, curbed dropsy entirely in a certain person, and conquered paralysis in another before it could take hold and bring doom as it had already begun to do. A three-year-old boy was refusing the breast of his mother and held his tongue out of his mouth constantly because he was so overheated. When a drop touched his tongue, he instantly cooled down and turned to his mother’s breasts.65 This chapter may well be derived from a letter sent by Peter de Melida to Christ Church.

A clerk of London, Roger, also burned with acute fevers. Since he did not have any of the water and was too sick to be able to go to Canterbury, he lay down to sleep in a certain place where he had heard the martyr had slept. The repose of sleep was followed on at once by the repose of the desired health. He collected some of the dust of that place and brought it about with him, and he administered the happiness of health to many people who took up the dust mixed with water. Among so many sufferers from fever, we wanted to make special mention of this case, so that it may be known how much power there is in his blood when the dust of his bed can do such things.

The convent of the church of Norwich knows how much the arm of the monk Guncelin had swollen and how painful it was. His arm was wrapped in the stole of the martyr, and in a very little time all the burden of the infirmity was unwrapped from him.

We are also not unaware of how Ansfreda, daughter of Hubert of Canterbury,66 A cordwainer named Hubert is found in a Canterbury rental dated c.1206: see Urry, CUAK, Rental F, pp. 370 and 374. suffered from quinsy. She was dressed in the blood-stained outer garment of the martyr, which in a moment dissolved the great swelling on her neck.67 For the gift of this outer garment to the poor after Becket’s murder, see Passion, Extract VIII above.

Solomon, a citizen of London, was known to be nearly one hundred years old. His eyes darkened, and he was not able to see. In that year when the light of the English illuminated heaven and was illuminated throughout the earth, he had been deprived of the light of his eyes for around six years. He determined to amend his life and opened his blind eyes by means of the martyr’s relics. In the evening he cried to the martyr, and in the morning he heard his voice [Ps 54:18]. In the morning, when he was led to church, he opened his eyes and said to his guide, “Shameful woman, why are you walking along beside me dressed in such a way? Go, put on your clothes, and do not walk by me half covered in skimpy linens.” Stunned, she said, “Does this mean, lord, that you see me?” “I see, and see well,” he said, “by the grace of God and our new martyr.” His neighbours and kin heard that the Lord had magnified his mercy with him, and they congratulated him [Lk 1:58]. Many Londoners came there to see Solomon, and left with greater devotion for the martyr, because they saw that he had done this sign [Jn 12:18].

A miracle of great wonderment and most worthy of everyone’s praise occurred in Kelvedon in Essex. Henry, the only son of William, knight and lord of the manor, was more than ten years old. He had lost his appetite in his second year, and with his shrunken and pale appearance, he reached his tenth year seeming more dead than alive. He was choked with fits nearly every single day, and it seemed as though his intestines were being cut with sharp razors. The son designated as the heir was preceding his parents in death. Their anguish was immense. And the Lord saw their affliction and heard their cry [Acts 7:34]. It happened one day that as the boy was suffering more greatly than usual from the infirmity, someone came in who carried the antidote of the water of Canterbury. The boy tasted it, but it seemed to bring no improvement – in fact, he became much worse. When he was brought to a desperate point and his life hung in the balance, he suddenly vomited out a worm half a cubit long,68 I.e., around nine inches long. along with pus and putrefaction. All who saw what came out of his mouth marvelled. With loud voices, they praised the martyr and the potency of the draught. The boy soon slept, sweated, and woke cured. The worm was hung in the church.

Hugh de Beauchamp had a son with dropsy named Nicholas.70 See Biographical Notes, Hugh de Beauchamp, baron of Eaton Soton, Bedfordshire. The dropsy made his stomach distend, genitals swell, hands puff up, and feet inflate. This brought despair to the doctors, grief to his parents, and horror to all those seeing him. No doctor could be found who would dare to take on the cure of the boy, fearing that they would appear to be driven by greed to deceive his noble parents by receiving payment from them for their work and yet killing the boy by their attentions. All of them abandoned him as incurable. Prayers were directed, therefore, to the doctor of Canterbury. A thread was brought to measure the length of the boy. As it was being stretched out between the measurers’ hands, it broke. The severed section was placed alongside the boy’s body, and it was found to be not greater nor lesser, but exactly equal to the boy’s length. Everyone marveled at the thread, but they were more gladdened by the boy’s health. Without any earthly medicine whatsoever, he deflated. In a short time, he offered himself healed to his doctor.

A severe headache led the venerable knight, Richard de Rokeleia,72 This Richard is most likely from Rokesley/Ruxley, which is part of Greater London today but was in Kent in the medieval period: see Edward Hasted, A History and Topographical Survey of the County of Kent (Canterbury, 1797), pp. 1–2, 142–4. It is also possible that he was a member of the Rokele family. There were two Richard de la Rokeles active in the mid and late twelfth century: see Robert Adams, “The Rokeles: An Index for a ‘Langland’ Family History,” in Andrew Cole and Andrew Galloway (eds.), The Cambridge Companion to Piers Plowman (Cambridge, 2014), 85–96, at p. 89. to tire of living. For nearly four years he wasted away inwardly. For two years, he was so often apprehensive of death that he ran to the bath of confession not once, but seven times every single week, believing that every day that shone for him was his last.73 Echoing Horace, Epistle 1, iv.13: “believe that each day which shines on you is your last” [omnem crede diem tibi diluxisse supremum]. By the advice of friends, he was instructed and persuaded to bind himself by a vow of pilgrimage to the martyr.74 Here I follow Robertson’s emendation of martyri for martyris: see Robertson, MTB, vol. 2, p. 106 n. 4. After he made the vow, he gave sleep to his eyes and rested for a time. When he woke, he found the pain was gone. And so he went to his liberator without delay. According to what is said, vow and pay to the Lord your God [Ps 75:12], he paid his vow and gave gifts to God and the martyr in the sight of all the people, in the courts of the house of the Lord, in the middle of Jerusalem of Canterbury [Ps 115:18–19]. The same malady did not touch him later; he was protected by the patronage of the martyr.

Adam de Hethlega75 The place is unidentified. It is spelled Helega and Hedlega in various manuscripts: see Robertson, MTB, vol. 2, p. 107 n. 1 and Duggan, “Santa Cruz,” p. 52. This might refer to Hadleigh, Suffolk. was gravely ill for a long time from the extremes of the same disease, so much so that in the sacred time of Lent he was not able to fast past the third hour of the day. The most excellent martyr of God did not find him unworthy to be shown his presence in a dream. When he was deep in sleep, he saw him standing nearby, saying, as it seemed to him, “Adam, do you sleep?” He denied it and said, “No, lord, I am awake. Who are you?” He said, “I am Thomas the archbishop of Canterbury, who has come to bring you a remedy for your peril. Do you care to be cured?” “Lord,” he replied, “I desire nothing as much as a cure.” And it seemed as if the saint drove his thumb into the top of his head and turned it in the brain, not without great pain to the sufferer. When he pulled it out, he showed it to him smeared with white corruption and most foul putrefaction. He said, “Look, you are fully cured!” And he added, “Come! Come!” – repeating himself. From that hour the man was made completely well, but, not knowing what he was called to do, he was heedless of the words of the saint who had called him and went about his own business. After a few days spent in such negligence, the saint appeared to him in a dream again, saying “Why are you still delaying here? Don’t dawdle. Come as quickly as you are able to come.” The man then got up and consulted an elderly priest, seeking his sensible advice on the thrice-repeated command. When he heard that he was being called to render thanks at Canterbury, he obeyed, and appearing at Canterbury, he opened all these things to us.

A young men of excellent qualities, John of the Chapel, who was a clerk of Roger, archdeacon of Shrewsbury,76 See Biographical Notes, Roger, archdeacon of Shrewsbury. came and eloquently told the story of his miracle to us. He had suffered a blocked-up nostril for four years. He consulted doctors, and they said it was a polyp – that is, a bit of dead flesh which sometimes grows in a nostril – and he found no cure. When the fourth year was nearing its end, all the cause and material of this infirmity moved up between his eyebrows. He feared he would go insane on account of an intense headache. In the end he was confined to bed. His hands, feet, and all his body lay useless, and he could not turn himself from side to side, open or close his hands, or stretch out or pull back his feet. Just as if he were weakened by a sudden paralysis, he lay five or six days without taking any food or drink. Only his power of speech remained. A drink of the water of Canterbury was brought from that neighborhood to the one in peril. After he had confessed his sins and promised to change his way of life, he vowed to go to Canterbury and in the course of time to erect an altar in honor of the martyr. He then drank the water. Wonderful to relate, and hardly credible even to the faithful, as soon as he had swallowed the water, it felt to him as if it descended like a cold wave through all the limbs and joints of his body, and then rose up again slowly through his whole body. As if it were pursuing the disease, it especially froze his brain, and his head was full of so much more uproar than usual that he was terrified, thinking that the life-giving medicine might send him into sudden death. In the middle of this torment, he sneezed, and it felt as if something dropped into his mouth from his brain. He put his fingers in his mouth and pulled out a cherry stone. He immediately received back all the power of his limbs. He asked for his shoes, put them on and got up without delay, walking here and there through the yard of the house. Made well, though very weakened by continuous fasting, he came to us. He showed us the stone, but he unyieldingly took it away with him.

Concerning the health-giving liquid of Canterbury, it is memorable and worthy to remember that just as it brought corporeal health to many ill people, so too, by the martyr’s gift, it brought the health of souls to many. Robert, son of Jocelin of Springfield in Essex, a knight of praiseworthy life, full of virtuous deeds and works of mercy, became gravely ill. He summoned one of his acquaintances from London, Anselm, a priest of the church of St. Swithun,78 This is probably St. Swithun, London Stone in Cannon Street, which was established by the late twelfth century: see John Schofield, “Saxon and Medieval Parish Churches in the City of London: A Review,” Transactions of the London and Middlesex Archaeological Society 45 (1994): 23–146, at p. 131. for he had heard that he had gone to Canterbury and brought back the water of the most holy martyr. And when he had tasted the relic, the priest urged him to ask with firm faith for the health of his body from the saint. He replied, “Far be it from me to categorically ask for a remedy of a bodily infirmity. May the Lord grant me health of the soul, or what he knows is right for me, through the merits of his saint and the virtue of his relic.” He passed the rest of that day and half of the following night with much relief and great contentment of heart, resting with both his lips and eyes closed. Waking after a little while, he urgently asked for the viaticum and the rest of the necessities for the dying. The priest and the rest of those who were there wondered at this, and said that it was not necessary, especially since he seemed to be more cheerful than usual. To those earnestly seeking out the reason for his request, he said, “I just saw the blessed martyr Thomas. He seemed to be gloriously dressed and in a beautiful orchard, and he asked me who I was, where I was from, and whether the illness that I had was serious. I answered each question truthfully. ‘Do not fear,’ he said, ‘and do not be sad, for you will come very soon to my society.’ And so I cannot stay here with you long, so do not delay in administering to me those things that are appropriate for the dying.” When he took the viaticum, he said, “Into your hands I commend my spirit. You have redeemed me, Lord God of truth.” And so, more as if he were going to sleep than dying, he sent forth his spirit into the hands of the Lord and the martyr. If there is anyone who does not wish or dare to call this a miracle, and does not disdain to hear our judgement on this, let him know that when we consider the prayer of the knight, the appearance and promise of the saint, and the knight’s manner of dying, it seems to us to be a much more glorious miracle than if he had received his health and recovered, for doctors may have been able to accomplish that.

Roger, the son of Herbert of Bisley, a knight of the region of Gloucester, lived a most esteemed life, for he lived like a knight of God rather than a knight of the world. He suffered from a constriction inside his chest, like the pressure of phthisis,79 Here Benedict uses the Greek medical term for consumption or tuberculosis. such that he could hardly breathe enough air to live. He consulted industrious doctors and gave them generous fees, but when he knew that the hand of the Lord was heavy upon him [I Sm 5:6], since there is support in the midst of plague [Ps 72:4] for those who make flesh their arm [Jer 17:5], he turned his whole heart to the Lord. Because he feared that the words of prayers would not be accepted on his own merits, he asked that the merits of the most holy martyr commend him to God. On the advice of friends, he dispatched and directed a messenger to Canterbury for the water of his relics. He received him back, with the water, on the vigil of the Ascension of the Lord.80 The feast of the Ascension, the day when Christ went up to heaven (see Acts 1:6–11), is forty days after Easter. In 1171, the vigil of Ascension Day was on May 5, the feast itself on May 6. Those who were there wished that he would taste the relic, but since he was a man of great devotion as well as discretion, he said that he thought it would be something like a sin of irreverence to pour such sacrosanct liquid into innards still distended with food. Thus, at his command, it was brought into a nearby church and placed in the custody of a priest, so that when it had been guarded reverently for the night, the knight might more reverently receive the water the next day. On the next day, when he had devotedly strengthened himself with the Lord’s sacrament, and when he saw the most holy water brought, as he had asked, in a consecrated cup of the altar, he said to the priest, “Now present to me, lord, the water of the blessed martyr, yet on this condition: that I will, by the intercession of the glorious friend of God, either recover physically in three days, or win the eternal health of my soul this very day.” He drank what was in the cup, and then, as if he had premonition of the divine will, he was brought at once, by his own order, from the solitude of an inner chamber to an outer hall. The hour had nearly come when that solemn feast, celebrated throughout the world, was to be celebrated. When he heard the voices of the clerics in the procession modulated in song, he prayed that he might be placed upon ashes and sackcloth, according to the customs of the Christian religion. Everyone resisted and did not do as he asked, as it did not yet seem necessary, but he held sway by means of the keenness and authority of his orders. And so, he was placed on ashes and sackcloth, and he poured out his prayer in this way: “O Lord Jesus Christ, glorious king, who on this day ascended bodily to heaven amongst an ineffable heavenly procession, by the merits of the glorious martyr and your friend Thomas, the archbishop of Canterbury, and the virtue of the holy water, which I received in his name, take me today in your procession, Lord Jesus, and let me merit to come into the society of your martyr.” Hardly had he finished saying this when, immediately, without any interval of time, he breathed forth his spirit as if falling into a most sweet sleep. Many clerics, more knights, and a very large number of ordinary people had gathered there, to whom God had granted that they should be present at such a spectacle. They could not wonder enough that by an invocation of the martyr, he should so suddenly be heard, both as to his desire and as to his salvation.

We know of these things from the account of his son, Thomas, a venerable clerk, who came to Canterbury to fulfill his vows to God and the martyr. He declared that he himself had been snatched from the jaws of death by an invocation of the martyr.

In this clerk, various infirmities ran together, of which only one, constipation, remains in my memory. After he was deprived of his strength for nearly five weeks, he tasted the aforementioned water. Immediately his bowels were loosened and the chains of all his illnesses were dissolved, and he escaped, healthy and whole.

Pilgrims took ship to go to Saint James of Compostela. After a favorable voyage, they were nearing the port when they were driven back by an opposing wind and a great storm, and for days they were blown here and there. For many days they were driven before various winds, until, with the storm growing in fury, they had no hope of safety or means of defending their lives. Setting the merits of the martyr against the wrath of God, they invoked the saint, asking for his aid, lest the tempest of water drown them and deep water swallow them up [Ps 68:16]. If they were rescued, they promised to go to Canterbury and honor the saint with gifts and oblations. The martyr prayed to the Lord for them, as we believe, and he was heard on account of his esteem. Other ships foundering in the same dangerous storm disappeared, but this one, which had been bound by these vows, was driven to the port of Sandwich, where that same saint and martyr of God had taken ship when driven into exile, and where he disembarked at the end of his exile.81 Landlocked today, Sandwich was an important port in the medieval period. Thomas Becket embarked for France from Sandwich on November 2, 1164 and landed there on his return from exile on December 1, 1170. Other ships went into the height of the sea, and the tempest swallowed them [Ps 69:3]. But they left the ship and hastened to Canterbury. They discharged their vows, and, as we believe, told us about these things faithfully. Many of them left crosses with their liberator, Thomas, that they had, by English custom, intended to offer to Saint James.

Others suffered on a calm sea. With the breeze of winds withdrawn, the ship stood fixed on the calm waters. The air was immobile, the ship’s sail unmoving. And they cried to the Lord, who produces winds from his treasury [Ps 134:7], and they put forward the merits of the glorious martyr in commendation of their prayers. They made a collection and promised wax to the martyr. Suddenly, plentiful wind rushed into the sail, and they safely made their way to the port of their desire. All of them began to marvel at the martyr and to say that the winds and the sea obey him [Mt 8:27].

The right arm of William, a knight of Chester, was folded up such that he could not extend it nor remove it from his chest. He invoked the martyr and promised to make the journey to him without delay. Right then, the pain fled and he was brought back to perfect health. He extended the arm freely and easily.

The arm of another man, Ralph of Essex, swelled up, and he was in such a desperate state that no-one held out hope for his life. His arm was thicker than his thigh, and he was not able to bend or move it at all. Confined to his bed for about five weeks, it appeared that the only remedy for the malady would be death. Anxious and not knowing what he ought to do, he at last took a penny, made the sign of the cross on his arm from every angle, and offered the same penny to a poor man in the name of the martyr. In addition, he ordered a wax arm to be made to the length of his arm, to be offered to the martyr after he received his health. The pain vanished instantly, and little by little the swelling subsided.

Ada, a young woman of London, wasted away from a long illness. Towards the end, she had so little strength that she was unable to lift herself or to turn onto her other side in her bed unless she had someone’s help or pulled herself up by a rope hanging above her. After a second remonstrance in a dream, she was transported by boat to a landing ground near Canterbury. She was put onto a horse and held on it by another person’s hands, and in this way she was conveyed to Canterbury. When she came to the western suburb of the city, she heard that there was a priest there of good reputation and upright life, and she was put down from her horse in order to bewail her sins in his ears. Wonderful to relate, though she had not been able, as mentioned above, to sit on the horse without someone else’s help, when she had been taken down from it, she stood on her feet, and, as the men who had come with her stood by astonished, she went with the priest to the church.83 This may well refer to the church of St. Dunstan, located outside the city walls near Canterbury’s West Gate. Another possibility is the chapel of St. Nicholas Hospital in Harbledown, located two kilometers west of Canterbury Cathedral. She deposited her little burden of sins with the elderly priest, and was filled with hope for greater health by her sudden strength. She hastened to the tomb of Thomas, the friend of God. On that same day, she recovered her former health and left rejoicing.

A boy of the marshes,84 This likely means Romney Marsh in the south of Kent. Thomas, son of Adam, was being undone by the distress of the stone.85 That is, a kidney stone. He cried and groaned so miserably every time he had to urinate that the hearts of those hearing him were moved to compassion. When he, along with his parents and other ill people, had begged for the martyr’s aid, he closed his eyes in a light sleep. When he woke, he needed to urinate and went out of the monastery. Along with the urine, he painlessly passed the stone broken up into very fine sand. He did not have to bear any more trouble from that source.

The woman Lefseda, who came from the same region, lamented that her right eye was blind. When she had tasted the holy water, she returned to the place of the martyrdom, and she received sight in her right eye that was not much worse than that of the left, even though it had earlier endured a great deal.

Godiva, a woman of Chelmsford, had also been condemned to blindness for five years. Falling down before the sepulchre of the martyr, she saw a ray of the sun. She could discern shapes and colors, but she did not receive perfect sight.

At the sepulchre of the glorious martyr Thomas, we saw and testify to the repetition of the miracle in the gospels of the man born blind, the man who replied to the Jews who wondered and maligned, “from the beginning of the world no-one has heard that anyone has opened the eyes of one born blind” [Jn 9:32]. A fourteen-year-old boy blind from birth, Geoffrey, son of Liviva of Chalgrave, came to Canterbury by means of the guidance and aid of his mother. His eyes were touched by the precious blood of the martyr. On the following night, his eyes swelled up incredibly. They emitted so much bloody matter that if the true amount were described, it would seem to exceed the bounds of truth. We saw this to happen to innumerable others, both for the torment of unworthy healthy people and for the health of worthy sick people. After the third day, the swelling was reduced, and though his eyes still appeared reddened with congealed blood, he opened them, and proved by clear indications that he was able to see whatever he looked at. Although he was able to perceive different colors of things, he could not put names to any of them with the exception of white. I do not know why he could only name this color, unless it may be that light and brightness, like love and joy and similar things, seem to be akin to human nature and naturally beloved of the soul. Perhaps he was ignorant of the rest of the colors, those that are less natural and less pleasing, and could only easily conceive the conception of pleasing whiteness. The blood left his eyes little by little. Having grown better, to the great joy of his mother as well as others known to him, he went back to his home.

Gilbert, of the Isle of Thanet, brought his small daughter to the martyr and offered her to be straightened out. All of the toes of her right foot were contracted and joined to the sole of her foot. She carried herself on a staff rather than her feet and used the top part of her foot as a sole. She was cast before the sepulchre. Her nerves were stretched out and her toes lifted up. She leapt up with her toes perfectly aligned, and placed her sole, which had never touched the ground, on the ground, though still not confidently.