In many ways this week the topic that has kept reoccurring is Thomas Becket. However before I get on to St Thomas of Canterbury I thought I would just mention that Dr Marin Watts did have a very successful time at the Sandwich Museum archives, in particular he was very impressed with the collection of photographs held there. Moreover he was able to share his earlier findings at the Royal Engineers Museum at Medway with the Sandwich archivist – an excellent example of intellectual co-operation.

On Wednesday another member of staff at Christ Church: Dr Lesley Hardy, with Dr Andrew Richardson from Canterbury Archaeological Trust, gave talks at Folkestone about the new project they are involved in with local people regarding the town’s Anglo-Saxon saint: ‘Finding St Eanswith’. It is her monastery in Folkestone that was among the religious houses targeted by Viking raiders in the centuries before the Norman Conquest. St Eanswith was one of a number of saintly abbesses and another from nearby Lyminge, St Eadburh, is becoming better known because a manuscript at Hereford Cathedral library containing details of her life and miracles, has recently received scholarly attention.

But to return to St Thomas, my first encounter was finishing off an article I have written on the St Thomas Pageant that took place in Canterbury at least from the early 16^th century. I have mentioned this before so I won’t say any more beyond that its timing is exceedingly interesting in terms of its being funded by the civic authorities. What I will mention, though, is that it will be coming out next year in Archaeologia Cantiana, the Kent Archaeological Society’s journal. To that end I have found some images for Terry Lawson, the journal’s editor, including one of the city’s seal from a Christ Church Priory document, held by Canterbury Cathedral Archives and Library; and an image of a woodcut showing the archbishop’s murder by the four knights, which is in a very early printed book. There is a copy of Caxton’s The Golden Legend in the Special Collections at Glasgow University Library and I have ordered a digital image from them. What is even more interesting is that the Glasgow image has been slashed, presumably at about the time of the Reformation by the 16^th-century equivalent of a Stanley knife, and this is true for both the image and text on St Thomas. The Early English Books Online [EEBO] has digitised two other printed copies, but these were printed by Wynkyn de Worde, Chaucer’s successor. The image is different in these, showing Becket kneeling before an altar but not his murder [martyrdom] and neither image is damaged, although one of the texts has been slashed in a similar way. The slashing of texts is certainly noteworthy, indeed the cathedral library at Canterbury has a slashed primer, the damaged part again refers to St Thomas, a reminder of just how potent a symbol he was in the late 1530s and into the 1540s.

Stelling Minnis parish church – St Thomas would have been most unwelcome here!

Photo: Imogen Corrigan

However Thomas Becket references this week don’t stop here because I was Dr Doreen Rosman’s ‘sheepdog’ for her Canterbury Festival walk around the village of Charing. Doreen was standing in for Sarah Pearson, which she did splendidly, and we started at the parish church which is next to the medieval archiepiscopal palace. Now Charing was one of Becket’s favourites and you can still see why because it did have a magnificent great hall and it is in a lovely setting. Moreover there is also another link to St Thomas in the church itself because the early 16^th-century roodloft contained an image of the saint standing in a tabernacle. Although long gone, like the late medieval roodloft, we know about this statue, as Doreen indicated, because Thomas Gibson, a local parishioner, intended that his executors should see to its gilding in his will of 1518. This appears to be an unusual occurrence, although I would be interested to know how unusual, because the only other one I have found evidence of so far in east Kent was at Sutton Valance. The testamentary evidence again comes from the 1510s, perhaps not a coincidence considering what was happening in Canterbury and the approach of the 1520 Jubilee, and in this case Thomas Steyle (1514) wanted the image of St Thomas to be painted ‘after the form and value’ of other images there when the roodloft was made. New work on such church fixtures and fittings appears to have been quite common at this time in the diocese of Canterbury, indeed several of the city’s parish churches were undertaking almost copycat works at this time.

My final St Thomas encounter was last night when I with about 200 others who attended a brilliant concert in Canterbury Cathedral crypt entitled ‘Felix Locus’. This music for 1215 brought together Magna Carta, Stephen Langton and Thomas Becket and featured The Victoria Consort and Canterbury Gregorian Music Society. To hear such 12^th and 13^th century pieces sung in that atmosphere was a rare treat and was beautifully complemented by the several readings, most of which were done by Dr Mark Bateson, the archivist who found Sandwich’s Edward I version of Magna Carta in the county archives earlier this year. Among Mark’s readings was Edward Grim’s contemporary account of Becket’s murder. I thought I knew it but I was wrong because I had totally overlooked the importance of the ‘evil’ clerk. So yes we have the four knights but the clerk provides the fifth wound, thereby mirroring Christ’s five wounds, and perhaps just as telling there is the slicing of Becket’s head. Of course there is the Corona chapel but thinking of Grim’s account he places considerable emphasis on the blood from Becket’s head wound, thereby providing a strong parallel to the wounding of Christ’s head by the Crown of Thorns. This in turn was thought provoking because on Wednesday I had heard a lecture by Dr Emily Guerry, at the University of Kent, where she had made a strong case about the innovative portrayal of the Crown of Thorns on the crucified Christ in a now almost completely lost wall painting in the mid-13^th-century Sainte Chapelle, built to house King Louis IX of France’s Passion relics, and most particularly his acquisition of the Crown as his most precious relic.

These references have all been exceedingly fascinating, not least because they span over 350 years, thereby demonstrating just how potent St Thomas was from the High Middle Ages right the way through to the Reformation, and even beyond. And as a final thought it reminded me that there are two lectures at the Medieval Canterbury Weekend that will focus on such interesting topics: Dr Diana Webb on Medieval Pilgrimage and Professor Nicholas Vincent on The Cult of Relics.