Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: Archbishop, (2) connection with the Abbey of Canterbury, the natural repository for records of his life. They accordingly chose Herbert of Bosham, who had instructed the Archbishop in Scripture; John of Salisbury, his confidential adviser and companion in exile; and William of Canterbury, who had been requested by the monks to compile a book about the Saint’s miracles and to present it to Henry II. But John’s sketch was recognized by all his contemporaries to be inadequate, and had been supplemented by Alan (Prior of Canterbury from 1179 to 1188), who prefixed the biography, thus supplemented, to a volume of the Archbishop’s correspondence. Alan, therefore, was recognized by the compilers of the Quadrilogus as their fourth author. When describing the Martyrdom, they call in Benedict as a fifth witness. But, as Alan does not describe the death, the witnesses practically remain four. [23] A later version of the Quadrilogus (printed in 1495, before the printing of the earlier one) inserts passages from Grim and Fitzstephen. This also contains the legend of the Syrian origin of Becket’s mother, and an account of the sudden withering of a tree under which the conspirators plotted his death.3 [24] All this indicates that
The Passion of St . Thomas of Canterbury
would be a common subject for clerical discourses and sermons abroad, as well as popular in England, where the poor, and the
English by birth, regarded him as their special champion and miraculous healer. Hence would spring a great number of anonymous
Passions, from some of which extracts are given below. The first two are portions of complete Lives. 3 The early Quadrilogus (Magnusson, Saga, ii. p. xcv.) was recast by Roger, a monk of Croyland, by desire of the same Abbot Henry, in 1212-13: The method adopt…
