The Correspondence of Thomas Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury, 1162-1170

The Correspondence of Thomas Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury, 1162-1170
Author: Saint Thomas (à Becket)
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 994
Release: 2000
Genre: Christian martyrs
ISBN: 9780198208921

This is a major new edition of the letters written and received between 1162 and 1170 by Thomas Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury and victim of the 'murder in the cathedral'. It takes the reader to the very heart of the great dispute that rocked the English kingdom in the twelfth century.

Liturgies in Honour of Thomas Becket

Liturgies in Honour of Thomas Becket
Author: Kay Brainerd Slocum
Publisher: University of Toronto Press
Total Pages: 404
Release: 2004-01-01
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 9780802036506

Slocum analyzes the image of Thomas Becket as presented in the liturgies composed in his honour, and examines these within the context of the political and social history of the late twelfth and early thirteenth centuries.

Thomas Becket

Thomas Becket
Author: John Guy
Publisher: Random House Digital, Inc.
Total Pages: 449
Release: 2012
Genre: Christian martyrs
ISBN: 1400069076

Drawing on the full panoply of medieval sources, Guy sheds new light on the relationship between Saint Thomas à Becket and England's greatest medieval king, Henry II, separating truth from centuries of mythmaking, and casting doubt on the long-held assumption that the headstrong rivals were once close friends. He also provides the fullest accounting yet for Becket's seemingly radical transformation from worldly bureaucrat to devout man of God.

History and the Written Word

History and the Written Word
Author: Henry Bainton
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
Total Pages: 208
Release: 2020-01-24
Genre: History
ISBN: 0812251903

A thought-provoking look at the Angevin aristocracy's literary practices and historical record Coming upon the text of a document such as a charter or a letter inserted into the fabric of a medieval chronicle and quoted in full or at length, modern readers might well assume that the chronicler is simply doing what good historians have always done—that is, citing his source as evidence. Such documentary insertions are not ubiquitous in medieval historiography, however, and are in fact particularly characteristic of the history-writing produced by the Angevins in England and Northern France in the later twelfth century. In History and the Written Word, Henry Bainton puts these documentary gestures center stage in an attempt to understand what the chroniclers were doing historiographically, socially, and culturally when they transcribed a document into a work of history. Where earlier scholars who have looked at the phenomenon have explained this increased use of documents by considering the growing bureaucratic state and an increasing historiographical concern for documentary evidence, Bainton seeks to resituate these histories, together with their authors and users, within literate but sub-state networks of political power. Proposing a new category he designates "literate lordship" to describe the form of power with which documentary history-writing was especially concerned, he shows how important the vernacular was in recording the social lives of these literate lords and how they found it a particularly appropriate medium through which to record their roles in history. Drawing on the perspectives of modern and medieval narratology, medieval multilingualism, and cultural memory, History and the Written Word argues that members of an administrative elite demonstrated their mastery of the rules of literate political behavior by producing and consuming history-writing and its documents.

Thomas Becket: Friends, Networks, Texts and Cult

Thomas Becket: Friends, Networks, Texts and Cult
Author: Anne J. Duggan
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 394
Release: 2023-05-31
Genre: History
ISBN: 1000939073

Becket's life was lived on a European stage, his cause was conducted in a European setting, and the cult of the new martyr spread with extraordinary rapidity to the furthest reaches of Latin Christendom before the end of the twelfth century. The fifteen studies collected here reflect not only the global reach of the subject but the diverse expertise of their author, whose edition and translation of the Correspondence of Archbishop Thomas Becket (2000) and acclaimed biography (Thomas Becket, 2004) have established her place in Becket studies. Based on the critical examination of manuscripts and texts, this collection focuses first on the papal curia and Becket's household in exile. The following studies deal with Becket's letters and their authorship, the coronation of the young King Henry (1170), and Henry II's reconciliation at Avranches (1172). The final part traces the explosion of Becket's cult, the transmission of hagiographical and liturgical texts to France, Germany, and Portugal, and the role of diverse agencies of dissemination: Henry II's daughters, for example, in Saxony, Castile, and Sicily, and the Cistercian and Augustinian orders whose networks of houses embraced the whole of Europe.

Pope Celestine III (1191–1198)

Pope Celestine III (1191–1198)
Author: John Doran
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 397
Release: 2016-12-05
Genre: History
ISBN: 1351910094

Hyacinth Bobone (c. 1105-1198) was one of the great figures of twelfth-century Europe. Active in the Roman Curia from the 1120s, a student in Paris, and associated with both Peter Abelard and Arnold of Brescia, he was made cardinal deacon of Santa Maria in Cosmedin in 1144 and served there during forty-seven years before being elected as pope in 1191. As curial cardinal and as papal legate in France, Spain, Portugal and the Empire, he was deeply involved in many of the major political conflicts and ecclesiastical reforms of his time. As pope, he contended with formidable secular rulers and serious setbacks for the crusading movement. His pontificate saw particularly notable developments in the fields of canon law and canonization policy, while his Roman origins influenced his artistic patronage in Rome and his attitude to the city's Jews. Yet this remarkable pope has been overshadowed by his celebrated successor, Pope Innocent III (1198-1216) and there has been no full-length study of his life since 1905. The fourteen studies presented here offer a fresh look at Hyacinth's early life in Rome, Paris and as legate, explain his relationship as cardinal and pope with the Christian kings, examine his promotion of the crusade in the Holy Land, on the Baltic Frontier and in the Iberian Peninsula, and analyze his role as pastor and reformer. These articles, written by leading experts in their respective fields, inform us not only on the life of an exceptional churchman but also of the vibrant and rapidly changing times in which he lived.

Aelred the Peacemaker

Aelred the Peacemaker
Author: Jean Truax
Publisher: Liturgical Press
Total Pages: 344
Release: 2017-02-01
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0879070536

In addition to being a prolific spiritual writer and the abbot of the premier Cistercian monastery in northern England, Aelred of Rievaulx somehow found the time and the stamina to travel extensively throughout the Anglo-Norman realm, acting as a mediator, a problem solver, and an adviser to kings. His career spanned the troubled years of the civil war between King Stephen and the Empress Matilda and reached its zenith during the early years of the reign of Henry II. In this work, Jean Truax focuses on the public career of Aelred of Rievaulx, placing him in his historical context, deepening the reader’s understanding of his work, and casting additional light on his underappreciated role as politician, mediator, and negotiator outside his abbey’s walls.

Proceedings of the Battle Conference 2014

Proceedings of the Battle Conference 2014
Author: Elisabeth M. C. van Houts
Publisher: Boydell & Brewer
Total Pages: 311
Release: 2015
Genre: History
ISBN: 1783270241

The latest research on aspects of the Anglo-Norman world. The contributions collected here demonstrate the full range and vitality of current work on the Anglo-Norman period, from a variety of different angles and disciplines. Topics include architecture and material remains in Winchester, Kent and Hampshire; the role of Duke Richard II and Abbot John of Fécamp in early Normandy; political and liturgical culture at the Anglo-Norman and Angevin courts; the lost (illustrated?) prototype of Dudo of Saint-Quentin's early Norman history and Geoffrey of Monmouth's motivation for his Historia Regum Britonum; twelfth-century legal scholarship and the archaic use of vernacular vocabulary in law texts; trade and travel; and a study of episcopal acta from the south-western Norman dioceses. Contributors: Richard Allen, Pierre Bauduin, Johanna Dale, Jennifer Farrell, Peter Fergusson, Sara Harris, Nicholas Karn, Edmund King, Lauren Mancia, Eljas Oksanen, Gesine Oppitz-Trotman, Benjamin Pohl, Katherine Weikert

The Popes and Britain

The Popes and Britain
Author: Stella Fletcher
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages: 280
Release: 2017-02-28
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1786731568

When the British thought of themselves as a Protestant nation their natural enemy was the pope and they adapted their view of history accordingly. In contrast, Rome's perspective was always considerably wider and its view of Britain was almost invariably positive, especially in comparison to medieval emperors, who made and unmade popes, and post-medieval Frenchmen, who treated popes with contempt. As the twenty-first-century papacy looks ever more firmly beyond Europe, this new history examines political, diplomatic and cultural relations between the popes and Britain from their vague origins, through papal overlordship of England, the Reformation and the process of repairing that breach.