| View previous topic :: View next topic |
Hatty
Site Admin
In: Berkshire
|
|
 |
|
At least five contemporary biographers of Thomas Becket are listed, one of whom is John of Salisbury. He was secretary to Theobald, Becket's predecessor, to whom he'd been introduced by Bernard of Clairvaux.
Edward Grim's biography was published about 1180. It appears to be a copy of an earlier work written in verse by Guernes, or Garnier.
Guernes was from a town near Picardy and is described as 'a wandering Christian cleric with a good command of Latin'. Possibly a troubadour. Eleanor of Aquitaine had been queen for a couple of decades by then. Anyway he is known for one work, a verse epic about Thomas Becket, in Anglo-Norman
Wiki says
Shortly after Thomas Becket's death in 1170 Guernes set out to compose a vernacular-French, biographical poem of Becket's life. He completed his first draft in 1172, working on the continent, but it was stolen before he could correct it.
This first draft was compiled only from secondary sources and drew mainly on an earlier biography by Edward Grim, who witnessed Becket's Death first hand and was wounded trying to save him. Guernes immediately started working on a second draft and, being a wandering cleric, went to England to interview the eyewitnesses of Becket's death in the Canterbury area.[5] Guernes completed the text, in 1174, drawing primarily on Edward Grim and William of Canterbury, and consulting Benedict of Peterborough and William Fitzstephen |
'William of Canterbury', a monk at Canterbury who ran away during the murder, may himself be a fiction. It's not clear how Garnier's epic was influenced by Grim's bio if Grim's book was published in 1180 and there's no way of comparing them since Garnier's earlier draft was, err, stolen.
The original of version No. 2 seems to have disappeared, but there are later copies.
| Guernes's work is the earliest-known life of Becket written in French, and the earliest known verse life of Becket.[3] There are six manuscripts of the second draft, all of them are Anglo-Norman and none of them older than the 13th-century. In 1977, Ian Short examined a fragment of the first draft which was assumed lost and noted that the second draft was far less influenced by Grim |
No date given for the presumed first draft. It may not have originated in France/Picardy after all
| The poem is further coloured with hints of Anglo-Norman because it was copied by Anglo-Norman scribes. | |
|
 |
|
 |
|
Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
|
|
|
|
You have to be very careful about the date of creation and the date of the earliest surviving document. Scholars tend not to be. That is because they assume everything is as it should be so to them it doesn't matter, it's all historical source material. If you take, say, the Gospel of St Mark, you might get (from academics)
purported eye witness account c 50 AD
probably written c 125 AD
earliest manuscript referring to it 250 AD
earliest manuscript containing text 500 AD
earliest text with secure scientific date 1450 AD
| At least five contemporary biographers of Thomas Becket are listed |
That is a suspicously large number not a comfortingly large number.
| one of whom is John of Salisbury. He was secretary to Theobald, Becket's predecessor, to whom he'd been introduced by Bernard of Clairvaux. |
This for example is worthless unless the manuscript he wrote is extant. Anyone later writing a purportedly contemporaneous account would make sure it was written by somebody who was known to be around at the time. That's not so easy, identifying someone from a long time before living in an age when hardly anyone's name was recorded. In this case it's actually a pretty unlikely personage -- strewth, how old would the old Archbishop's secretary be? Since he wasn't Becket's presumably by now someone else's secretary, retired or dead. And Bernard of Clairvaux being mixed up in it is not exactly reassuring.
| Edward Grim's biography was published about 1180. It appears to be a copy of an earlier work written in verse by Guernes, or Garnier. |
Which turns out to be a copy of Grim. Dear God!
| Guernes was from a town near Picardy and is described as 'a wandering Christian cleric with a good command of Latin'. Possibly a troubadour. Eleanor of Aquitaine had been queen for a couple of decades by then. Anyway he is known for one work, a verse epic about Thomas Becket, in Anglo-Norman |
That would make it one of the very earliest! Maybe the earliest. You might check.
Wiki says
Shortly after Thomas Becket's death in 1170 Guernes set out to compose a vernacular-French, biographical poem of Becket's life. He completed his first draft in 1172, working on the continent, but it was stolen before he could correct it. |
Draft biographies. Worth rubies down at the local fence. "Got any more like this, son. We can really shift 'em."
| This first draft was compiled only from secondary sources |
Becket dies 1170, the draft is completed by 1172. So, let's see, it must have been started in 1171 and bios are never undertaken unless and until you have the material to hand. A few months is not a very long time for primary sources to be consulted, secondary sources to be written, copies made, circulated to interested parties and finally to hove up in Picardy. Wings of a dove!
I can't improve on your account of the rest of this ridiculous fable.
|
|
| |
|
|
|
Wile E. Coyote
In: Arizona
|
|
|
|
John of Salisbury is supposed to have written at least parts of the Entheticus Maior, in 1150's. It uses a stylistic device found in Ovid "prosopopoeia", he addresses "his book" as a person (Becket). So it advises on the dangers of travel and the corrupting effect of court life......ie exactly the traps Becket fell into within Henry's court. (Well predicted John!).
This is the same John that after Becket's death gives us a vita et passio along with miracles etc that will then become part of the Becket cult. It is a (post) justification for Becket to become a saint.
We see a compelling story....humble upbringing, a prodigy, off to study scripture....the court, the temptations of court, the rejection of temptation, martyrdom, sainthood. It is the story of Christ, where Satan is the court.
Tho(mas) is a messenger messiah.
|
|
| |
|
|
|
Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
|
|
|
|
| Tho(mas) is a messenger messiah. |
Well, I'd quite like to hear more about this from a Megalithic Empire point of view. From a strictly AE perspective Thomas (the Apostle) can be commended for doubting but criticised for judging by results. He is certainly a suitable martyr freak for the Becket story
| Thomas first speaks in the Gospel of John. In John 11:16, when Lazarus had recently died, the apostles do not wish to go back to Judea, where some Jews had attempted to stone Jesus. Thomas says: Let us also go, that we may die with him. | |
|
| |
|
|
|
Hatty
Site Admin
In: Berkshire
|
|
|
|
People called Tom seem to be fall guys in folklore. But also talented.
Tom, Tom the piper's son,
Stole a pig and away he run,
The pig was eat,
And Tom was beat,
And Tom went howling
Down the street. A longer, more complicated version includes the refrain 'Over the hills and far away'.
The name Thomas became popular because of St Thomas Becket according to Behind The Name which smacks of post-justification as Wiley says.
Another well-known character is Mad Tom or 'Tom of Bedlam', the title of a 17th century ballad. In Shakespeare's King Lear, 'Poor Tom' is a nobleman disguised as a mad beggar. Fools, madmen, disguises, alms, thieves ... have Megalithic overtones.
|
|
| |
|
|
|
Hatty
Site Admin
In: Berkshire
|
|
|
|
There are ten 'known' Thomas biographers who are categorised as contemporary, plus a couple of anonymouses. They can be quickly discounted on the grounds of hearsay/circularity/dating.
Take Robert of Cricklade, a cleric of course, who wrote
| a number of theological works as well as a lost biography of Thomas Becket |
It's doubtful he was the author of anything since 'some of the manuscripts are now lost' and his biographical details are sketchy if not downright wrong. Despite the loss of his Life of Thomas, it exerted 'a major influence' not only at home but abroad
Robert wrote his Life and Miracles of St Thomas of Canterbury around 1173 to 1174. Though lost, it is one of the main sources for an Icelandic saga on Becket entitled Thómas saga Erkibyskups, which survives in a copy dating from the first half of the 14th century. This saga preserves a number of otherwise unknown details about Becket's life and remains one of the main sources for Becket studies.[21]
Robert's life also was a source for the work of Benet of St Albans, another biographer of Becket.[22] A modern historian partially reconstructed Robert's biography from these sources.[23] A major source for Robert's work on Becket was the writings of John of Salisbury. A modern biographer of Becket, Frank Barlow, speculates that Robert's biography was lost because it favoured the king's side of the story, rather than Becket's. |
If correct, one might think such a bias was due to the work by Guernes whose biography is noted for 'legend truth' because, historians say, having already been canonised there was no need to emphasise Becket's saintliness.
This cleric, Guernes, is credited with starting a trend though; historians treat his Vie as both 'a serious work and a tourist attraction' and generally approve of its 'accuracy'.
Vernacular-hagiography had a specific influence on the epic genre; it influenced the very conception of hero by canonizing figures like Charlemagne, Roland, Perceval, Lancelot, and Galahad. Vie de Saint Thomas Becket was a forerunner in this field. It is also a forerunner in the hagiographical method of viewing the epic narrative structure as a means of presenting “myth truth,†in which the poet treated the subject as a “real†myth and served the myth by presenting it as accurately as possible.
This hagiographical attitude towards truth is in opposition to truth in the hagiographical works of the novelistic, romance structure, which adopts a preference towards “legend truth:†true in moral implications but not necessarily factually provable or historically correct. Vie de Saint Thomas Becket is seen to adopt a myth perspective towards truth because of Guernes’s preoccupation with accuracy. | |
|
| |
|
|
|
Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
|
|
|
|
| Vernacular-hagiography had a specific influence on the epic genre; it influenced the very conception of hero by canonizing figures like Charlemagne, Roland, Perceval, Lancelot, and Galahad. Vie de Saint Thomas Becket was a forerunner in this field. |
I make the claim in Forgeries that the local vernacular languages became written vernacular languages for this very purpose. That is why I enquired whether the Vie de Saint Thomas Becket was the first piece of written Norman-French. The Normans might have spoken Norman French when they pitched up here in 1066 but they sure as hell didn't write it. That came later. Much later. Sort of Thomas Becket later.
|
|
| |
|
|
|
Wile E. Coyote
In: Arizona
|
|
|
|
This might be worth a closer look.
The River Thames is the oldest thoroughfare in London, passing boatmen tipped their caps in respect to a statue of St. Thomas a Becket.
Thames = Thomas = Tamesis
St Thomas miracles are often to do with water, travel.
|
|
| |
|
|
|
Wile E. Coyote
In: Arizona
|
|
|
|
Orthodoxy is struggling with this rescuing from rivers, streams and wells.
Actually Bec = stream
|
|
| |
|
|
|
Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
|
|
|
|
|
Well, I had been wondering about that but your statement about Tooting Bec was sufficiently strident to put me off. Is there any mileage (in English or in French) in the idea of a Becket (or Beket) as a riverman.
|
|
| |
|
|
|
Wile E. Coyote
In: Arizona
|
|
|
|
The Thames = Thomas retains explanatory potential, when you start looking at the evidence. There is plenty of physical evidence for a cult. So it's worth looking at it as a cult. Without the history folks would be looking at the finds from the Thames foreshore and coming to a different conclusion. Of course it doesn't mean right or wrong at this stage. I am just saying that there is explanatory potential of some of the evidence. Let's take a look.
http://britishartstudies.ac.uk/issues/issue-index/issue-6/ampulla-souvenir
Helpful, keep going........
A quick google reveals wiki
An ampulla (/æmˈpʊlə/; plural ampullae) was, in Ancient Rome, a "small nearly globular flask or bottle, with two handles" (OED). The word is used of these in archaeology, and of later flasks, often handle-less and much flatter, for holy water or holy oil in the Middle Ages, often bought as souvenirs of pilgrimages, such as the metal Monza ampullae of the 6th century. Materials include glass, ceramics and metal. Unguentarium is a term for a bottle believed to have been used to store perfume, and there is considerable overlap between the two terms, one defined by shape and the other by purpose.
The glass Holy Ampulla was part of the French coronation regalia and believed to have divine origins. Similar, but far more recent, is the Ampulla in the British regalia,[1] a hollow, gold, eagle-shaped vessel from which the anointing oil is poured by the Archbishop of Canterbury at the anointing of a new British sovereign at their coronation. The Danish ampulla, used during the king's anointing in the period of absolutism, is cylindrical in shape, made of gold, and decorated with enamelled flower motifs and diamonds |
Actually that goes neatly as well.
|
|
| |
|
|
|
Ishmael
In: Toronto
|
|
|
|
| Mick Harper wrote: | | Although one has to say we now have a fourth Thomas put to death by a monarch for overstepping his bounds. |
There are FOUR duplicate Thomas Beckets in the life of Henry VIII. These are...
- Cardinal Wolsey
- Thomas Moore
- Thomas Cromwell
- Thomas Canmer
|
|
| |
|
|
|
Ishmael
In: Toronto
|
|
|
|
| Wile E. Coyote wrote: | | Actually Bec = stream |
Doesn't Becket = Bucket?
|
|
| |
|
|
|
Ishmael
In: Toronto
|
|
|
|
A Thomas Bucket = A bucket without a bottom; ie. a ring = A Life Saver = Celtic Cross.
|
|
| |
|
|
|
|
|
|
The Library Index 
FAQ 
Search
Register
Profile 
Log in to check your private messages 
Log in 
