The imperfectly remembered archbishop - three late-medieval images of Saint Thomas of Canterbury

Today, September 18, I virtually attended a workshop on hagiography, comprised of scholars working in the Nordic countries. It was a welcome opportunity to present research, which is something I have missed more than I thought I would in this year’s string of conference cancellation. My talk was focussing on the cult of Saint Thomas of Canterbury in medieval Denmark, a topic on which I have spent a lot of time this year, and which continues to fascinate me. As I was preparing for my talk, I was reminded of one quandary that has been in the background of much of my research on the cult of saints. When trying to chart the development of a particular saint’s cult, or the role of saints in a particular historical period, one important perennial question is this: How do we measure the popularity of a saint outside that saint’s cult centre? And more to the point, how do we measure that popularity when the saint in question is of very widespread fame?       

This matter is particularly pressing in the case of Thomas of Canterbury. Due to his role as a figurehead for the struggle of ecclesiastical power against royal power in the twelfth century, the cult of Thomas was disseminated throughout Latin Christendom very rapidly following his canonisation in 1173. Because of this widespread reception of his cult, the figure of Thomas is a ubiquitous feature in sources pertaining to the cult of saints in the later Middle Ages, and in particular liturgical books and legendaries. The papal request to include Thomas in liturgical calendars meant that Thomas can be encountered in probably every church province of the papal church. Similarly, because Thomas was one of few modern saints included in Legenda Aurea by Jacobus de Voragine in the 1260s, the martyred archbishop was included in practically every edition, translation and adaptation of this collection of saints’ lives, which was one of the most popular books produced in the medieval period. Consequently, Thomas of Canterbury appears in a wide range of sources from all over Latin Christendom from the late twelfth century onwards. Because of this wealth of cult material pertaining to Thomas of Canterbury, I find myself asking the question: To what extent do these numerous witnesses to his cult actually indicate popularity?          

To answer this question would require a scholarly article, perhaps even a monograph, but all I have at the present is this blogpost. I therefore wish to go into some of the ways in which we approach this question, and what follow-up questions that we need to posit in order to find at least a tentative conclusion.    

First of all, we need to ask whether the source in question contains a version of the legend of Thomas which follows the narrative of his vita. This is of course a question that can only be put if the source allows for a narrative, be it textual or pictorial. In the event that the source provides a narrative of sorts, we need to consider whether this source follows the narrative of the vita to a significant degree. If the answer is yes, we might tentatively interpret this as evidence of popularity.   

However, if the source only follows the narrative of the vita to a limited degree, or perhaps not at all, we have to go back to another set of questions. In this case, we need to consider whether the discrepancy in the narrative can be explained by a local tradition about Thomas. If so, we should probably interpret this as an expression of popularity. On the other hand, if the discrepancy stems from an imperfect attempt at recording a narrative that is not well known in and of itself, we should not interpret the inclusion and depiction of Thomas as anything but the sign of the universality of his cult, and not as a sign of popularity.    

In addition to the narrative of the vita, we also need to pose these questions when looking at the iconography of Thomas that appears in the source, and here I mean both textual and pictorial iconography. Do the images employ or point to a notable familiarity with the legend of Thomas and with his iconographic tradition as it was established in the twelfth century? Does the iconography differ? And if it differs, is this because the source in question follows a local tradition – which would suggest popularity – or does it differ due to a lack of familiarity with the established iconographic tradition? Moreover, if the divergence comes out of a lack of familiarity with established iconography, should we interpret this as a lack of popularity, as indifference, or even unpopularity?    

I do not have the answers to these questions myself – at least not yet. But as a kind of scholarly experiment, I want to point to three late-medieval images from different parts of Latin Christendom. All these images depict the martyred archbishop of Canterbury in different ways, and in ways that do not correspond very well to the iconographic tradition of the twelfth century onwards, as it was formulated in England and France. 

A very curial Thomas of Canterbury
Avignon - BM - ms. 0136, f.015v, missal, Bologna, late C14
(courtesy of enluminures.culture.fr.)

 
The first image comes from a fourteenth-century missal, produced in Bologna and used at the papal court of Avignon, with the shelfmark Avignon – BM – ms. 0136. This book reportedly belonged to pope Urban V and his controversial successor antipope Clement VII, and it is a sumptuously illustrated manuscript. On folio 15v, we find the above initial in the introit of the mass for Thomas of Canterbury. Thomas himself is depicted as what we might presume to be a typical senior churchman of the times, holding the palm to signify his martyrdom. This image is very different from the earlier depictions of the archbishop with which I am familiar. The difference lies in the static nature of the image. In older illuminations, we usually see Thomas being martyred, usually with an indication of how the archbishop received the wound in the head. In the Bologna missal, however, we see a typical martyr-archbishop, a stock figure ready to be inserted whenever the need arose. Should we interpret this as a sign of papal veneration of Thomas of Canterbury? Or should we see this as a sign that in this missal, Thomas was just one in the crowd of universal saints and of no particular importance? Or should we perhaps see this in another way? Perhaps as a way to present this famous archbishop as a contemporary bishop, which would signify a departure from iconographic tradition for the purpose of exploiting his symbolism? It is impossible to say for certain, of course, but we see a clear departure from the iconographic tradition as it had been formulated in the past two centuries.

Thomas of Canterbury out in the open
Das Leuend der Hÿlghen, Syddansk Universitetsbibliotek RARA M 15, f.311r

The second image comes from Germany. This is a woodcut from the incunable Das Leuend der Hÿlghen, printed by Steffen Arndes in Lübeck. The image in question comes from the 1493 edition, here seen in the book with the shelfmark Syddansk Universitetsbibliotek RARA M 15. Das Leuend der Hÿlghen was one of several German collection of saints’ lives that were based on Legenda Aurea, but which also added a number of local and regional saints, and which were adaptations rather than translations in the strictest sense. In this image, we can clearly note a connection to the established iconographic tradition: The protagonist is an archbishop, and his killer has raised his sword in a movement that foreshadows the imminent blow to the head. That the archbishop has his back to the murderer is in keeping with the established tradition, but this would also have been the case if Thomas had faced the murderer, since this was also a version which came into place already in the late twelfth century.          

However, there are two other features in this image which suggest that this depiction is not in keeping with the established tradition. First of all, the archbishop is being led away by a soldier. In the traditional narrative, as depicted in all the early vitae and almost all older representations of the scene, the knights do not lead away the archbishop, but murder him on the spot. What appears to be an arrest of Thomas in the woodcut is, therefore, a feature that is not based on the original narrative. Moreover, the scene of the martyrdom is clearly out in the open, as seen by the winding road in the background. This, too, is a deviation from the narrative of the vitae, since the martyrdom expressly took place inside the cathedral of Canterbury, which added to the transgressive nature of the crime. Here, too, it is difficult to assess how to interpret these deviations, but it does beg the question whether the Lübeck printers had any particular interest in the famous archbishop.

Wall-painting from Skive Church, Northern Jutland, c.1500

The final image is also one of German production, although it is situated in Northern Jutland in Denmark. This is a detail from the wall-paintings of the Church of Our Lady in the town of Skive, and it is one of several saint figures that decorate the vaults of the church interior. The church itself was built around 1200, but the wall-paintings are from around 1500, and they are believed to have been produced by a workshop of German painters. The iconographic programme of the church shows a selection of the most common and famous universal saints in the liturgical calendar, with a few Nordic saints included as well. In other words, the frescoes seem to be a standard selection of the saints deemed most powerful and meritorious among those in vogue at the time. This is in and of itself an indication that the selection should not be interpreted as a sign of the personal devotion of the donors of these wall-paintings.      

This suspicion seems strengthened, perhaps even confirmed, when we turn to the depiction of Thomas of Canterbury. The image clearly depicts him as an archbishop, and the text-scroll above his head states that he is indeed the martyr of Canterbury. However, the sword protruding from his chest is not in keeping with the traditional narrative of his death. The sword is pierced through his breast from the front and out the back, whereas the established tradition clearly states that Thomas received his wound in the head. There exist other images that also present Thomas as dying from being pierced rather than being cut, but these are later and do in their own way deviate from established tradition. In light of how the image differs from the tradition, and in light of the general context of the pictorial programme, it feels relatively safe to say that this depiction of Thomas of Canterbury does not suggest a particular popularity, but rather a more general fame, a fame shared with a plethora of other saints also depicted in the church.


These thoughts are some tentative ideas about how to interpret images that do not conform with iconographical tradition. But to be more certain of these interpretations, I would have to delve deeper into the issue, and one day I hope I get the chance and the time to do just that.