Commemorating Cantilupe: The Iconography of England’s Second St Thomas

Abstract

2020 saw the celebration of significant anniversaries connected with several medieval English saints, led most notably by the triple anniversary of the birth (1120), death (1170) and translation (1220) of St Thomas Becket, archbishop of Canterbury (1162–70, canonised 1173). This offered scholars an occasion to review and revisit important aspects of the documentary sources and material culture relating to the saints’ cults in England and across Europe. The celebrations of St Thomas Becket also coincided with the 700th anniversary of the canonisation of St Thomas de Cantilupe, bishop of Hereford (1275–82, canonised 1320). Renewed scholarly interest in Cantilupe’s posthumous cult has particularly offered insights into daily life and devotion in late thirteenth- and early fourteenth-century England and Wales. Likewise, it has recently been demonstrated that, in the wake of the Cantilupe cult at Hereford Cathedral, a period of intense church building occurred throughout the diocese. This paper is the first to assemble and publish a comprehensive catalogue of all known lost and surviving iconographical images of Cantilupe from the Middle Ages. More significantly, keeping the 2020 celebrations of both the Becket and Cantilupe cults in mind, this paper is the first to bring attention to all the examples of medieval iconography that associate England’s two Thomases, demonstrating how Becket was utilised as a model of sanctity par excellence with Cantilupe presented as a ‘second Becket’.