Hello my name is Lloyd De Beer I'm a curator of Late Medieval European Collections here
at the British Museum and welcome to my corner.
So I'm currently curating an exhibition; Thomas Becket : murder and the making of the saint here
at the British Museum and we have some extraordinary treasures in this show. We've got golden reliquary
caskets, we've got Magna Carta in the exhibition, we've also got an entire stained glass window
from Canterbury Cathedral - a six meter tall window and I could have picked any of those
objects to talk to you about today. But I didn't. I picked these three objects to talk
to you about. These three little unassuming pieces of metal. The reason I picked these
objects is because I think that these objects are as interesting as all of those sparkly
glittering shiny objects and they can tell us as much about the cult of Thomas Becket but we
need to do a little bit more work and we need to look a little bit more closely at them.
The Becket story is extraordinary; this stratospheric rise, exile and eventual murder in the cathedral
but it's what happens after he dies that is really extraordinary because within days - probably
the very night of his murder - miracles start happening. So much blood was spilled when
he was killed that they collected up a lot of the blood but a lot of people also did
things like dip their fingers in the blood or dipped cloth into the blood and it's some
of these bloody cloths and it's some of this blood that is responsible for some of the
earliest miracles. For instance a man takes home one of these bloody cloths and he dips
into a drink and gives it to his sick wife and she's healed from the drinking of this
liquid. And it's these stories that start to circulate that people pay attention to
and they realize that something very special is happening at Canterbury. And they start
to go to Canterbury, they want to get access to Becket's blood for healing and that's where this
object comes in here. And this was bought at Canterbury by a pilgrim and it was filled
with a liquid called Saint Thomas' water which was a mixture of water diluted with Becket's
blood. We know it was that because on the front of the object here we can see the martyrdom
scene; Becket's murder in miniature detail. So what we have here is we have four knights
and then slightly strangely we have these two giant heads just here and just there behind
and they either show it twice so they either show Becket kind of bowing his head down as
the first knight drives the sword into his head or they show Becket and an associate
who is there at the murder a man called Edward Grimm who was one of the only people actually
stayed to defend Becket from these knights who also got his arm chopped into by another
one of the knights during the kind of fracas. You might be thinking hang on I've never heard
of a religious or a Christian cult where they drank the saint’s blood and you'd be right
because this was one of the only ones and it freaked people out. And so in a sense the
drinking of Becket's blood was a little bit like the drinking of Christ's blood, but the
monks watched what was happening, they gave people this diluted mixture it seemed to be
working and in the end they were kind of okay with it. I mean they were clearly okay with
it because they were doshing loads of this stuff out and this isn't just one or two miracles
that happen connected to Becket there are hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of miracles
attributed to Becket - more miracles than any other saint at the time you know. The
miracles are extraordinary there are miracles where peoples’ sight being repaired of people's
genitalia coming back they are of people who couldn't walk being able to walk again and
one of them is about a woman where a worm falls out of her face and it's because she's
eaten cherry pits and so Becket makes these cherry pits come out and then a worm comes
out of her face and I think the miracles called something like concerning the woman from which
a worm came out of her face. At first pilgrims were just taking their own boxes to Canterbury
and they were taking these wooden boxes and what's amazing is we're told that these could
not contain the power of the water that the water of Becket was so strong that it would
break open these wooden boxes or break open these ceramic boxes. A local man in Canterbury
decided to make these flasks which are called ampulla in lead internally we're told that
it was by divine will that he came up with these flasks that would not split because
these could contain the water but the really important thing that Benedict tells us is
that these could also be worn as a sign of the pilgrim's journey so that all could see
they had been to Canterbury. So you might be wondering did they run out of blood or
how much blood did they have? Well amazingly, in the miracle stories - Becket's miracle
stories, there are these blood miracles where the blood reproduces and so a local church
in Canterbury asks for some of the blood and the monks give a tiny little scraping that
they put into a flask that they give to the church. The priest of the church takes the
blood home and in the morning wakes up to see that the small scraping of blood had turned
into an overfilling jar of blood. It's very good business to never run out of the thing
that everyone is coming to your place to get. Pilgrimage is not a monolithic thing it changes
constantly and in Becket's case I think there is a shift from the drinking of Becket's water
from the purchasing of these ampulla to badges to other kinds of objects that can be worn
on the body. But the badges are doing a completely different kind of thing and what they're doing
in this instance is they're telling us a story that's not just the story of the murder but
it's also the story of Becket's life. So this object that I have here which is a very delicate
badge this shows Becket sitting on top of a horse. So why is Becket on a horse? Well
one thing that happens to Becket is that he goes into a prolonged exile abroad he returns
to Canterbury on the 2nd of December 1170 and he returns and rides back to Canterbury
triumphantly and so here we've got an image of Becket returning from exile and riding
triumphantly back into Canterbury. So what does that tell us? Well it tells us that pilgrims
were really interested in identifying with parts of the Becket story that earlier on
with the ampulla with the flasks they weren't as interested in. And the horse is so beautifully
rendered with all of these little circles and these little dots and you can see horse
harness equipment and then Becket is showing an incredible detail wearing his arch episcopal
clothing wearing a mitre carrying a cross-shaped staff and so it really is I think a really
magnificent little object. One thing that happens is in 1173 when Pope Alexander the
Third canonizes Becket is he decrees that Becket’s body should be moved to a much
better site because after the murder they put him in a they put him in a tomb in the
crypt of Canterbury Cathedral but this isn't really good enough for a saint of Becket’s
standing so what do they do well they decide that they're going to make a new shrine but
before they're able to do that the east end of Canterbury Cathedral burns to the ground
but they also use it as an opportunity to rebuild Canterbury Cathedral on an even greater
scale and place Thomas Becket’s shrine at the very centre of their plans because he's
their new mega saint. This takes about 50 years but on the 7th of July 1220 they move
the body of Thomas Becket from the crypt of Canterbury Cathedral into this new shrine
and this shrine is amazing. The base is a pinky white marble and on top of this base
is a golden reliquary casket that's covered in gems and jewels and rings and brooches
and all kinds of treasures that people are giving to Canterbury Cathedral and the badge
I'm going to show you now is a miniature version of that shrine.
What we see is a kind of architectural frame around the outside of the badge and then at
the very top of the badge we see this casket covered in these little blobs these little
dots to represent gems and jewels. In the very middle we see an image of a tiny reclining
in in the shrine with his hands in prayer and his crozier to his side his staff to his
side and then underneath we have these little architectural niches and these are the things
that pilgrims would go and bow down before and stick their heads in to pray. What drew
me to these objects, why I love these objects so much is that in a sense I've always been
drawn to the lesser objects the one that you might easily pass by in a gallery at the British
Museum and not give a second thought but that when you do reveals so much more than you
ever thought you could derive from an object like this. I mean you can see from some of
the ones I've shown you today these are very damaged objects they're hard to interpret.
I mean even in the galleries they're hard to light and so for me there's something about
looking closely at them and promoting them a little bit to say hey every object at the
British Museum is potentially a star object! Every object has a story to tell and every
object can reveal so much to us if we just spend a little time with it and think about
what it meant. The other thing about these objects that really appeals to me is that
so much of what we know about objects in the middle ages certainly things like that gold
cup just behind me for instance is that they're made by kings or by queens or by very important
noble people. But these objects were purchased by ordinary people who otherwise leave no
trace and so they connect us to a whole group of individuals from the past who we really
have no other access to other than these kinds of remains. So we've got an exhibition on
about Thomas Becket right now called Thomas Becket: murder and the making of a saint.
It's filled with amazing things, stained glass, manuscripts, religious caskets. If you want
to learn more about the life death and legacy of Thomas Becket you can buy tickets right
now by clicking here 