Thomas Becket's personal book of psalms 'found in Cambridge library'

A Cambridge academic believes he has discovered Thomas Becket’s personal book of psalms, an ancient manuscript the martyred saint and so-called “turbulent priest” may have been holding when he was murdered in Canterbury Cathedral in 1170.

Dr Christopher de Hamel, a historian at Cambridge University, stumbled across the book during a conversation with a colleague. De Hamel, author of the just-released Meetings with Remarkable Manuscripts, had said that books belonging to saints were generally not used as relics, and his fellow historian replied that he knew of an exception.

He showed de Hamel an entry from the Sacrists’ Roll of Canterbury Cathedral, dating to 1321, which gave a detailed description of a Psalter, or book of psalms, in a jewelled binding, that was then preserved as a relic at the shrine of Becket in the cathedral. Becket, archbishop of Canterbury from 1162 to 1170, was murdered by four knights inside the cathedral, who took on the task after supposedly hearing Henry II remark: “Who will rid me of this turbulent priest?”

De Hamel said that he read the Psalter’s description, and realised he had seen it before: an Anglo-Saxon Psalter in Cambridge’s Parker Library bears the same description on its flyleaf. It is undoubtedly the same manuscript from Becket’s shrine, he believes.

A 16th-century note says the book once belonged to Becket, but “everyone has always said it was ridiculous,” said de Hamel. “Becket is a big name and there’s a list of his books. This isn’t one of them.” But a link had not previously been made between the 14th-century inventory and the Parker manuscript.

In a piece in Saturday’s Guardian Review, De Hamel lays out how the Psalter was clearly made in Canterbury, and dates from the very early 11th century. It was probably, he said, made for the private use of an archbishop, likely Alphege, who was archbishop from 1005 to 1016, when he was killed by the Danes in Greenwich. Alphege was later canonised, and was Becket’s personal patron saint.

“People hadn’t matched it up, and suddenly there it was,” said de Hamel. “The inscription says this is the Psalter of the archbishop of Canterbury. It clearly is a private Psalter … I assume Becket had come across the book and taken it into his own possession.”

The academic also points to the stained glass window in Trinity Chapel in Canterbury, which shows Becket holding a book of the Psalter’s size, in a similarly decorated binding. The window is above the site of the shrine of Becket, and is almost contemporary to the saint’s death, made around 1200. The shrine was destroyed in the 16th century by Henry VIII.

“Of course he is going to be shown holding something you could have seen on the shrine – that’s part of ­­the marketing,” said de Hamel. “The shrine was destroyed, and nothing from it survives, except possibly this. It would have been seen by pilgrims to the shrine [including] Chaucer. And it was sitting quietly in Cambridge.”

De Hamel said he was “absolutely sure” that the Parker library manuscript is the book that sat on Becket’s shrine. “Whether it really belonged to Becket - well, I wasn’t there. But I bet it did. [The creators of the shrine] obviously absolutely believed it was his. And I expect it was,” he said.

“Of course I want this to be the book he was holding when he died – but we don’t know he was holding a book. We do know that when he died he commended his soul to St Alphege … It was clear to him it was coming. He left the room, and the knights there. He went upstairs, kitted himself out with his archiepiscopal [appurtenances], his ring, his mitre, and walked into the cathedral where they caught up with him and did it. Whether he also picked up the Psalter, I don’t know. There’s certainly no blood on the manuscript, but I don’t think there’s any doubt that moments after his death, they swept it up and said this is the most personal possession of the martyr. He would have had it on his person: it was his talisman of the divine.”

Becket’s death has been commemorated many times over the centuries, by authors ranging from TS Eliot – who immortalised it in Murder in the Cathedral – to Alfred, Lord Tennyson. In his A History of Britain, Simon Schama writes that Henry II, enraged by Becket’s excommunication of those responsible for crowning his son, did not actually utter the famous phrase about the “turbulent priest”.

Instead, writes Schama, the knights heard the “much more alarming outcry” from the king of “What miserable drones and traitors have I nourished and brought up in my household who allow their lord to be treated with such shameful contempt by a low-born cleric?”

Becket’s death on 29 December 1170, at the hands of the knights Reginald FitzUrse, William de Tracy, Richard le Bret and Hugh de Morville, who took the king at his word, is recounted in disturbing detail by eyewitness Edward Grim:

In his piece for Review, de Hamel called the Psalter “a tangible link with one of the very great figures of history”, adding that “nothing else imaginable has such personal intimacy”.