When Thomas lay dead on the floor of Canterbury Cathedral he was less a focus of veneration than of fear. The monks of Christ Church had never warmed towards this non-monastic archbishop who had been intruded by the royal power. His conflict with the king and his six-year absence had brought them uncertainty, poverty and repression. Now it seemed that he who in life had undermined that ancient and celebrated community would destroy it in death. Fearing reprisals from the murderers, the monks buried their archbishop in haste, without the usual ceremony. But as they stripped the body for burial they found beneath his pontifical vestments a monastic habit, and beneath that again a hair shirt. One of their number, Benedict, tells us that at this ‘The monks looked at each other, and were astonished at this view of hidden religion beyond what could have been believed, and with their sorrow thus multiplied, so were their tears.’ In the months that followed, people from Canterbury and beyond came to Thomas's shrine reporting further revelations of a sanctity which had been hidden to many. And as the numbers became ever greater, it was this monk, Benedict, who was assigned to the task of recording the miracles reported by visitors to the shrine. From June 1172 Benedict was joined in this task by William, another monk of Canterbury. Both monks made their own compilation of miracles which together stand as a striking testimony to Thomas's popular veneration. But they also wrote testimonies to the wonder of Thomas's life, in Benedict's case a Passio, in William's a full-scale Vita et Passio.