THE SECOND TEXT: THE ORIGINS OF THETFORD’S RELIC COLLECTION, ITS RELIQUARY, AND PATRONAGE

The account of the Thetford relics in CCC 329 bears the title given to it by its fifteenth-century compiler: ‘How the holy relics, discovered in the head of the abovesaid image, came to the monastery of Thetford (letter)’. It is in fact two texts: the first is a transcript of part of a twelfth-century letter from William of St Mary’s, Merlsham (Martlesham, Suffolk), to the aforementioned Stephen, Prior of Thetford, offering a gift of relics from the Holy Land; the second is a later account of another collection of relics discovered with the aforementioned Holy Land relics in a cavity in the head of the statue. The letter states that the relics originated from the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem and were given by William of Merlsham out of ‘paternal reverence’ to the priory at Thetford with the support of ‘my lord, Hugh Bigod’ and the ‘devout supplication of lord Ralph, your monk’. Unfortunately, William of St Mary’s, Merlsham, cannot be identified; nor is it clear how sacred relics of a high status were transferred from Jerusalem to what seems an inauspicious destination in the parish church of St Mary’s, Martlesham. What is clear is that the prior of St Mary’s Thetford was the aforementioned Stephen of Provence, prior from 1107 to as late as 1130.Footnote ¹¹

Stephen was a key figure in the formation of the Cluniac monastery: he would lay one of its foundation stones and he would be commemorated alongside other founders and benefactors into the sixteenth century.Footnote ¹² He was specifically requested to come from Cluny to preside over the new foundation by its founder and patron Roger Bigod, father of Hugh Bigod (1095–1177). Geoffrey de Rocherio indicates that Roger founded the Cluniac priory at Thetford in commutation of his vow to make a pilgrimage to the Holy Land during the First Crusade. Thetford was one of a long list of monasteries founded by new aristocratic wealth in the early twelfth century.Footnote ¹³ It drew its monks from Lewes Priory (East Sussex) founded by the Warenne family between 1078–82, another new, aristocratic foundation and the head of the Cluniac order in England. Although ‘Ralph, your monk’ (to whom we will return) cannot be identified, he was perhaps the first sacristan of Thetford Priory (he is also mentioned in connection with imagery made in the refectory in these years, of which more below).Footnote ¹⁴ The presence of Hugh Bigod and Stephen of Provence allows us to date the original letter with some precision. As Hugh only inherited his elder brother William’s estates when he drowned on the White Ship on 25 November 1120, the original letter was written and the relics acquired between c 1120 and 1130. Here we see the son of the founder of the priory working with the prior appointed by his father to transfer a series of Holy Land relics from a local parish church to Thetford Priory. The justification for this extraordinary gift was that the relics may be ‘celebrated more devoutly in your church’, which was doubtless true, but whether the relics were actually a gift or an opportunistic purchase by Bigod to endow his new foundation is unclear.

The Holy Land relics comprised fragments

• of the purple robe of Our Lord

• of the girdle of the Virgin, the Lord’s mother

• of the Sepulchre of our Lord

• of the rock of Calvary

• of the tomb of the Virgin

• of the manger of our Lord

• of dust found in the tomb of St John the Evangelist

• of St George

The general credulity of the medieval cult of relics aside, there is no obvious reason to doubt the relics’ authenticity.Footnote ¹⁵ It should be noted, however, that the collection did not all hail directly from the Holy Sepulchre, as the text indicates, but from the Holy Land more broadly: St George’s relic would have originally come from his cult site in Lydda, while others came from Bethlehem and the Mount of Olives. The collection described here feels much like a generic relic collection that could be acquired in Jerusalem by crusaders and pilgrims from stalls around the Holy Sepulchre, which may explain why the letter ascribes the relics to the Holy Sepulchre in particular. While Holy Land relics had a history in England, France and elsewhere before the First Crusade, it is most likely that the relics were recently acquired as part of the flood of holy remains that came to Europe with returning crusaders, whether as diplomatic gifts or as booty after c 1100.Footnote ¹⁶ Jerusalem was described by Bernard of Clairvaux as the thesaurus caelestis, or ‘treasury of Heavenly things’, and its conquest was understood to have been a gift from God to Christendom. Relics were acquired by pilgrims and crusaders to bring to their homelands so that the saints might be embraced ‘more closely with the arms of faith’, as Raymond of Aguilers put it contemporaneously.Footnote ¹⁷ It is notable that the recovery of the Holy Land would be central to the politics of twelfth-century Thetford beyond Bigod’s commuted crusade and the resulting construction of Thetford Priory.Footnote ¹⁸ Only 300 metres from the new site of Thetford Priory, William iii de Warenne founded an Augustinian priory in 1146–8 dedicated to the Holy Sepulchre.Footnote ¹⁹ Thetford would be one of the earliest religious houses of the canons of the Holy Sepulchre in England, and it was staffed by the order of Augustinian canons established in the church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem by 1114. In the course of the twelfth century, the canons of the Holy Sepulchre had a fair on the Invention of the Holy Cross, another on the feast of the Holy Sepulchre and a third on the exaltation of the cross, thus linking at least some locally held relics to the economic and social world of medieval Thetford.Footnote ²⁰

The ‘gift’ of the relics to Thetford had an important context in the Bigods’ creation of a new monastery. Endowments of lands and relics went hand-in-hand with monastic foundations. As Julian Luxford has shown, a relic list could function analogously to a foundation charter, as it substantially kick-started a religious foundation, legitimated its altars and liturgy and bolstered its religious authority.Footnote ²¹ As patron and would-be crusader, Bigod was surely keen to endow Thetford with some of the most venerable Christian relics from the Holy Land.Footnote ²² Doing so immediately positioned Thetford among a series of important and, in many cases, established relic collections held by English monasteries. The New Minster Liber Vitae records the gift of a Byzantine triptych to New Minster by Queen Emma (probably in the 1030s) that included relics from the Holy Land and the Byzantine world.Footnote ²³ Many were in common with Thetford, including stones from the Holy Sepulchre, wood from the manger in Bethlehem, a relic from Mount Calvary and relics of John the Baptist and of St George. Thorney Abbey had a similar list of Holy Land relics, including a fragment of the Holy Sepulchre and a relic from Mount Calvary as well as relics of the True Cross and the tomb of the Virgin Mary.Footnote ²⁴ Endowing a monastery with Holy Land relics was a particularly common practice in Anglo-Norman foundations after the First Crusade, since it was facilitated by the quickened transit of relics from east to west. Reading Abbey, a Cluniac foundation founded by Henry i in 1121, likewise acquired a substantial collection of relics including an extended list of relics from the Holy Land, many of which were also held at Thetford.Footnote ²⁵ At Barnwell Priory (Cambridgeshire), Robert Peverel (standard bearer to Robert Curthose) relocated the priory, rebuilt it and endowed it with relics and a reliquary of gold and topaz he had acquired on the First Crusade.Footnote ²⁶ At Bridlington Priory in Yorkshire, the founder (Walter of Gant, d 1138) gave a reliquary filled with relics from Jerusalem in the early twelfth century.Footnote ²⁷ Bigod was thus participating in a much broader pattern of relic acquisition from the Holy Land after the First Crusade, whether he went on crusade or not.

We can now move to the second part of the account of relics. Following a line filler in the manuscript is a later account of other relics found in the head of the statue. These are not mentioned in the letter from Stephen of Merlsham, and appear to derive from a different collection altogether assembled in early twelfth-century Thetford. Functioning like a relic list in two parts, it is typical of the genre in listing Christ and the Biblical saints first, before listing subsequent Christian saints, martyrs and so on.Footnote ²⁸ The text lists relics of the martyrs Vincent, Leodgar, Agnes and Barbara, of Sts Gregory and Jerome and relics of East Anglian origin, namely the caskets of St Edmund King and Martyr and St Etheldreda (from Bury St Edmunds and Ely respectively), and a piece of clothing of St Lazarus.Footnote ²⁹ All of these relics, including those from the Holy Land, were interred in the head of a Marian statue apparently procured by the aforementioned monk, Ralph, in the early twelfth century.Footnote ³⁰

A complicating feature of the account is that the first miracle story claims that the statue was from the former cathedral of Thetford prior to the translation of the bishopric to Norwich, thus dating it to the original bishopric of Thetford 1071–94/5. The image was moved into the new church (presumably after 1114) and placed upon the high altar, but this would seem to contradict the account that Ralph ‘worked energetically to acquire [the statue] along with the smaller images pertaining to it and with a tabernacle most splendidly adorned, as is most fitting, with gold, stones and colour’. Assuming the text is not a strictly factual account, it would accord with a tradition in which Marian reliquaries (and ars sacra generally) were employed in medieval texts to suggest continuity of an institution over time, occasionally involving subsequent rebuildings of its architectural setting. There is an instructive parallel with the image of the Virgin at Glastonbury, which was apparently made by Joseph of Arimathea in the first century. It miraculously survived the 1184 fire of Glastonbury Abbey with only slight blistering to the face of the statue, only to be repositioned on the altar of the rebuilt Lady Chapel as the centre of the Marian cult.Footnote ³¹ John of Glastonbury would consider the miraculous survival ‘a worthy demonstration of the miracle that fire could not touch the image of her who remained ever virgin in body and mind and who knew no lust of the flesh’.Footnote ³² It has recently been suggested that the image was commissioned by Henry of Blois (abbot 1126–71), and that its general appearance is reflected in the twelfth-century seal of Glastonbury.Footnote ³³ Whatever the case, the Glastonbury statue, like that at Thetford, may operate as a figure to demonstrate devotional and institutional continuity.

But we may also read the account literally and suggest that Ralph ‘worked energetically’ to acquire the statue, which must have been translated along with the episcopal throne and other ornamenta from Thetford cathedral to Norwich by Bishop Herbert de Losinga (d 1119).Footnote ³⁴ Here it should be noted that, as a new religious order in post-Conquest England, Cluniac priories did not have the luxury of inheriting relics and liturgical ornamenta such as reliquaries, altarpieces, cloths etc from a previous church.Footnote ³⁵ Although this is not recorded in documentation, the letters of de Losinga to Thetford Priory create an important context to understand such a situation.Footnote ³⁶ Thetford was officially exempt from episcopal jurisdiction and subject instead to Cluny, a situation that was not agreeable to de Losinga. Although de Losinga attended the initial laying of the foundation stones, relations between Thetford Priory and Norwich Cathedral would be strained after the death of Thetford’s founder, Roger Bigod, because de Losinga claimed Bigod’s body against the will of Roger and his wife, who granted it to Thetford Priory.Footnote ³⁷ This was an extremely acrimonious situation, and it is entirely possible that part of Ralph’s energetic works as sacristan (if indeed he was) was to negotiate for the return of the statue as the new focus of Thetford Priory’s devotional life.

Fortunately, we can say a little more about the other objects Ralph acquired. The splendidly adorned tabernacle was probably a wooden frame with hinged doors that concealed and revealed the statue at specific occasions during the liturgical year. While we have no physical evidence for such wooden tabernacles in England in this period, a number exist on the Continent and particularly in Scandinavia, where the design of tabernacles is understood to parallel those that existed in England. The reconstructed twelfth-century tabernacle and Marian statue from Urnes, Norway, may offer us an approximation of the form of the statue and tabernacle at Thetford (fig 3).Footnote ³⁸ However, its description, which states that it is adorned with ‘gold, stones and colour’ indicates that the Thetford tabernacle was a more sumptuous, ‘multi-media’ object, perhaps comparable to that in the Capilla Real in Seville, which was likewise encrusted with precious stones.Footnote ³⁹ The tabernacle is noted again in the 1473 will of Peter Benne, chaplain of the Lady Chapel, who left money to repaint it; the same will notes the presence of a tabernacled reredos that stood behind the altar, which was also to be repainted.Footnote ⁴⁰ A ‘tabernakyl Assumptionis Sancte Marie’ and a ‘tabernakyl Nativitatis Sancte Marie’ are noted in the early sixteenth century, but it is not certain that these are the same as those mentioned in the letter or if they reflect later additions.Footnote ⁴¹ The text then moves to the monastic refectory, where we learn that Matilda of Saxmundham has, with the support of Ralph the Monk and a Ralph of Caen (Radulfo de Cadamo), made a new picture (pictura) in the refectory. The term pictura probably indicates a wall painting, although whether it refers to a single image or an entire cycle is unknown. It has been assumed that the imagery featured Marian iconography, but this is not stated in the text, and Christological imagery would be far more common in a Romanesque refectory.Footnote ⁴²

Fig 3.

Reconstruction of the tabernacle and statue from Urnes, Norway, of c 1150–1200, now in the University Museum of Bergen. Image: Reconstruction by Justin Kroesen and Stephan Kuhn, drawing by Åsta Lindemann.

Matilda of Saxmundham is considered ‘a sister of this place’, although she was not a ‘sister’ (soror) of the affiliated nunnery of St George, Thetford, which was founded only around c 1160.Footnote ⁴³ Matilda is more likely to be a laywoman with confraternity within Thetford Priory. As such, she can be securely identified as Matildis de Langetot, daughter of Ralph de Langetot. Matilda’s husband was Ranulf Fitz Walter, a Domesday tenant of Roger Bigod, a donor to Thetford Priory and a signatory of its early charters.Footnote ⁴⁴ The identity of Ralph of Caen is slightly more complicated. A recent hypothesis suggests that he is the elusive Ralph of Caen who wrote the Gesta Tancredi, the crusade epic that recounts the Norman campaigns in Cilicia and Norman rule in Antioch.Footnote ⁴⁵ Hailing from Caen and trained at the cathedral school there under Arnulf of Chocques, Ralph spent much of his life in Jerusalem, possibly serving Arnulf as Patriarch of Jerusalem, which put him close to the source of the relics (as the argument follows).Footnote ⁴⁶ This is an alluring suggestion, but it is quite certainly incorrect. First, the text is clear that Ralph of Caen contributed in some way to the imagery in the refectory and was not specifically connected with the acquisition of the relics. Second, a different de Cadamo family was closely involved with the Bigods as benefactors to Thetford Priory and tenants of the Bigod family from shortly after the Conquest.Footnote ⁴⁷ Ralph de Cadamo is, in all likelihood, the son of Walter de Cadomo (sic) who attested the foundation of Eye Priory (Suffolk) as Walter of Huntingfield/ de Cadamo, held the barony of Horsford (Norfolk) and was an important Domesday tenant of Robert Malet.Footnote ⁴⁸ Ralph is called a ‘dear friend’ of the monastery, and so he too is a lesser donor to Thetford Priory. A relation of Ralph – Richard de Cadamo – also signs Bigod charters at Thetford in these years, as does Robert Malet’s descendant, William Malet, thus reflecting two generations of interconnected families involved in the formation of Thetford Priory.Footnote ⁴⁹

It is notable that Walter de Cadamo’s children – Ralph, Roger and Robert – would feature in the art and patronage of twelfth-century Norfolk. Robert Fitz Walter/de Cadamo, would be the founder of Horsham St Faith Priory, Norfolk, in 1105. In the thirteenth century, the walls of the refectory there were painted with the remarkable cycle narrating its foundation during the twelfth century.Footnote ⁵⁰ While on a pilgrimage to Rome, Robert Fitz Walter/ de Cadomo and Sybilla, his wife, were imprisoned and they prayed to St Faith, who delivered them from imprisonment and brought them to the abbey of Conques (and thus to another famous reliquary statue, that of St Foy of Conques).Footnote ⁵¹ Visualising this narrative, the paintings at Horsham St Faith conclude with Sybilla witnessing the creation of Horsham St Faith Priory. Our knowledge of refectory decoration in medieval England is sparse at best, so the association between the decoration of the refectory at Thetford and the refectory at Horsham St Faith is intriguing: did Matilda, via Ralph, commemorate the founding of Thetford Priory on the walls of the refectory as a model for the future paintings of Horsham St Faith?

THE FIRST TEXT: MARIAN MIRACLES, THE RELIQUARY AND ITS SETTING

Despite the fact that the first text in CCC 329 is titled ‘These are the extraordinary reasons why the chapel of the glorious Virgin was constructed on the north side of the monastery of the monks and Prior of Thetford’ by its fifteenth-century compiler, it is in fact a collection of four Marian miracles, and only the first of them concerns the Lady Chapel. This miracle was manifestly the most significant to the compiler and it is accordingly my focus here. The three other miracles are distinctly local and focus on miraculous cures for people in Thetford and its environs, including the healing of the child of a carpenter from Hockham, Norfolk, and the revivification of a child who suffocated while co-sleeping with its mother in Thetford. Unfortunately, the miracles offer little if any internal evidence to date them. The first miracle refers to the Lady Chapel itself, which I note below can be dated to the middle years of the thirteenth century, so the first miracle was probably composed in response to the building of the Lady Chapel in the second half of the century. While the other miracles may have been composed contemporaneously, it is also possible that they reflect an earlier history of Marian miracles at Thetford.Footnote ⁵² The first miracle in particular was informed by a rich tradition of Marian miracles that began to be collected in England in the twelfth century.Footnote ⁵³ Marian miracles were, in general, formulaic narratives designed to communicate Mary’s power and mercy: frequently involving a devotee such as Theophilus who angers the Virgin through disobedience, sin or arrogance, the Virgin then must intervene with a miracle to save (or punish) the devotee and re-establish Christian order. The proliferation of Marian miracles on one hand and their standardised narrative structures on the other means that tracing precise lines of transmission is often impossible.Footnote ⁵⁴ In the absence of further evidence of the literary culture at Thetford Priory, the miracles themselves are testaments to a keen awareness at Thetford of Marian miracles from England and France.Footnote ⁵⁵

The first miracle begins with the origins of the Romanesque statue of the Virgin that was apparently part of the former cathedral of Thetford but was moved into the new church and positioned there upon the altar. Over time, the Romanesque statue of the Virgin was replaced by what was likely a contemporary thirteenth-century Gothic version of its predecessor, while the Romanesque image was demoted to a niche or pedestal above a door next to the chapel. As I note below, this statue may have been moved to the niche in the north transept directly beside the door to the chapel itself where it stood as a signifier of the Marian cult but was not in the place of privilege at the Lady Chapel’s high altar (see fig. 10). Typical of descriptions of art in Marian miracles, it is the act of devaluing an ancient Marian statue, whether for its outmoded style, poor manufacture or material – perceiving it as an aesthetic object rather than as a signifier of, or vehicle for, the Virgin’s power – that angers the Virgin and catalyses the miracle story.Footnote ⁵⁶ Understanding that offence to the Virgin’s image is offence to the Virgin herself, such narratives reinforce the danger of treating images as inert matter rather than as matter animated by the Virgin’s presence. Offering a cogent anthropology of what images mean and how medieval viewers were to interact with them, the Thetford miracles endorse the idea that Marian miracles helped to theorise the very idea of ‘art’ in the Middle Ages.Footnote ⁵⁷

The Virgin visits a humble builder (simplex operarius) with failing health who had long prayed for her assistance.Footnote ⁵⁸ For the return of his health, the Virgin asks him to speak to the prior and urge him to build a new Lady Chapel on the north side of the priory. The Virgin visits him three times before the builder finally speaks to the prior (whose identity is not given). The prior assents to have a wooden chapel built, but the builder is clear that the Virgin wishes that the chapel be built from stone and mortar and traces out its footprint on the ground. Returning for the third conversation with the prior, the builder finds him absent, and he instead speaks to a venerable member of the monastery. Both men witness the miraculous appearance of the sign of the cross decorated with gold and gems on a stone that would mark the site of the main column of the Lady Chapel (presumably the easternmost column that separated the Lady Chapel from the presbytery). The miraculous appearance of the cross to mark the site of Marian architecture was common enough in Marian miracles: a useful parallel here is in the Evesham Chronicle in which St Ecgwin seeks out the Virgin, who appears before him and presents a golden cross to mark the future site of Evesham Abbey.Footnote ⁵⁹ The prior’s absence from Thetford slowed progress on the new building, and so the Virgin appeared to a certain woman in Thetford urging her to speak to the prior and hasten his work on the chapel. Like the builder before her, the woman does not heed the Virgin’s command and the Virgin then punishes her by rendering her arm immobile. The monks advise her to offer an arm of wax (an ex voto) to the Marian image, and her arm is healed.Footnote ⁶⁰

The story then jumps ahead to the discovery of the relics in the head of the Marian statue, which may suggest that the fifteenth-century compiler skipped a passage from the original text. Referencing a passage in Luke 11:33 commonly evoked to gloss the discovery and display of relics, ‘No one lights a lamp and puts it in a place where it will be hidden, or under a bowl. Instead, they put it on its stand, so that those who come in may see the light’, the aforementioned prior responds to the Virgin’s interventions: ‘wishing to increase the devotion of the people towards the glorious Virgin as much as possible’, he had the image translated from its subordinate position to, presumably, the main altar of the Lady Chapel. But, first, the prior had a painter clean and repaint the statue, during which the painter discovered a silver plate nailed to the top of its head. Calling the prior and the monks to witness his discovery, the prior removed the plate and miraculously discovered the relics enclosed in lead with identificatory tituli attached. The gist of the story is that appropriate veneration of the Virgin in an elegant new setting and the renewed attention to her image resulted in the miraculous discovery of relics, a spiritual quid pro quo within the priory. Bringing the reader to the present with the knowledge that these very relics are currently worshipped in the chapel, the arc of the story is completed, from the acquisition of the relics to their veneration in the new chapel. Intricate and topographically specific though this account is, it is manifestly not a straightforward account of the building of the Lady Chapel. There is a tension between recounting a narrative that ‘fit’ with the physical and devotional world of thirteenth-century Thetford, and one that adhered to an established literary tradition of miracle stories that focus on Marian art and architecture.Footnote ⁶¹ The text offers no evidence of when the chapel was built or the identity of the prior who built it, as we have seen, and it alludes to multiple phases of construction or repair to the chapel but gives no evidence of what this work entailed.

We can now look more closely at the object and space our texts describe and the literary topoi that inform them. Beginning with the Marian image, the Latin term ymago used to describe it is frustratingly unspecific, but that it was easily moved from place to place and was positioned above a door, that it had a hollow cavity for relics in its head covered by a silver plate nailed on and the fact that it bore paint, suggests that it was a wooden Madonna or Madonna and Child (sedes sapientiae) reliquary of a type that was common from the mid-tenth century.Footnote ⁶² The only Marian image to survive from Thetford in these years is the priory’s seal, which shows the Virgin seated with Christ on her left knee (fig 4).Footnote ⁶³ The style of the seal is closely related to the sculpture of the west façade of Wells Cathedral (Somerset) and can be dated to c 1240–50. If the seal does reflect a Marian image at Thetford, this is likely the Gothic image that replaced our Romanesque subject. Whatever the case, the original, Romanesque statue at Thetford is one of a number of reliquary Madonnas in England known from documentation, including a statue of the Virgin filled with relics created by Abbot Fabritius of Abingdon, Oxfordshire (1100–15), another at Barking Abbey (set within a tabernacle) and the miraculous Virgin at Glastonbury, which was adorned with gold and precious stones and relics were enclosed within it during the abbacy of John Chinnock (1375–1420).Footnote ⁶⁴ A list of extant wooden Madonnas on the Continent, including the Montvianeix (fig 5) and Morgan Madonnas, both of which have relic cavities and bear significant traces of polychromy, offer contemporary parallels.Footnote ⁶⁵

Fig 4.

Thirteenth-century seal of Thetford Priory. Drawing: Martin 1779, 157.

Fig 5.

Montvianeix Madonna. Cloisters Museum, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. French c 1150–1200. Photograph: Reproduced with permission of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

As we can contextualise the Marian image within the history of medieval art, so can we understand the accounts in CCC 329 within the tradition of Marian miracles. The account of the statue, in which its return to a place of honour was rewarded by the ‘discovery’ of relics, can be compared to a story in Hugh of Poitiers’ Vezelay Chronicle in which a wooden statue of the Virgin survived an 1165 fire, only slightly blackened and untainted by the scent of smoke. When the statue was examined, a hollow section was discovered in its back and, as at Thetford, the monks were called to bear witness as it was opened and a wealth of relics hidden within were revealed, each identified by tituli. The statue was returned to the high altar and ‘then all the people came flocking, both pilgrims and locals, and there was wonderfully great joy and exultation in the church, in the whole town, and in the neighbouring countryside’.Footnote ⁶⁶ Painting a Marian statue as a stimulus to a miracle would also be a trope of Marian miracles. Our narrative recalls the ‘The Painter and the Devil’ miracle in which an artist paints the Devil exceedingly ugly to contrast with the beauty of the Virgin, and the Virgin intercedes on the artist’s behalf when attacked by the Devil. This story is recounted in the miracle collections of John of Garland and Vincent of Beauvais, and a version of it appears on the frontispiece of the Lambeth Apocalypse (Lambeth Palace Library ms 209) in which a Benedictine monk paints a statue of the Virgin and Child which comes alive in the process and rewards the monk with the apple she holds (fig 6).Footnote ⁶⁷ Versions of this story are recounted in the thirteenth-century Cantigas de Santa Maria of c 1280,Footnote ⁶⁸ in which the artist is shown painting a Virgin and Child sculpture and a deformed image of the Devil. The model for the sculpture was probably the aforementioned Virgen de los Reyes, a thirteenth-century statue in Seville Cathedral.Footnote ⁶⁹ Containing and concealing the relics of saints within the body of the Virgin, the Thetford statue and its miracle story anticipate the ‘complex revelatory potential’ of late medieval Marian art, as statues of the Virgin quite literally open outward to reveal their hidden contents.Footnote ⁷⁰

Fig 6.

Frontispiece, Lambeth Apocalypse. Lambeth Palace Library ms 209. Image: Reproduced with permission of Lambeth Palace Library.

The account of the building of the Lady Chapel also adheres to a tradition of Marian miracles that concern the Virgin’s role as patron, architect and even builder of architecture. Indeed, it belongs in particular to an East Anglian tradition of Marian building miracles. It was probably informed by a story in William of Malmesbury’s De miraculis beatae virginis Mariae in which a humble labourer happens across a small country church and there meets the Virgin and her court who ask him to speak to the priest and urge him to build the Virgin’s church on a larger scale. The Virgin went out with the labourer and marked out the footprint of the building with her staff and set out stones as markers. After some mishaps, the church is built and the Virgin is more suitably housed in a larger and more magnificent setting, and the labourer, because of his fidelity to the Virgin, is promoted to the status of master mason. Occurring in the environs of Bury St Edmunds, the story was surely known in nearby Thetford.Footnote ⁷¹ Marian building miracles would occur again in the fifteenth-century Pynson Ballad, which recounts the Virgin’s intervention in the creation of the Lady Chapel at Walsingham. The Virgin again measured out the footprint of the building, but the masons could ‘nat ken neither mesure ne marke/ To ioyne togyder their owne proper werke’, and so it was the Virgin herself who, with angel’s hands, miraculously joined the stones together, ‘Hirsylfe beynge here chyef artyfycer’.Footnote ⁷² The chapel at Walsingham was thus an acheiropoieton – a work not made by human hands – a status fitting East Anglia’s greatest Marian shrine.Footnote ⁷³

The Thetford miracle was located physically and chronologically between William of Malmesbury’s Bury St Edmunds miracle and Walsingham’s Pynson Ballad. It borrows a number of features from the Bury miracle: a humble builder, a Marian setting in need of expansion or improvement and the Virgin’s direct involvement in it via the builder. The stories emblematise material and social elaborations: at Bury, the church must be enlarged, while at Thetford, the Lady Chapel’s humble construction in wood does not sufficiently honour the Virgin, and so, at her insistence, the chapel is updated to the more costly, permanent and elegant construction in stone. As in architecture, so in sculpture: the worn and dirty surfaces of the reliquary suggest decay due to neglect and a resulting lack of splendour unsuited and even offensive to the Virgin Mary. Indeed, it is the intention to move the Marian image to a suitably honourable place and to redecorate this signifier in a manner that faithfully conveys the beauty of its signified – with paint but probably also with ornamentation including garments, applied gems, a veil and a crown – that causes the relics to be revealed in the first place.Footnote ⁷⁴ In its many manifestations, Marian art was defined by its superior material character and by its technical sophistication. From the perspective of the medieval viewer, Marian art was often understood to have been made by the Virgin or through her involvement and was intended to bear the stamp or look of divine artistry, to possess the immaculate sheen of the Queen of Heaven’s court.Footnote ⁷⁵

THE LADY CHAPEL

We can now turn to the Lady Chapel itself as the locus for the cult of the Virgin. It formed the northern part of an asymmetrical extension added to the Romanesque fabric that included the Lady Chapel and presbytery (fig 7). It was one of a long list of Lady Chapels added to English great churches from the later twelfth century, but it is especially part of an East Anglian tradition in which Lady Chapels were added to the north side of great Norman churches at Peterborough and Bury St Edmunds (1270s) and Ely (1320s). Unlike Peterborough and Ely, which featured attached but distinct rectangular chapels, Bury is the closest comparison, being built against the east wall of the north transept and the north wall of the choir.Footnote ⁷⁶ The nearly complete destruction of the Lady Chapel during the Dissolution, and the post-medieval robbing-out of the fabric means that the majority of what is currently visible is the building’s rubble core and few worked stones (fig 8). Although reading the fabric is challenging, the main lines of its development are discernible from the archaeology and documentation.Footnote ⁷⁷

Fig 7.

Plan of Thetford Priory. Drawing: © Historic England Archive.

Fig 8.

Thetford Priory Lady Chapel, from west to east. Photograph: author.

Building the thirteenth-century Lady Chapel and presbytery onto the north-east corner of the priory necessitated the removal of much of the fabric of the Romanesque triple-apse. This meant squaring off the southern apse and extending a curtain wall from the junction of the main and southern apse eastward, turning north across the eastern part of the building to create a flat eastern wall for the presbytery and Lady Chapel, and returning west to terminate at the northern apse. In 1935 F J E Raby argued that the presbytery and Lady Chapel were built in one campaign, while more recently it has been suggested that the addition was built in two phases during the thirteenth century.Footnote ⁷⁸ The key evidence offered for a multi-phase build is the foundation of what was interpreted as the original west wall of the Lady Chapel on the line of the buttress on the north wall; it is assumed that this is the termination of the chapel prior to the continuation of the north chapel wall in a putative later-thirteenth-century campaign (there is no aboveground evidence visible for this at present).Footnote ⁷⁹ The difficulty in accepting that the north wall was extended in a second campaign is the fact that the design of the plinth at the north-east corner of the Lady Chapel is identical to those in the north-west wall of the chapel (ie that assumed to be later). The section of plinth between these two points is of a different design, a feature that may have been intended to accommodate an existing structure against the wall with a flat plinth.Footnote ⁸⁰ The visual evidence we have for the north wall of the chapel – an engraving by Wenceslaus Hollar (1607–77) – shows the entirety of the north wall of the Lady Chapel substantially complete: built in identical bays, there is no indication of a change in design in the western bays of the chapel (fig 9). Logic indicates that removing the Romanesque fabric would not have been a piecemeal affair. The fact that the masonry of the new east wall appears continuous likewise suggests that the destruction of the Romanesque apse cleared the way for an integrated presbytery and Lady Chapel built in a single campaign.

Fig 9.

Wenceslaus Hollar, Thetford Priory from the north showing the north elevation of the Lady Chapel at left. Drawing: Reproduced with permission of the British Museum.

When complete, the Lady Chapel was a rectangular addition accessed from the west off the north transept or from the presbytery through an arcade that divided the two spaces (patronal tombs filled these areas in the later Middle Ages).Footnote ⁸¹ In conjunction with the new Lady Chapel was the creation of the aforementioned niche within the east wall of the north transept, which presumably held a Marian image (fig 10) and may have been the place that the original Marian image was set after it was removed from the altar.Footnote ⁸² Hollar’s engraving (fig 9) confirms that the Lady Chapel had a two-level elevation with lancet windows in the aisles and round oculi in the clerestory.Footnote ⁸³ The east window was recorded by Francis Grose as a single traceried window (fig 11), but it is clear that this is a later insertion of c 1300 (doubtless one of the changes to the fabric referred to in the miracles).Footnote ⁸⁴ A newel stair was built just south of the northern transept chapel to access a viewing chamber, which must have been intended for the priory’s patrons to gaze upon the elevated host at the altar below.Footnote ⁸⁵ The date of the building of the Lady Chapel is not recorded and so it must depend principally on the fabric and antiquarian evidence. The interior of the east window retains some of the only worked stones remaining in the Lady Chapel that have diagnostic value: the inner capital and springer of the east window remains attached to the inner east wall at the north end (fig 12). Featuring spool capitals, en délit shafting and label stops with head busts, the stonework here confirms Peter Draper’s dating of the Lady Chapel to the middle years of the thirteenth century.Footnote ⁸⁶ If so, the date of the building of the chapel broadly agrees with the date of the priory’s new Marian seal and perhaps the new Marian statue mentioned in the miracles. Although the nature of the evidence does not allow for certainty, this points to an intention to promote a cult of the Virgin at Thetford in the middle years of the century.

Fig 10.

Niche in the east wall of the north transept leading to the Lady Chapel at Thetford Priory, which probably once held a Marian image. Photograph: author.

Fig 11.

Thetford Priory from the east showing the remains of the east wall of the Lady Chapel at right. Drawing: Grose 1797.

Fig 12.

Detail of the in situ capital on the inner north-east corner of the Lady Chapel, Thetford Priory. Photograph: author.

THE CULT OF THE VIRGIN AT THETFORD

The texts in CCC 329 and the new Lady Chapel offer remarkable evidence of a Marian cult at Thetford centred upon its miracle-working statue. How successful was the Marian cult and, aside from the Cluniac monks, who were its devotees? The statue, Lady Chapel and miracles were components of a cult that would eventually be dwarfed by the major East Anglian cults at Bromholm and Walsingham in the course of the thirteenth century. Bromholm, another Cluniac monastery, was founded by William de Granville in 1113 and boasted a relic of the True Cross apparently acquired during the Fourth Crusade. The relic came to Bromholm c 1220, and miracles were first recorded in 1223.Footnote ⁸⁷ Bromholm would grow in importance and appear in Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales and Langland’s Vision of Piers Plowman.Footnote ⁸⁸ St Mary Walsingham was begun by Richeldis de Faverches in the twelfth century after a miracle in which the Virgin brought Richeldis from England to Nazareth to see the Holy House where the Annunciation was received. Richeldis apparently built a replica of the Holy House before founding an Augustinian priory with its own miracle-working Marian statue.Footnote ⁸⁹ To these major cults should be added lesser local cults including St Mary, Woolpit, Suffolk. Located just sixteen miles from Thetford, Woolpit was a minor Marian cult from at least the early thirteenth century, and its focus was a Marian image that was the subject of devotion and benefaction in the later Middle Ages.Footnote ⁹⁰ Later additions to East Anglia’s Marian shrines would include Our Lady of Ipswich, where around 1300 a statue of the Virgin was miraculously discovered in the ground and miracles were recorded there by 1327.Footnote ⁹¹

While we do not know how early miracles were recorded at Thetford, it is clear that Walsingham, Bromholm, Woolpit and Thetford were all lesser cult centres when they began in the twelfth or thirteenth centuries. The fame associated with Walsingham and Bromholm would be due in large part to royal interest in them. Henry iii would visit Bromholm and Walsingham in 1226 and would grant fairs to each institution, which substantially invigorated the beginning of both cults. Our Lady of Woolpit is first recorded in 1211–14 and it would receive a fair in 1286.Footnote ⁹² Competition with these local centres is recorded only once in CCC 329, and it is notable that the miracle references St Mary Woolpit rather than a larger cult centre. The third miracle recounts a devotee of the Virgin who had seemingly suffered from facial paralysis and dysphagia. Although instructed to take a penny to Our Lady at Woolpit, the mute woman gestures instead to Thetford Priory and its Marian statue and goes there in the hope of being healed. Her prayers and donation animate the statue of the Virgin, who reaches its hand into the woman’s throat and dislodges her tongue, restoring her speech.Footnote ⁹³ The woman pledges to maintain a candle at the statue of the Virgin for the rest of her life, thus transitioning from devotee to donor. This miracle offers a blunt account of the competition between two local cults for the attention and renumeration of devotees. As Carol Rawcliffe has shown, these major cults served to draw a significant pilgrimage trade to East Anglia and churches such as St Mary Woolpit and Thetford Priory seized upon this.Footnote ⁹⁴

The miracle stories and Lady Chapel aside, the evidence for a cult of the Virgin at Thetford is not extensive. The Victoria County History nonetheless states: ‘Pilgrims flocked to the priory, and as a result of their offerings a fine Lady Chapel was built on the north of the quire; the quire was itself extended forty feet, the frater was rebuilt on a larger scale, and […] monks were added to the establishment.’Footnote ⁹⁵ This is based on the 1291 Taxatio, but, with no earlier point of comparison, it is open to question. Indeed, many of the sources we expect to note the presence of a cult do not: for instance, Matthew Paris recounts that Prior Stephen ii was murdered by a monk within Thetford Priory, but he says nothing of a Marian cult.Footnote ⁹⁶ The 1279 visitation of Cluny indicates that the number of monks increased from 13 to 22, but this follows a pattern of thirteenth-century monasteries generally and may or may not relate to a thriving cult. This visitation records that the church and cloister were in good condition, that the monastic residences were repaired and a new grange was built, but neither the Lady Chapel nor the cult of the Virgin is mentioned.Footnote ⁹⁷ We are also lacking evidence of pilgrim badges from Thetford and other material signs we might expect of cult activity. The pilgrim badges and ampullae found in Thetford are mostly related to Walsingham and appear in Thetford as an accident of being on a pilgrimage route.Footnote ⁹⁸

Royal interest in the cult was relatively minor, a factor that helped to tip the scales in the favour of Bromholm and Walsingham. Henry iii (1216–72) visited Thetford five times between 1234 and 1245; although the Priory of St Mary is not specified, that it was his host institution is likely. Henry’s itinerary also included major shrines at Bromholm, Norwich, Bury St Edmunds and Ely.Footnote ⁹⁹ In 1239 Henry iii asked that the Sherriff of Norfolk take 11 tons of wine for the king’s use and send it ahead to Thetford, Castle Acre, Walsingham, Bromholm, Norwich and Bury St Edmunds (a similar request would be made the following year).Footnote ¹⁰⁰ That Thetford Priory was intended here is suggested by a 1244 notice in which Henry iii gifted a ton of wine to the priory and its monks.Footnote ¹⁰¹ A devotee of the Virgin Mary, Henry’s preference among East Anglian shrines was for Walsingham, and his devotion to the cross was performed at Bromholm, where he bestowed gifts of wax, money and ex votos.Footnote ¹⁰² No gifts are recorded to the Marian cult at Thetford, although Henry did give the aforementioned Prior of Thetford, Stephen ii (a royal servant), 14 marks 6s 8d for a chasuble and a cope on 28 March 1246.Footnote ¹⁰³ Henry’s son, Edward i (1272–1307) spent less time in Norfolk, although he signed letters patent at Thetford in 1285, 1293 and 1305.Footnote ¹⁰⁴

The fourteenth century was a period of decline for the monastery, which led to it being significantly in debt. An alien priory connected to Cluny, Thetford’s revenues would be harshly taxed and its lands sequestered to fund wars with France. In 1313 the priory would be ransacked by a mob and the prior’s goods carted away.Footnote ¹⁰⁵ The 1321 Cluny visitation records that some of the priory buildings were ruinous and threatening collapse.Footnote ¹⁰⁶ This situation changed in 1376 when Edward iii naturalised the priory (thus removing the requirement to pay additional taxes), one year after the Mowbray family became its main patrons. It may be no surprise that it is after this point that evidence for the cult of the Virgin begins again. Indeed, the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries up to the Dissolution appear to have seen the cult flourish. In 1406 Henry iv visited Thetford Priory as part of a journey of healing at East Anglian shrines including Norwich and Walsingham, and, as we have seen, a series of donations to the Lady Chapel can be charted in wills.Footnote ¹⁰⁷ The 1520s and 30s witnessed renewed attention to the Lady Chapel, including purchasing a new bell rope and altar cloths, and work on the ceiling of a chamber identified as a watching chamber in the upper west end of the Lady Chapel paid for by the Duchess of Norfolk.Footnote ¹⁰⁸ In the following year there is evidence that the Lady Chapel owned the White Hart Inn in Thetford, which was tenanted out.Footnote ¹⁰⁹

While there is still much to be learnt about CCC 329 and its composition, the renewed interest in the cult alone suggests why its fifteenth-century compiler felt it necessary to include the texts of a twelfth-century account of its relic collection and a thirteenth-century record of the miracles in a volume focused upon the history of the priory. Seemingly always at the mercy of their patrons’ generosity, the cult of the Virgin remained a lesser cult centre that never reached the heights of its local competitors, and it is in this very precarity and locality that its interest lies. There can be little doubt that the monks of Thetford would wistfully agree with Reginald Pecock who claimed that ‘no place in erthe is holier than an other place is, and noon ymage is holier than an other lijk ymage is. Wherfor it is vein waast and idil forto trotte to Wasingam rather than to ech other place in which an ymage of Marie is’.Footnote ¹¹⁰

APPENDIX: CCC 329 TRANSCRIPTION AND TRANSLATION

[page 206]

Hec sunt motiva exhortatoria quare capella virginis gloriose in parte aquilonari monasterij monachorum Thetfordie per Priorem eiusdem loci extiterat constructa.

Olim dum sedes episcopalis fuerat in civitate Thetfordie predicta in ecclesia provinchiali sancte marie. Deinde translata ad Helmham. Novissime ubi iam situatur apud Norwycum erat quedam ymago virginis benedicte in predicta ecclesia eiusdem Thetfordie que postmodum ad ecclesiam monachorum deportata ac in loco honorifico videlicet ad magnum alta re collocata est. Demum decencioris ymaginis occasione a loco illo deposita et in loco obscuro quasi totaliter derelicta ponebatur. Est verum et publice per provinciales divulgatur quod erat quidam simplex operarius in prefata villa Thetfordie qui quia incurabili infirmitate diutius laboravit virginemque benedictam pro sua sanitate recuperanda incessanter interpellabat. Tandem in visione nocturna ei beata virgo apparuit sic inquiens si tuam desideras optinere sanitatem surge dilacione postposita et dic priori domus mee ut ad honorem mei nominis mihi capellam fabricet in parte aquilonari per ipsum noviter reparata. Qui sua verba reputans quasi frivola opus illud celitus sibi iniunctum perficere non curavit. Tribus admonicionibus ex parte virginis per prefatum languidum non obstantibus tandem pro certitudine maiori tale secretum prefato priori firme intimavit. Quod nulli viventi extiterat revelatum. Quod audiens prefatus Prior ultra quod credi possit in se stupefactus tremuit et de revelacione multum admirans ligneam finaliter proposuit construxisse capellam. Sed prefatus languens iterum ad Priorem redijt asserendo voluntatem virginis esse non ligneam habere capellam sed de cemento et lapidibus fore fabricandam locum ei signando et spacium. Modico intervallo habito accidebat priorem devillasse et eo absente redijt vir prefatus racione confabulandi cum eo. Quo non presente accessit ad quemdam senem multum devotum in eodem monasterio moram continue trahentem ostendens ei signum crucis habens formam in quodam lapide auro gemmisque preciosis mirabiliter decoratam fere per duarum horarum spacium omnibus intueri volentibus manifeste apparuit. Super quem columpna principalis prefate capelle situatur.

Demum priore ad monasterium redeunte ac structuram capelle predicte aliqualiter procrastinante causis legitimis veraciter prepedito cuidam mulieri ville prelibate virgo sanctissima visione consimili qua prius viro apparuit intimans ut quemdam monachum eiusdem loci devotum adiret sibi iniungendo quod

[page 207] priorem provocaret ut structuram capelle sue celerius festinaret omni excusacione penitus remota. Cuius iussionem sedule non advertens revelacionem sibi factam adimplere non curavit. Sed virgo benedicta sue intencionis non immemor tempore nocturno redijt ad prefatam mulierem ac acriter eam redarguens quia suum contempsisset preceptum. Sic brachium mulieris manu sua strinxit atque palpavit ut omnem usum levandi ac administrandi penitus amisit. Que vigilans non iniuncto turbata ac de sua negligencia corditer dolens cum summa festinancia predictum monachum adivit omniaque que ei ex parte virginis fuerant facta cum eiulatu et fletibus revelavit. Cuius doloribus compaciens monachus prelibatus ei consuluit ut brachium de cera formatum ymagini beate virginis offerret. Quo facto mulier pristine sanitati est restituta ac a dolore brachij totaliter aliena.

Cum dicat evangelicus ille lucas quod lucerna accensa modio submitti non debeat sed super candelabrum ut luceat et cetera. Ideo ad maiorem dei ac matris sue laudem et sanctorum veneracionem cum reverencia ac summa devocione fidelium mentibus est commendandum de sanctissimis inventis reliquijs in capite ymaginis situate in capella predicta per priorem ut pretactum est noviter reparata. In prima constructione capelle predicte volens prefatus prior in quantum possit erga virginem gloriosam devocionem populi augmentare fecit prefatam ymaginem noviter ornari atque depingi que antiquitus supra quoddam hostium iuxta prefatam capellam in loco minus honesto erat situata. Sed cum pictor de putrida pictura ymaginem purgaret in capitis summitate quoddam lamen argenteum firmissime clavatum invenit. Qui de signo insolito intra se admirans priorem celeriter inquisivit eique lamen in summitate ymaginis sic clavatum demonstravit. Prior convocatis pluribus monachis ac alijs personis sperans ibidem aliquod dei donum esse manu sua omnibus cernentibus lamen abstraxit ibique plurimorum sanctorum invenit reliquias plumbo inclusas nominibus universorum sedulis scriptis que in eadem capella usque hodie devotissime venerantur.

Erat quedam mulier in prefata villa Thetford tenellum habens infantem etatis sex mensium. Que quadam nocte in stratu suo recubans sinistrante fortuna illa dormientem puerum oppressit. Que evigilans repperit suum infantem omnino fore mortuum. Et velud amens effecta prefatum mortuum subito in ulnis arripuit ac nuda ad ecclesiam monachorum cucurrit et coram prefata ymagine devotissime prostrata vitam sui pueri a virgine

[page 208] gloriosa magnis fletibus corditer flagitabat. Oratione autem finita puer revixit et vivus apparuit. De quo feliciter gratulata gaudens ad propria remeavit.

Erat in Thetfordia mulier quedam diutina infirmitate prostrata ac in articulo mortis veraciter posita et quod mirum est auditu ita in sua lingua erat capta quod in suo gutture profundius erat retracta ita ut omnem usum loquendi vel eam movendi totaliter amiserat. Reliquam tamen membrorum suorum potenciam sufficienter possidebat. At assistentes sibi benivoli pro sua sanitate habenda quendam denarium super capud suum flexerunt ymagini virginis gloriose offerendum apud wylput. Quod considerans mulier prefata manu sua signavit versus monasterium monachorum ville pretacte. Quod cernentes prefati benevoli et amici assignaverunt predictum denarium ymagini situate in capella monasterij monachorum per priorem noviter reparata. Quo assignato mulier incontinenti loquebatur recte benedicens deum et eius matrem gloriosam. Et ut prefata mulier asseruit similitudo ymaginis predicte sibi assistebat et linguam suam sic in gutture suo retractam manu sua miraculose extrahebat. Sicque ad laudem dei pristine sanitati mulier restituta in signum tam evidentis miraculi per totum vite sue spacium coram prefata ymagine candelam vovebat sustinere.

Ad dei misericordiam magnificandam et sue genitricis gloriose laudem ampliandam unum admirabile et insigne miraculum dignum duxi provulgare Non enim occultandum est vel negandum quicquid ad honorem dei et sue genitricis dinoscitur pertinere. In quadam villa Norffolch vocata Hokham fuit quidam homo carpentarius nomine Willelmus Heddrich iunior cum uxore sua Ysabella comorans. Hij filium tenellum etate trium annorum habebant. Qui et tempore autumpnali dictum puerum in campum secum adduxerunt prout habetur in consuetudine a quampluribus in patria. Quadam die ad occasum solis contingebat puerum predictum oppressum sompno in humo cecidisse et obdormisse ad finem illius terre in qua mater sua metebat. Et crepusculo superveniente venit quidam ducens carectam cuius rota super capud pueri dormientis transiens illum interfecit ductore de puero penitus ignorante. Quam quidem carectam pater pueri sequebatur inveniensque puerum in brachijs suis suscepit. Quem videns mortuum multum doluit. Et festinans cucurrit ad quendam virum fidelem in eadem villa commorantem qui plures a diversis morbis et

[page 209] infirmitatibus virtute medicinarum graciose curaverat. Hic cum vidisset puerum et diligenter tangendo atque palpando mortuum veraciter cognovisset patri consuluit ut illum domum deferret et pro eius sepultura in crastino ordinaret. Qui audiens flevit et filium multum condolens et graviter lugens domum redijt corpus exanime uxori sue tradens ut illud in lecto. Collocaret et convocatis amicis suis et propinquis sicut mos est funeris faciendi vigilabant orantes et voventes beate dei genitrici marie quod si filium suum iam defunctum sua intercessione vivum potuerint optinere nudis corporibus peregre proficiscentes ymagini beate marie in ecclesia monachorum apud Thetford offerrent constitute. Oratione autem finita et votis devote promissis circa mediam noctem revixit puer. Quo viso multum congratulabantur laudantes deum et benedicentes. Qui et vota sua adimplere cupientes puerum sustulerunt et ymagini gloriose virginis supradicte devotissime optulerunt.

Qualiter sancte reliquie in capite supradicte ymaginis repperte ad Thetfordense monasterium pervenerunt. Epistula.

Domino et patri Stephano Thetfordensis ecclesie procuratori egregrio Willelmus ecclesie sancte Marie de Merlesham minister humilis salutem paternamque reverentiam. Caritas que non est ambiciosa queque non querit que sua sunt sed que aliena cogit me facere vobis que neque episcopo nostro nec ulli unquam homini facere volui pro sancta religione et observantione sacri ordinis quam vestre inesse ecclesie a multis audivi. Et hoc precipue facio suffragante domino meo Hugone Bigoto et devota supplicacione dompni Radulfi monachi vestri. Mitto igitur vobis de sacris reliquijs nostre ecclesie a sanctissimo sepulcro domini transmissis. Scilicet de purpurea veste domini et de cingulo sancte marie matris domini et de sepulcro domini de petra calvarie de sepulcro sancte marie de presepio domini et de pulvere in sepulcro sancti Johannis evangeliste invento qui inde ebullire et scaturire a verace assertore perhibetur et de sancto Georgio. Et hoc ea devocione facio ut horum memoria sanctorum devocius in vestra ecclesia celebretur.

Iste sacre prenominate reliquie et cum istis sacra pignora plurimorum sanctorum scilicet de sancto Vincentio martyre et de sancto Leodegario martyre de capillis sancte agnetis virginis et martyris de sancta Barbara virgine et martyre de sancto Gregorio pontifice de sancto Leonardo de sancto Jeromino de ligneo locello gratia non natura imputribili in quo sanctus edmundus rex et martyr post multos passionis sue annos inventus

[fol 209v] est integer et viventi simillimus et adhuc in eodem iacet positus. Similiter de sancto ligneo locello sancte etheldrede in quo post undecim annos inventa est integra et dormienti similis. Et de vestimento sancti Lazari et eius sepulcro et de multis alijs quorum merita et nomina deus scit nos autem salva veritate nominare non audemus. Hec omnia recondita fuerunt in ymagine sancte dei genitricis supradicta quam ymaginem dompnus Radulfus huius loci monachus et a iuventute sua nutritus in hoc eciam thetfordensi oppido natus sua vivaci strenuitate et adquisicione fecit cum appendentibus ymaginibus minoribus et cum tabernaculo sicuti est decentissimum auro lapidibus et coloribus adornato. Sed et picturam in refectorio licuit domina matildis de samundeham huius loci soror et singularis amica cuius animam absolvat omnipotens sua de peccunia fecerit adnutante eciam quodam clerico Radulfo de Cadamo amico nostro caro. Predictus tum Radulfus monachus sua ammonicione et exhortacione et laboriosa procuracione fecit in quo opere multos labores et tribulaciones sustinuit donec ad effectum perduxit. Pro hijs et pro alijs que devote secundum posse suum huic ecclesie fecit servicijs concessum est ei in hac ecclesia anniversarium suum imperpetuum devote fieri quod est. Idus Octobris.