Benet of St Albans was a medieval English monk and biographer of
Thomas Becket
Thomas Becket (), also known as Saint Thomas of Canterbury, Thomas of London and later Thomas à Becket (21 December 1119 or 1120 – 29 December 1170), was an English nobleman who served as Lord Chancellor from 1155 to 1162, and then ...
.
Benet was a monk at the Benedictine monastery of
St Albans Abbey
St Albans Cathedral, officially the Cathedral and Abbey Church of St Alban but often referred to locally as "the Abbey", is a Church of England cathedral in St Albans, England. Much of its architecture dates from Norman times. It ceased to be ...
during the abbacy of Simon (1167-1183). About 1184, Benet composed a
hagiography
A hagiography (; ) is a biography of a saint or an ecclesiastical leader, as well as, by extension, an adulatory and idealized biography of a founder, saint, monk, nun or icon in any of the world's religions. Early Christian hagiographies migh ...
of Becket in French verse, basing it partly on the now-lost work of
Robert of Cricklade
Robert of Cricklade (–1174×79) was a medieval English writer and prior of St Frideswide's Priory in Oxford. He was a native of Cricklade and taught before becoming a cleric. He wrote several theological works as well as a lost biography of ...
.
[ This set of verses is one of the secondary sources for Becket's life.][Barlow ''Thomas Becket'' p. 6]
The verses have been edited and published by F. Michel in 1844.[Barlow ''Thomas Becket'' p. 7] In turn, Benet's work was used as a source for the 14th-century Icelandic saga about Becket titled Thómas saga erkibyskups.[Staunton ''Lives of Thomas Becket'' p. 11]
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Benet of St Albans
English Benedictines
English religious writers
12th-century French writers
French male non-fiction writers