Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 9.djvu/352

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NOTES AND QUERIES.

. ix. MAY a, 1902.

only amplification." This is not quite -true The first " that " represents the end, and th second the means to that end. Macbeth would have a prize, and as that prize entail a certain deed, he would have the deed done without involving his own guilt woulc wrongly win, and yet escape the responsi bility. The meaning of lines 25 and 26 woulc seem to be :

And (thou'ldst have) that (done) which rather thou

dost fear to do Than wishest should be wndone.

E. MERTON DEY.

St. Louis.

THOMAS A BECKET AND THE CATHEDRAL CHURCH OF SIGUENZA. It is a notable fact that Spain was one of the first of the conti- nental monarchies to venerate St. Thomas of Canterbury as a martyr of the Catholic Church. The explanation is simple. The Queen of Castille at that time was the Princess Leonora, daughter of the Norman king of England. It is probable that she took with her to Spain some Anglo-Norman chaplains, and succeeded in placing them on the episcopal thrones of the Spanish Church, and, by the irony of history, it is also to be noted that it was a Spanish princess who was the innocent occasion of the suppression, in the Anglican Church, of the tomb and the commemoration liturgical of the aforesaid Primate of All England. It can be proved that St. Thomas a Becket enjoyed his popu- larity in Spain within a very few years of his death in Toledo, Salamanca, Zamora, Sigiienza, &c. Don Carlos Rodriguez Tierno who has been a canon of the Cathedral Church of Sigiienza since 9 April, 1862, and is now, by order of Pope Leo XIII., whom all the world respects, precentor (chantre) of that capitular corporation has this day placed before me some documents concerning the engrafting upon Spanish Christianity of English ecclesiasticism. Most of them he had already communicated to me in May, 1897, when I was examining the remains of Byzan- tine (in English Norman) architecture in this Iberian city. In the chapel of St. Catherine (Santa Catalina), formerly called "de Santo Tomas Martir," in this cathedral, there is an inscription, which is quite recent, though in mediaeval letters, "Hie est inclusa Joscelini prsesulis vlna" i e., " Herein is enclosed the elbow of the Prelate Joscelin." Don Carlos was present when that reliquary was opened, and believes the bone which the inscription commemorates to be there. It was left where it was found. He infers from all his studies in the antiquities of Sigiienza that the said

bishop died abroad as an ambassador, pro- bably in Germany, and that he sent his right arm to bless post mortem his faithful disciples of Seguntiurn. Don Carlos has given, in his unpublished book entitled * Resumen de varias Correcciones y Advertencias, que en vista de los Documentos de los Archivos de la Santa Yglesia de Sigiienza deben hacerse al Cathalato [sic] Seguntino, 1 his reasons for believing that Bishop Joscelin, who ruled the see of Sigiienza from 1168 till 1179 A.D., was a Norman or English priest. He refers me to the printed books 'Santa Librada Virgen y Martir, Patrona de la Santa Iglesia, Ciudad y Obispado de Sigiienza, por el Doctor Don Diego Eugenio Gonzalez Chantos y Ullauri ' (Madrid, 1806), and ' La Catedral de Sigiienza, erigida en el

Siglo XII por D. Manuel Perez-Villamil'

(Madrid, 1899), in which there are some things derived from himself and some faulty copies of inscriptions, &c. (see pp. 336-7 for the subject of these notes). He has shown me in the library of his cathedral of which he is about to publish a catalogue and which contains many precious manuscripts and incunables four volumes in parchment which belonged to Bishop Rodrigo, who was consecrated Bishop of Sigiienza in 1182, and presented many books to the library of his church. In one of these there is a minute account of the life and last moments of St. Thomas a Becket. It occupies twenty- three leaves of parchment, of small folio size, beautifully written in very large and very black letters, with numerous abbre- viations. This document, of the end of the twelfth century, begins thus : " Ad laudem Deatissimi Martiris Thome : et fidelium edifi- cationemopus irnparscientie meeaggredior"; and ends as follows : "Et aperte cognoscent quod non sit Ecclesia sed scismaticorum con- yenticula quam Martir iste respuebat ; et nfidelitas [sic] aliud sentire de Deo quam pse prsedicabat." It fixes the date of the death of St. Thomas as " quarto Kalendas Fanuarii, anno ab Incarnatione Domini ^CLXX, primo die post sol lempnita tern "nnocentium." St. Thomas had his altar here Iready in 1192. The surname of Bishop Toscelin appears to have been Adelida. Can any information about him be produced from documents written in England in the twelfth
 * entury 1 St. Thomas was canonized while

his prelate ruled in Sigiienza, and an altar was erected in his memory in the Cathedral f Toledo while D. Cerebruno, who preceded oscelin as Bishop of Sigiienza, was Primate )f all the Spain s.

EDWARD SPENCER DODGSON.