Elisabeth Austin PhD Thesis - University of St Andrews

But the most telling argument against attempting at a
biography of Thomas of Bayeux is the problem of evidence. Of
Thomas' own writing, only his profession, one poem, one letter, and a
few acts and charters (the most telling of which is widely considered
a forgery) survive. A catastrophic fire at York in the 1120s
destroyed any contemporary documents that remained there. Aside
from late copies, Thomas' writings owe their survival to sources
outside York. Nonetheless, although the lack of immediate primary
sources precludes the sort of biography to which, for example,
Lanfranc or Anselm lend themselves, a multitude of sources remain
to testify to Thomas' character and actions.
Two twelfth-century chronicles of York provide details of
Thomas' episcopate, and shed some light on his earlier career. In
1127, Hugh the Chanter wrote a history of the church of York in
order to refute the Canterbury version of the primacy dispute. 4 His
text, preserved in the Minster's fourteenth-century Magnum
Registrum Album, comprises a series of biographies of the first four
Norman archbishops of York. Thomas of Bayeux plays a prominent,
indeed a ctucial, role in Hugh's history.
The text of Hugh the Chanter's history is strikingly defective,
due to the incompetence of its scribe. Abbreviations have been
expanded incorrectly, documents "given below" do not appear, and
sentences frequently make no sense. Modern editors of the text
have been driven to extreme lengths in attempting to render Hugh
4The text of the De aduentu W. ducis Normannie in Angliam may be found in
York's Magnum Registrum Album, I, ff. lr-32r. For convenience, references
are made to the revised OMT edition, although where my reading differs from
the editors', the MS is cited.
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