ABSTRACT
Henry II’s appointment of Benedict as abbot of Peterborough came in tense circumstances. The knights of the Soke had triggered a confrontation with the king due to their obstruction of royal justice. Benedict was charged to trim the knights’ powers and to restore the monastery to regional leadership. His campaigns of building may be read as part of this mission. Undertakings such as the law buildings at the entry to the monastery asserted royal authority in judicial administration over that of the Soke’s earls, and the expansion of the great church and the adoption of a powerful west termination utilized early Gothic to affirm a new authority. Further, Benedict’s promotion of pilgrimage focussed on the veneration of Becket’s relics; their effectiveness overshadowing those from the abbey’s Saxon past. Benedict’s patronage reveals the recurring influence of Canterbury where he had been trained and risen to leadership during a critical period of its building history, and where the king’s reversal in attitude to Becket in the years following his murder eased the way for the assimilation of Angevin influence in the mid-1170s.
