ABSTRACT
The Biblioteca Nacional in Lisbon houses one of the earliest surviving copies of the compilation of accounts of miracles ascribed to the intercession of St Thomas Becket, which Benedict of Canterbury, the later Abbot Benedict of Peterborough, had assembled from 1171 onwards. ( 1 ) The manuscript is remarkable not only for its high quality but also because the place and date of its transcription are accurately recorded in a colophon. The Liber miraculorum beati Thome occupies the greater part of Lisbon Biblioteca Nacional, cod. Alcoba$a ccxc/143, a carefully-transcribed manuscript written in north Portugal in the last quarter of the twelfth century. ( 2 ) The 146 parchment leaves are numbered consecutively in a modern hand; the text is in single columns, with 26 lines to the column, and the pages are pricked and ruled. The manuscript was rebound in the eighteenth century, when it received paper endleaves, of which the first serves as a title page, with the inscription:
S. Thomae Cantuariensis Miracula, Passio et Epistola. In fine codicis hujus ante Passionem seu legenda S. Thomae et Epistolam finalem memoria invenitur, esse Alphonso Portugalliae Rege primo vivente scriptum.
