ABSTRACT
Following the publication of my study on the very early copy of Benedict of Peterborough’s Liber miraculorum beati Thome in Lisbon, cod. Alcobaga CCXC/ 143, 1 Dr José Meirinhos drew my attention to Porto, BPM, Santa Cruz 60, which is revealed to be another early Portuguese transcription of the same text. This discovery means that of the thirteen complete copies of Benedict’s Miracula now known, three were transcribed in Portugal in the late twelfth or very early thirteenth century; moreover, they belong to an élite group of five manuscripts (and one fragment), which transmit the earliest surviving version of the text. Furthermore, they were written in religious houses which occupied the first rank in the emerging kingdom of Portugal—S. Mamede de Lorvão, Santa Cruz in Coimbra, and perhaps Alcobaga—and, even more significantly, they represented three distinct orders, Benedictine, Augustinian canons regular, and Cistercian. The context for this remarkable precocity, and its relevance for the high level of Anglo-Portuguese relations in the twelfth century, were reviewed in 1998 and need not be repeated here. 2 The purpose of this study is to establish the place of the Santa Cruz manuscript in the textual history of Benedict of Peterborough’s collection of Becket miracles.
