William de St-Calais - Death and Legacy

Death and Legacy

Shortly before Christmas 1095, one of St-Calais' knights, Boso, fell ill and dreamed he was transported to the afterlife, where he found a large house with gates made of iron. Suddenly, St-Calais emerged from the gates, asking the knight the whereabouts of one of his servants. Boso's guide in the dream then informed Boso that this was a warning that St-Calais would soon die. Boso recovered and warned St-Calais of the dream.

St-Calais died on 2 January 1096 after falling gravely ill on the previous Christmas Day. Before his death he was consoled by Anselm and was blessed by his former opponent. He was buried on 16 January 1096 in the chapter house at Durham. The king had summoned St-Calais shortly before Christmas to answer an unknown charge, and it is possible that the stress of this threat caused his death. In 1796 St-Calais' grave was supposedly found during the demolition of the chapter house at Durham Cathedral. Found in the grave were a pair of sandals, which still survive, and fragments of a gold embroidered robe.

While in office as bishop, St-Calais gave a copy of the False Decretals to his cathedral library. The manuscript was an edition that had been collected or prepared by Lanfranc for the use of the chapter of Canterbury. St-Calais may have used this copy in his trial. His plea for an appeal to Rome was grounded in the False Decretals, whether or not it was based on this particular manuscript. The manuscript itself is now in the Peterhouse Library. St-Calais also gave a copy of Bede's Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum to his cathedral chapter; this copy still survives. Other works that St-Calais gave to the cathedral library were copies of Augustine of Hippo's De Civitae Dei and Confessions; Gregory the Great's Pastoral Care, Moralia, and Homilies; and Ambrose's De Poenitentia.

St-Calais was known to his contemporaries as an intelligent and able man. He had an excellent memory. Frank Barlow, a historian, describes him as a "good scholar and a monk of blameless life". Besides his copy of the Decretals, he left at his death over fifty books to the monks of Durham, and the list of those volumes still exists. His best-known legacy is the construction of Durham Cathedral, although the nave was not finished until 1130. The construction technique of combining a pointed arch with another rib allowed a six-pointed vault, which enabled the building to attain a greater height than earlier churches. This permitted larger celestory windows, and let more light into the building. The technique of the six-pointed vault spread to Saint-Etienne in Caen from which it influenced the development of early Gothic architecture near Paris. The system of rib vaulting in the choir was the earliest use of that technique in Europe. The historian Frank Barlow called the cathedral "one of the architectural jewels of western Christendom".