Abstract: Between 1218 and 1220, fifty years after the death of Thomas Becket, the poet Henri d’Avranches wrote no less than four poems in memory of the martyr. How much of the historiographic and hagiographic material relative to the recent events did he use ? This article considers the ways, stylistic as much as thematic, in which he dealt with the material and produced a style of epic writing much inspired by the great Classical models, and their imitators.
