SHORT" STUDIES, 
Before launching his thunderbolts Becket had gone 
to Soissons, there to prepare for the operation. 
At Soissons were to be found in special presence 
the Blessed Virgin and St. Gregory, whose assistance 
the archbishop considered would be peculiarly valu- 
able to him; and not they only, but another saint, 
Beatus Drausius, the patron of pugilists and duellists, 
who promised victory to intending combatants on 
their passing a night at his shrine.! 
Becket gave St. Drausius three nights—or per- 
haps one to each saint—and thus fortified he betook 
himself to Vezelay, where at Whitsuntide vast 
numbers of people assembled from all parts of 
France, There from the pulpit after sermon on 
Whitsunday, with the appropriate ceremonies of 
bells and lighted candles quenched, he took venge- 
ance at last upon his enemies. He suspended the 
Bishop of Salisbury. He cursed John of Oxford and 
t*he Archdeacon of Ilchester, two leading church- 
1 “Archiepiscopus noster in 
procinctu ferendee sententi® con- 
stitutus iter arripuerat ad urbem 
Suessionum orationis caus&i, ut 
Beatee Virgini, cujus ibi memoria 
celebris est, et Beato Drausio, 
ad. quem confugiunt pugnaturi, 
et Beato Gregorio Aunglicanee 
Ecclesim fundatori, qui in eidem 
urbe rcquiescit, agonem suum 
precibus commendaret, Est 
autem Beatus Drausius gloriosis- 
simus confessor qui, sicut Franei 
et Lotharingi credunt, pugiles 
qui ad memoriam ejus pernoctant 
reddit invietos.’—John of Salis- 
bury to the Bishop of Exeter. 
Zora, vol. 1. p. 227.