The Thingness of the Thing: The Role of Everyday Objects in Becket Miracle Windows

In “The Waning of the Middle Ages”, J. Huizinga has pointed out that “all things would be absurd if their meaning would be exhausted by their function and their place in the phenomenal world, if by their essence they did not reach into a world beyond this.” (1924:201) Starting from this assumption, I purport to analyze the role/roles played by everyday/ordinary objects in the miracle stories depicted in the Trinity Chapel glazing and argue that their individuation/haecceity is subject to practices of ritualistic and artistic encodings