The Hanged Man

In 1307 an inquiry opened in London to determine whether Thomas de Cantilupe, Bishop of Hereford who had died twenty-five years earlier, was a saint. The three high-ranking ecclesiastics appointed by the pope to investigate were interested in two main things: the kind of life Bishop Thomas had lived and the miracles he might have performed after his death. A good life and posthumous miracles were, in the eyes of the Church, requirements before a person could be canonised.