Synopsis
BECKET, Thomas, Archbishop of
Canterbury; b. in London, Dec. 21, 1118; d. in Canterbury, Dec. 29, 1170. The
writing of his name À Becket, as if he were of noble birth, is
inaccurate, and now discarded.
Life - His father, Gilbert Becket,
was from Rouen; his mother, Roesa or Matilda, from Caen. But, though thus
Norman in parentage, he was a thorough Englishman, full of national and local
patriotism. His father, a baron of the city of London, gave his son an
excellent education, with the canons of Merton Abbey, in London schools, and
afterwards in Paris. There is no proof that he ever went to Oxford. His
father’s friend, Richer of Laigle, - one of the great barons of England,
—took an interest in the boy; and, in his castle of Pevensey, Becket was
introduced to the sports of hunting and hawking, in which he became such a
proficient. On his return from Paris, he was employed under the sheriffs of
London, and so made acquainted with political business. But preferment was to
be expected in the case of so brilliant a scholar; and when common friends from
the other side of the Channel had recommended him to the notice of Theobald,
Archbishop of Canterbury, who, however, was probably already acquainted with
Becket’s father, he was immediately taken into his service (1142), sent to
Bologna and Auxerre to study civil and canon law, and quickly made archdeacon
of the see, and Provost of Beverley. While in this double capacity, Becket
showed his loyalty to the Church, and his political tact, by cleverly solving
the difficulty connected with the succession to the crown of England. Securing
it to Henry, while not sacrificing papal interests, he made two secret journeys
to Rome, and thwarted an effort to win over the Pope to the side of Eustace,
the son of Stephen. When Henry II. came to the throne, he made Becket his
chancellor (1155), on the recommendation of Theobald; and the ecclesiastic was
immediately forgotten in the statesman. The key to the mystery of Becket’s
character, his apparent fickleness, is his complete devotion to the office he
held, involving a constant study how best to magnify it. Accordingly, when a
chancellor, he served his king with the utmost fidelity. He surrounded himself
with the outward state befitting so exalted a station, because he had the wit
to see that it would give him the more power. While chancellor, he headed the
chivalry of England in the war of Toulouse, and there certainly acted little
like an ecclesiastic; for he joined in their bloody work. But to him belongs
the chief credit of bringing England back from utter lawlessness to as strict
an administration of the law as the state of England in the twelfth century
allowed. Sufficient emphasis has not been laid upon this fact. He was one of
the greatest chancellors England ever had. It was an evil day for him and for
his fame when he accepted the Arch-bishopric of Canterbury. He left an office
he was fitted for, for one he was not; and he was, alas! one of those men who
show their strong side in prosperity, and their weak in adversity. But being
elected in 1162, by the Chapter of Canterbury, on the King’s command,
archbishop, he gave up his pomp and worldliness, and began at once a life of
austerities, and at the same time appeared as the champion of the Church
against the State; so that he contended with Henry, his patron and friend. Yet
this was not fickleness, but principle: he was loyal to his master. Once it was
the King, now it was the Pope: once it was the State, now it was the Church.
But because Becket was really an arrogant churchman, and opposed to popular
progress, his career from our standpoint is discreditable. He fought against
the Constitutions of Clarendon, Jan. 25, 1164, which subjected clerks (clergy)
guilty of crime to the ordinary civil tribunals, put ecclesiastical dignities
at the royal disposal, prevented all appeals to Rome, and made Henry the
virtual head of the Church. To these, however, under pressure, he set his seal;
but as he had been led to suppose the King would have been satisfied with a
merely verbal assent, - a very different thing in the morality of his age, -
when compelled to affix his seal, he felt himself entrapped, and guilty of a
great sin. The Pope absolved him, and he proceeded to anathematize the
Constitutions with energy. In so doing he had great popular sympathy. To be
sure, the Constitutions were not novelties; yet they appeared so in the novel
form of statutes. They were really most beneficent, helpful in raising England
out of barbarism into civilization; and Henry was right in urging them. But, as
they undoubtedly detracted from the papal and ecclesiastical power, Becket from
his stand-point was also right. The battle thereafter waged incessantly between
king and prelate, disastrously for the latter. An assembly of the people was
held at Northampton. Becket was cited to appeal before it to answer the suit of
John the Marshal, who had charged him with injustice, and had the case removed
from the archbishop’s to the king’s court. Thus to himself the
Clarendon Constitutions, which sanctioned such proceedings, were applied; but
it surely was unworthy of the king, after having gotten him in his power on one
pretext, to raise a charge of malfeasance in office so long a time after his
connection with the chancellorship had ceased. This was a mean trick. Becket
denied the authority of the council over him, appealed to the Pope, refused to
make any explanation, fled in disguise, and after hiding in England, at last,
with two companions, crossed the Channel from Sandwich to Graveliries, Nov. 2,
1164. He hastened to Sens, where the Pope (Alexander III.) then was, whither,
also, the King’s legates were bending their steps. The Pope favored, Louis
VII. of France kindly received him, and he retired to the Cistercian monastery
of Contiguy, where he passed the next two years. The Pope acted cautiously in
the matter, because Henry had shown a disposition to favor the anti-pope,
Pascal III. But, when the Archbishop of York officiated at the coronation of
Henry’s son without the Pope’s permission, the latter took decided
measures, and threatened excommunication if the King did not make peace with
Becket. This he did July 22, 1170, at Freteval in Vendome. The first act of the
reinstated archbishop was to excommunicate all his enemies, - the Archbishop of
York, and the bishops who had taken part in the coronation, or who favored the
Clarendon Constitutions. Becket returned to England, and was warmly received.
His friends were many. The excommunicated prelates fled to Normandy, where
Henry was: their arrival created a great sensation. The King is said to have
exclaimed, "By God’s eyes! if all are excommunicated who were
concerned in the coronation, I am excommunicated also. Is this varlet that I
loaded with kindness, that came first to court to me on a lame mule, to insult
me and my children, and to take my crown from me? What cowards have I about me,
that no one will deliver me from this low-born priest!" Four of
Henry’s knights - Reginald Fitzurse, Hugh de Morville, William de Tracy,
and Richard de Breton - really or affectedly understood the King’s words
literally; and, making a hasty journey to Canterbury, they murdered him coolly,
brutally, in Canterbury Cathedral. Becket made no attempt at resistance:
indeed, he courted martyrdom.
Death and Consequences. - The murder
of Becket has been considered merely a deserved fate, a piece of rude yet
even-handed justice; and by others a veritable martyrdom. But Becket was far
from being a saint. He was abusive in his speech, haughty in his manner,
arrogant in his claims: yet, however deeply he had insulted his sovereign, he
was no traitor; and, because this was the ostensible ground for the murder, the
act was foul, cowardly, only excusable from the turbulence of the time. - On
the very night of the murder, the miracles which made the shrine of Thomas
Becket so famous began. People from all parts of England made pilgrimages to
his tomb: one such is immortalized in Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales. He was
called "saint" long before he was formally canonized, which was two
years afterwards. The news of the murder greatly affected Henry, and he took
rigorous and indeed humiliating measures to remove the popular impression that
he was directly responsible for it. One of the most remarkable scenes in
history was enacted in Canterbury Cathedral when Henry II. of England, dressed
in a hair shirt, laid his head upon Thomas’s tomb, and was whipped by the
monks and clergy present. But he stooped to conquer. He was a more powerful
king after this penance.
Character. - Thomas Becket is a fine
study. He came at a time when the country was ripe for progress; and, while
chancellor, he hastened the good work; but in his later years he tried to stem
the tide. The interest of his life for most persons begins when he leaves the
pomp of the chancellor for the asceticism of the archbishop. It was of
deliberate purpose that he entered into opposition to the King. lie dreamed of
showing a devotion to the Catholic Church equal to that of his great
predecessor Anselm; but alas! he had not the same
genius, self-control, and tact. Anselm and Henry I. contended for supremacy,
but the friendship between them was not broken. Becket contended so hotly, that
he was in open feud with his sovereign. Becket was the first Ultramontane of
his day, bent upon the upholding of papal privileges, more eager than the Pope
about them. Curiously enough, he disappointed his two patrons, Theobald
(because as chancellor he seemed to forget the Church), and Henry (because as
archbishop he seemed to forget the State). Yet, in serving these two causes so
faithfully, he was not inconsistent with that guiding principle already
mentioned, - to be faithful to his master. But this principle surely led to
great changes of outward conduct, and hence to insinuations of hypocrisy.
Unfortunately, the archiepiscopal throne was not fitted to him; and hence he
discharged its duties in a strained fashion, like a man who conscientiously is
acting consciously a part. It is also important, in weighing his character as
archbishop, to bear in mind that Thomas died for the rights of his own church,
- for the right of the Archbishop of Canterbury, and none other, to crown the
King of England, but that the struggle began upon quite a different point,
viz., the question of the exemption of the clergy from temporal
jurisdiction.
Philip Schaff, ed., A Religious
Encyclopaedia or Dictionary of Biblical, Historical, Doctrinal, and Practical
Theology, 3rd edn, Vol. 1. Toronto, New York & London: Funk &
Wagnalls Company, 1894. pp.230-231.
 |
 Jean Anouilh, Becket or the
Honor of God. Berkley Publishing Group, 1995. Pbk. ISBN: 1573225088.
pp.118. {Amazon.com} |
|
Frank
Barlow, Thomas Becket. Phoenix Press, 2000. Pbk. ISBN: 1842124277.
pp.352. |
|
 John Butler, The Quest for
Becket's Bones: The Mystery of the Relics of St Thomas Becket of
Canterbury. Yale University Press, 1996. Pbk. ISBN: 0300068956. pp.192.
{Amazon.com} |
 |
Anne Duggan,
"'Ne in dubium': The Offical Record of Henry II's Reconciliation at Avranches,
21 May 1172," English Historical Review 115 (2000): 643-58. |
|
R.M.
Franklin, "Thomas Becket and the Canon Law," Theology 73(600) (1970):
243-249. |
|
William
Holden Hutton, Thomas Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury, revised.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1926. pp.vii + 315. |
|
David
Knowles, Thomas Becket. Stanford University Press, 1971. Hbk. ISBN:
0804707669. pp.183. {Amazon.com} |
|
Candace
Lines, "'Secret Violence': Becket, More, and the Scripting of Martyrdom,"
Religion and Literature 32.2 (2000): 11-28. |
|
 F. Donald Logan, A History of the Church
in the Middle Ages. London & New York: Routledge, 2002. Pbk. ISBN:
0415132894. pp.162-173. {Amazon.com} |
|
Robert E.
Scully, "The Unmaking of a Saint: Thomas Becket and the English Reformation,"
Catholic Historical Review 86.4 (2000): 579-602. |
|
 Michael Stauton, ed. The
Lives of Thomas Becket. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2001. Pbk.
ISBN: 0719054559. pp.265. {Amazon.com} |
|
 William Urry, Thomas Becket:
His Last Days. Sutton Publishing, 1999. Hbk. ISBN: 075092179X, pp.208.
{Amazon.com} |
|
Richard
Winston, Thomas a Becket. Constable, 1967. Hbk. ISBN:
0094523304. |
|
Anne Duggan, Thomas Becket: A Textual
History of his Letters. Arnold, 2002. Pbk. ISBN:
0340741384.
