Saint Thomas Becket

English statesman and archbishop of Canterbury (1162-1170)

• Born: December 21, 1118
• Birthplace: London, England
• Died: December 29, 1170
• Place of death: Canterbury, Kent, England

Becket accepted martyrdom in defending the rights of the Church as developed under the Gregorian reforms against the encroachment of the secular power of the state.

Early Life

Though born in London, Saint Thomas Becket (BEHK-uht) was not of native Saxon lineage, as had long been assumed. His parents came from the province of Normandy. His father, a merchant, was a man of substance and of considerable standing in the city. When ten years old, Thomas was sent to a priory school in a nearby county, where he learned Latin grammar. After four years he entered one of the London schools, and at the age of eighteen he went to Paris to continue his studies for another four years. Following a short term of employment by a kinsman, Thomas entered the household of Theobald, the archbishop of Canterbury. Wishing to groom his young protégé for the post of archdeacon, Theobald sent him to study civil and canon law first in Bologna (now in Italy) and then in Auxerre (now in northeast-central France), where there was also a famous school of law. Probably on Theobald's recommendation, Becket was appointed the royal chancellor by Henry II three months after the young king's accession to the throne.

Affable, witty, and adept at repartee, Becket soon became the boon companion of his youthful master despite his fifteen years’ seniority. Becket was fond of the hunt, especially of the royal art of falconry, which he had learned at an early age. The king's loyal and obedient servant, he lived in almost regal splendor, dining sumptuously on the choicest foods and wearing the finest fabrics. Fastidious in his personal grooming, he insisted that his living quarters be kept in impeccable order. About the time Henry appointed him, he was still youthful in appearance, described as slender, unusually tall, pale of complexion, with dark hair, a long nose, and well-formed facial features.

Life's Work

During the eight years of his chancellorship, Becket served his king obediently and adroitly. Much to Archbishop Theobald's disappointment, he forced submission of the bishops to Henry's demands. On two occasions he crossed the Channel to assist Henry in defending his French fiefs. He successfully carried through the embassy to arrange a marriage contract between the son of his king and the infant daughter of the French king, Louis VII. He was such an official as Henry could not afford to lose.

On Theobald's death in 1162, Henry took it as a matter of course that Becket would serve him as archbishop of Canterbury with the same fidelity that had marked his conduct as chancellor. Soon after being appointed, Becket resigned the office of chancellor. This about-face was considered an unfriendly act by Henry, but Becket was nothing if not thoroughgoing. As archbishop, he served a new master, realizing that his championship of the Church would lead to conflict with Henry.

A sore point on which the imperious king expected Becket's compliance concerned jurisdiction over the clergy. That category had been extended in practice far beyond those who exercised a spiritual office to include students and practically anyone who could speak a few lines of Latin. “Criminous clerks” tried in the much more lenient Church courts escaped due punishment for serious crimes. Henry II wanted them to be turned over to the royal courts for sentencing if found guilty of charges in the Church courts. Becket refused to concede to Henry's wish and only reluctantly did so on the insistence of Pope Alexander III.

Even so, King Henry, possessed of the violent temper characteristic of his family, was enraged by Becket's obstinacy. He resolved to set down the terms of relationship between royal power and Church authority in writing. He commanded Becket to appear at the meeting of the royal council at Clarendon, where the Constitutions of Clarendon (1164) were presented. The Constitutions of Clarendon prescribed the procedure in punishment of criminous clerks, forbade appeals to Rome without royal permission, and prohibited the excommunication by the pope of any of the king's vassals or officials unless the king consented. Rather surprisingly, Becket, who could be adamant in opposition, accepted the Constitutions of Clarendon. Becket, however, reversed his position on learning that the pope had condemned the document.

Outraged by Becket's renunciation, the vindictive king summoned Becket to a council at Northampton to stand trial for having wrongfully taken land from one of the royal officials and to recover debts that Becket had failed to pay when he was chancellor. Becket accepted the judgment of the court in the first case but protested that he had received quittance of his debts as chancellor when he was raised to the archbishopric. At one point in the proceedings, Becket broke in on the court and heatedly asserted that the laymen who were sitting there had no legal right to try an archbishop. As he left the room, some of the barons grabbed rushes from the floor to hurl at him, and cries of “traitor” were heard as he walked through the door. Unwilling to submit to the sentence that was certain to ensue and fearful for his life, Becket that same evening secretly stole away from Northampton in a heavy rainstorm and by stages managed to make his way to exile in the French kingdom.

Becket was to remain in exile from November, 1164, until December, 1170. At first, the pope temporized in trying to deal with the quarrel between Henry and Becket, but on January 19, 1170, he decreed the terms under which a settlement would be reached, including the restitution of Canterbury to Becket and Becket's submission to Henry except for the articles of the Constitutions of Clarendon. Becket and Henry met at Fréteval in France and conversed amiably, though nothing was said about the restoration of property or the Constitutions of Clarendon. All of the specifics were to be settled later. Inwardly, however, Henry was not reconciled. He feared the interdict and excommunication that might easily result if he did not show some compliance to the pope's terms. Wishing to have his son Henry crowned king before his own death, he had the ceremony of coronation performed by the archbishop of York and six other bishops before Becket could return to England, knowing that the archbishop of Canterbury had the exclusive right to preside at coronations. Because of this breach in Church law, the pope gave Becket permission to excommunicate all bishops who had overstepped their authority whenever the time might be opportune.

Becket returned to England amid the tumultuous acclaim of the populace on December 2, 1170. Shortly afterward, he executed the power of excommunication against the offending bishops as had been authorized by the pope. On hearing of Becket's retribution, the king, who remained in his fief of Normandy across the Channel, flew into a rage. “What a set of idle cowards I keep in my kingdom,” he allegedly said, “who allow me to be mocked so shamefully by a low-born clerk.” Four members of his household secretly crossed the Channel to avenge their king. They were not mere knights, but barons of substance, great men of the realm. They confronted Becket in the north transept of Canterbury Cathedral as he was going to Vespers, and after some altercation, hacked off the top of his skull.

For some time that evening, Becket's corpse lay unattended where it had fallen, the monks having been scattered by the armed assassins. When later the monks came to prepare the body for burial in a crypt of the cathedral, they discovered beneath the monastic habit that Becket wore a hair shirt (worn for penance) tightly sewn around his body. Not even Becket's clerks had been aware of this mortification: He had wholly committed himself to the religious and ascetic life after becoming primate of England.

Western Christendom was aghast over the horrendous crime. A church was supposed to be a place of asylum even for the most heinous criminals. Two years later, Thomas Becket was canonized, and a cult developed around the martyrdom of the saint. Canterbury became one of the great shrines of Europe, as attested in Geoffrey Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales (1387-1400).

For Henry II the murder was a disaster. All who were involved in the crime were excommunicated by the pope. Henry feared that an interdict might be imposed on England and that he might himself be excommunicated. After evading the heat of censure for a time by going to Ireland, where a revolt threatened, he ultimately had to renounce the Constitutions of Clarendon and to admit full jurisdiction of Church courts over criminous clerks. He also was forced to undergo public scourging at the hands of the cathedral monks on the very spot where Becket had been struck down, as a gesture of penance for the responsibility he bore in the murder.

Significance

The whole episode of the dispute between King Henry and Thomas Becket was a dramatic story. It has been presented with varying interpretations by playwrights such as T. S. Eliot and Jean Anouilh. Until the later nineteenth century, writers usually presented the narrative as the struggle of a heroic and devout clergyman defending the liberties of the Church against a tyrannous and overbearing monarch. Since the research and writings of the magisterial constitutional historian William Maitland, another view has modified the former opinion. Maitland revealed the legal and administrative reforms that were promoted by Henry II, so that a more secular age sees a real point in the king's argument against the archbishop. The epic reduces itself into a contest between two poles, the spiritual and the secular.

Bibliography

Becket, Thomas. The Correspondence of Thomas Becket: Archbishop of Canterbury, 1162-1170, edited by Anne J. Duggan. New York: Oxford University Press, 2000. A collection of Becket’s letters while he served as archbishop. Includes a bibliography and index.

Jones, Thomas M., ed. The Becket Controversy. New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1970. Contains selections from a few of the chronicles of the twelfth century, some of the letters written by Becket and others, and selections from works on Becket published in the eighteenth, nineteenth, and twentieth centuries.

Knowles, David. Thomas Becket. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1971. A thoroughly researched work on Becket by a premier scholar on the subject and an exposition of Church history and canon law. Includes an informative bibliographical essay.

Maitland, Frederic William. The Collected Papers of Frederic William Maitland. 3 vols. Edited by H. A. L. Fisher. 1911. Reprint. Holmes Beach, Fla.: Gaunt, 1999. Presents the papers of the influential scholar of British constitutional history.

Smalley, Beryl. The Becket Conflict and the Schools: A Study of Intellectuals in Politics. Totowa, N.J.: Rowman and Littlefield, 1973. Presents the arguments of twelfth century scholars on the dispute between Archbishop Becket and Henry II. The fundamental issue was that of the legal relationship between sacerdotium (priestly authority) and regnum (kingdom).

Staunton, Michael, trans. The Lives of Thomas Becket. New York: Palgrave, 2001. A biographical look at Becket. Part of the Manchester Medieval Sources series. Includes a bibliography and an index.

Winston, Richard. Thomas Becket. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1967. Based on documentary evidence, including the published archives at Canterbury relevant to the life of Becket. A resource for the general reader unacquainted with medieval institutions.