Following my previous message to the medieval-religion list, I am passing
along to listmembers an article on page 20 of today's *The Times*,
trusting that this doesn't transgress any laws, written or unwritten. The
piece is by Henry Mayr-Harting, and will be of interest to the scholars on
our list.

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OPINION


     Turbulent priest or saint, asks Henry Mayr-Harting 

     Hold on to Becket's casket 

     A showy and worldly Chancellor; made Archbishop of Canterbury in
1162 to the disgust of many learned churchmen; martyred at the apparent
instigation of King Henry II in his own cathedral on a stormy December
afternoon in 1170; canonised in 1173; and a splendid Limoges reliquary,
dating from scarcely a quarter of a century after Thomas Becket's
death, now about to be sold at Sotheby's: was there ever a more
meteoric rise to official sainthood? 

     The best comment I ever read on this was written in an examination
by a BA candidate 20 years ago. The gist was that during his
archiepiscopate Becket was a bag of trouble, but after his death nobody
dreamt of saying that he was the man who had quarrelled with his King, who
had ridden roughshod over aristocratic rights in Kent, who had broken the
unity of the bench of bishops. No, he was at once the great martyr,
working miracles at his tomb, healing not the great, but Canterbury bakers
and the like who came to venerate him. Before 1200, his relics were being
honoured on altars at such places at Saragossa and Bologna, and his case,
and what he had died for, were being discussed in learned circles at Paris
and Cracow.

     What did Becket die for? He did not die for his faith; everyone
shared that. He did not really die for the rights of the Roman or English
Church (pace some historians); many of his opponents among the English
bishops were equally keen on those. He died fighting for the rights of the
church of Canterbury. Bishops and abbots of that time understood all about
the universal Church, but from day to day they were more taken up with
the affairs of their own church, Canterbury or London or St Albans -- or
Rome! Heads of Oxford colleges know all about Oxford University or even
the Commonwealth of Learning, but from day to day their thoughts are more
likely to be with the advancement and the concerns of Balliol or Queen's. 

     If Henry II ever said "Who will rid me of this turbulent priest?", he
said it not at the climax of a fit of neurotic drunkenness in the manner
of Peter O'Toole's brilliant act, but because Becket complained that the
younger Henry had been crowned King without his officiating, the violation
of a Canterbury right. With almost his dying breath he commended himself
to St Alphege. Of the whole heavenly kingdom, it was on this obscure saint
that his mind alighted in the crisis. St Alphege was an 11th-century
Archbishop of Canterbury, pelted to death with chicken bones by drunken
Danes, not for defending the faith but for the material possessions of the
church of Canterbury. 

     If it was all so particular and local, why the sensation? Partly
because of the times. Thanks to the rising 12th-century cathedral schools
of France, the drama of the Becket conflict was acted out before a
theologically educated public such as had not existed in Europe for a
very long time. Whenever there is a growing theological awareness in the
Latin West, there is an intensification of thinking about the Church's
eternal or spiritual significance and juridical forms

     Several of Becket's supporters were Paris theologians. It would be
natural for them to see the archbishop's struggle as a great instance of
the Church's struggle against earthly power, indeed of the cosmic struggle
between good and evil, as represented in the Apocalypse, which marked the
whole of Christian history. So it was seen by the theologians of Peter the
Chanter's school in Paris who debated the issue of Becket's martyrdom in
the generation afterwards. Even more than from Canterbury, it was from
Paris that the fame of Thomas Becket would radiate throughout Latin
Christendom.

     There is, however, a point more personal to Becket which should not
be overlooked. It would be quite wrong to think of him as an obstinate,
worldly man, whose conversion to religious ways on becoming archbishop was
a mere performance, and who would never have been regarded as a saint
but for the manner of his death. His contemporaries thought of him as
undergoing a kind of martyrdom even during the struggles and exile of his
lifetime; and Frank Barlow has observed that those around Becket saw more
than a sense of theatre, and were "conscious of an innate and constant
greatness". 

David Knowles once wrote that in history there are those such as Cicero or
Abraham Lincoln whose personality reveals itself in every word they wrote
or spoke, and others whose charm and power were felt by their
contemporaries but whose surviving words do not conduct "the magnetic
spark". He put Becket among the latter. But Becket was a truly charismatic
man, or else he could hardly have retained the loyalties of so many highly
intelligent and able supporters for so long, to the certain detriment of
their careers. There was no disguising his distinction. Passing him on the
road during his exile in France, a knight observed: "That's the Archbishop
of Canterbury or the Devil." 

Let us hope, therefore, that Becket's casket, with its enamel scenes
representing his martyrdom and ascent into Heaven, will stay in England to
remind us of this great Anglo-Norman and of a passage in our history
significant for all of Europe.

[The author is a Fellow of St Peter's College, Oxford.]

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George Ferzoco


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