42. The Saint and the Penitent
Introduction
Saint Thomas Becket is a saint known only to a few in this current age. As his optional memorial appears on the Church’s general calendar during the Octave of Christmas, he can get lost in the festivities of the Lord’s nativity. He may also be overshadowed by another English martyr, his namesake Saint Thomas More. Yet, this twelfth-century archbishop of Canterbury, slain by knights in his own cathedral, is a man who has extraordinary relevance for Christians in every age, and most particularly for the time in which we now live. In the area of medieval scholarship, far from considering him a distant figure from the past, modern historians must come to terms with Becket. Indeed, the Becket controversy continues to challenge, and people find themselves almost being forced to take sides today as in the 1160s. His life is one of the most recorded of medieval saints. A wealth of contemporary biographies, hundreds of letters (his own and those of others), and Church and state documents plot the course of his dispute with King Henry II of England, revealing that almost everyone had an opinion on him and his struggle.
Thomas’s murder in his cathedral in Canterbury just after Christmas in 1170 sent shockwaves throughout medieval Europe. It seemed to be the extreme result of a struggle between Church and state as manifested in a very personal struggle between two men who had been friends. The killing stopped the belligerents in their tracks. As the details of the archbishop’s death emerged, many were gripped with horror, while others were inspired to devotion. Those who had known him in life may well have understood why in the end he had a violent death, and those who knew Henry II may have ceded that he was the very man to carry it out. Thomas’s murder and the revelation of secret penitential aspects of his life had a chastening effect on many and led them to wonder who this martyred archbishop actually was: Had they known him at all? That is a question that still occupies historians, and it is one that should occupy us even as we venerate this man as a martyr-saint of the Church. In coming to understand him, we will come to understand what the Church is and what her role in the world ought to be.
Thomas Becket did not live as a saint for most of his life. As a young man he was vain, lazy, and wild; devoted to his mother yet a wastrel; a lover of the high life but also a loner. A charmer, he had heartbreaking charisma. He was said to be handsome; and yet, he was not known to have had an amorous relationship. Highly intelligent from his youth and ambitious, he was a late starter. As an archdeacon and royal chancellor of England, he was diligent and capable, loyal to the king, sometimes gauche, and often the butt of the king’s jokes. Simply devout, he was chaste, but also worldly and materialistic. He was not above pulling a fast one and maneuvering people and situations to yield a desired result.
As archbishop, he became more penitent and devout. He spent hours studying the Scriptures, a development from his simple piety; but his character did not change too much, not at first. He was still ambitious, but now for the rights of the Church. Implacable and immovable, he was prepared to employ any means necessary to achieve his aims. He wielded his powers with skill and sometimes brutality. With no hesitation, he imposed penalties, excommunications, and interdicts. He was a fierce combatant, much to the chagrin of Henry II and the fears of a pope who was trying to find some sort of peaceful settlement to a controversy in England while in the midst of his own crisis. Thomas was a man who stood for his rights and would permit no trespass, nor turn a blind eye to transgressions, even for the sake of picking his battles to win a war. Was this out of personal pride or vigilance for the sake of the Church and her flock?
That question has been asked many times down the centuries and is still being considered; the answer can only be found in the life and words of Thomas himself. Historians have studied him, his words, the dispute, the people around him and their views of him; as one might expect, they have come to differing conclusions. Today, many historians do not like Thomas. Some of these are admirers of Henry II, a notable king indeed, for them the archbishop was an ambitious man intent on preventing the reform of the English political and judicial system. Others dislike him because he was a defiant defender of the Catholic Church, one who insisted on the Church’s rights over and against the secular. There are those who see him as a self-obsessed man who would not back down in a crisis for the sake of peace, a radical who prolonged the agony of a nation rather than embrace a more conciliatory and pastoral position.
And then there are some — perhaps a few today — who see a hero, a warrior, flawed as he may have been; a man who felt he had to do what he thought was right. In the past, Catholic authors have been generous with Thomas, painting the man and his struggles in black and white: the Augustine of Hippo figure, the convert who fought for the Church in the face of an evil king’s tyranny. That picture does not do justice to either Thomas or the king. Becket would be the first to say that Henry was not an evil man; after all, the archbishop loved his friend, and their dispute brought with it a great deal of personal suffering.
As scholars have examined every aspect of Thomas’s life, interestingly, in recent works, too little emphasis has been placed on his faith. Indeed, it is this lack of emphasis that has, in my view, led some to misunderstand Thomas and his motivations. Many misread his actions as simply those of an arrogant man who was prepared even to die to preserve his honor. The historian W. L. Warren, for example, in his magisterial biography of Henry II, says that Thomas “was fundamentally a proud self-centered man.”1 Warren is not alone in this view. Is it true? In my opinion, no; for one thing, it is too simplistic — at the very least, Thomas was complicated. What leads such fine scholars to conclude that he was simply arrogant? According to Warren, it was “his prohibition of the bishops performing their duty to the king.”2 Warren was no friend of Thomas; like many others, he held Thomas more responsible for his own death than those who killed him.3 Like many others, Warren does not understand Thomas Becket. This is because, in failing to understand Thomas’s faith — which was real and sincere — we cannot fully understand his motives.
For all his ambition, ability, pride, and humiliation, Thomas Becket — or as he