§ 34. The Effects of Becket’s Murder.
§ 34. The Effects of Becket’s Murder.
The atrocious murder sent a thrill of horror throughout the Christian world. The moment of Becket’s death was his triumph. His exalted station, his personal virtues, the sacrilege,—all contributed to deepen the impression. At first opinion was divided, as he had strong enemies, even at Canterbury. A monk declared that Becket paid a just penalty for his obstinacy others said, "He wished to be king and more than king; the archbishop of York dared to preach that Becket "perished, like Pharaoh, in his pride."
But the torrent of public admiration soon silenced all opposition. Miracles took place at his tomb, and sealed his claim to the worship of a saint and martyr. "The blind see, the deaf hear, the dumb speak, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the devils are cast out, even the dead are raised to life." Thus wrote John of Salisbury, his friend.168 Remarkable cures, no doubt, took place; credulity and fraud exaggerated and multiplied them. Within a few years after the murder, two collections of his miracles were published, one by Benedict, prior of Canterbury (afterwards abbot of Peterborough), and one by William, monk of Canterbury.169 According to these reports, the miracles began to occur the very night of the archbishop’s death. His blood had miraculous efficacy for those who drank it.170
Two years after his death, Feb. 21, 1173, Becket was solemnly canonized by Alexander III., who had given him only a lukewarm support in his contest with the king. There is scarcely another example of such an early recognition of saintship; but public sentiment had anticipated it. At a council in Westminster the papal letters of canonization were read. All the bishops who had opposed Becket were present, begged pardon for their offence, and acquiesced in the pope’s decision. The 29th of December was set apart as the feast of "St. Thomas of Canterbury."
King Henry II., as the supposed author of the monstrous crime, was branded with a popular excommunication. On the first news, he shut himself up for three days in his chamber, rolled himself in sackcloth and ashes, and obstinately refused food and comfort. He lived secluded for five weeks, exclaiming again and again, "Alas, alas that it ever happened!" He issued orders for the apprehension of the murderers, and despatched envoys to the pope to exculpate, himself and to avert the calamity of excommunication and, an interdict. After long delay a reconciliation took place in the cathedral of Avranches in Normandy, before the papal legates, the archbishop of Rouen, and many bishops and noblemen, May 22, 1172.171 Henry swore on the holy Gospels that he had neither commanded nor desired the death of Becket, that it caused him more grief than the death of his father or his mother, and that he was ready to make full satisfaction. He pledged himself to abrogate the Statutes of Clarendon; to restore the church of Canterbury to all its rights and possessions; to undertake, if the pope should require it, a three years’ crusade to Jerusalem or Spain, and to support two hundred knights in the Holy Land. After these pledges he said aloud: "Behold, my lord legates, my body is in your hands; be assured that whatever you order, whether to go to Jerusalem or to Rome or to St. James [at Compostella in Spain], I am ready to obey." He was led by the bishops into the church and reconciled. His son, who was present, promised Cardinal Albert to make good his father’s pledges. This penance was followed by a deepest humiliation at Canterbury.
Two years later, July 12, 1174, the king, depressed by disasters and the rebellion of his wife and his sons, even made a pilgrimage to the tomb of Becket. He dismounted from his horse as he came in sight of the towers of Canterbury, walked as a penitent pilgrim in a woollen shirt, with bare and bleeding feet, through the streets, knelt in the porch of the cathedral, kissed the sacred stone on which the archbishop had fallen, threw himself prostrate before the tomb in the crypt, and confessed to the bishops with groans and tears his deep remorse for the hasty words which had led to the murder. Gilbert Foliot, bishop of London, once Becket’s rival and enemy, announced to the monks and bystanders the king’s penitence and intention to restore the rights and property of the Church, and to bestow forty marks yearly on the monastery to keep lamps burning at the martyr’s tomb. The king, placing his head and shoulders on the tomb, submitted to the degrading punishment of scourging, and received five stripes from each bishop and abbot, and three stripes from each of the eighty monks. Fully absolved, he spent the whole night on the bare ground of the crypt in tears and prayers, imploring the forgiveness of the canonized saint in heaven whom he had persecuted on earth.
No deeper humiliation of king before priest is recorded in history. It throws into the shade the submission of Theodosius to Ambrose, of Edgar to Dunstan, of Barbarossa to Alexander, and even the scene at Canossa.
Fifty years after the martyrdom, Becket’s relics were translated with extraordinary solemnity from the tomb in the crypt to the costly shrine of Becket, which blazed with gold and jewels, in the reconstructed Canterbury cathedral (1220). And now began on the largest scale that long succession of pilgrimages, which for more than three hundred years made Canterbury the greatest sacred resort of Western Christendom, next to Jerusalem and Rome. It was more frequented than Loreto in Italy and Einsiedeln in Switzerland. No less than a hundred thousand pilgrims were registered at Canterbury in 1420. From all parts of England, Scotland, Wales, and Ireland, from France and the far north, men and women flocked to the shrine: priests, monks, princes, knights, scholars, lawyers, merchants, mechanics, peasants. There was scarcely an English king, from Henry II. to Henry VIII., who did not from motives of piety or policy pay homage to the memory of the saint. Among the last distinguished visitors were John Colet, dean of St. Paul’s, and Erasmus, who visited the shrine together between the years 1511 and 1513, and King Henry VIII. and Emperor Charles V., who attended the last jubilee in 1520. Plenary indulgences were granted to the pilgrims. Some went in December, the month of his martyrdom; a larger number in July, the month of the translation of his relics. Every fiftieth year a jubilee lasting fifteen days was celebrated in his honor. Six such jubilees were celebrated,—1270, 1320, 1370, 1420, 1470, 1520. The offerings to St. Thomas exceeded those given to any other saint, even to the holy Virgin.
Geoffrey Chaucer, the father of English poetry, who lived two centuries after Becket’ martyrdom, has immortalized these pilgrimages in his Canterbury Tales, and given us the best description of English society at that time.
The pilgrimages promoted piety, social intercourse, superstition, idleness, levity, and immorality, and aroused moral indignation among many serious and spiritually minded men.
The superstitious idolatry of St. Thomas was continued down to the time of the Reformation, when it was rudely but forever crushed out. Henry VIII. cited Becket to appear in court to answer to the charges of treason and rebellion. The case was formally argued at Westminster. His guilt was proved, and on the 10th of June, 1538, St. Thomas was condemned as a "rebel and a traitor to his prince." The rich shrine at Canterbury was pillaged; the gold and jewels were carried off in two strong coffers, and the rest of the treasure in twenty-six carts. The jewels went into the hands of Henry VIII., who wore the most precious of them, a diamond, the "Regale of France," in the ring on his thumb; afterwards it glittered in the golden, "collar" of his daughter, the bigoted Queen Mary. A royal proclamation explained the cause and mode of Becket’s death, and the reasons for his degradation. All festivals, offices, and prayers in his name were forbidden. The site of his shrine has remained vacant to this day.
The Reformation prepared the way for a more spiritual worship of God and a more just appreciation of the virtues and faults of Thomas Becket than was possible in the age in which he lived and died,—a hero and a martyr of the papal hierarchy, but not of pure Christianity, as recorded in the New Testament. To the most of his countrymen, as to the English-speaking people at large, his name has remained the synonym for priestly pride and pretension, for an arrogant invasion of the rights of the civil estate. To a certain class of English High Churchmen he remains, like Laud of a later age, the martyr of sacerdotal privilege, the unselfish champion of the dowered rights of the Church. The atrocity of his taking-off no one will choose to deny. But the haughty assumption of the high prelate had afforded pretext enough for vehement indignation and severe treatment. Priestly robes may for a time conceal and even protect pride from violence, but sooner or later it meets its just reward. The prelate’s superiority involved in Becket’s favorite expression, "saving the honor of my order," was more than a king of free blood could be expected to bear.
This dramatic chapter of English history may be fitly closed with a scene from Lord Tennyson’s tragedy which presents the personal quality that brought about Thomas à Becket’s fall.172
John of Salisbury.
Thomas, I would thou hadst returned to England
Like some wise prince of this world from his wars,
With more of olive-branch and amnesty
For foes at home—thou hast raised the world against thee.
Becket.
Why, John, my kingdom is not of this world.
John of Salisbury.
If it were more of this world it might be
More of the next. A policy of wise pardon
Wins here as well as there. To bless thine enemies —
Becket.
Ay, mine, not Heaven’s.
John of Salisbury.
And may there not be something
Of this world’s leaven in thee too, when crying
On Holy Church to thunder out her rights
And thine own wrong so piteously. Ah, Thomas,
The lightnings that we think are only Heaven’s
Flash sometimes out of earth against the heavens.
The soldier, when he lets his whole self go
Lost in the common good, the common wrong,
Strikes truest ev’n for his own self. I crave
Thy pardon—I have still thy leave to speak.
Thou hast waged God’s war against the King; and yet
We are self-uncertain creatures, and we may,
Yea, even when we know not, mix our spites
And private hates with our defence of Heaven.
The name was derived by legend from the distribution of bread in time of famine by one of the ancestors of the family. Its coat of arms represented two lions rampant, holding a loaf of bread between them. Gregorovius. IV. 404.
The thorough investigation of Mühlbacher is unfavorable to the validity of the election of Gregory (Innocent II.), and Deutsch (note in his edition of Neander’s St. Bernhard, I. 110 sq.) agrees with him, and bases his claim on purely moral grounds.
See the chapters on the Second Crusade and St. Bernard.
Otto von Freising calls him "singularitatis amator, novitatis cupidus, " and ranks him with those characters who are apt to produce heresies and to make schismatic disturbances. St. Bernard denounces him as the author of a schisma pessimum, but bears testimony to his ascetic piety, yet with the cruel charge of satanic thirst for the blood of souls: "Homo est neque manducans neque bibens, solo cum diabolo esuriens et sitiens sanguinem animarum."
Von Freising: "Praeter haec [his views on Church property]de sacramento altaris, et baptismo parvulorum non sane dicitur sensisse." Some Baptists claim him for his supposed rejection of infant baptism. The attempts to bring him into contact with the Waldenses (who are of later date) have no foundation.
Freising: "Arnaldus iste et Italia, civitate Brixia oriundus, ejusdemque ecclesiae clericus ac tantum lector ordinatus, Petrum Abailardum olim praeceptorem habuerat." St. Bernard seems to place the acquaintance at a later period: "Execratus a Petro apostolo, adhaeserat Petro Abailardo."
Epist., 238 ad Eugen. III.
Otto v. Freising, l.c.: "Dicebat, nec Clericos proprietatem, nec Episcopos regalia, nec monachos possessiones habentes aliqua ratione salvari posse. Cuncta haec Principis esse, ab ejusque beneficentia in usum tantum laicorum cedere opportere."
Tosti, in his Storia di Abelardo, Naples, 1851, says of Abaelard that he had the courage of thought, but not the courage of action (il coraggio del pensiero non quello dell’azione).
This Guido was formerly identified with Guido of Castello who became Pope Coelestin II., Sept. 26, 1143, and ruled five months. But Giesebrecht and Gregorovius (IV. 455) distinguish the two. Francke exaggerates Arnold’s influence upon Swiss liberty while at Zürich. Milman makes him a forerunner of Zwingli, who opposed the hierarchy; but Zwingli knew little or nothing of Arnold, and had no idea of pauperizing the Church, or of a separation of Church and State.
According to a Brescian poem, Arnold refused to recant and made only the single request for time for prayer before dying. Gregorovius, IV. 545.
Unter die eigentlichen Heretiker. Hefele denies the errors ascribed to Arnold by Otto of Freising. Kirchengesch. 407.
The castle was destroyed in the Peasants’War in 1525. At the foot of the hill is a village and an old church with a fresco picture of Barbarossa, bearing the inscription: "Hic transibat Caesar, amor bonorum, terror malorum.""Here Caesar passed away, beloved by the good, dreaded by the bad." Close by is the ancient seat of the Hohenzollern family. On the site of the old castle a splendid castle was erected by William I., the Emperor of Germany.
John of Salisbury, Polycraticus, VIII. 23; Migne, 199, 814.
See vol. IV. 258, and Rückert’s poem there quoted. Em. Geibel also wrote a beautiful poem on the German dream of sleep and revival of Barbarossa:—
"Tief im Schoosse des Kyffhäusers
Bei der Ampel rothem Schein
Sitzt der alte Kaiser Friedrich
An dem Tisch von Marmorstein,"etc.
Eskill of Lund seems to have had the loftiest ideas of prelatical prerogative, and boasted that he was accustomed to command kings, not obey them. It is quite possible the emperor took inward satisfaction at his custody. Hauck, IV. 210. Adrian’s letter, Mirbt, Quellen, 119 sq., speaks of the treatment of the archbishop as "that fearful and execrable deed and sacrilegious crime,"illud horrendum et execrabile facinus et piaculare flagitium.
Gregorovius, IV. 560, after praising his merits, says of Adrian. "He was shrewd, practical, and unyielding as Anglo-Saxons are wont to be." His "nature was as firm and strong as the granite of his tomb."
The subject has been thoroughly discussed by Professors Thatcher and Scheffer-Boichorst before him. John of Salisbury, Polycr. VI. 24; Migne, 199, 623, distinctly says that Adrian, "listening to his petitions, conceded and gave" Ireland to Henry and his heirs on the ground that all islands "by ancient law and Constantine’s donation, are said to belong to the Church." The pope sent to the king through John a ring of gold set with a precious stone to be a seal of investiture. There is no good reason to doubt this statement. And we know from Roger de Wendover, Rolls Series, I. 11, that an English embassy was sent to Adrian to secure this permission. The bull Laudabiliter (Mansi, XXI. 788), which formally confers the island upon the English crown and demands from it the payment of Peter’s Pence, is found also in Roger de Wendover (Giles, Trans., I. 529) and Giraldus. Upon internal grounds its genuineness is considered doubtful or flatly denied, as by Thatcher. This author gives, p. 4, a list of review articles on the subject. Scholarship and patriotism have made it possible for Irish writers to use much argument to show that the bull is a forgery and the alleged fact a fancy, whether of a prophetic enemy of Ireland or by a historical bungler is not known. The Protestant has an easier way out of the difficulty in affirming that the pope may make mistakes.
Octavian, according to the report of his enemies, plucked the papal cope from the shoulders of Roland, and invested himself with such indecent haste that the cope was reversed, and the back of it appeared on his breast. The mistake created derisive laughter, and was construed as a divine judgment.
The document is given in Rahewin, Gesta Frid. IV. 64, and Mirbt, Quellen, 121.
Thomas à Becket, in a letter congratulating Alexander, compared Frederick’s discomfiture by pestilence to Sennacherib’s defeat at Jerusalem. 2 Chron. xxxii:21.
His few acts are recorded in Jaffé-Wattenbach, Regesta, pp. 429-430. He submitted to Alexander, and was made archbishop of Benevento. Of the fourth anti-pope, Lando Sitino, who called himself Innocent III (1179-1180), nothing is recorded but his election and imprisonment, ibid., p. 431.
For the text see Mirbt, Quellen, 121-124. The chief authorities for the Peace of Venice are Alexander’s Letters to Roger, archbishop of York, in Migne, 200, 1160 sqq.; and Mansi, XXII. 180 sqq.; the Chronicon of Romuald., archbishop of Salerno and commissioner from Sicily, in Muratori, Scrip. Rer. Ital. VII. Mathews, pp. 99-105, also gives the text.
Vita Alex.: "prostravit se in terram."Chron. Romualdi (Muratori,VII. 231): "totum se extenso corpore prostravit."
Romuald. "quem Alexander papa cum lacrymis benigne elevans."
Romuald.: "moxque a Teutonicis Te Deum laudamus est excelsa voce cantatum." Vita Alex.: "Tunc repleti sunt omnes gaudio et prae nimia laetitia vox conclamantium in Te Deum laudamus insonuit usque ad sidera." Alexander writes to Roger of York: "innumera multitudine virorum et mulierum praesente, alta voce reddente gratias et laudes Altissimo."
Alexander ad Rogerum (Migne, 200, 1 1131): "Cum ascenderemus palafredum nostrum ibi paratum, stapham tenuit, et omnem honorem et reverentiam nobis exhibuit, quam praedecessores ejus nostris consueverunt antecessoribus." It is stated by Godfrey of Viterbo, an attendant of the emperor, that the old pope, through the pressure of the crowd, was thrown from his horse, and that the emperor assisted him to remount. Pertz, Archiv, IV. 363, quoted by Milman, bk. VIII. ch. IX.
"Super aspidem et basiliscum ambulabis," etc. This and other stories of the fourteenth century are irreconcilable with contemporary records and are given up by nearly all modern historians. They may have partly originated in the fresco paintings of Spinello described by Lord Lindsay, History of Christian Art, II. 315. Milman, IV. 435 (Am. ed.), says."As poetry has so often become, here painting for once became history." Comp. Reuter, III. 758.
The lists are defective, and the contemporary records vary between 287, 300, 396 bishops, and 1000 members in all. See Mansi, XXII. 213 sqq.; Hefele, V. 711; Reuter, III. 418 sqq.
"Ille Romanus Pontifex habeatur, qui a duabus partibus fuerit electus et receptus. Si quis autem de tertiae partis nominatione confisus ... sibi nomen Episcopi usurpaverit: tam ipse, quam qui eum recepuerint, excommunicationi subjaceant et totius sacri ordinis privatione mulctentur," etc. Mansi, XXII. 217.
Reuter, III. 495-499. A similar insult was offered by the Roman populace to Pius IX. when his coffin was transported in the night from the Vatican to its last resting-place in the basilica of S. Lorenzo. He, too, spent some time in exile after the proclamation of the Roman republic in 1849.
Rahewin, in his Gesta Friderici, IV. 86, gives an animated description of Frederick’s appearance, habits, dress, achievements, etc. He calls him the best of emperors.
The Norman descent of Becket rests on contemporary testimony, and is accepted by Giles, Lingard, Robertson, Milman, Hook, Freeman, Reuter, Hefele. The commercial advantages of London attracted emigrants from Normandy. Lord Lyttleton, Thierry, Campbell, and J. A. Froude make Becket a Saxon, but without authority. Becket is a surname, and may be Norman as well as Saxon. The prefix à seems to be of later date, and to have its origin (according to Robertson and Hook) in vulgar colloquial usage.
Tennyson describes Stephen’s reign as—
"A reign which was no reign, when none could sit
By his own hearth in peace; when murder common
As nature’death, like Egypt’s plague, had filled
All things with blood."
The tradition ran that she poisoned his favorite concubine, Rosamund de Clifford, who, with her labyrinthine bower, figures largely in the literature of romance, also in Tennyson’s Becket. On her tomb were inscribed the lines:—
"Hic jacet in tumba Rosa Mundi, non Rosa Munda,
Non redolet, sed olet, quae redolere solet."
"Here Rose the graced, not Rose the chaste, reposes;
The smell that rises is no smell of roses."
Freeman, who exalts him as chancellor, thinks that he failed as archbishop; but his martyrdom was his greatest triumph.
Tennyson ingeniously introduces his drama with a game of chess between Henry and Becket, during which the king informs the chancellor of the fatal illness of Theobald, and speaks of the need of a mightier successor, who would punish guilty clerks; while the chancellor quietly moves his bishop and checkmates the king; whereupon Henry kicks over the board, saying—
"Why, there then—down go bishop and king together."
"Though of Norman blood, his whole feeling, his whole character is English, and it is clear that no man looked on him as a stranger." Freeman (l.c., pp. 101 sq.).
Tennyson makes Becket say:—
"This Almoner hath tasted Henry’s gold.
The cardinals have fingered Henry’s gold.
And Rome is venal even to rottenness."
They are found in Matthew Paris, ad ann. 1164; Mansi, XXI. 1187; Wilkins, Concilia M. Britanniae, vol. I. Gieseler, II. 89 sqq. (Am. ed. II. 289 sq.); Reuter, I. 371-375, 573-577; Hefele-Knöpfler, V. 623-628 (in German); Stubbs, 135-140 (in Latin); Gee and Hardy, 68-73.
Maitland, p. 135 sqq., has thrown light upon this article, and interprets it to mean that a clerk is first to be accused and plead in the temporal court, then to be taken to the ecclesiastical court, and if found guilty and degraded he is to be returned to the temporal court and receive sentence to the layman’s punishment. This procedure was for civil crimes, such as robbery, rape, murder.
See the pope’s letter to the archbishop of York in the "Materials," vol. VI. 206 sq., and Robertson’s note; also Reuter, II. 683 sq. The letter is not in the Vatican, but in other MSS., and is admitted as genuine by Jaffé. It was probably written in the beginning of 1170, when Alexander was hard pressed by Barbarossa in the siege of Rome. See the other letters on the subject in "Materials," VII. 257, 305 sqq., 399.
In 1169 Henry proposed to marry one of his daughters to the young king of Sicily, and to give a sum of money to the cities of the Lombard League for the erection of fortifications, provided they would influence Alexander to depose or transfer Becket. See Stubbs, ed. of Hoveden, II. xci sq.
Cubicularii, gentlemen of the bed-chamber.
The biographers say he was more fit to be called "the Brute."
Modern writers are in the habit of calling him a monk, and so he may have been. In the contemporary narratives he is called simply "clerk." Abbott, I. 42 sq.
See Abbott, I. 89 sqq., on the words used, and Becket’s reply.
"Lenonem appellans." Becket was wont to use violent language. He called Geoffrey Riddell, the archdeacon of Canterbury, "archdevil." Three years after Becket’s death, Riddell was made bishop of Ely.
Abbott, I. 147, holds that these words must have been spoken before the blow was struck which dislodged the cap from Becket’s head. The blow cut off a piece of the prelate’s skull.
All the authorities relate this brutal sacrilege.
Grim, with whom the other original authorities agree, says that those who saw this haircloth suit, covering the upper and lower parts of Becket’s body, put aside all their doubts and acknowledged him as a martyr.
168 See his Vita S.Th. in the "Materials," etc., II. 322: In loco passionis eius ...paralytici curantur, caeci vident, surdi audiunt, loquuntur muti, claudi ambulant, leprosi mundantur ...et quod a diebus patrum nostrorum non est auditum, mortui resurgunt.
169 William’s long Vita et Passio S. Th. is printed in the "Materials," vol. I. 173-546. The credulous Alban Butler, in his Lives of the Saints, quotes from an old English MS. of a pretended eye-witness, who records two hundred and sixty-three miracles wrought by the intercession of St. Thomas,—many more than are found in the whole Bible.
170 Dr. Abbott devotes the main part of his work, I: 224 sqq., II. to a detailed description and discussion of the miracles. His closing chapter, II. 307-314, draws a parallel between these miracles and the miraculous works of Christ. He makes a distinction between mighty works wrought on human nature, such as the cure of diseases and the mighty works wrought on "nonhuman nature," as on bread, water, trees. The reality of the former he accepts, though he denies their supernatural character. The latter "are not to be accepted as historical, but as legends explicable from poetry taken as prose or from linguistic error or from these two combined." He goes on to say the distinction between Christ and Thomas is that "the spirit of St. Thomas had no power to pass into the hearts of men with a permanent vivifying message of its own. The Spirit of him whom we worship has both that power and that message." This is not the place to make an argument for the miracles of the New Testament, but two considerations place them and the miracles of Thomas of Canterbury in different categories. Christ’s miracles had the purpose and worth of attesting his mission as the Saviour of the world, and they were original. It was quite easy for the mediaeval mind in its fear and love of the wonderful to associate miracles with its saints, Christ’s example being before them; but where it was original, the miracles it believed were for the most part grotesque.
171 A granite pillar in the Norman cathedral at Avranches bears an inscription in memory of the event. It is given by Stanley, p. 136.
172 Sir Henry Irving, the distinguished English actor, died Oct. 20, 1905, seven days after a performance of this drama, the last time he appeared on the stage.