St. Thomas Becket, Hedonist

[c. 1120–1170] FEAST DAY: December 29

His name was Thomas Becket. Not Thomas à Becket—which he never used and no one ever called him until sometime after the Reformation, when the odd name began to crop up in books, perhaps because it had a more medieval ring to it, or perhaps because people were confusing their Thomases: there was Thomas Aquinas, the great theologian, and Thomas à Kempis, the author of Imitation of Christ. But the Thomas we will be discussing was just plain Becket.

Nor was he a Saxon. The portrayal of Thomas as a lowborn Saxon upstart bossing around Norman nobles has no basis in history. It is a plot device from the 1964 movie Becket, starring Richard Burton and Peter O’Toole.

The real Thomas Becket was born in London on the afternoon of December 21, probably in the year 1120. By the liturgical calendar of the time it was the feast of St. Thomas the Apostle, so the infant’s parents, Matilda and Gilbert, gave their son the name “Thomas” at his baptism.

The family came from Norman merchant stock. Gilbert emigrated from France to England as a young man. In fact, he and Theobald, archbishop of Canterbury, both hailed from the same part of Normandy, near the town of Thierville. We know that once, at some function or other, the merchant and the archbishop enjoyed a pleasant conversation together, swapping news about neighbors and relatives back home in the Old Country.

We know almost nothing about Matilda, except that she was keen on education for her boy. From age ten until he was twenty-one, Thomas studied first at the Augustinian priory at Merton, fifteen miles outside London, then at a London school, and finally at the university in Paris. Thomas’s clerk, John of Salisbury, recalled that his master had an excellent memory and a subtle mind that could find a solution to almost any problem. And Thomas was very handsome—all the chroniclers of his time mention his good looks. No one says, however, that Thomas Becket was affectionate, or friendly, or pleasant to be around. Archbishop Theobald, who purposely put Thomas on the path to a great career by making him part of his household, and King Henry II, who unintentionally set Thomas on the path to sainthood by compelling him to accept the office of archbishop of Canterbury, both loved the man. Thomas’s feelings for the elderly archbishop and the young king were a mixed bag of respect, gratitude, and resentment.

Thomas, like all clerks in this period, was considered a member of the lower ranks of the clergy. The word “clerk” is derived from “cleric.” They accepted the tonsure, in which the hair on the crown of the head was cropped in the style of a priest, and they took minor orders, the first formal steps toward ordination to the priesthood. These formalities did not compel any student to take final vows as a priest. They did not oblige him to remain celibate, nor bar him from any secular occupation later in life. Rather than imposing duties upon the man, becoming a cleric actually conferred privileges. A cleric who got into trouble was immune from civil law; his case was heard in an ecclesiastical court where penalties were much lighter. For example, a layman who stole something could expect to be whipped at the very least, and might be hanged. A cleric guilty of the same crime would be confined in a comfortable monastery and fed on bread and water for a few weeks. This dual system of justice would be the source for many of Thomas’s later troubles.

Fresh from the university at Paris, Thomas landed his first job as a clerk for a London banker named Osbert Huitdeniers (“Eightpence”). We don’t know what salary Osbert paid his clerk, but it must have been enough to give Thomas a taste of the good life. He started overdressing; he took up hunting and falconry; he ran with a boisterous, frivolous, fashionable crowd of young men. But this was only the beginning. In 1146, at age twenty-six, Thomas traded up, leaving Osbert’s bank to take a position as clerk to Theobald, archbishop of Canterbury, the most important, most powerful prelate in England. Very quickly the archbishop learned that his new clerk was exceptionally clever, a fine administrator, and skilled at settling disputes. Theobald trusted Thomas with diplomatic missions, sent him to the university at Bologna in Italy to study Roman and canon law, and ordained him a deacon so he could award the young man the archdeaconry of Canterbury, a plum assignment that brought with it an annual income of one hundred pounds. As a deacon Thomas was only one step away from the priesthood. Now he was obligated to remain chaste and forbidden to bear arms, gamble, or pursue any other activity that would disgrace his office and reflect badly upon the Church.

A running joke at the time, put in the form of a theological point for debate, asked, “Can an archdeacon be saved?”—the implication being that archdeacons lived so fast and so loose that their damnation was virtually a sure thing. As archdeacon of Canterbury Thomas did nothing to diminish the old prejudices against his office. He still went hunting, he gambled (shooting dice was his favorite game), his wardrobe became even more worldly and ostentatious, and his pride even more puffed up. To supplement his income he took money from serious sinners, letting them buy their way out of their penances. To all this Archbishop Theobald turned a blind eye, unwilling to admit there might be anything unsavory about his favorite protégé. Consequently, in 1155 when Thomas resigned from the archbishop’s service to join the household of the new king, Henry II, old Theobald’s heart was broken.

The young king made Thomas his chancellor, a post that brought him vast power and wealth. He began to live like a prince. A crowd of servants maintained his sumptuously furnished house. He indulged his taste for the hunt with new dogs, new horses, and new hawks and falcons, and acquired trained wolves that he took into the forests to hunt the wild members of their kind. He owned six ships, claiming they were necessary to transport him, his goods, his documents, and his household on missions back and forth across the English Channel. To his lavishly appointed table he invited knights, nobles, and high churchmen, as well as cardsharps, courtesans, and lechers.

When Henry went to war with France, Thomas joined him, not merely as a military advisor, but as a commander. The archdeacon of Canterbury buckled on chain mail and a helmet to lead his own band of handpicked fighting men into battle. When the French king drove the English back at Toulouse, Thomas retaliated by attacking the small town of Quercy, burning it to the ground and slaughtering almost all the inhabitants.

One frigid winter day King Henry and Thomas were riding through London when they saw a poor old man shivering in the street. The king suggested that since Thomas was an archdeacon, it would be fitting if he gave his magnificent new fur-lined cloak to the poor man. Thomas refused. The king, in a merry mood, insisted, and tried to pull the cloak off his friend’s back. The two fell to the ground, wrestling, until Thomas at last gave in and handed his cloak to the unfortunate man. It never occurred to the king or the archdeacon that making someone else’s misery the excuse for a comic brawl was the height of callousness.

In 1161 Archbishop Theobald died. Theoretically the monks of Canterbury Cathedral and the bishops of the realm elected a new archbishop, with the king endorsing their candidate. In practice the king could, if he wished, name the archbishop himself. That is precisely what Henry intended to do. To Henry’s way of thinking the Church in England had become too independent. After decades of existing under the royal thumb, churchmen now saw themselves as a distinct class in English society, loyal to the king but not subservient to him. They felt more closely bound to the pope, and as this link to Rome grew stronger, the king’s ability to dictate policy to the English hierarchy grew weaker. Henry was determined to reassert royal authority over the Church, and an excellent way to begin was to name as archbishop of Canterbury a man of unshakable loyalty. That man was Thomas Becket. Henry pushed so hard for his candidate that the bishops and monks put aside their own judgment to give the king the man he wanted.

On June 2, 1162, Thomas the archdeacon was ordained a priest. On June 3 he was consecrated archbishop of Canterbury. In the days of feasting and celebration that followed, a band of jesters approached the new archbishop to request a reward for their performance. In the past Thomas had always treated players, musicians, and other wandering entertainers generously. Now he said, “I am not the man I was when chancellor. Church funds are for the Church and the poor. I have nothing to give you.”

That statement marks the beginning of Thomas Becket’s conversion from a worldly, ruthless king’s man to a man of God and a defender of the rights of the Church. Not that the conversion was completed overnight. Thomas still had expensive tastes, and as the leading churchman in England he could afford to live very well. He still hunted, with his own personal pack of hounds. Furthermore, his pride was bruised by the size of his archdiocese: it was one of the smallest in England, much too small for a man who had once gallivanted about the realm on the king’s business. To relieve his boredom, Thomas began making extended formal visits to other dioceses across England. When word of Archbishop Becket’s high living and pointless journeys reached Pope Alexander III, he wrote to Thomas, offering him a little fatherly advice. “You must shut yourself in the church of Canterbury,” Alexander said. “Reduce yourself to mere necessities, and do stop chasing about all over the country.”

The monotony of church life ended in 1163, when Henry II made his first move to assert royal authority over the Church in England. He attacked the problem by way of the criminal clerics issue, arguing that Church courts treated clerical thieves, traitors, and murderers too leniently. The way the king saw it, if a member of the clergy was guilty of a serious crime, the Church court should strip the offender of his clerical status and hand him over to the state for a just punishment. Henry argued that he was not introducing any innovations to the English code of law, but returning to a venerable legal tradition. Thomas, speaking for the English bishops, replied that the clergy respected and recognized the laws of the state and would support them so long as they did not impinge upon the rights and liberty of the Church. As for criminal clerics, laymen did not possess the right or authority to sit in judgment on clergymen.

The squabble sounds petty to modern ears, but the fight was not about which court would pass sentence on some pilfering priest—that was just a smoke screen for the real conflict. Henry wanted to rule over the Church the way he ruled over his barons. Thomas knew this better than any man, but as archbishop he would not compromise the independence of the Church.

Over the next year the archbishop and the king both dug in, each becoming more extreme in their positions. Then the fight got personal. Henry charged Thomas with criminal mismanagement during his days as chancellor and imposed a fine of thirty thousand gold marks or one hundred eighty thousand pounds—an impossible sum Thomas could never pay. Worse, Henry’s men were now accusing Thomas, to his face, of treason. In fear for his life, the archbishop of Canterbury boarded a rowboat with three supporters and headed for the coast of France.

The six years of Thomas’s exile from England give even his most sympathetic biographers headaches. As a refugee he was even less open to finding some middle ground where the demands of the king and the rights of the Church could both be satisfied. After Thomas excommunicated his enemies in England, Henry rounded up all of Thomas’s relatives—including infants—and drove them out of the country, in the teeth of bitter winter weather.

By 1170 even Thomas’s two most steadfast supporters, King Louis of France and Pope Alexander, were exasperated with the archbishop. But Thomas had his reasons for holding firm. He knew Henry would not be content with a few concessions from an archbishop: he wanted complete control over the Church in his territory. As for the king, he had insisted upon Thomas for archbishop because he considered the man a friend and ally. What is more bitter than betrayal at the hands of a friend?

In 1170 mediators arranged for Henry and Thomas to meet. Seeing each other after so long a separation stirred up the old feelings of affection between the two men. Bit by bit over the next few months they and their representatives resolved the thorniest issues until, in December 1170, Thomas Becket could return home to England. As his ship sailed into Sandwich harbor, a huge crowd thronged the dock, eager to welcome their archbishop. His progress to Canterbury was one long holiday, with farmers and villagers lining the roads, cheering and chanting what the people of Jerusalem had called out when Christ entered the Holy City on Palm Sunday, “Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!” Outside the cathedral precincts Thomas dismounted and pulled off his boots. As the cathedral choir sang the ancient hymn “Christ conquers! Christ reigns! Christ commands!” Thomas walked barefoot up the main aisle of his church to prostrate himself before the high altar.

If anyone in England believed that the archbishop had modified his views concerning the rights of the Church, he was mistaken. In Thomas’s absence, at Henry II’s request, the archbishop of York, assisted by six other English bishops, had crowned young Prince Henry king of England. Crowning an English king was the exclusive prerogative of the archbishop of Canterbury. On Christmas Day, Thomas, with the authority of the pope backing him up, excommunicated the archbishop of York and the six other bishops who had made the mistake of assuming a privilege that belonged to the archbishops of Canterbury alone.

Henry was in Normandy, celebrating Christmas at a castle called Bur-le-Roi near Bayeux when word of the excommunications reached him. Exploding in one of his famous rages, he cried, “Will no one relieve me of this lowborn priest?” That’s only an approximation of the king’s actual words, since the sources all give different versions. The point is that Thomas’s enemies believed they had a royal commission to kill the archbishop. Four knights, Reginald FitzUrse, William de Tracy, Hugh de Morville, and Richard le Breton, set out for Canterbury, their pockets jingling with coins for their traveling expenses, furnished by Roger of Pont l’Eveque, the excommunicated archbishop of York.

On the afternoon of December 29, 1170, the knights galloped into the cathedral precincts and demanded an interview with the archbishop. Thomas met them in his private quarters. The knights insisted that Thomas lift the excommunications. He refused, and the conversation degenerated from there, ending in mutual recriminations, with the knights threatening the archbishop’s life.

As the knights went outside to arm, Thomas’s attendants tried to hurry him into the church, where the monks were singing vespers. Once Thomas was safely inside, several monks locked the church door. “A cathedral is not a castle,” Thomas said, and reopened the doors himself. He was ascending the steps of the sanctuary toward the high altar when the four knights stormed into the church, their helmets and chain mail rattling, their swords drawn, shouting, “Where is Thomas Becket the traitor? Where is the archbishop?”

Thomas turned to answer. “Here I am,” he said. “No traitor to the king, but a priest of God.”

FitzUrse came up behind the archbishop, flicked off his skullcap with the point of his sword, grabbed the archbishop’s cope, and tried to haul him outside. “Get out of here, you abominable man,” Thomas commanded. “I am not a traitor and don’t deserve any such accusation.”

FitzUrse gave a sharp tug on the cope, making Thomas stumble. The knight and the archbishop struggled until Thomas gave the man such a good shove that FitzUrse almost fell sprawling on the pavement. As FitzUrse regained his balance, Thomas let fly one final insult, “You pimp!”

Like mad dogs the knights closed in around the archbishop. “Now,” one said, “you die.”

A moment earlier Thomas had been brawling in his own cathedral; now he composed himself for martyrdom. Making the sign of the cross he said, “To God and to the Blessed Virgin Mary, to the blessed martyr Denis and to St. Alphege, archbishop of Canterbury, and to the patrons of this place I commend my spirit and the cause of the Church.”

Crying, “Strike! Strike!” the knights hacked at the archbishop with their swords. Under a hail of blows, Thomas fell in the transept of the church, between the side chapels of Our Lady and St. Benedict. The four knights ran out a side door of the cathedral, but one of their attendants, Hugh of Horsea, went back into the church, placed his foot on Thomas’s neck to steady himself, then thrust his sword into the fallen man’s skull and scattered the brains across the floor. “Come on!” he cried to the knights. “He’ll never get up again.”

The murder of the archbishop in his own cathedral shocked England and all of Christian Europe. Martyrdom rehabilitated Thomas: he was no longer an obstinate prelate, but one of God’s champions. Pilgrims who visited the murdered archbishop’s tomb reported such a flood of miracles that barely two years after Thomas had been slain, Pope Alexander declared him a saint.

Henry, on the other hand, began to look like an outlaw. There was a real danger that rival monarchs might take Thomas’s murder as an excuse to wage war on Henry. It was possible that Henry’s own subjects would rebel against him. To restore his reputation Henry announced he would do public penance for the part he played in Thomas’s death.

On July 12, 1174, the people of Canterbury watched as their king walked barefoot through a rainstorm to the cathedral. Down in the crypt, before the tomb of his old friend, Henry stripped to the waist. Each bishop present gave the king five blows across the back with a leather whip; the eighty monks of Canterbury gave the king three lashes each.

In spite of Thomas Becket’s martyrdom and Henry II’s penance, the balance between papal authority and royal power remained an unsettled issue in England until 1535, the year Henry VIII severed his nation’s ties to Rome, declaring that he was the Supreme Head of the Church in England. Three years later he sent his agents to Canterbury. They stripped all the gold, silver, and jewels from St. Thomas’s shrine and shipped them back to the royal treasury. Then they pried open the tomb and destroyed St. Thomas’s remains. In Henry VIII’s England there could be no challenge to the king, not even from a long-dead saint.