Saint Thomas Becket (1119-1170)

A son of Norman merchants

Thomas was born in London, in the merchant quarter of Cheapside, around 1119 or 1120. Tradition sets his birth on 21 December, the feast of Saint Thomas the Apostle, which is said to have given him his first name.^[6] His parents, Gilbert and Matilda Becket, were prosperous burgesses of Norman descent, settled in the English capital after the conquest of 1066. Thomas was thus neither the son of the high nobility nor a peasant: he belonged to that rising merchant class which hostile chroniclers would later hold against him, contemptuously calling him a "low-born clerk".^[7]

He was first educated at the Augustinian priory of Merton, in Surrey, then in the schools of London, before leaving to study in Paris, the intellectual hearth of Christendom. There he acquired the culture, ease and taste for the world that would mark the first half of his life. Back in London, he worked for a time as a clerk in business, learning how to handle accounts and men.^[8][9]

In the service of Archbishop Theobald

Around 1145, Thomas entered the household of Theobald of Bec, Archbishop of Canterbury. That was the turning point. Gifted, hard-working, skillful, he quickly rose through the ranks of the archiepiscopal household. Theobald sent him to perfect his canon law at Bologna and Auxerre, entrusted him with delicate missions to the pontifical court, and singled him out among his clerks.^[10] In 1154, as a reward for his services, Thomas was made Archdeacon of Canterbury, one of the most lucrative ecclesiastical offices in England.

He was still only a deacon: his career was that of an administrator and diplomat clerk, not a man of prayer. But he had learned, in Theobald's school, what the rights of the Church of Canterbury were — knowledge that would later serve him against the king.

Chancellor to Henry II: the king's favorite

When the young Henry II Plantagenet came to the throne in 1154, Theobald recommended his brilliant archdeacon. From January 1155, Thomas became Chancellor of the realm, the first personage of the State after the king.^[11] The two men, separated by some fifteen years, became inseparable. The chronicler William FitzStephen, who was his clerk, describes a chancellor of dazzling splendor: a princely household train, sumptuous embassies, an open table, hunting, and even the leading of an armed troop during the king's campaigns in Toulouse.^[12]

"Never, in all Christendom, were two men seen more united or more of one heart." — William FitzStephen, Vita sancti Thomae, on the friendship between Henry II and his chancellor^[13]

This man of the world, rich, powerful, the king's friend, in no way resembles the martyr he would become. It is precisely this contrast that made his conversion so striking in the eyes of his contemporaries.

An election willed by the king

In 1161, Archbishop Theobald died. Henry II saw an unexpected opportunity: to place his faithful chancellor at the head of the Church of England, and thus to unite in the same friendly hand the government of the realm and that of the Church. Despite Thomas's own reluctance, sensing the coming conflict, the king imposed his choice. Thomas was ordained priest on 2 June 1162 — until then he had been only a deacon — then consecrated Archbishop of Canterbury the next day, 3 June 1162.^[14]

The warning Thomas is said to have addressed to the king has remained famous: he reportedly told him that by making him archbishop, Henry would lose his best friend, for he would have to choose between God and the king, and that choice would divide them.^[15]

A man's conversion

What follows baffles the chroniclers: the elegant chancellor turned into an ascetic. He put aside splendor, wore a rough hair-shirt beneath his archiepiscopal garments, multiplied fasts, vigils and alms, secretly washed the feet of the poor, studied Scripture, and placed himself entirely on the side of the Church now entrusted to him.^[16] His adversaries saw in this a comedy or proud obstinacy; his defenders, a true grace of conversion, comparable to the turnaround of a Saint Augustine or a Saint Paul.

The spiritual truth can be read in its duration: for eight years, until martyrdom, Thomas held this line with a constancy that cannot be explained by political calculation alone. On the day of his death, the hair-shirt of penance he had silently worn was discovered against his skin — proof, in the eyes of the faithful, that his conversion had not been a posture but a life hidden with God.^[17]

The stake: libertas Ecclesiae

The conflict between Becket and Henry II is not a mere quarrel of pride between two former friends. It concerns a fundamental question stirring the whole medieval West: how far may civil power command the Church? Henry II, an administrator of genius, wanted to restore royal authority shaken by the civil wars of the previous reign and to subject to his courts everything touching the order of the realm — including clerks. Becket defended the liberty of the Church (libertas Ecclesiae): its own jurisdiction, its courts, its direct link with Rome.^[18]

According to his medieval biographers, Becket maintained that Christ instituted in the Church not a single order but several degrees and functions, and that clerks should not be judged by the secular power.^[19]

The Constitutions of Clarendon (1164)

The most concrete bone of contention is that of the "criminous clerks": were clerks accused of grave crimes to be tried by the more lenient Church courts, or handed over to royal justice? In January 1164, at a council held at the palace of Clarendon, near Salisbury, Henry II had sixteen articles drawn up — the Constitutions of Clarendon — which claimed to codify the "ancient customs" of the realm and largely subjected the Church to the crown: trial of accused clerks by the royal courts, prohibition on appealing to Rome without the king's authorization, royal control over episcopal elections.^[20]

Under pressure, Becket first gave his verbal assent, then recovered himself and refused to seal the document. When Pope Alexander III condemned most of these articles, the archbishop openly repudiated them and did penance for having wavered.^[21] The break with the king was complete.

The Council of Northampton and the flight

In October 1164, Henry summoned Becket before his council at Northampton under an avalanche of accusations — denial of justice, embezzlement from his time as chancellor, contempt of court. The trial was a political trap designed to break him. Feeling condemned in advance and threatened even in his life, Becket fled by night, crossed the Channel in disguise, and took refuge in France with King Louis VII, protector of ecclesiastical causes.^[22]

Pontigny, then Sens

For nearly six years, Becket lived in exile on French soil. He stayed first at the Cistercian abbey of Pontigny, in Burgundy, where he embraced monastic austerity, study and prayer; then, when Henry II's pressures threatened the Cistercian order, he withdrew to Sens, under the direct protection of the King of France and the pope.^[23] These years of exile completed the transformation of the former sumptuous chancellor into a man of the Church hardened by destitution.

The support of Alexander III and Louis VII

Becket was not alone. Pope Alexander III, himself exiled from Rome by an antipope backed by the emperor, supported him — cautiously, for he needed Henry II's backing in the schism then dividing Christendom. King Louis VII of France, Henry II's rival, welcomed the archbishop and pleaded his cause. Becket multiplied letters, threats of excommunication and interdict, wielding the spiritual weapon against the force of the King of England.^[24]

The coronation of the Young King: the final break

The incident that made the tragedy inevitable occurred in 1170. Wishing to secure his succession, Henry II had his eldest son, Henry "the Young King", crowned by Roger of Pont-l'Évêque, Archbishop of York — Becket's old rival. Yet to crown the King of England was, from time immemorial, the exclusive right of the Archbishop of Canterbury. The violation was flagrant, and the pope had expressly forbidden it.^[25]

A facade reconciliation was negotiated on 22 July 1170 at Fréteval: Becket could return and recover his goods. But nothing was settled on the substance. Before leaving France, the archbishop excommunicated the bishops who had taken part in the illegitimate coronation. He returned to England in early December 1170, welcomed by the people in triumph — but as a man who knew he was walking toward his death.^[26]

"What wretches have I fed?": the king's words

In Normandy, the news of the excommunications threw Henry II into a famous rage. The popular formula "Will no one rid me of this turbulent priest?" is a late 18th-century invention; contemporary chroniclers report cruder words. Edward Grim records this outburst:

"What miserable drones and traitors have I nourished and brought up in my household, who let their lord be treated with such shameful contempt by a low-born clerk!" — Henry II, words reported by Edward Grim, which triggered the departure of the four knights^[27]

The king probably gave no formal order of murder. But four knights of his entourage took these words literally.

The four knights at Canterbury

Four barons — Reginald FitzUrse, Hugh de Morville, William de Tracy and Richard le Breton (Brito) — left the court, crossed the Channel and reached Canterbury. On 29 December 1170, late in the day, they entered the archiepiscopal palace, ordered Becket to lift the excommunications and submit to the king. He refused. As they went out to arm themselves, the monks, frightened, drew the archbishop into the cathedral for the office of vespers, hoping the holy place would protect him. Becket forbade the doors to be bolted: a church, he said, must not be turned into a fortress.^[28]

"I am ready to die"

The knights burst into the cathedral plunged in gloom. To their cries — "Where is the traitor? Where is the archbishop?" — Becket came down the steps and answered calmly. The eyewitness Edward Grim, a clerk who stood at his side, left the most precise account of the martyrdom:

"I am ready to die for my Lord, so that in my blood the Church may find liberty and peace." — Saint Thomas Becket, before the knights, according to Edward Grim^[29]

As they tried to drag him by force out of the church, Becket resisted, refusing to flee the altar. Then the swords fell. Grim, who sought to shield the archbishop with his own arm, was grievously wounded by the same blow:

"With one blow, they cut off the crown of his head, which the sacred chrism had consecrated to God […] and by the same blow the arm of him who writes these lines was severed." — Edward Grim, Vita sancti Thomae, account of the mortal blow^[30]

Before expiring, Becket commended himself to God, to the Virgin Mary and to the saints, offering his life for his Church. He collapsed near the altar, his skull split open. It was the evening of 29 December 1170.^[31]

The revealed hair-shirt

When the monks prepared the body, they made a discovery that shook Canterbury: beneath the archbishop's rich garments, against his skin, Becket wore a rough hair-shirt of horsehair, the sign of a hidden penance no one had suspected. For the faithful, this secret garment was dazzling proof that the conversion of the former worldly chancellor had been real and profound.^[32]

The liberty of the Church, unto blood

Becket's spiritual figure rests first on a conviction: the Church is not a mere service of the realm; it has a divine mission that makes it free before the powerful. Becket did not die for an abstract juridical privilege, but for the principle that God must be obeyed before Caesar. His last sentence — "for the name of Jesus and the defense of the Church" — sums up his whole cause. He stands in the line of martyr bishops who, since Saint Ambrose standing up to the emperor, remind the prince that he is not the master of souls.^[33]

Conversion and penance

The second trait is conversion. Becket belongs to that category of saints who were not pious from childhood, but whom grace seized in the midst of a brilliant, worldly life. The bishop who fasts, wears the hair-shirt, washes the feet of the poor and keeps vigil in prayer is the same man who lived in grand style at court. This rupture gives his holiness an evangelical flavor: "there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents" (Lk 15:7).^[34]

"If you were of the world, the world would love its own; but because you are not of the world […] therefore the world hates you." — Gospel according to Saint John 15:19, read by tradition as the key to Becket's martyrdom^[35]

Martyrdom as fulfillment

Finally, Becket embodies martyrdom in the purest sense: not a political accident suffered, but a death accepted, foreseen, and offered. Returning to England when he could have remained safe in France, refusing to barricade his cathedral, coming down to meet the knights, he walked toward death as toward a fulfillment. The Church's liturgy thus places him among the martyrs, and not among the confessors alone: he shed his blood for the faith and for the Church of Christ.^[36]

The explosion of the cult and the miracles

In the aftermath of the murder, the horror of the sacrilege — an archbishop slain in his cathedral, during the office — seized Christendom. From the first days, miracles were reported around the tomb at Canterbury; the monks collected "Saint Thomas water" (water said to be tinged with his blood) to which healings were attributed. Pilgrims flocked; two monks of Canterbury, Benedict and William, recorded hundreds of miracles in collections that have come down to us.^[37]

The canonization (1173)

Popular pressure and the scale of the repercussions hastened the process. On 21 February 1173, at Segni, Pope Alexander III solemnly canonized Thomas Becket — barely three years after his death, an exceptionally short delay. The bulls Redolet Anglia, Gaudendum est and Qui vice beati Petri announced the canonization to the Church and ordered the translation of the body to a worthier tomb.^[38]

Henry II's penance (1174)

The king, overwhelmed by the scandal and threatened by a great revolt of his sons and barons, came to do public penance. On 12 July 1174, Henry II walked barefoot through the streets of Canterbury, prostrated himself before the martyr's tomb and let himself be scourged by the monks, acknowledging his share of responsibility in the death of his former friend.^[39]

Canterbury, capital of pilgrimage

On 7 July 1220, in the presence of King Henry III and an immense crowd, Becket's relics were solemnly translated (translatio) into a shrine of gold and precious stones, behind the high altar of the cathedral. Canterbury became one of the greatest pilgrimages in Europe, on a par with Rome, Santiago de Compostela or Jerusalem — the pilgrimage staged by Geoffrey Chaucer in his Canterbury Tales (late 14th century). The feast of 7 July commemorates this translation, distinct from the feast of the martyrdom on 29 December.^[40]

The destruction of the shrine (1538) and the memory

The cult suffered a brutal rupture. In 1538, at the break with Rome, King Henry VIII had the Canterbury shrine destroyed, the relics scattered and Becket's name proscribed: the martyred archbishop, symbol of the Church's resistance to royal power, had become unbearable to the monarch who had made himself head of the Church of England. The memory of Saint Thomas survived nonetheless: he remains one of the most universally venerated English saints, and the Catholic liturgy still celebrates him on 29 December.^[41]

• Medieval sources: the great collection Materials for the History of Thomas Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury (Rolls Series, 7 vols., 1875-1885) gathers the contemporary Lives, including those of Edward Grim, William FitzStephen, John of Salisbury and William of Canterbury, as well as the archbishop's correspondence.^[56]
• Historical studies: Frank Barlow, Thomas Becket (1986); David Knowles, Thomas Becket (1970); John Guy, Thomas Becket: Warrior, Priest, Rebel (2012).
• Related articles on Ignispedia: Pope Alexander III, who supported Becket in exile and canonized him; the calendar of saints; should we pray to the saints?.