In Our Time - Thomas Becket

Episode Date: December 14, 2017

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the man who was Henry II's Chancellor and then Archbishop of Canterbury and who was murdered by knights in Canterbury Cathedral (depicted by Matthew Paris, above). Henry believed that Becket owed him loyalty as he had raised him to the highest offices, and that he should agree to Henry's courts having jurisdiction over 'criminous clerics'. They fell out when Becket agreed to this jurisdiction verbally but would not put his seal on the agreement, the Constitutions of Clarendon. The rift deepened when Henry's heir was crowned without Becket, who excommunicated the bishops who took part. Becket's tomb became one of the main destinations for pilgrims for the next 400 years, including those in Chaucer's Canterbury Tales where he was the 'blisful martir'. With Laura Ashe Associate Professor of English at Worcester College, University of OxfordMichael Staunton Associate Professor in History at University College DublinAndDanica Summerlin Lecturer in Medieval History at the University of SheffieldProducer: Simon Tillotson.

This is the BBC. Thanks for downloading this episode of In Our Time. There's a reading list to go with it on our website, and you can get news about our programs if you follow us on Twitter at BBC In Our Time. I hope you enjoy the programmes. Hello, Thomas Beckett, Archbishop of Canterbury, was murdered in his cathedral in December 1170 by four knights who'd come to arrest him as a traitor, as they thought, to please the king.

Beckett had once been King Henry II's Chancellor, friend and right-hand man. As Archbishop, he'd become his enemy, blocking royal powers over clergy and excommunicating the bishops who, while Beckett was hiding in France, had crowned the king's oldest son as heir to the throne. Beckett's tune became a shrine.

He became a saint two years later, and Canterbury became one of the main destinations for pilgrims across Europe for the next 400 years until Henry VIII had his bones scattered in the Reformation. With me to discuss Thomas Begatar, Laura Ash, Professor of English at Worcester College University of Oxford. Michael Staunton, Associate Professor in History at University College, Dublin, and Danica Summerlin,

lecturer in medieval history at the University of Sheffield. Michael Staunton, Beckett became one of the most powerful men in the land, but how did his life begin? Thomas was born around 1118. In London, he was from a comfortable middle-class background. His parents were immigrants from Normandy, Gilbert Beckett and Matilda. So he was Thomas Beckett. he was never Thomas Abbeckett. And he grew up in a house in Cheapside.

He was educated in Merton Priory, studied in a grammar school. And his family had made money as his father was a merchant and had then made money from renting out property. So he was comfortably off, but he was not from a noble background. And that was something that he was reminded of

for much of the rest of his life. There's a later legend that claims that his mother was a Saracen princess. And that's the kind of story that's told when people simply cannot understand how somebody so great could have come from such a relatively humble background. When you talk about his education,

it finished at the age of about 16, didn't it? Well, his education in England finished at about 16. He went to Paris where he studied at about the age 20, but he dropped out of study in Paris. When did you study in Paris? We don't know for certain. but it's likely that he studied the arts, so he would have studied grammar and rhetoric mainly,

skills of reading and writing. But for some reason he dropped out, and he came back to London, and he had an aimless year. He seems to have done nothing for about a year. And his father's fortunes were declining at this point. He got a job as an accountant. He worked for a London financier for about two or three years. But this was the sort of time

when people from Thomas's background could make a lot more of themselves because of the opportunities for people who were literate and who are numerate. And he had his big break when he went into the household of Archbishop Theobald of Canterbury. Across the piece, there was a,

and Paris was a turner-outer of these sort of people. There was a call for better-educated young men because the state was growing all over the place. The church was growing massively and they needed clever people to run it. and he was a beneficiary of that. And when he became part of the church bureaucracy, that was perhaps you suggest a small family connection?

There could have been a family connection to Archbishop Theobald, but also Gilbert Beckett was quite well connected. So having a certain connections, it's not that surprising that somebody like him might have been put in touch. So he got there as a clerk, but obviously he was very, very bright, because soon, among all the clerks and all the noble people, who were there as well. This man raised from the dust, that was the idea, wasn't?

Exactly. All these sort of people who were not noble were raised from the dust. He made his way and became very important to see a vote. Yes. The word clericus meant both Clark and cleric. So there was a call for these new bureaucracies to be staffed by talented people who were able to read and write. He was also clearly very good at charming people, very good at dealing in negotiating because the sort of business you would have had to look after was managing estates,

but also dealings with, say, representatives of the Pope, dealings with representatives of the King. It's quite heavy heavy lifting for a young man, isn't it? You're dealing with representatives from the Pope, that's the big man in Europe. You're dealing with just properties, and they're very key on their properties, and they're expanding. He's been asked to do a lot quite young. And especially since some of those other talented clerks that you were talking about,

They were often more intellectual figures, for example. They would have been able to write elaborate letters and so on. Thomas might have written letters, but much of his business, it seems, was actually acting in diplomacy. So he clearly had something about him that allowed him to, maybe it was that he was able to keep his cards placed close to his chest. But he was certainly able to deal in this environment. But at the same time, there was a lot of jealousy in the course. court, according to later biographers of Thomas, and certain people who reminded him of his relatively humble background. Yes, that was always a prod.

Nora Ash, Henry II was King of England from 1154. What were his priorities on taking the throne? Well, I was thinking when you said, this is a lot for a young man for Beckett, that this was a country of young men. Henry came to the throne at 21, and his priorities then were to take complete control of his vast dominions, because he was in the most ester. punishing position. He'd apparently been put out the line of succession as a child when his mother's cousin had seized the throne. Civil war had resulted as his mother

first on her own behalf and then ultimately for her son. Against Stephen. Against Stephen. King Stephen. And finally, as Civil War had gone on for some time and Henry had come of age and he'd become Duke of Normandy and now the whole feeling of the country was towards him. King Stephen asked all of the

bishops to guarantee that his son used to would inherit and all the bishops simply refused. Everyone wanted Henry to be back in the line of succession. And two years before he became king, he'd married Eleanor of Accutain, which meant that he had effective rule over most of Western France, plus he was aiming for all of England. And so when...

And Maine, Turenne, Normandy, Enjou and Brittany, and Brittany, and now he's going for England, and everyone wants it. Because he also represents the unification. of the Old English line with the Norman line because his grandfather Henry I had married an English princess. So everyone wants Henry. Henry is a young man on a mission. He has vast amounts of energy

and he wants men who can sort things out and do things. And Beckett, who was maybe 12, 13 years older than Henry and clearly a very impressive figure, very charismatic and charming, as Michael said, seemed like the right kind of man to help it in what he was doing. So he had this empire from the North Sea to the Pyrenees. and he was 21, and he wanted to make it even better. Yes.

And he was quite ruthless, wasn't he? He was. Well, he was, I think he was just a very brilliant politician, actually. He was tireless. He travelled throughout his realms, throughout his reign, and he appointed good people to run things when he wasn't physically present. And whenever he did come to a different part of his realm, he would investigate what had been going on and put things right.

And he was thoroughly energetic about that. And it's clear that Beckett fitted in with this programme brilliantly in the early days. But I think one of the most important things to grasp about that is firstly how Henry's experience of coming to the throne was that he had the support of the church. As I say, all the bishops supported him. And secondly, Henry felt that he'd been restored

to his lost birthright. And he is said, in one of the letters of John of Salisbury, he's said to have boasted proudly that I have achieved what my grandfather achieved, who was king in his own realm, and papal legate and emperor and patriarch and whatever else he wanted. And so this is the other thing about Henry.

He believes that the church is in service of him in his own realm. No disrespect to the Pope, but Henry is on a mission to be emperor in his own kingdom. But when I mentioned his ruthlessness, you didn't rise to it, but he did, if anybody opposed him,

their castles were destroyed, their property was taken? It wasn't a very difficult, complicated process, was it? But that was, you know, that was just good practice for the time, really. You know, he brought a long period of peace to England after this civil war.

And indeed, the peace was only broken because he was unfortunate enough that because he came to the throne at 21 and he had so many living sons, they ended up as adults themselves looking for power when he was still in the prime of life. Hence they started to oppose him. That was when trouble came about it. But let's talk about now. He picks out Beckett. Do we know how and why he picked out Beckett? Beckett has done very well at the Thiebalt's Archbishop Court.

So did Thierbald recommend him? Did Henry spot him? Yeah, it looks as though Theobald must have been involved. Theobal was involved in the negotiations by which King Stephen capitulated and adopted Henry as his heir, which meant that Stephen could keep his throne for his lifetime, but then Henry would inherit. And Theobald was closely involved in that. And at that point, Beckett must have been encountered by Henry. And it seems possible, it seems plausible that Theobald actually kind of imposed Beckett into the king's court as a helpful piece of control over the king.

from Theobald's point of view. It was certainly something that Theobald wanted. But the king immediately put, made him Chancellor and gave him great wealth and great position. And he travelled, we are told in France, this is like a king, with a pet wolf and moakers and great cattle train, cuttle loads of clothes and so on and so forth. So people, he says, people would say, look, if the Chancellor is doing that well, the king must be a very mighty man. Yes, exactly. I mean, he lived as a, he lived an absolutely lavish life as a wealthy nobleman, a man who, led armies into battle as well, although not at last with any great glory,

in sort of indecisive campaigns. But yes, he was the king's right-hand man and as glorious as the king, really. That's interesting about leading into battle and unseating a famous knight in a jazz and so on. What we don't get, this time is the answer is a speckle of a notion that there was any spiritual Islam in him whatsoever, spiritual life whatsoever. No, we really don't have any of that. From the lives that were written after his martyrdom, there's a lot of claiming for hidden sanctity and hidden holiness

that was there in his early life and no one knew. But it's very clear that as far as people knew of him at the time, he was an entirely worldly, highly successful, rapacious, wealthy person. Well, that's him then, but we can carry on. There's more to say. Danica, who is the Pope at this time and who were his allies and then we'll bring him into the picture? So one of the problems that's underpinning the 1160s are that there are actually two popes in Europe at that particular point in time.

You've got Alexander III, who is the one who's recognised by Henry, by Beckett, and by Louis of France. And then you've also got Victor the 4th, and then from 1164 you've got Pascal the 3rd. So part of this is because in 1159 you have what's known as a schism. So what happens at this point, there was a dual election. The popes at that time were elected as they are now. And it ended up with a situation where two people were elected and two people were supposedly chosen, one of whom was Roland who became Alexander

and the other of whom was Octavian who became Victor. So this is one of the problems behind this is that Victor is supported by the emperor, who's Frederick Barbarossa at this point. And Frederick really doesn't like Roland, doesn't like Alexander. They had past history when Alexander was a good. Cardinal and there are suggestions that there were problems starting from then. So from 1159, Alexander is in this difficult situation.

He's not supported by this. Is he at Rome or Aminian? So he's all over the place. He's all over the place. But doesn't he have a home? He doesn't have a base? Well, he tries to be based in Rome. He just never really succeeds.

I see right. So let's understand in Alexander. Because he takes up the France and England. Yes, he does. Then he's major allies in this play. Yeah. And let's keep with him. Barbarossa, Texas.

A very interesting chap is in another programme. So he's there. What part is he to play with Henry II and Beckett? How important is he in Henry the Second's calculations? Alexander is very important, but also Henry is very important in Alexander's calculations. And that's really one of the points here, because Alexander needs Henry's support.

He needs Henry and Louis to be behind him. And that actually, in many ways, limits what he can actually do in the 11th. 60s. Alexander is a strong supporter of church liberties. We see that in what he's saying. We see that in his letters. We see that in the way that he's coming across. So he does want this church to be free from secular interference, but he can't afford to lose their support. He can't afford to alienate either of them. How did Beckett become Archbishop of Canterbury? It's already been mentioned by me en pass on a rather jockey fashion, but very accurate. There's no sign of spirituality whatsoever. And then he, are we told he resisted the appointment? Henry wanted to

him to be Archbishop of Canterbury for political reasons. Beckett thought he was leading a pretty good life as he was, as I understand it, and he didn't want to be. Can you tell us a bit more about that? So Beckett's election was an interesting one, and it is this election. Technically, the monks at Canterbury would have chosen their Archbishop, and in reality what almost always happened was the king intimated who he wanted to be archbishop, and that was followed through. So that really is what happens at this point in time. Was I right about Beckett's objection? Did he object? I was just about to say that, yeah.

I mean, he really, he doesn't, he didn't really seem to want to be. At the same time, a lot of those objections, we see that they're coming out of the lives that are written later. And this idea of someone who's very humble and who's deliberately refusing this position, refusing to be in that place, it fits in very well with this idea of Beckett as a saint from very early on in his life. So it seems as though, yes, he did, didn't want to be Archbishop, he did try to refuse it, but it could just be that they're trying to play into that narrative. Or that he's playing a political game because he knows that Henry's going to force it through anyway.

It could be. Depends how cynical you want to be. Well, how cynical do you want to be? I try not to be too cynical with Beckett, to be honest. I try and at least believe in him a little bit, but I know that it is very easy to read him very cynically. So then we come Michael Staunton to what we could call the Great Transformation. Beckett, who'd been right-hand man, that's a useful cliche.

A penit of a day seems to be more or less true. They knocked around together in France and then we have a film of Richard Burton and Peter Attilaire to prove it. And so then he became Archbishop of Canterbury. And then what? Well, according to his biographers, as soon as he became Archbishop of Canterbury, he was touched by the Holy Spirit

and he underwent a transformation. He put off the old man with his finery and his riches, and he put on the new man. He started to wear a monastic habit underneath his clothes. And underneath his monastic habit, he wore a hair shirt, so a long shirt made of rough cloth that cut into his body. He would study the... Was that never proved?

It was never proved, but it was claimed. It was claimed that that's what they found. Nobody ever saw it. People said that they did see it. But then this is in the aftermath of the murder, they said that they had seen the relic of the head. hair shirt, nobody had actually seen him wearing it at the time. So all of these things come from after his murder as an explanation of what happened. What we do know happened was that

soon after he became archbishop, he started to distance himself from the king. The first thing was that Henry had wanted him to continue as chancellor. This is something that they did in Germany. You had a chancellor and an archbishop, and they later tried it in English. And they later tried it in England and it worked. He resigned the office of Chancellor. And then you had various kinds of skirmishes over quite small matters, over financial

matters, over minor jurisdictional matters. But it's gradually building up and it's clear that Thomas is not going to be the sort of person that Henry thought he would be. And then the main issue becomes one of jurisdiction. An issue of what's known to historians

as criminus clerks. Now what this means is that Laura was talking earlier about how Henry had tried to bring in this new law and order policy, if you like, after his, after the succession to Stephen. Part of this was trying to do something about people who are in holy orders who are committing various crimes. And that wasn't just, if you're talking about people in holy orders, not just monks or priests, It's people like Thomas when he was Clark to Theobald who are leading in certain ways quite secular lives but they were being tried in church courts

you had church courts as well as the royal court so Henry wanted to do something about the fact that people in holy orders were being treated leniently as he sought by church courts So what happened if you're in there if you go out of the benefit of clergy you could rape, steal even physical damage to people you'd be tried by the church laws

they would say this was a sin, but they weren't going to send you to jail or anything. Then maybe you'd be stripped of your garments, so your priest are defrocked, and then you have maybe or maybe not, largely not, go to a civil court and be tried for what you'd actually done. In other words, it was a massive protection bracket. This is the point that

they were not, they were not handed over. That was from the church's perspective. They could impose their own penalty, which might be that you take an oath or you do some sort of verbal penance. The king, insisted that they should be handed over to a royal court.

What Laura, Laura Ash, so this criminalist activity is one thing that listeners can contend on to its vote, but there are other things he's opposing the king on. And the king's drive is to get this growing church, over mighty church, which is becoming a state within the state, doing things that he thought the king should get it under his control because it was becoming out of his control. He didn't like that, but partly he could oppose him in all sorts of words.

So what support did Beckett have for opposing the king in this? It was quite a difficult situation. What most people wanted was the kind of compromise that meant that everybody could save face, that you could find a way forward. These things, both sides were claiming that there were absolute rules and precedents. Henry would constantly talk about the ancient customs of the realm, while Beckett and the church would talk about holy truths of the rights of the

church. But in each case, what we're really dealing with is people on the ground working out compromises by which they could carry on. And the problem as far as I think many people were concerned with Beckett was just that he was no good at compromising. He held his line on the benefit of clergy, which everyone could see was an outrageous corruption. And indeed, you know, there was plenty of non-support for it in the church. But he held his line. and he continually then protected people in holy orders. And this news would come to Henry, and Henry would be enraged every single time.

And then there are financial situations. One of their earliest disputes was Henry wanted to divert a particular part of the taxation to the Royal Treasury, which Beckett's Chancellor would have absolutely supported. Becket says Archbishop said, no, you're not having any of the church's money, and Henry was utterly enraged. and on it went with these things and the problem for Beckett's bishops

the problem about how much support he had was that they were infuriated with him they didn't know what to expect next from him and when finally the key turning point that just made everyone feel that it was impossible was that the constitutions of Clarendon this council

when they all got together and Henry tried to say once and for all will you or will you not obey the ancient customs of the realm Beckett said yes and all his bishops said yes and then he said no and he said it would be a sin when it came to signing it he said no

yeah when it came to actually now you have to put your name to this in writing put your seal to this and he said no it was a sin and by so doing he not only betrayed Henry but he also betrayed all of his

bishops who had followed him in saying yes to it and so that left him isolated in that sense As a non- cynical person, Danica, why do you think that Beckett became such a rigid, true to God, Archbishop, serving God before the king? People have used the word transformation. You could say, you tell me how you think that happened. Well, I think a lot of it is coming out of Beckett's character and parts of Beckett's character that you can see before,

which is that he is quite rigid anyway. he seems to have been quite uncompromising. But there does seem to be this genuine, a genuine belief in the religious ideals and the religious ideas that underpin that. That's something that you see in churchmen across this period. They do really believe in what they're saying in many ways. They're not just out for power.

They're not just looking for things. So it's very much that I think Beckett is just tying in with that. He's carrying on in that sort of, in that vein. He does, in terms of, is there, this great transformation, does he suddenly start believing in this super-Christianity? Maybe it's just that he's trying to do the best to his job that he could do before. Just to come in and follow up on what Danica was saying, I think it's clear that he was drawing on ideas that were conventional, but he took them so far. So notoriously, the Council of Northampton, which

followed the constitutions of Clarendon, he insisted on carrying his vast cross into the court with him. And supposedly, according to one of the chroniclers, the bishop said to him, what are you doing? If the king draws his sword as you have drawn yours, there will be no hope of peace between you. Because effectively, Beckett carrying his cross, was saying, I'm not a person you can judge or put on trial. I am a representative of God. And there's no way back from that. Before, I'd like to follow up with you on that. But before that, can I just ask one last question about his genuine

he is said to have read the commentaries of Gregory he's set to have read deeply into church history and so on how much credence do you give to that how much credence is not a anyway how much credence you give to that

I give quite a lot of credence to it I'm pretty sure that he did spend time reading these things we do know that one of his clerks John of Salisbury was actually telling him while he was in exile that he should be reading these commentaries and we do know

that the lives and things will tell us that actually he was there reading the books of church law. Actually, after he died, we also know that some of the books, some of the bequests that he gave to Canterbury Cathedral included some of these books on things like church law. But one of the other points is that when you're thinking about canon law, this medieval church law at that time,

it's very amorphous in many ways. It's not this fixed set of regulations in the way that we might think of law now. One of the really important books that was circulating or had just been circulating for about 20 years at that point was precisely a harmony of dissonant canons. The whole point is that the canons say different things and they're

trying to balance them all together to try and work out where to go with it. So what one of the things that Beckett was doing was he was just picking up on one particular strand of those that argued one set of things. Most of his bishops were picking up on a different set that argued for much more

of a balanced opinion and more of a compromise. But Henry went after him through the courts, small matters and then a bigger matter at Northampton embezzlement and so when he came in with the cross. Becket looked as if he would lose that. He fled to France, top and bottom of it, didn't he?

Can you tell us why he felt he wanted to do with that, Michael? Well, the purpose of this trial of Northampton was clearly to try to get him to resign his office as archbishop. And that was why he was being pressured in various ways. And in the Council of Northampton, in this trial, he raised the matters to a fight of good against evil of God against tyrants.

And now he was out of options. So he left secretly at night from Northampton. He made his way by a circuitous route to a southern port, and then he made his way to Flanders. The Pope at this time was in France. So he went first of all to the King of France, who was an enthusiastic supporter of his,

and then he went to the Pope. And he presented his case before the Pope. And the Pope said, I condemn these constitutions and so on, but at the same time, I want you to be quiet for a while. So he sent him off to a monastery, a Cistercian monastery in Pontini, an austere monastery very different to anything he would have seen before. So Thomas used this as a time of preparation trying to gain further supporters until, as he described it in his letters. I have been sleeping and resting for a time, but will I sleep forever? There must be a time to revive and re-engage the fight. And then Henry wanted to do what happened in Germany and France, I think,

but didn't happen in England. He had four lusty sons, as you said earlier on, and to stop them quarreling about who would succeed in Wanderers about to become Richard the Lionheart when he got going and so on. He wanted the eldest to be crowned as his legitimate air to stop. And traditionally, that, That had to be done by the Archbishop of Canterbury, who was in France. So they got other bishops in.

They seem to be Beckett's particular enemies to do the job. And what happened after that? So, as you say, Henry wanted his young son, Cramp. This was an experiment for England. It hadn't been done before, and unsurprisingly, it wasn't done again. It was a French custom. But Henry had the papal bulls to let him do it, dating from when there hadn't been an Archbishop of Canterbury.

And he went ahead while Beckett was in exile with Gilbert Folliott, Bishop of London, who was a man who certainly was infuriated with Beckett. He famously said of Beckett, he's always been a fool and he always will be. And they crowned the young king. And when Beckett heard this, it seems clear that he was most of all enraged with his bishops. He talked about his bishops as being traitors to the church and to God.

And he seems to have directed his anger at them rather than at the king because while this was happening, peace negotiations, very half-hearted, stuttering peace negotiations with Henry were ongoing. So Beckett got to know of this, and do we know, Laura's begun to sketch that in, do we know more of his reaction and of the action? What about the reaction of people in England and in other parts of Christendombe? Well, this could seem an illegal act. This has been predicted, and Beckett had actually got letters from the Pope

prohibiting this from going ahead. So it was really quite a foolhardy action by King Henry. So there was immediate negative response, particularly in France, threats against Henry. And he was brought to negotiate directly with Thomas. And this is the first time that they had met for years in 1170, July 1170. And they come to a peace agreement.

And this peace agreement doesn't mention, anything about the constitutions of Clarendon. It just says you can go home to Canterbury, I'll restore the property that I confiscated from you. So the idea is that Thomas will go home, everything will be fine again. The problem, or one of the problems, is that just before he sets out to sail for England,

he sends letters ahead of him, excommunicating or suspending the bishops who had been involved in the coronation. So this, in a way, was him writing his own death warrant. And at the very least, a provocation. Yeah. Laura, we have the famous four knights, or the infamous notorious four knights who were to murder him.

Yes. What prompted them to head out for Canterbury? The news came to Henry. Henry was in northern France, and the news came to him that Beckett had gone back to Canterbury, had immediately re-excommunicated everyone, had tried to go and see the young king, and the rumours were that what he was going to do

was uncrown the young king in rage. And basically, Beckett had provoked Henry drastically. And when this news arrived, famously Henry shouted to his court. And the quote we have from a chronicler is, what miserable drones and traitors have I nurtured and promoted in my court that they should allow their lord to be treated so shrew. shamefully by a lowborn clerk. And that tells us everything we need to know about status, honour, nobility.

This is all about shame and honour. This is all about saving face. And in the end, Beckett is a lowborn man who has ungratefully betrayed Henry as far as he's concerned. And there's some idea that Henry will send an official party to go and arrest Beckett for treason. But these four knights set out, take it upon themselves to set out. The historian Nick Vincent has argued that this is because their families had been anti-Angvin, anti-Henry the 2nd's family and that therefore they wanted to kind of get in there and make a big gain favour with Henry by doing this.

But in any case, they set out, they cross the channel and they get to Canterbury before anyone else. Nanica, should Beck had been aware of the risk he was taking when he went to Canterbury? Was he aware in any way? He should have been. No. I'm pretty, I think he probably was. One of the things that you see when he's actually, he's parading around the south of England.

He lands at a different port to the one that he says he's going to. He then goes into Canterbury and is accompanied by processions. He's essentially thumbing his nose at Henry for the entirety of this period. He knows what he's doing. By going back to Canterbury, he must have been aware that he had the potent, that there was the potential for something to go wrong, whether he expected to end up being murdered or not is a different matter.

So they came, he went back into the cathedral, Vespas was being sung, four knights in full armour with drawn swords, came in, and the idea from, well described by a lot of people, was that they asked him basically to surrender, and he wouldn't, and there was a struggle, and then what? And then he was killed.

the stories that we have are that to begin with he was hit by, I think it was Reginald Fitzers was the first one who struck the first blow and then, well, one of the knights was ostensibly holding the onlookers back keeping them from actually defending Beckett with the exception of Edward Grimm who was supposedly around there having

be always also hit. Did he... Somebody act to you? No, no. I think Michael knows... Michael, did he act in a full highly fashion here? Could he have said yes, I'll come along with you. You could say it was foolhardy. You could also say it was brave.

And I think that this is something that we can't deny about Thomas. You can have doubts about so many of the other things, but he clearly stood his ground here. The knights had already tried to arrest him in his palace. He was then brought into the cathedral by the clerks and the monks.

He doesn't seem to have taken the initiative there. When they called out to him in a very threatening manner, where is Beckett traitor to the king? again, a reminder of his humble background, he walked forward towards them. They said to him, go on, run away, hit him over the shoulder with a sword. And he said, once I've run away,

I'm not going to run away from my church again. Now that's what the biographers say, even if he didn't say those words, his actions made that clear. So he did stand there as they were attacking him. And it may be that the moment when they struck at him, It was because one of them had grabbed him by his clothes and tried to drag him and he gave this person a shove. He may have even knocked him over.

And that's when the first night swung at him. So they were all foolhardy in a way. The knights were foolhardy because they came to arrest him, but they came in full armor where there was always the danger of something like this happening. Thomas, what else could he have done? He could have either given in, surrendered to them, been taken away for trial, or he could have been taken away for trial, or he could have done what he did, which was to stand his ground. So I have a slightly different view. I think everything that Michael says is true,

but there are also other little bits of information. I mean, I think one other thing he could have done that would only have been temporary, but he could have locked the doors. So his monks hustled him into the cathedral because it was supposed to be secure and they barred the doors. Was the idea of sanctuary quite strong then?

Yeah, absolutely. Although, of course, the archbishop, which wouldn't be seeking sanctuary in his own cathedral, Because he wasn't a criminal. But he said, no, unbarred the doors. And then when these knights approached him, as Michael says, there was an unseemly scuffle. It's also, I think, several people have suggested

that he shouted abuse at the knights. And my general sense of this, combined with what the chroniclers say, the hagiographers say about, oh, he knew his death was coming, is that with however much notice, I think Beckett staged his own martyrdom and did it brilliantly.

He made sure he was in his cathedral and when these knights emerged, he bravely, but I think knowingly, brought about his end at that point. Why would you do that, Danica? I don't agree that he did. Sorry, Laura. Because it transforms his entire cause.

Right, fine, we got that. Now, why, you don't think he did? I don't think he did. I don't think he necessarily expected that. I don't think he would have expected Henry to go that far. or I suppose maybe he wasn't anticipating that Henry would actually lose control of some of his nights,

which is essentially what happened. That one of the things is that Henry has no control over these people and they just seem to act entirely on their own accord. So I don't think Beckett is necessarily expecting that. And I think he is deliberately provoking, but I don't think he's necessarily, I don't think he's expecting that to end in martyrdom. By saying engineered his own martyrdom,

that's quite a process, isn't it? Well, it's, I mean, martyrdom is the ultimate route to sanctity. What evidence do we have that is the sort of chapp who would go for martyrdom? I think he's... I think his uncompromising rigidity, I think. I mean, I'm saying something purposely provocative. It's certainly true that Danica says he wouldn't have expected these knights to feel free to act like that. They had been his vassals when he was Chancellor.

And there's a great deal of their shouting at him as a low-born person, but he's shouting at them as his inferiors and it's a battle over honour and perhaps he didn't expect it but he certainly made sure that this confrontation happened on holy ground with the result, whether he intended or not, that when he was struck down

it could instantly or within 12 hours perhaps not quite instantly be interpreted as a martyrdom for the face. George had last word, Danica, before we move away from this. I just think that in this instance I can see that if you're going to stand back and look at it,

then you can see that there is this process. I think Thomas is smart, but I'm not sure that he's necessarily smart enough to have engineered it in quite that way because he's relying so much on other people acting in particular ways. And I think that a huge part of the martyrdom as well, and the reason that Thomas became so important is the way the cult spread afterwards.

And that was, he had nothing to do with that. That was entirely about other people. Can we talk about that, Michael? was spread rapidly, massively, 10 biographies, two years, made a... Can you give us some idea of the impact that this had? The immediate impact was, it was a popular, a genuine popular grassroots reaction to it. At shock at what had happened, of one of the most famous people in England, the leader of the church, being killed in the Mother Church of England by people,

claimed that they were acting as representatives of the king. We are the king's men. We are the king's men. They chanted as they ran out. This is the sort of place. England in the 1170s was not the sort of place where this happened. The age of martyrdom

was long gone. So this was a tremendous shock. So you had this popular reaction. Then you had fairly quickly various people taking control of and shaping the cult of Thomas, and a very significant element of this is to say it's not just that he was a martyr

in death or that he was somebody who was a miracle worker, which he was lots of people claiming that they were experiencing his intercession in miracles, but also that his life had been a way to martyrdom, so that they looked back at all of his earlier life, that there was a conversion, that the trial at Northampton was a foreshadowing of his martyrdom, that the martyrdom itself was a consummation, a fulfillment of all of these things. But the mass of attention, there were ten biographies in ten years. More miracles were claimed for him than anyone else saved the Virgin Mary. The church was destroyed.

It was built again for money donated by pilgrims who came. We know by Chaucer. So Chaucer came on that pilgrimage, a pilgrimage there. It was enormous. And we hadn't got a real saint to compare with anybody. Now we had our own saint. And I think another important element of it is that he becomes England saint. And one of the reasons for that is that he comes to be, ironically, Henry II's saint.

Soon after the murder, a couple of years after, there's a wide-ranging rebellion from Henry the young king, Eleanor of Aquitaine, Henry's wife, the young Richard, who's going to be Richard the Lionheart, King of France, King of Scotland. They all rebel against Henry II. And Henry beats them. He defeats them all. And why people believed that he had defeated them was because he had gone and bowed down to Beckett at his tomb. He'd made a pilgrimage to him,

and Beckett had interceded on his behalf. Just to add to this sense that he becomes England's saint, he's an astonishingly adaptable saint, because, as you say, Michael, he's Henry II saint, and Henry II lords it over Louis of France evermore, that Beckett is his man. But in the 13th century, Beckett was associated with the Baron's War,

wars with the cause of Simon de Montfort. And Simon DeMontfort was compared to Beckett in poetry and songs. And there's a famous vision, apparently the Battle of Lewis where Simon de Montfort and his forces won over Henry III. There's a vision over the battlefield in which all the men there saw over the field in the sky, St. George and Thomas Beckett, who had come together to save England, apparently. And so you can see that the force of this martyr saint is vast. We have to go for the tape now, Michael. The shrine was destroyed by the vandal, Henry VIII, and the cult began to fade away. Yeah, to Henry VIII, you can just imagine what Thomas Beckett looked like to him. So he said there is nothing in this man that shows any sign of sanctity,

and he destroyed the tomb. Now there have been various conspiracy theories about that maybe Thomas' body was actually switched before that by the monks of Canterbury, but that was the end of the cult of St Thomas. And thereafter he becomes something of a symbol of Catholicism versus Protestantism. Thank you very much.

Thank you very much Michael Stoughton, Laura Ash and Danica Assembly. Next week we'll be discussing Ludwig Van Beethoven. Thanks for listening. the In Our Time podcast gets some extra time now with a few minutes of bonus material from Melvin and his guests. What did we miss out that was important? I think what was Thomas Beckett like. That's what I'd like to know.

Why can you tell us what? I wish I'd ask that. It was a sort of, it's one of those questions that's behind all the questions, but you're thinking I'd better get all the factual stuff done first. But what do you think it was like? Infuriating. Yeah, it's not someone that I would have ever like to work with. one of the things about Thomas is that

Thomas had no friends but he had a lot of followers he was the sort of person who people either loved him or they hated him people could only get close to him if they were in some way his supporter and his follower and he really did inspire

intense admiration from certain people a lot of this as well comes down to the whole question about his so-called conversion. And some people are, you know, modern historians will often be puzzled about this, saying, could this really have happened? Surely, maybe was the real Thomas, the person who became Archbishop, had he been hiding that before? Of course, people do actually change their minds, and they change the directions of their lives. Medieval people aren't often given that sort of

opportunity when we look at them because we don't know enough about them. Whereas with Thomas, we do know a great deal. So we can see that he's in a way quite a prickly character. He's somebody who is very determined, but in his favour, he really was a leader. He might not have always gone the way that he should have gone, but he made decisions. I think you're right, the nub of this question of conversion. So they feel the need to say 1162, he's consecrated archbishop and he's touched by the hand of God and it's a different man. But these same chroniclers also try and say that he was actually putatively holy before then

and they note that he got things wrong after then. This idea of one-off conversion just doesn't work. So they don't really try and sustain it. They talk about his daily growing in holiness. And of course all this stuff about secretly wearing a hair shirt which is not undisprovable. But I think it is in lots of ways. I don't think you need to, for them,

at the time it was a do you serve the world or do you serve God and hence an idea of conversion. But for me, I feel like it's more like a Premier League footballer who changes teams and has to, you know, and therefore says, so I used to wholly love Manchester United and now I wholly love Arsenal, you know, this kind of just change of loyalties, but still doing what you do best. Although how good a diplomat or politician Beckett was is also up for question. Yeah. I mean, I think I would definitely agree with that sort of picking up. and following through, this idea that he was doing what he was good at and he was good at

some of the administration and things. But I do think as Archbishop of Canterbury, he ended up being completely out of his depth and then just reverted back to, well, this is what I've said. How did it be it's depth in what way? I do which depth? I mean, it wasn't spiritually enough. No, I mean, I don't think he knew the laws well enough

that he was trying to play with. And this is one of the things, like I said, you've got these different ones and they can go in different directions. but it just means that they're kind of, in picking up on them, he chose the ones that everybody else ignored, and he couldn't compromise. And the infuriating aspect of him

that whenever anyone tried to pin him down on something, he'd say, well, it wasn't me who excommunicated them, it was the Pope, therefore I can't reverse it, or it wasn't me who says this, it's church law, and it's just infuriating to be... So it's interesting, you thought it's out of his depths? I do get that impression. It's certainly, it's shared by a lot of,

his contemporaries. And this is another major issue in this, which is that even though the dispute was on the surface between Henry II and Thomas Beckett, the most intense debate was actually within the church. And particularly from people like Gilbert Bishop of London, one of those who was excommunicated and involved in the Young King's coronation. And Gilbert wanted the job of Archbishop, so he was guilty of jealousy and all of this. But Gilbert said pretty much exactly what Danica has said. This person is out of his depth. And he says, how can anything turn out right

if you haven't started in the right way? This person came from the royal court. He was never able to, he didn't have the tact to deal with these things. He charged in, whereas wiser heads would have done things differently. And some of this is also thinking back to Beckett's education as well. We do know that Folliott...

He said he didn't have the Latin. Yeah, we do know that Foliott did have a good education and he spent a lot of time studying the laws, various laws, and that he had, he spent, he was good, he knew his stuff. Whereas when you've got Beckett, you don't have that. It's a very superficial education. He's not spent the years and years and years that you would need to get the detailed knowledge of these things,

but he's still trying to apply them and he's just missing the mark, which is why Folliott is saying what he's saying. and that's one of the charges that he really does lay against Thomas. And he, I mean, Follett writes this as an incredible letter to Thomas in exiles, basically storming against him saying, what did you think you were doing? And so when you fled at Northampton, what were you doing except fleeing a doom that no one had threatened you with?

You've just abandoned us, you've humiliated yourself, you've humiliated the church. And he accuses him of posing as a martyr. He says, you're summoning us to martyrdom, to be like you, be a martyr. What's the cause for which you're bringing us to martyrdom? Because Martyram non-fakit poena said Kauser. It's not enough to be killed. You have to have a cause. You have to be upholding the Christian cause for which you were killed in order to be a martyr.

You can't just decide to get killed and be a martyr. So he's saying, is it simply these customs of the king, that that's what you are, claiming you were a martyr for. That's something that any of us could have easily dealt with. It's the kind of problems that come up. I'm not sure if I entirely, I agree with much of what Gilbert Folliott says there. But on the other hand, what Henry II was doing was actually quite radical. I'm particularly writing down those laws.

Yes, writing them down and making them seal them. Yeah, the written aspect is the key. Because when they're just customs, they're just what people are saying, their tradition almost. But having it actually written down and having something that you can tie them. someone to makes a huge difference. Did they bring up at the time the fact that it wasn't a real martyr? But that made it public at all because everybody rushed to say martyr, martyr,

was there a silent, strong, silent voice? It hung in the balance. Strong voice, small, strong small voice saying, no he isn't. Well, yes, it hung in the balance. It was under question. The monks of Canterbury petitioned for him to be recognised as a saint very early on within six months or so. And at that point, the Pope just didn't act.

He said, hmm, we'll need to wait. and see. And it's clear that although the chroniclers tell us that miracles started almost immediately, I think there must have been a few dicey months. The shrine was opened to the public at Easter, and that was clearly the turning point, because now so many people came to the shrine, and there were so many stories of miracles. But when he was first killed, no one, you know, in the first few hours, the monks were just shocked, appalled, horrified, and they had no idea what to do, and the king's men came back and said, chuck him in the ground now. And it was when they came to bury him and they undressed him and they found a hair shirt.

And meanwhile, the people of Canterbury had come and started gathering up the blood and gathering up the brains. And supposedly a man who had a cloth soaked with Beckett's blood went home that night and dipped it in water and then gave his sick wife that water. And it healed her. And thus begins, supposedly, the story of the holy blood of Beckett that you can drink and you'll be healed. So it was rapid, but it hung in the balance. But it rapidly became irresistible. Part of it was the petitioning by various influential people within the church to the Pope. John of Salisbury, one of his clerks, wrote about two or three months after, wrote to the Pope saying,

there are miracles being recorded here. There are people coming to the tomb. It's time that this was. recognized. This is something that you must recognize, and they moved very quickly to do that. He was canonized within a very, very short time. So

it seems that within a few months, there was such outrage about it that the matter was settled. Now, there is recorded that there was a debate in one of the theology schools in Paris, where somebody said, I don't believe that Thomas is actually a martyr. Does

he really, does this really count as martyrdom? And one of these theologians saying to die for the church is to die for God. So you clearly had certain amount of debates there. And also Henry II held out for quite a while. Henry the second was unapologetic, really for about a year and a half about the murder of Beckett. But his turnaround, when he then does apologise

and performs his dramatic penance and then instantly captures the King of Scotland, puts an end to civil war. I mean, this was a fantastic coup de grace, and it just meant that it demonstrates how useful a symbol of value a saint is. You know, anyone can adopt his favour and use it for their own power. Yeah. The producer is about to rudely interrupt us, I'm trying.

I think the tea coffee's gone cold, but I can... Yeah. I'd love a coffee. Coffee? Thank you. Tea, please. Tea as well, please. In our time with Melvin Bragg is produced by Simon Tillotson.

Hello, I'm Neil McGregor. In my series, Living with the Gods, we've looked at how throughout human history believing and belonging have gone together. We've covered everything from Vestal Virgins and Human Sacrifice to why we love singing together and spiritual entities that live just on the other side of the leaf. It's not just about living with the gods

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