The Cult of Thomas Becket (original) (raw)
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In July 1220, the boy king Henry III attended the Translation of St Thomas Becket at Canterbury, whereby the saint's body was transferred from its original tomb in the crypt of Canterbury cathedral to a splendid new shrine in the main body of the church. This article explores the continuing appeal of Becket's cult at Canterbury for elite ecclesiastical and lay circles in thirteenth-and early fourteenth-century England. It argues that the Englishmen, or holders of ecclesiastical office in England, who were canonised as saints in the thirteenth century were associated with St Thomas and his cult. Drawing on the records of the English royal household and wardrobe, alongside letters and charters, this article then examines the reception of Becket's cult at the royal court. Although Henry III was more famous for his adult devotion to St Edward the Confessor, Henry and his wife, Eleanor of Provence, still paid their respects to Becket's shrine at Canterbury. Royal interest in St Thomas of Canterbury, or St Thomas the Martyr, continued, but with added vigour, under Edward I, his wives and his children. Despite St Thomas's appeal for opponents of the English crown, Becket's cult remained firmly connected to the English ruling dynasty. T he cult of Thomas Becket, archbishop of Canterbury, was one of the most popular saints' cults in western Europe in the Middle Ages. The stories of Becket's murder at the hands of four knights in Canterbury cathedral on 29 December 1170 and of the posthumous miracles associated with him circulated widely at home and abroad. Their transmission was assisted by the many works of hagiography written by witnesses to the martyrdom and by men associated with Becket, as well as the reports carried away by visitors to Becket's tomb. 1 Such was the damage to King Henry II's prestige as the man who uttered the words that led to Becket's death, especially after Becket was canonised I am grateful to Paul Webster for his helpful comments on a draft of this article.
“Martyrs on the Move: The Spread of the Cults of Thomas of Canterbury and Peter of Verona,”
In a recent survey of historians, Thomas Becket (1118-1170) was nominated as one of the ten worst Britons in history, and took the title for the twelfth century. 1 Peter of Verona (1203-1252) for his part bears the title "Prince of the Holy Inquisition," a dubious honor in contemporary society. 2 That these two lay claim to sanctity perplexes the modern world, and even evokes outright hostility. For centuries both Peter and Thomas have been figures characterized by contradiction. They were often reduced to simplistic caricatures of un-reflexive and monomaniacal churchmen on one hand or of flat cut-outs of saintly paragons on the other.
Defender of the Church: Thomas Becket as an Example in York Minster Cathedral
St. Thomas Becket, archbishop of Canterbury who was martyred in 1170, occurs in three windows at York Minster Cathedral; the eastern window of the chapterhouse, the southernmost window of the chapterhouse, and one of the windows in the northern choir aisle. In this paper, I shall analyse how these Becket windows are tailored to specific audiences, and how scenes from the life Thomas Becket can be used to imply different meanings according to the context the saint appears in. I shall discuss the Becket window and the five saints window in the chapterhouse (CH s4), its context and its audience, and I shall then do the same with the window in the northern choir aisle (n9) in order to show how context and audience call for different readings of the Becket-panels.
Ch 14 The Death of Thomas Becket
Sense of the Sublime, 2022
Chapter 14 The Death of Thomas Becket Medieval writers were perplexed and inspired by the story of a man who lived the life of a splendid worldly cleric, friend and chancellor to the king of England, who reversed the course of his life when appointed by that same king as Archbishop of Canterbury and became the servant of the church, not, as the king had planned, the king's
at Soisy-en-Brie, about fifty miles southeast of Paris. After his body was embalmed, it was carried in procession to the Cistercian abbey of Pontigny in Burgundy to be buried, as he had requested. His last journey took six days, and Edmund's body performed its first miracles among the crowds of Burgundian peasants who sought cures as the body progressed to Pontigny. The enthusiasm of the crowds is surprising since this English archbishop could not have been well known in Burgundy. Whatever the origins of his popular and local veneration in France, this article is concerned with the reception of Edmund's cult in England and the meaning of his sanctity in the English political and religious context.
Music, Politics, and Sanctity: The Cult of Thomas Becket, 1170-1580
Unpublished PhD, 2021
The role of the liturgy in establishing the iconographic nature of a saint was fundamental during the medieval period; to date, though, the liturgies of Thomas Becket have rarely been considered for their role in the creation of Thomas’ cult. While work by musicologists such as Andrew Hughes and Kay Brainerd Slocum, and literary scholar Sherry L. Reames has done much to establish the chronology of Thomas’ liturgies and the context of their creation, questions about the liturgies as texted, melodied, and performed statements of Becket’s sanctity remain. My thesis builds on that work while also developing its own methodological framework by locating the Becket liturgies within the political, cultural, and social histories of the institutions for which they were created. It begins with an overview of the sources, addressing their virtues and limitations (especially in terms of using manuscript sources that are not contemporaneous with composition date of the liturgies they represent), while also addressing how the interdisciplinary approach of the thesis - which incorporates analysis of textual, musical, and artistic sources - fits within current historiographical trends. The thesis emphasises performance practices at Canterbury itself and with the liturgy as a musical, audible practice, in turn, it engages with a wider range of sources, placing liturgical texts in dialogue with other non-musicological material. For example, it utilises architectural evidence at Canterbury in conjunction with chronicles and customaries to present an experiential history of Becket’s cult. Doing so will allow the exploration of the "dissemination" of liturgy beyond the textual and demonstrate how liturgy moved to new institutions already embedded with pre-set performative and spatial requirements that needed to be re-imagined in new spaces. The thesis is divided into two parts. Part A (consisting of Chapters One and Two), discusses the creation of the offices for Becket’s passion and translation at Canterbury in the years after his death. The first chapter explores how the office was composed in 1173 by Benedict of Peterborough (d. 1193), one of the feretrarians for Becket’s shrine, and how Benedict’s place at the heart of a network of early Becket hagiographers shaped the liturgy. It then examines how Benedict’s liturgy influenced the rebuilding of the east end of Canterbury Cathedral after the devastating fire in 1174, and how the internal politics of Christ Church meant that the enlarged Trinity Chapel was built to house Becket’s cult (and his liturgy). Chapter Two’s focus is the creation of the office for Becket’s Translation by the clerical familia of Archbishop Stephen Langton during the 1220s. It explains why Canterbury appears so prominently in that liturgy; namely, after years of wrangling with the monks over where Becket should be buried, Langton desired to reconcile with the community by indicating that Becket’s new shrine was to be his permanent home. Part B examines how Becket’s liturgies were spread beyond Canterbury and follows three lines of inquiry. Chapter Three explores how Becket’s liturgy was adapted, re-imagined, and re-compiled in new institutions that required something different to the original Canterbury plan. Such an aim will not be approached diachronically but will provide snapshots of how the process of adaptation occurred at different places across the centuries. Chapter Four surveys how Becket’s liturgies were utilised as the basis for new non-liturgical music, particularly in Parisian and English motets and conductuses of the thirteenth- and fourteenth-centuries. The final chapter explores how the Lancastrian dynasty used music to promote Becket as a symbol of England and of themselves, which was to imbue the Becket cult with new ideological undertones. The conclusion then takes a brief look at the end of the Becket cult during the reign of Henry VIII, and argues that long-standing tensions in Becket’s hagiography, beginning in the liturgies, ultimately meant he was replaced by Reformation martyrs in the Catholic imagination during the sixteenth century.
Thomas More, England and the Martyrs: Martyrs of conscience.
Conference talk presented at the 2018 Europa Christi Congress 14-22 October, Częstochowa, Warszaw, Rzeszów, Lublin Lodź, Kraków. This Paper will both ambitiously cover a few notable English martyrs as well as some of their institutions, and meekly confine itself to a panoramic view of the topic. It will present the English Martyrs, as Martyrs both of the Libertas Ecclesiae and Conscience.