Wake up, blah, blah, blah, get on a train to Canterbury.

And while we are on the train, this gives me a chance to explain just why I was going to Canterbury.

First, as usual, is because I felt like it. Second is because Canterbury is the destination of the pilgrims from the Canterbury Tales. You know, the Squire, the Bishop, the Knight, the Rook, the Parson, the Wife of Bath, the Nun, the Other Nun, the, uh, Dog Handler, the Database Administrator, and the Account Executive. Third is the reason that these folks were going to Canterbury: the Canterbury Cathedral. The fourth, as I later found out from an instructional videotape, is Thomas Becket, who is significant for being part of reason three and the cause of reason two. Once again, a little history is in order. Once again, British folks and history majors can skip ahead a few paragraphs. Unless you don’t know the story. In which case you should have studied more. However, I am (was) neither, so I may make a few mistakes in this account.

Thomas Becket, of course, was the Archbishop of Canterbury and he was martyred at Canterbury Cathedral. There are two questions which can branch off of this statement. One of the answers is interesting, one of them isn’t. We’ll start with the less interesting one because it is important background information for the second. Actually it’s really not that important, but I’m going to tell it to you anyway because, to tell part of the story of Thomas Becket means that one must tell almost all the story of Thomas Becket just to allow the rest of it to make sense. Plus I’m more than happy to throw more history at you, because I find this guy rather interesting. So get comfortable. Very comfortable. If you need a new couch, buy it.

Question 1:
Why was Thomas Becket the Archbishop of Canterbury?

Because the post had been open for a while after the death of Theobald, the previous Archbishop of Canterbury and somebody needed to fill it. Thomas Becket was Archdeacon of Canterbury previous to that, as well as being chancellor to King Henry II.

Question 1.1:
Why did somebody need to fill the position of Archbishop of Canterbury?

The Archbishop of Canterbury was a very important job back in the day. He was the primate (their term, not mine) of the Catholic Church in England and later the Church of England (an important distinction for those in our reading audience who had been paying attention to prepositions). As an example of his importance, he was the guy who was supposed to crown the King when he succeeded to the throne.

Question 1.2:
Why didn’t somebody fill the position of Archbishop of Canterbury shortly after the death of Theobald?

Heck if I know, but apparently Henry wanted to appoint Becket to the post and Becket did not want the position due to being very close friends with Henry. Becket warned Henry of the changes that would have to take place if he was given the job, but Henry appointed him anyway.

The pictures are ahead of the story, sure, but I got some decent shots in Canterbury.

Question 1.2.1:
What changes took place?

Well, for one, Becket was no longer the close friend of Henry when he had merely been Archdeacon of Canterbury. They used to be a sort of inseparable duo as Becket helped him raze castles, raise armies, repair the Tower of London and generally gather power into the hands of the monarchy, even at the cost of the claims of the Church.

Interjection:
Sounds like exactly the wrong guy to be Archbishop of Canterbury.

Why do you think Henry wanted him for the job?

Anyway, continuing from Answer 1.2.1, Becket was now the head man in England’s Catholic Church and he began taking his job as a member of the Church seriously. For one, he began fighting for Gregorian reform in England, which made the Church exist under a different set of laws than the rest of the populace. As one quick example, they would be tried in ecclesiastical courts instead of lay courts and the punishments were usually much lighter in the Church’s courts. Obviously, Kings were not happy with clerics being merely demoted or exiled instead of having them drawn, quartered, beheaded, stretched on the rack and flayed like the rest of the populace. You can understand the King’s position of wanting to punish as he sees fit, but I think that you can also see the point that the members of the Church wanted to be free from punishments which could very well be considered uncomfortable. They preferred to receive such punishments out of ecclesiastical duty.

Question 1.2.1.1:
Ecclesiastical duty?

Monks and priests usually received floggings every so often, just as a sort of testament to and test of their faith. I suppose it is somewhat comparable to Buddhist monks meditating under cold waterfalls, Native Americans offering flesh (their own) to the Spirit, and the bloodletting and self-torture performed by Mayan rulers.

Question 2:
So why was Thomas Becket martyred in Canterbury Cathedral?

I told you we would get to the more interesting question second. Things between Becket and Henry had been getting pretty bad. I suppose that it is generally true that when very close friends have a big falling out, there cannot help but be an incredible backlash that makes them dislike each other with an anger equal to their former amity. Maybe that is just philosophical baloney, but either way, Becket changed to meet his new obligations and Henry did not like it one bit.

Becket began fighting for the rights of the Church with a furor and energy that must have shocked Henry. The King resisted his arguments for Gregorian Reform with the Constitution of Clarendon, which essentially said, "My land, my rules." This was the end of good relations between the two.

Henry began efforts to imprison Becket, or at least oust him from his new position. Some other archbishops were more than happy to support him in this, probably because they had designs on being Archbishop of Canterbury. Some in the Church in England didn’t support Becket just because they still thought of his as the King’s man. With few friends and many enemies, Becket realized his plight and got the heck out of England, fleeing to France. From there, he tried to get the Pope to place England under the Interdict, which was the most severe punishment that the Church could mete out.

Question 2.1:
What’s ‘the Interdict’?

It is a punishment for a monarch in which the King and all his subjects are excommunicated. No Church, no Christian burial, no Communion, no nothing, everybody was given a one way ticket straight to the place where people weep and gnash their teeth.

Comment:
Big deal.

To a 12^th century peasant, you’d better believe it was a big deal. When the only thing in this world you have to look forward to is a comfortable place in the next one, you tend to get very vehement about your rights to get there. People with nothing to look forward to tend to get very angry and tend to lash out and that makes life a little precarious for people who want to remain King. Besides which, crushing peasant rebellions means crushing peasants and that means that food becomes harder to come by. However, this is by far the least threat to the King.

Lands under the Interdict have also excommunicated the nobles and nobles tend to be the sort that look for ways to move up in the pecking order. Thus, an Interdict is a good excuse to go kill the King and get ahead in life, as well as get back into the next one. If the Church put a land under the Interdict, it was probably because it wanted the nobles to do that very thing. In fact, what the Church was doing was renouncing Divine Providence for a regent and without Divine Providence there is really no reason to keep doing what the King tells you to do.

Continuation to Question 2:
Anyway, go on.

Thank you. Now then, Becket was throwing all sorts of rhetoric in Henry’s direction and Henry was throwing plenty right back and Pope Alexander was trying to mediate between the two because Becket was, after all, their man and they couldn’t hang him out to dry. However, the Pope didn’t want to drive Henry into the camp of the Holy Roman Empire and its (anti-)pope, so reconciliation was exactly what everybody had in mind, with the notable exception of Archbishop Becket and King Henry II.

However, after several inflammatory actions, statements and excommunications, including that of Henry, there was something of a reunification, in that Becket would return to Canterbury and all the possessions of his see would remain under Canterbury’s control. This is what is known as a compromise. This is also what is known as "the beginning of the end".

Becket returned to Canterbury and immediately began excommunicating people again. This infuriated Henry and, in the company of several nobles, proclaimed something to the effect of, "Will no one rid me of this meddlesome priest?" Anyway, this is when history was made, much as it always is, by a bunch of hotheads. Historians always renounce these folks but, I think, secretly love them because it means that something more interesting is happening than, say people writing declarations and forming committees and signing Magna Cartas. How many Civil War recreationists do you know who restage the 3/5ths Compromise?

Some chapel dedicated to something or another.

Comment:
I’m asking the questions here. And get to the killing, finally.

Folks, we are finally there.

Four knights promptly left Henry’s company to go seek that of Thomas Becket and it was not for tea and cucumber sandwiches. As they entered the cloister, the priests and monks helped Becket flee into the Cathedral, figuring he would be safe there, especially considering the fact that a Vespers service was occurring at the time. The knights, however, stormed into the Cathedral and attempted to force Becket, at threat of violence, to rescind his excommunications. However, Becket refused, probably because being killed was probably the least uncomfortable thing he could think of, for reasons that will become clear after we have finished him off.

Three knights began pulling at Thomas, probably in the hopes that they could pull him outside to kill him, as spilling blood inside a church was a desecration. However, Thomas was in quite a rage at that time and managed to fight them off, going so far as to push one of them to the floor (this was FitzUrse, the one that Thomas called a ‘pimp’, by the way). The knights were probably getting pretty sick of this and one of them pulled his sword. Obviously, what with them being hotheads, things started going downhill pretty quickly. Becket, realizing he was at the end, began verbally commending his soul unto God and stating his willingness to die for his church. As two swords hit his head, he continued speaking. Not until the third did Thomas finally quiet. That was the blow that split Thomas cranium wide open. However, just to ensure that the blame went about equally, the fourth knight, who had not yet laid arms upon him, put his sword into Thomas newly opened brain-pan and scattered the contents. Thus was Thomas Becket’s end, turning him into Thomas a-Becket for reasons nobody has ever explained.

Blame for the death mostly fell at Henry II’s feet, because he was the one who uttered the words that sent knights out on their mission. Upon hearing of the death of his former friend, the King felt woefully ashamed of his actions and he went to Canterbury in 1174 to do penance. He walked the streets of Canterbury shoeless and in sackcloth as eighty monks flogged him with branches. Henry finished his penance by spending the night inside Becket’s crypt. Yikes. Incidentally, the knights who made a martyr of Thomas Becket were disgraced to the point that some of their shamed relations changed their names so as to not be associated with such rabble.

Anyway, I alluded to two things earlier in this seeming neverending essay about the discomforts of being a monk, and the lack of worry Becket had for death. Now, we are going to go into more explanation.

However much the priests and monks disrespected this seeming interloper, who many of them still considered him to be a disobedient agent of the King, they realized that it was extremely wrong for him to have been struck down in the Cathedral, so they took his body and began preparing it for burial.

Thomas had always been an ostentatious sort. He dressed in expensive clothes and the enormity of the entourage he traveled with was the stuff of legend. Thus, the monks and priests never considered him to be one of them. However, as they began undressing the body, they removed his robe to discover a coarse monk’s habit beneath. The priests and monks were overjoyed! This was no agent of the King, he was secretly one of them! He wore the garment such that the cuffs of it were not visible at the edges of his Archbishop’s robes, that was why nobody knew! This was wonderful news, but it was about to get better. For them at least.

Beneath this was a hair shirt, which was stiff and uncomfortable in itself, however it was considered an especially glorious way to test one’s spiritual mettle due to the hair painfully rubbing the skin. It was an especially severe self-inflicted penance to wearing such a garment and the monks were positively ecstatic. He was, in addition to being one of them, abundantly holy to be able to stand that sort of discomfort.

However, as the body cooled, further proof of his piety came in the form of fleas, ticks and vermin that crawled away from the hair shirt in such abundant numbers that it was a wonder he could tolerate the mere act of living. By this point the monks and priests were going positively loopy with rapture. Not only had this guy secretly been a monk, he had also secretly been very pious and, on top of that, one serious badass to allow his body to take that sort of abuse. This certainly goes a long way toward explaining why he was so surly all the time: he was in serious need of a flea dip. This also explains why he was not so worried about those knights killing him: the moment the crown of his head was lopped off was probably the best he’d felt in weeks.

Now that we have finished that, we shall take a break and enjoy the countryside before I explain what this had to do with Chaucer.