THERE is something that everybody agrees about Thomas Becket: that he experienced a notable change upon becoming Archbishop of Canterbury. To those that looked back on his life as that of a saint, this was a moment of conversion, during which he was touched by the hand of God, and the old man was transformed right into a latest man. And even those more sceptical about Thomas’s sanctity could see that something remarkable had happened to alter the King’s loyal servant into the headstrong champion of the Church’s liberties.
But whether it is agreed that Thomas modified, there has at all times been disagreement about what this variation meant. To his supporters, Thomas’s defence of the Church and apparently newfound spirituality uncovered something that had at all times been there but was hidden. To his critics, Thomas never succeeded in laying aside the proud and worldly Chancellor.
We may never fully understand what caused Thomas to alter on becoming Archbishop, and what exactly this variation involved, but we are able to appreciate it higher if we put the claims of Thomas’s biographers within the context of latest attitudes towards conversion.
This shows us that the conversion claimed for Thomas was not a single dramatic rupture with the past, but, slightly, the start of a technique of change that will be fulfilled in his death.
ANOTHER essential point is that, although Thomas surprised many by the best way during which he began to uphold zealously the rights of the Church, his actions were precipitated not only by his own, apparently latest, attitude to ecclesiastical liberties, but by King Henry II’s actions in relation to the Church.
Although Thomas’s own actions are sometimes the main target of attention, in lots of respects he was responding to the King’s initiative. The King was introducing measures that might need caused tensions with any archbishop. They demanded a response, and it’s the character of Thomas’s response that caused tensions to blow up right into a full-blown crisis.
THOMAS’s change of life is clearly presented as a conversion. The language used — touched by the “hand of God”, laying aside the “old man” and putting on the “latest man” — is biblical, and is often utilized in medieval saints’ Lives to depict a moment of conversion. But there are essential elements of Thomas’s transformation, because it is presented, which have caused people to query whether this constituted a real conversion.
First, in Thomas’s case, change gave the impression to be a completely inward phenomenon, hidden from others, at the least in his early years as Archbishop.
In fact, plainly, in his early days as Archbishop, there have been complaints that he had not modified sufficiently. There was some reluctance among the many monks of Canterbury to appoint a non-monastic monk, and now Thomas faced complaints that he was entering the cathedral choir in clerical dress.
One of Thomas’s clerks reported to his master that a person of terrifying countenance had appeared to him in a dream, commanding him, “Go tell the Chancellor to alter his garb straightaway, because if he fails to accomplish that, I shall go against him all of the days of his life.”
EDWARD Grim says that Thomas began to dwell on how he had squandered his life on transient worldly glories. He realised that, if he was to are likely to the flock that had been committed to him, he must despise earthly things, and so he “declared war on himself”. That is, he decided to punish the body and to evolve to the lifetime of a monk — but inwardly, not outwardly.
Similarly, William of Canterbury writes that Thomas got down to renew the old man. Thinking about how high he had climbed, and the way previously as a courtier he had neglected himself, he exerted himself to make up for lost time. So, “as if transformed into one other man”, Thomas became more restrained, more watchful, more frequent in prayer, more attentive in preaching.
AS AN expression of this inward transformation, Thomas began to adopt a threefold manner of dress. On the surface, he continued to wear the garb of a canon and archbishop, thereby retaining to observers his apparent secularity and magnificence.
But, beneath that, he secretly adopted the monastic habit, in order that he could conform to the lifetime of his brothers, though without them knowing. Not only that, but underneath, near his skin, Thomas began to wear a hairshirt of rough cloth that covered his body right right down to his shins and swarmed with lice and vermin.
As William of Canterbury puts it, “inside [Thomas] subdued the illicit stirrings of the flesh, suffering the hardships of the desert without being within the desert.” Quoting the words of the Roman author Seneca, William Fitzstephen writes, “His outward visage was like that of unusual men, but inside all was different.” He was like St Sebastian who outwardly fought as a soldier within the Roman army, but inwardly fought as a soldier of Christ; or St Cecilia, who wore a hairshirt under her precious marriage dress.
This is probably the most famous images of Thomas: the outwardly magnificent Archbishop humbly subduing the flesh in a monastic habit and hairshirt. But is it believable? Many historians have considered it to be a posthumous fabrication, prompted by the dearth of compelling evidence otherwise of an inner spirituality. Others have argued that Thomas could have been wearing the monastic habit and hairshirt on the day that he died, but that this didn’t date back to his consecration.
THE wearing of a hairshirt was not unknown amongst medieval saints, and the biographers are unanimous in confidently attesting to it. Some writers cite witnesses to Thomas’s habit of concealing his true asceticism and piety. Alan of Tewkesbury describes how a monk laughed on the Archbishop for apparently putting on weight, not realising that it was the majority of the hairshirt and habit that gave the misunderstanding.
Fitzstephen cited the private testimony of Thomas’s confessor, Robert of Merton, that he at all times remained chaste. On the opposite hand, that is essentially the most difficult of all claims to confirm: that Thomas had a spiritual purpose, but a crucial element of that purpose was its concealment. We know that to most of his contemporaries, including the monks of Christ Church, it remained successfully concealed throughout his life.
BUT there may be one other aspect of Thomas’s “conversion” that continues to lift questions. That is, that whatever change Thomas underwent on becoming Archbishop, it was not a definitive break with what had gone before; nor did it open a direct path to sanctity. Thomas’s life before his consecration, if worldly and undistinguished by obvious sanctity, was not that of an irreligious sinner.
To his enemies, he remained the proud Chancellor in a unique and more dangerous guise, and Thomas himself later confessed that he didn’t at all times live as much as the office of archbishop. As one modern historian has written, his was “not within the deepest sense a conversion”, nor “a change or rebirth of character”. He didn’t “pass at a definite moment with Paul, with Augustine, with Francis, right into a latest world of the spirit from the world of other men”.
But the very fact is that, despite the biblical language, Thomas’s biographers don’t claim that he experienced a conversion along the lines of St Paul. For them the change was indeed great and dramatic, but it surely was also only one especially significant step on his path to perfection. In fact, the language used of Thomas’s transformation was that commonly utilized in Twelfth-century England to explain those that entered upon a latest vocation — those that adopted the monastic life, or joined a latest religious order, and even those that took on a latest responsibility, similar to a bishop, archbishop, or abbot.
IT MAKES sense, then, that looking back on Thomas’s early days as Archbishop from the vantage point of his death, those monastic writers similar to William of Canterbury should describe it when it comes to the brand new lifetime of a monk, emphasising his prayers and mortifications. But even the monks of Canterbury would have recognised that it was not enough for a successful archbishop to be pious.
The Archbishop had a spread of duties which placed great demands on him, and it was customary for Twelfth-century prelates to bemoan the pressure of business and the dearth of leisure for the things of God. He had specific liturgical duties: to substantiate the faithful, to ordain priests, and to consecrate churches inside his archdiocese.
He was a serious landlord, with responsibility to guard the lands he had inherited against incursion, and to increase the wealth of his see where possible. This meant that he was a feudal overlord, with many tenants, and plenty of obligations to them. He oversaw an intensive administrative machine, geared towards the running of the secular and spiritual obligations of office. He was a judge, presiding in court over disputes inside the archdiocese, and the leader of the English Church, holding synodal gatherings of prelates and abbot.
He was also certainly one of the principal vassals of the King — a “tenant-in-chief” — owing the supply of troops to the King and attendance at his court. Inevitably, the Archbishop of Canterbury was consulted on matters of state, and acted as a conduit between the demands of the English hierarchy, the King and the Pope.
NOT surprisingly, some archbishops were less than the duty. Some, similar to the rapaciously ambitious Stigand within the eleventh century, found themselves so engaged in worldly business that the position of archbishop became a travesty. Anselm, who held the office on the turn of the Twelfth century, was probably the most gifted and saintly Archbishops of Canterbury but was considered a failure by many on account of his aversion to worldly affairs.
To his biographers, Thomas succeeded in perfectly balancing the twin nature of the position. Citing the usual biblical examples of the contemplative and lively lives, they are saying he was like Mary of Bethany who sat on the feet of Jesus, feasting on the bread of angels, he who had previously starved now being filled; but he didn’t neglect the work of Mary’s sister Martha, busy about many things. John of Salisbury tells us that whatever time Thomas could withdraw from pressing business he almost at all times gave to prayer and reading.
At the identical time, the reverence he showed in celebrating mass also informed the religion and morals of those around him, and in his preaching he acted as teacher and pastor. Even in precious clothes he was a pauper in spirit; with a joyful face he maintained a contrite heart. He was mild and delicate to the meek and the poor, but freely condemned the vices of the powerful.
This is an edited extract from Thomas Becket and his world by Michael Staunton, published by Reaktion Books at £16.95 (Church Times Bookshop £15.25); 978-1-5261-1268-2.
