Thomas Becket. Father John S. Hogan

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      And then there are some — perhaps a few today — who see a hero, a warrior, flawed as he may have been; a man who felt he had to do what he thought was right. In the past, Catholic authors have been generous with Thomas, painting the man and his struggles in black and white: the Augustine of Hippo figure, the convert who fought for the Church in the face of an evil king’s tyranny. That picture does not do justice to either Thomas or the king. Becket would be the first to say that Henry was not an evil man; after all, the archbishop loved his friend, and their dispute brought with it a great deal of personal suffering.

      As scholars have examined every aspect of Thomas’s life, interestingly, in recent works, too little emphasis has been placed on his faith. Indeed, it is this lack of emphasis that has, in my view, led some to misunderstand Thomas and his motivations. Many misread his actions as simply those of an arrogant man who was prepared even to die to preserve his honor. The historian W. L. Warren, for example, in his magisterial biography of Henry II, says that Thomas “was fundamentally a proud self-centered man.”¹ Warren is not alone in this view. Is it true? In my opinion, no; for one thing, it is too simplistic — at the very least, Thomas was complicated. What leads such fine scholars to conclude that he was simply arrogant? According to Warren, it was “his prohibition of the bishops performing their duty to the king.”² Warren was no friend of Thomas; like many others, he held Thomas more responsible for his own death than those who killed him.³ Like many others, Warren does not understand Thomas Becket. This is because, in failing to understand Thomas’s faith — which was real and sincere — we cannot fully understand his motives.

      For all his ambition, ability, pride, and humiliation, Thomas Becket — or as he would prefer to be called, Thomas of Canterbury — was a man of faith. He was lukewarm in the beginning; but through time and suffering, he embraced a deeper living of the Gospel, imperfect as it may have been at times. While he was conscious of his dignity (a problematic issue in his struggle), Thomas gradually came to understand that he had a greater master than any earthly king or even pope. This sinful and often difficult man came to realize that the Church, and religion in general, was not a department of state. While bishops and clergy owed fealty to their king in many areas, in the end, their first and most important master was Christ — and the Church was Christ’s, not Henry’s. Perhaps scholars see Thomas through an Erastian lens, presuming that the Church must be subject to the state.⁴ In that context, if Thomas was only a minister of the king, certainly his actions would seem to be disloyal. But he was not a minister of the king; he was a minister of the Church and meant to be, first and foremost, a servant of Christ. His refusal to concede may be seen as arrogance and pride by some; but in reality, it sprang from his loyalty and obedience to Christ. Interestingly, almost every martyr of the Church, from Saint Stephen to Saint Oscar Romero, who died in opposition to the state, has been criticized by those who do not understand faith.

      This biography seeks to examine Thomas and his actions in the context of his faith, a faith that was deepened through a gradual transformation that took place following his appointment as archbishop. Two keys help us to understand how this transformation took place: the simple piety his mother taught him as a child, and a sense of duty that at first served his ambition and allowed him progress through work well done, but later led him to serve another and greater Master. That progress from self-ambition to an ambition to serve God, marked by the four sections of this biography, was gradual. It is a spiritual drama in which, over time, and through various struggles, one master gave way to another, as Thomas increasingly died to self, as Jesus urges us in the Gospel. Some have considered Thomas an enigma — and he may have been one, even to himself, but not to heaven. Something about his life, his final struggle, and his death won favor with God. We know this because — to the astonishment of king, courtiers, Church officials, and even his friends — miracles abounded from the moment of his martyrdom. What did God see in this man? What did he make of his stubborn stand against his king? What was the meaning of his death? Without doubt, the answers to these questions can be seen in the fact that God made him a saint, as the miracles testify; the Church, in humble obedience, would confirm this even as her clergy scratched their heads, mystified. Thomas’s glorification was a sign that God approved of his struggle, both his personal struggle and that with the king; and that his death was a true martyrdom

      As the battle between Church and state resumed and rolled on in the years to come, Thomas’s sainthood would certainly prove useful. But what of his life? Thomas’s friends and enemies, scholars, and theologians would spend centuries poring over every deed, every word spoken or written, and every event to discover what made him acceptable to God. Was it simply his death? Was Thomas a victim or a martyr? Does God raise up victims, or was Thomas indeed one of the Church’s great heroes whose relevance extends well beyond their time and personal situation?

      In A Short History of England, G. K. Chesterton describes Thomas as “a great visionary and a great revolutionist.”⁵ The saints have relevance for every age, and though some ages may forget certain saints, other ages realize how poor they are without them and turn once again to these heroes of the faith to intercede for us and to help us make sense of the Gospel in the age in which we live. Thomas is more relevant now than ever as secularism leans over faith and seeks to destroy it. Chesterton suggests that Thomas was an impractical man living in a practical age and that his impracticality came from the Gospel, where mercy and pardon outweigh the burden of justice.⁶ In Chesterton’s eyes, the dispute was between the state, which could only work with the machinery of punishment, and Thomas’s Catholic Church, which worked with the machinery of pardon. This is certainly one way of looking at the dispute — as a case of two visions clashing as much as two individuals fighting on a deeply personal level. But it was more than that.

      Both Thomas and his nemesis, King Henry II, were baptized Christians; both claimed to be Catholics and faithful sons of the Church, and yet the quarrel between them concerned the Church, its way of life, its relationship with its members, and its relationship with a state that also claimed to be Christian. How was a dispute possible? In Thomas’s life and experience, we see how it was possible and indeed necessary. The Christian Thomas clashed with the Christian Henry because Thomas finally understood what the Gospel was all about and what it meant to be a Christian, a disciple of Christ. In wisely calling him a visionary and a revolutionist, Chesterton points to the radical nature of Christian discipleship. Speaking of Thomas as impractical, Chesterton is saying that the kingdom the Christian disciple must inhabit is not of this world. The values of this kingdom are utterly impractical in the eyes of the world — they are otherworldly — and that is why they are the only values that will work here to create a more just and human society. These values raise the mind, heart, and soul of a person to God, the Creator. Thomas understood this as a canonist, but he grew to understand it even more as a Christian and most radically as a priest. In analyzing the conflict with Henry, one must never forget that Thomas was a priest, because becoming a priest changed everything for him.

      One aspect of Thomas’s life that has fascinated historians and writers alike is the nature of his friendship with Henry. For many, the story of Thomas and the king is a story of two men in conflict. There is no doubt that the dispute between the two was aggravated by an intensely personal dimension, and it may have been the cause of the dispute, as Henry expected Thomas to conform to his will for the sake of their friendship as much as for the sake of his being a subject. One author in the twentieth century, the playwright Jean Anouilh, reflected on this in particular. His play Becket,⁷ the basis of the 1964 movie of the same name,⁸ explores the exterior conflict between archbishop and king. However, both play and movie are flawed because Anouilh’s work is historically inaccurate. For one, he thinks the issue of the dispute was not only personal in terms of a broken friendship but also a clash between the Anglo-Saxons, which he believed Thomas to be, and the Normans, represented by Henry.⁹ When later informed that Thomas was a Norman, Anouilh did not correct his error but left the play as it was; and though he acknowledged that it contained historical inaccuracies, he was quoted as saying that history might eventually “rediscover” that Thomas was a Saxon after all.¹⁰ Another inaccuracy leads to Anouilh’s ultimate failure to СКАЧАТЬ