Читать книгу Thomas Becket - Father John S. Hogan - Страница 7

Saint Thomas Becket is a saint known only to a few in this current age. As his optional memorial appears on the Church’s general calendar during the Octave of Christmas, he can get lost in the festivities of the Lord’s nativity. He may also be overshadowed by another English martyr, his namesake Saint Thomas More. Yet, this twelfth-century archbishop of Canterbury, slain by knights in his own cathedral, is a man who has extraordinary relevance for Christians in every age, and most particularly for the time in which we now live. In the area of medieval scholarship, far from considering him a distant figure from the past, modern historians must come to terms with Becket. Indeed, the Becket controversy continues to challenge, and people find themselves almost being forced to take sides today as in the 1160s. His life is one of the most recorded of medieval saints. A wealth of contemporary biographies, hundreds of letters (his own and those of others), and Church and state documents plot the course of his dispute with King Henry II of England, revealing that almost everyone had an opinion on him and his struggle.

Thomas’s murder in his cathedral in Canterbury just after Christmas in 1170 sent shockwaves throughout medieval Europe. It seemed to be the extreme result of a struggle between Church and state as manifested in a very personal struggle between two men who had been friends. The killing stopped the belligerents in their tracks. As the details of the archbishop’s death emerged, many were gripped with horror, while others were inspired to devotion. Those who had known him in life may well have understood why in the end he had a violent death, and those who knew Henry II may have ceded that he was the very man to carry it out. Thomas’s murder and the revelation of secret penitential aspects of his life had a chastening effect on many and led them to wonder who this martyred archbishop actually was: Had they known him at all? That is a question that still occupies historians, and it is one that should occupy us even as we venerate this man as a martyr-saint of the Church. In coming to understand him, we will come to understand what the Church is and what her role in the world ought to be.

Thomas Becket did not live as a saint for most of his life. As a young man he was vain, lazy, and wild; devoted to his mother yet a wastrel; a lover of the high life but also a loner. A charmer, he had heartbreaking charisma. He was said to be handsome; and yet, he was not known to have had an amorous relationship. Highly intelligent from his youth and ambitious, he was a late starter. As an archdeacon and royal chancellor of England, he was diligent and capable, loyal to the king, sometimes gauche, and often the butt of the king’s jokes. Simply devout, he was chaste, but also worldly and materialistic. He was not above pulling a fast one and maneuvering people and situations to yield a desired result.

As archbishop, he became more penitent and devout. He spent hours studying the Scriptures, a development from his simple piety; but his character did not change too much, not at first. He was still ambitious, but now for the rights of the Church. Implacable and immovable, he was prepared to employ any means necessary to achieve his aims. He wielded his powers with skill and sometimes brutality. With no hesitation, he imposed penalties, excommunications, and interdicts. He was a fierce combatant, much to the chagrin of Henry II and the fears of a pope who was trying to find some sort of peaceful settlement to a controversy in England while in the midst of his own crisis. Thomas was a man who stood for his rights and would permit no trespass, nor turn a blind eye to transgressions, even for the sake of picking his battles to win a war. Was this out of personal pride or vigilance for the sake of the Church and her flock?

That question has been asked many times down the centuries and is still being considered; the answer can only be found in the life and words of Thomas himself. Historians have studied him, his words, the dispute, the people around him and their views of him; as one might expect, they have come to differing conclusions. Today, many historians do not like Thomas. Some of these are admirers of Henry II, a notable king indeed, for them the archbishop was an ambitious man intent on preventing the reform of the English political and judicial system. Others dislike him because he was a defiant defender of the Catholic Church, one who insisted on the Church’s rights over and against the secular. There are those who see him as a self-obsessed man who would not back down in a crisis for the sake of peace, a radical who prolonged the agony of a nation rather than embrace a more conciliatory and pastoral position.

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 understand Thomas: Despite the piety and strength he portrays in his protagonist, he does not delve deeper and sees only a man in conflict with another man, the destruction of a close friendship. Without question that did happen, but there was a lot more going on. There is always the danger of concentrating only on the external and superficial when trying to understand Thomas — a complex man who, with every passing year, was delving more deeply into profound mysteries, sometimes despite himself.

Another notable work of the twentieth century is the poet T. S. Eliot’s drama Murder in the Cathedral, written for the Canterbury Festival in 1935.¹¹ This work delves much deeper than does Anouilh’s. This is a spiritual drama in which Eliot tries to understand Thomas’s inner conflict as he faces martyrdom. The theme of the play is pride and the character of the archbishop as he struggles with temptations to pride, first in fleeing martyrdom but then in succumbing for the wrong reason. Eliot sums up this tension in these famous lines: “The last temptation is the greatest treason: / To do the right deed for the wrong reason.”¹² Eliot also offers his version of Thomas’s Christmas Day sermon and allows the four knights time at the end of the play to explain why they killed the archbishop. They at first appeal to the audience’s sense of honor to hear their side of the story, but end by ordering the audience to disperse quietly to their homes and do nothing that might provoke any public outbreak.¹³

Eliot is correct to reflect on Thomas’s inner conflict. When Thomas became archbishop, he had to die to self. The simple piety that had sustained him until then was no longer enough. Sterner stuff was required now, and that was radical holiness. As he returned to England in December 1170 after six years of exile to face what he knew was coming — martyrdom — he may have remembered Saint Paul’s words that it is not easy to die, not even for a good man (see Rom 5:7). Yet he, Thomas of London, made archbishop of Canterbury, would have to face such a fate. As he crossed the water from exile to martyrdom, he may have mused on his life, seeking to understand the years that had been given to him, their significance, and how they would culminate.

This biography, an introduction to his life, aims to consider Thomas, his background, his influences, his progress in ambition and office, and his struggle to a new generation of Catholics who may not know him as well as other saints. Thomas’s life and the controversies in which he was immersed are complex. This biography tries to offer to the general reader a sense of what was going on. There are many biographies of the man, and many of them are as complex as the dispute; this aims to offer a simple chronological narrative in as far as it is possible. In this regard, I found John Guy’s chronology, unfolding of events, and discussion of the historical milieu around Thomas in his biography¹⁴ the most successful and most accessible, and I have drawn upon this work as a major resource and used his chronological sequence. Other biographies that have proved most beneficial are those by Frank Barlow¹⁵ and Anne Duggan.¹⁶ In terms of the original medieval biographies, Michael Staunton has provided some excellent translations of extracts from those works, and while I have drawn on the original texts, I also consulted these extracts.¹⁷

To understand Thomas and his struggles, one must understand the time he lived in and the people and events that surrounded him. He was no solitary, detached saint; he was a man of his times, and those times formed the man now venerated as a martyr. This author aims to take his readers to meet Thomas by setting them down in the middle of twelfth-century Europe, with all its grandeur and chaos; its complex familial relationships; its political intrigue and instability; and the mischievousness, virtues, and sinfulness of its inhabitants. It is only in the crowded heart of that “chaos” that we can understand the influences that formed Thomas; the people he loved, respected, and struggled with; and the events that raised him to high office, pushed him against a wall, and forced him to fight. His work in defense of the Church was not a simple affair; it was so complex that it divided good people and devout Catho lics. The trouble started with a problem of succession and the need for political reform and stability. It came to its climax as the blood of the primate of England was spilled on the floor of his cathedral.

This is the story of a man who wrapped himself in power and luxury, and then was gradually stripped bare through suffering, betrayal, repentance, and even foolishness — a man who was forced into exile so he could prepare to die in his cathedral, proclaiming to the world that the vision that transformed him is worth dying for, as is the One who confers that vision. He learned, often in great bitterness, that true liberty and freedom can be found only in Christ. In a sense, this is the story of every Christian; though the time and circumstances may differ, the struggle remains the same. For this reason, contemporary Catholics need to rediscover Thomas Becket. He is indeed a man and a saint for our times, someone we modern Christians have much to learn from. It falls to every generation of Catholics to engage with the saints anew, to discover what the saints have to say to them about their own concerns and about the state of the Church and her relationship with the world. Thomas of Canterbury is one whose time has come again, who is emerging from the shadows even as it seems the Church has entered into them. He seeks to engage with us.

Thomas’s shrine at Canterbury was a place of pilgrimage for more than three hundred years before it was destroyed during the English Reformation. In that time, countless men and women came to his tomb, entrusting their concerns and needs to his wisdom and his prayers. In the devotional life of the Church, this should continue unabated. Faithful disciples of Jesus Christ are invited to see in Thomas a companion on the pilgrim path of fidelity, a wise teacher, an ardent intercessor, and a fatherly figure who can help us stand firm amid the storms that all too often assail the Church and her faithful members. In the providence and plan of God, Christians have discovered time and time again that when trouble comes, Saint Thomas Becket can be found standing with us, with the poor and afflicted, with those who may have been led to believe that there is no hope.

There is always hope, even in the greatest crisis, even in the most profound darkness, even when those who were supposed to be faithful have run away. Thomas did not run away. While his exile may have seemed to be his abandoning his see and his cause, in reality it was the means of ensuring he was free to continue his struggle, as previous archbishops of Canterbury had taught him. As he came to discover, he was first and foremost a pastor and shepherd, a father of souls, a faithful and true bishop whose concern was for the flock and their passage in holiness to the fulfillment of God’s promises. This is his story, an introduction to his life that this author hopes will engage, fascinate, and, above all, inspire.