Cross Word

Murder in the Cathedral

• Michele McAloon • Season 4 • Episode 142

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Michele McAloon is the host.  You can find more interviews on her website https://www.bookclues.com.

The name Thomas Becket echoes through history as one of medieval England's most compelling figures – a man whose dramatic transformation from royal chancellor to martyred archbishop continues to captivate our imagination nearly a millennium later. In this episode, we're joined by Professor Michael Stotten from University College Dublin, a medieval historian whose expertise brings this extraordinary 12th-century drama to vivid life.

Born to Norman merchant parents in bustling London around 1120, Becket's early years gave little indication of his eventual fame. Far from displaying early signs of sainthood, he dropped out of studies in Paris, drifted without purpose, and eventually found employment as a clerk. It was only after joining Archbishop Theobald's household that his remarkable administrative talents began to shine.

When young King Henry II ascended the throne in 1154, Becket was appointed Royal Chancellor, beginning what contemporary accounts describe as one of history's greatest friendships. The two hunted, feasted, and worked together to strengthen royal governance across England – until everything changed in 1162. Henry's decision to appoint his trusted friend as Archbishop of Canterbury triggered an unexpected spiritual transformation in Becket, who suddenly began defending church privileges against royal authority with unyielding determination.

The friendship rapidly deteriorated as king and archbishop clashed over jurisdiction, culminating in Becket's six-year exile in France. Though peace was eventually negotiated allowing his return to England in 1170, Becket immediately reasserted his authority by excommunicating bishops who had participated in the coronation of Henry's son – a direct challenge to royal power.

The shocking climax came on December 29, 1170, when four knights, interpreting Henry's frustrated outburst as a command, murdered Becket in Canterbury Cathedral during evening prayers. The brutality of killing England's highest churchman in his own cathedral stunned medieval Europe. Almost immediately, pilgrims reported miracles at his tomb, and within three years, Thomas Becket was canonized as a saint.

Professor Stotten guides us through this remarkable story with expert insight, explaining how Becket's cult spread throughout Europe and how, ironically, Henry II himself eventually embraced it – transforming his former friend from a symbol of resistance to royal power into a unifying national saint.

Listen now to discover how the complex relationship between Thomas Becket and Henry II changed the course of English history and left a legacy that continues to resonate with themes of power, duty, friendship, and faith that feel surprisingly modern.

Michele McAloon:

You're listening to Crossword, where cultural clues lead to the truth of the word. And my name is Michele McAloon You can find out more about me at my website, bookclues.com. Also, today we are going to talk about St. Thomas Beckett. He was a martyr in the 12th century. We've heard this word martyr being thrown about over the last couple weeks. In Greek, martyr always meant a witness to something. In a modern political vernacular, it's come to mean a witness to something that has caused great harm, even an assassination. I will let you decide on if that is the true use of the word, the best use of the word. Anyway, I hope you enjoyed listening. If you like this show, please subscribe. Please give me a good five-star rating. And again, you can find out more about me at bookclues.com. Thank you, dear listener, for listening.

Michele McAloon:

It's Thomas Beckett. He was actually murdered on December 29th, 1170, in his cathedral. And that happens to be my birthday. And here to talk to us is Professor Michael Stotten. He is hailing to us from Dublin. He is actually a professor at the University College of Dublin. He's a medieval historian specializing in historical and biographical writing and intellectual life, especially in post-conquest England. And when you say post-conquest England, professor, we're talking post-Viking, right?

Professor Michael Staunton :

Post-1066. Post-1066.

Michele McAloon:

Oh, post-Norman conquest. All right. He is the man to do this because he is a medieval historian. He has written a lot of books on Thomas Aquinas. And his current project is medieval biography of certain medieval figures right now, some of which you may know, and some of Canterbury, Queen Margaret of Scotland. And he wants to argue for the value of approaching their works and these works as biographies. And I love biographies because you learn so much about the time that these characters, their real lives in the context of their history. So, Professor, welcome to the show.

Professor Michael Staunton :

Thank you, Michelle, for that introduction. And it's very nice to talk to you.

Michele McAloon:

Well, thank you. Thank you for taking time out of your busy academic schedule. Professor Michael Stanton has written Thomas Beckett and His World, and it's put out by Reaction Press. I uh really encourage people to go onto the Reaction Press website. They've got a lot, they've got a lot of variety and a lot of really interesting stuff on there. So I was really surprised. I've done some reaction books, but I recently went on the website. A lot of interesting works on there. Okay, so let's go ahead and start with Thomas of Beckett. As you say in the beginning of the introduction of your book, we know more about Thomas of Becket than any other medieval saint at this point, because he is probably one of the most well-documented saints in both the Roman Catholic and I imagine the Episcopal Church and the other denominations that follow the saints. So let's start with the very beginning. When did Thomas Becket live? Give us the time frame and give us a time frame that this merchant's son was born into.

Professor Michael Staunton :

So Thomas Becket was born in either 1118 or 1120, and he died in 1170. So you see in his life, you see the center of the 12th century, which is a very exciting time in England. It's uh as you were mentioning earlier about post-conquest, conquest of 1066, when you have William, Duke of Normandy, conquering England, a lot of people crossing the Channel from Normandy after that, including Thomas's parents. So he was originally of Norman stock.

Michele McAloon:

Okay. And his , at this point I didn't understand. Was he born in Normandy or was he born in London?

Professor Michael Staunton :

He was born in London. He was born right in the centre of London. So if you go to London today and you go to the area that's known as the City, which is the historic centre of London, not that far from St. Paul's or from the Tower of London, you'll see this street called Cheapside. And there there's a little plaque where you have the house where Thomas was born, or at least the site of the house where Thomas was born. So very much a Londoner, and born there at a time when London was becoming a really important city, growing in numbers and you know, looking more outward to the rest of the world, a city where you had merchants like Thomas' father using London as a base.

Michele McAloon:

Well, you know what? A lot of times people call him Thomas Becket.

Professor Michael Staunton :

Yeah.

Michele McAloon:

Why is that?

Professor Michael Staunton :

So Thomas A. Beckett was a was a later kind of name applied to him centuries later. It could be because of Thomas Akempus. Centuries later, that people started saying Thomas A. Beckett, but nobody called him that at the time. His father was Gilbert Beckett, so his name was Thomas Becket. But when he was growing up, he would have been known as Thomas of London. After that, he would have been known as Thomas the Chancellor. After that, he would have been known as Thomas, Archbishop Thomas, and eventually Thomas the Martyr of Thomas or Thomas of Canterbury. So he was never called uh Thomas Abeckett.

Michele McAloon:

Interesting. Very interesting. Okay, so the century that he was born into, it's an amazing century. It is, I mean, you've got giants walking the earth at this point. You have Saint Bernard of Clairvaux, you have uh Hildegard Abingen, right? Was she there? You've got Eleanor Aquitaine, the most beautiful woman in the world from France, you have Richard the Lionheart. Why this century? Why did this century produce these just phenomenal people in France and England?

Professor Michael Staunton :

I suppose it's a chicken and egg situation. You know, is it that because you had some remarkable individuals that they influenced so many changes to the world at this time? Certainly you can point to somebody like Bernard of Clairvaux or Henry II, who we'll we'll hear more about, as people who changed the world that they were living in. There's also the fact that you've got some kind of deep changes going on in the 12th century. So you've got a growth in urban life, you've got increased communications. So people are getting to know each other, or at least certain more elite figures, are getting to know each other in different parts of Europe. There's contacts, increased contacts, cultural contacts between the Muslim world and the Christian world, for example. But also we know more about them because we have there's an increase in literacy. We've got a lot more that is written down, whether it's just biographies of people, or whether it's accounts of the exchequer or legal accounts. So we know a lot about this period. And you mentioned at the start about how much we know about Thomas Beckett. We know more about Thomas Beckett than we know about any English person of the Middle Ages. And that's not just because there was a great interest in Thomas' life and death. It was also because there were a lot of people writing about him. So that's part of the reason.

Michele McAloon:

That's interesting. He was one of the first celebrities, wouldn't you say that?

Professor Michael Staunton :

Certainly. And and I really think, you know, sometimes talking about people in the Middle Ages and celebrity or celebrity culture, it doesn't quite fit. In this case, it really does. Because, and this is where, you know, most people, when they tell the story of Thomas Beckett, they begin with his with his murder. And that's what really made him a celebrity. He was somebody who people started to project their own ideas onto him. They started to want to know more about him, but he was also famous before that. So I think celebrity is a is a good word for him.

Michele McAloon:

Interesting. Very interesting. So he grows up in London and he's not a saint from the very beginning. He's not, he's not a story of where they're packing virtue upon virtue. He's a very human person for actually a number of years, correct?

Professor Michael Staunton :

Yeah. He's in many ways, including in the field of sanctity, he was an underachiever. He was he was a slow developer in many ways. Part of this is that he came from a reasonably well-off financially family. As I mentioned, his father Gilbert was a merchant, his wife, his wife and Thomas' mother was Matilda. They were financially well off, at least around the time he was born, but they didn't come from a noble background. So immediately he has a disadvantage in relation to other people who we hear about at this at this time. It's relatively rare to hear much about somebody who's a commoner. So what are the the opportunities for his advancement? He could go into the family business, become a merchant. He could go off to be educated, and that's what happens with him. He goes to schools in London and around London, and then he goes off to Paris to be educated. But he drops out of college. He's a student in the schools of Paris, the most exciting place intellectually in Europe at this time. This is he's there a little bit after, talk about other famous people of this era. Abelard and Eloise had been there sometime before. It's a very exciting time to be there. None of this really seems to have grabbed Thomas. He drops out after a year, he comes back. Looks like he doesn't really do anything for about a year. He's not working at anything. Eventually he becomes, he enters uh a job with an accountant in London. So not the sort of picture that you usually have of a saint in terms of his background necessarily, but also there are no obvious signs of any distinguishing um Christian or generally moral aspects or spiritual aspects to him.

Michele McAloon:

And he would have been a Catholic, right? I mean, just like a cultural Catholic, just like everybody was at the Yeah.

Professor Michael Staunton :

And and there's no reason to think that he was ever irreligious or anything like that. He just didn't certainly stand out. He didn't seem to have a very distinctive spiritual side to him. So he did eventually get a position of employment within the church. He, through family connections, he enters the household of Archbishop Theobald as a clerk. So he's in religious orders. You have to you're in religious orders to be a clerk. But a clerk, or you know, in American English, a clerk, um the word is the same as clericus. Clericus means a cleric, and it also means somebody who writes. But really, his was an administrative job. And in the accounts, and these are written by people who were very supportive of him, even they admit that there wasn't anything very obviously spiritual about his life at that early age.

Michele McAloon:

But he's very successful as a, and and it's really unclear if he was cleric or clerk. He that you know he wasn't of orders, or maybe he was of minor orders, but he wasn't of he wasn't a priest. He actually, and one of the things that your book just uh really brings up really, really well is again, you just touched upon it, but he became the need for an administrator now, to be for administrative, because what is happening now, as you said, writing is developed. English common law is now having its basis. Actually, canon law is now ecclesiastical law, Justinian law has been refound in the lat in the later part of the 1100s. So there's a lot of legal and administration coming together. And he comes into this job basically through family connection, right? Yeah. And he he excels at it.

Professor Michael Staunton :

Yes, he does. And precisely what you're saying about the, you know, with secular law and also canon law, the law of the church, when he's in the archbishop's household, he's actually sent off to Bologna to do a kind of a crash course in in canon law. And so he learns that. He's involved in writing documents, drafting documents. He's also involved in things like diplomacy, negotiations, all of this. He's a kind of a right-hand man to the archbishop. He's able to learn these things very quickly. He's also clearly a very talented young man in various ways. He has a kind of a practical ability, which is also recognized as he goes on, even by some of his critics. When he entered that household of the archbishop, he was just one of many young, fairly ambitious, often competitive clerks, people in minor orders, as he said. But he becomes the favorite of the archbishop, and he promotes him eventually to be archdeacon, and he involves him in quite high-level negotiations about the future of the kingdom, for example.

Michele McAloon:

Okay, so now enters the second person of the story that we have to talk about. Actually, you know what? And we have to talk a little bit about his history because his history, like all history, forms the person, right? And and when King Henry II comes in, he's actually bringing a history along that kind of affects his story a little bit into the future. So tell us a little bit about the figure of King Henry II and sort of where he came from and his grandfather, and I believe it was his brother, the king uh preceding him, the king before him, is kind of shapes his story a little bit and shapes some of his reactions in the Thomas of Eckett story.

Professor Michael Staunton :

Yes, that's right. So Henry I, King of England, reigned from the year 1100 to 1135, and he dies fairly unexpectedly. And he dies without leaving a male heir. So he just leaves as his daughter Matilda, and he designates her. He had already designated her as his successor. But various people dispute this, it's very there's no tradition of having a woman as a ruler, various other reasons why she's she's quite unpopular. And another figure called Stephen takes the throne. So for the next 19 years, there's the reign of Stephen, but this is known to historians as sometimes as the anarchy of Stephen's reign, because it's a time of civil war. So you got, on the one hand, you've got Stephen, who's seen as a usurper by Matilda, and by her husband, Geoffrey, Count of Anjou, and by their son Henry. Henry is known as Henry Plantagenet or Henry of Anjou. Both of these give their names to his dynasty, the Plantagenets or the Angevins. They mean basically the same thing. So this man, Henry, uh, who will become Henry II, he's brought up with this idea that he has been wronged, that the throne is rightfully, was rightfully his mother's, and the throne should be his. So from the from a young age, he's engaged in a project to try to regain the throne. And he invades England at the age of 14 initially. He makes various other locations. A very impressive figure. He's a bit younger than Thomas, very energetic, very capable. In 1150, there's a settlement made between Stephen and Henry, brokered by the Archbishop of Canterbury, assisted by Thomas Beckett, in which when Stephen dies, Henry will succeed. That's what happens a year later, 1154. Henry comes to the throne, he's 20 years old, and he has a project ahead of him. He wants to turn back the clock, 19 years, to the way it was during his grandfather, Henry I's time as king.

Michele McAloon:

Okay. All right, that's interesting. I didn't realize that. I mean, that was the I knew he wanted to solidify his reign, but and so he really he really looks up to his grandfather, Henry I. He sees him as a absolute success. And this is a huge part of the story as he tries to tries to make it that reality in his own reign. So Archbishop Theobold, the Archbishop of Canterbury, he dies. When does he die?

Professor Michael Staunton :

So he dies in 1162.

Michele McAloon:

Okay, so wait a minute. So King Henry II came when?

Professor Michael Staunton :

So Henry II comes to the throne in 1154.

Michele McAloon:

Okay, so there's about an eight-year period, right, where Henry II and Thomas are buds, basically.

Professor Michael Staunton :

So what happens is that as soon as Henry comes to the throne in 1154, he needs personnel to run his government. It's like a kind of a cabinet. And the Archbishop of Canterbury recommends his right-hand man Thomas, and Thomas is appointed Royal Chancellor. So Royal Chancellor is one of the most important roles within the kingdom, and by all accounts, the two of them rule very closely together, and the two of them try to put into place Henry's policy of restoring strong rule, bringing strengthened central government, bringing law and order to the kingdom, all of these things. So it's Henry and Thomas working in tandem. And not only that, but by all accounts, they're the best of friends. As one of the people who wrote Thomas's biography and who was actually working in government with these two men said, never in Christian times were there two better friends.

Michele McAloon:

Out.

Professor Michael Staunton :

Yeah.

Michele McAloon:

Out.

Professor Michael Staunton :

So they were, you know, it was the descriptions of Thomas in this time as being Chancellor. He's depicted as somebody who absolutely took to the lavish lifestyle of the court. They're descriptions of him that he had a pet wolf, that he would go hunting and hawking with his friend Henry, that the two of them would go feasting together, that they'd start, you know, wrestling on the ground and all of this. Very, very sort of two young men feeling that things were going well for them, best friends, able to take on the world. And this is how it was. And this is one of the things that makes the story all the more tragic and the more dramatic because you had this close friendship that is then shattered.

Michele McAloon:

Interesting. So Tom has become a rich man being a chancellor. He owns lands, he owns money, he owns agriculture. It doesn't say he's lived a dissipated life, but he's lived, I mean, he's lived large. He has lived large. But then the Archbishop of Canterbury, Theobald, dies, right? And when does that happens, what, 1162?

Professor Michael Staunton :

1162. So he he dies in 1162, and Henry, looking for a successor, reasonably easy choice. Thomas seems to be perfect. He's friends with him, he's apparently loyal, he's very, very capable. He's not irreligious, but there's nothing terribly dramatic about his religious devotion. And what Henry wants to do is to extend his policies that he's been using elsewhere, of extending the power of the king. He wants to do that in relation to the church. He's been afraid to do that while the old archbishop is still alive. But now he's cleared the way.

Michele McAloon:

Now, but he's got a shock coming to him, doesn't he? Because so Thomas, he's not even a priest. So within real quick succession, he has to be ordained a priest, he has to be ordained a bishop, he has to be brought up to uh as an archbishop, he has to be made the archbishop of Canterbury. So there those are some canonical processes that he has to go through. It's not the first time in history, it won't be the last time in history, but something happens to him in that process. What happens to Thomas? He changes a bit.

Professor Michael Staunton :

Yeah, I wish I knew what happened to Thomas. We know that something remarkable happened, but what exactly that was has been a subject of debate ever since. So if we look at his own biographies, and remember that these are writing after his death, they say that Thomas was made a priest, the next day he was consecrated archbishop. As soon as he was consecrated archbishop, he was touched by the hand of God. He put off the old man and he put off on the new. So this is all biblical language typical of conversion narratives. So they're suggesting that he went through a kind of a dramatic conversion. The problem with this is first of all that people around him didn't see this. So what his biographers say is that not only did he go through a dramatic conversion, but even better than that, he kept it secret out of humility. So they say that he started to wear underneath his fairly, you know, elaborate archepiscopal garb, he's wearing a monk's habit secretly. And below that, he's wearing a hair shirt, which cuts into his skin as a way of punishing the flesh. But this was all kept within. Outside, he continued to behave like the old uh Thomas that they knew.

Michele McAloon:

Interesting. And he becomes the Archbishop of Canterbury, and for Americans, I really want to tell you this because I just looked this up in his the Cathedral of Canterbury by that time is 500 years old. So this is in this is in the 1100s, a cathedral that is already 500 years old, right?

Professor Michael Staunton :

This is the mother church of England. This is the most distinguished, most powerful, most influential church position in England.

Michele McAloon:

Okay, what would some of his positions be? And this is important too. I mean, he's a priest now, so he he's but he is a he's a senior, what we say, a prelate. Uh and how has his life changed from being the chancellor? And Henry doesn't want it to change, but he sees his responsibilities very different, correct?

Professor Michael Staunton :

So there's there's a story that when when Thomas was told that he was going to be made Archbishop of Canterbury, he said the news came to him while he was playing chess, wearing a sort of a very fine costume with long sleeves and decorations hanging from them. And he said, Really, am I the sort of person who should be made made Archbishop of Canterbury? I know that if the king makes me Archbishop, that endless strife will develop between us. Because he knew that there was a a part of his position that where compromise was going to be quite difficult, no matter who was the archbishop and who was the king. One of the first things that the Archbishop of Canterbury had to do was to protect the rights of the Church of Canterbury. Maybe the second one was to protect the rights of the English Church. He had loyalties elsewhere. He now had loyalties to the Pope in a way that he didn't before. And there was a tradition that the Archbishop of Canterbury had certain spheres of influence that sometimes overlapped with the king or were sometimes different to the king. The other thing, of course, is that much of the job of being Archbishop of Canterbury, then as at any time, is meeting and greeting important people. It's about doing business. It's about, you know, putting your seal to documents, it's about talking to your clerks in the same way as Theobald would talk to the young Thomas and say, you know, you need to send off a letter to this person about this business. We've just heard back from the papal curia, the court, that they have decided this. So a lot of it is very practical measures. But it obviously has a sp strong spiritual element to it as well. He's the head of a group of monks. The Cathedral of Canterbury is run by monks. There may have been about a hundred monks at that time. So he is their spiritual leader. And he's the spiritual leader of the English people as well. It's a difficult job.

Michele McAloon:

Yeah, it's a big job. And you know, what's interesting too is you this doesn't happen in a vacuum. It happens in the background of European politics because you've got a very competent Pope this time, a guy named Pope Alexander III. He is fighting with Frederick Barbarossa of Germany, which basically Frederick the Redbeard. They're fighting over Sicily, they're fighting over the Roman state, they're fighting, there's a lot of fighting going on. And uh I understand that uh from what you've written, Alexander III kind of played a chess game because he was always afraid that Henry would uh unite with the Germans. Is that correct?

Professor Michael Staunton :

Yes, yes. So so the the Pope uh around this time actually went into exile in France because he he was in danger in in Rome. He depended on the support of Henry, and Henry was quite slow to give his support, and it was always a little bit cont uh you know conditional, which also means that the Archbishop of Canterbury is in a difficult position because he's looking to the king, who he knows well, and he's also looking to the Pope, and he's trying to bring them together. But most archbishops also would try not to rock the boat all that much. Turned out that Thomas was somewhat different in this regard. He was a boat rocker. He was a boat rocker. This is the other side of the of the conversion, if you like. You know, the biographers will talk about his his inner conversion, but people were able to see after a while that he had changed. And you start to get these little skirmishes with the king over various issues, might be over taxation, might be over the fact that Thomas excommunicated one of the king's senior men. But gradually it starts to develop into a rift between them that is based partly on specific issues, many of them jurisdictional issues, also to do with personal personal clash. But deeper issues are there too. And those deeper issues go back, it's also talking about the 12th century as this exciting time. This is the time when you're seeing uh developments within the church, the growing power of the papacy, the extension of papal authority into England in a way that it hadn't before. And all of this is the background to the dispute that now breaks out between king and archbishop.

Michele McAloon:

So it's crown and church, and they're they're battling it out, and these two men are representing crown and church to a certain degree.

Professor Michael Staunton :

Yes. As you'll see, it's not simply crown and church, because there's a lot of division within the church as well. And Thomas's stance is not necessarily a popular one. And to explain this, I'll I'll just say a little bit about the main confrontations at this stage of the dispute. So, as I said, what Henry really wanted was to extend his general project of strengthening the crown, exploiting the powers and the rights that he believed were his. And to this end, he wanted to do things like say, for example, one important issue was that at this time, if anybody in clerical orders committed a serious crime, they were tried in the church courts and they were often let off with a very, very mild punishment. What he wanted was those felons to be handed over to his court. So it was for him it was both a matter of law and order, and it was also a matter of of the king's authority. And similarly, he wanted that by this time English ecclesiastics, you know, bishops, abbots, whatever, they were often appealing over his. Head to the Pope for judgment over various matters. If there were a dispute between two bishops, they'd vote right to the Pope. Henry II said, This is my right. You've got to approach me first. Likewise, you can't just travel off to Rome without my permission. You've got to ask ask me first. So all of these things, as he saw them, were the rights that his grandfather had had. And he wanted to reassert those rights for himself. And this comes to a head when the king calls various gatherings of all the leading nobles, the bishops, the abbots of the kingdom, and he demands of them that they agree to recognize the customs that his grandfather had had, these kinds of issues. And Thomas initially is first of all, the bishops, the abbots, they all stand firm, they say no. And then eventually various people come to persuade him and they say, look, the king only wants his honor to be recognized. He's not trying to, you know, have a victory over you. He just wants his rights to be verbally acknowledged. And Thomas says, eventually, okay, I will acquiesce, I'll recognize his customs. At which point Henry says, Okay, let's have them written down, itemized. So they're itemized. The a bishop or an abbot may not leave the country without my permission. When somebody in religious orders is convicted of a serious crime, they must be handed over to my court. All of these kinds of things. In general, in this, at least at the start, most of the other leading figures within the church supported Thomas. They believed in principle in the rights of the church as regards the rights of the of the king. But it was more about the practice of it and how Thomas subsequently behaved over this. Where other people within the church said, you know, we don't like this, but you've got to compromise, you've got to negotiate with the king, you've got to give certain things, you've got to recognize what's a serious issue and what isn't a serious issue. But that wasn't Thomas's way. And here's really when things start to intensify.

Michele McAloon:

850 years later, the church, the Roman Catholic Church, has this same conversation about what to do with priests that have committed crimes during the pedophilia crisis. That was a serious discussion. Discussion's pretty much over with because now most dioceses around the world will hand over a criminal priest to secular authorities. But that was a discussion 850 years later. There's always divisions in the church, it's always evolving. It's that's really interesting. He comes up with this one phrase that just makes Henry crazy, and that's called saving our order. And this all comes out in the constitutions of Clarendon. Tell us about that.

Professor Michael Staunton :

So this is where, you know, the Thomas initially was resisting and he was saying, yes, I will agree to the customs, saving our order, which effectively means yes, I will agree to the customs, except when I disagree with them. And so it was saying really those of us in clerical orders have certain rights that must be must be retained. Again, it's a somewhat ambiguous phrase. Where does this apply? Where does it not? And it comes up later in the dispute as well. But this is eventually Thomas is persuaded to remove this clause and agree, believing that nothing is going to happen. And the the constitutions of Clarendon were these, the customs of the king that were written down in black and white. And as certain perceptive people said at the time, the problem wasn't the customs themselves. The problem was that they were written down. Because they then, you know, you're held to specific customs.

Michele McAloon:

Interesting. So once they're written down, they're codified. Yeah. And when they come become codified, it becomes law. This is where they're starting to bulk. So if they hadn't written him down, if it had just been kind of a gentleman's agreement, then they probably could have gone on their merry way, right?

Professor Michael Staunton :

That's right. This is a time when relationships are being made formal. So we're not that far away from Magna Carta, which of course, you know, it's some some decades past this, but it involves Henry II's son, John. That's a case of people saying, we actually need to write down exactly what are your rights as regards mine. So this fits into the same kind of pattern, and it's part of this world of, you know, writing, law, all of these kinds of things that are very familiar to us, but in many ways they go back to this period, the 12th century, as having a direct influence on our lives.

Michele McAloon:

He gets out of dodge, though, because he realizes it's heating up and he heads himself to France.

Professor Michael Staunton :

Yeah. How this happens is that he's summoned to trial by Henry on fairly spurious charges. You know, you embezzled money when you were a chancellor, this kind of thing. So he's brought to trial, and at that trial, after a number of days of kind of low-level discussions over particular issues, he walks into the trial chamber carrying his cross in front of him. He takes it from his crossbearer, he carries it in. That morning he has said the Mass of Saint Stephen, the first Christian martyr. So he is posing as a martyr of the church. And he is saying, this isn't about these individual issues of law. He says, he's quoted as saying, the Lord didn't say, I am law, I am custom or I am law. He said, I am truth. And he's raising the individual issues to a higher plane where he's representing God against tyranny. He's representing good against evil. And that's the kind of when we get into that sort of argument, it's very difficult to get back out of it. So he leaves the trial. As they're trying to make uh deliver their sentence on him, he walks out. He walks out with his men, and in the middle of the night, he leaves his lodgings in disguise and he makes his way to the south of England, gets into a little boat and makes his way to France.

Michele McAloon:

This is actually in revolt against what law that is written down because he is leaving on his own accord while he's down in France. I think he he's in two different places, but he meets with Alexander III. Again, it is against the law because he's he's meeting with the Pope. But then Henry coronates his son. Yes. Goes sideways here, too.

Professor Michael Staunton :

Yeah, yeah. So so Thomas has been in exile for a number of years. Both sides have been sort of sending volleys against each other. There's occasionally attempts to patch up a piece, these collapse for various reasons. One of the main things, weapons that Thomas is using, is he's been given by the Pope the power of excommunication, so he excommunicates or suspends a number of his enemies. Henry is meanwhile starts to make various compromises. He says, okay, I'll drop the, I'll drop the customs, all of the constitutions of Clarendon. Thomas says, you know, I don't trust him, all of this. Anyway, one of the things that is preying on Henry's mind, as well as Thomas Becket, is the fate of his family and the fate of the kingdom. So, as I said at the start, he's obsessed with this idea that he's had the crown taken away from him. And since 1066, succession to the throne has been very unstable in England. It's always been disputed. But he looks at the kings of France who designate their own sons during their lifetime. Crowns the King of France crowns his son as his successor, and the succession tends to be smooth. So he says, I'm going to do that with my son, also called Henry. There's one problem with this. Who crowns a king? The Archbishop of Canterbury. So he decides he'll go ahead and he'll get some of Thomas's main enemies actually within the church to crown his son. So the Bishop of London, who wanted the job of Archbishop for himself, who said about Thomas he was always a fool and he always will be. The Archbishop of York, who had been one of those young, ambitious clerks in Theobald's household, never liked Thomas, he's involved in it, some others. This causes outrage throughout Europe. And there's all kinds of threats of excommunication, various other measures like this. So Henry decides to directly negotiate with Thomas. They make peace, everything is settled so that Thomas can go back to his church, restore to his land all of that. At least that's what they agreed to. This is in June or July of 1170.

Michele McAloon:

But old Thomas can't really behave himself. They're gonna be what they are, right? And this is, and we're leading up into December.

Professor Michael Staunton :

Yeah.

Michele McAloon:

And I believe who could rid me of this turbulent priest? Whether it's cool core or not, it's a great line.

Professor Michael Staunton :

Yeah, it is. So so what happens is that Thomas is getting ready to sail back to England. First time in six years, it's being restored to his church, arrangements are being made, all of that. Just before he he sails the channel, he sends a message ahead of him in a smaller boat, and the message, three letters, and these letters are letters excommunicating three bishops, excommunicating or suspending the three bishops who took part in the coronation of the young king. They are understandably outraged at this. They immediately, when they hear the news of their excommunication, they send a message to the king. The king is in Normandy. The king is the ruler not just of England, but also much of France. So he's in Normandy at this time. And he hears this, and the famous phrase is, Who will rid me of this troublesome priest or turbulent priest? Which is is a good line. But unfortunately, it's a it's a kind of a modern line. Oh shoot. Okay. Did say something quite similar. He by various accounts say that he said something like this This man who came into my court with a limping mule behind him and a pack over his back, I lifted him up from nothing. What does he do now? He kicks me in the teeth. And who are these drones who sit around me and hear about all these insults to me, and none of them go and avenge my injury? Something like that. So who will rid me of this troublesome priest is kind of a summary of that in a way? It represents it quite well. So they set out, the knights set out for Canterbury, and it's the evening of the 29th of December, 1170. Thomas is in his palace when it's announced that there are some knights here to see him. And they're actually called them knights, but they're they're they're quite distinguished nobles, young men, ambitious young men. So they arrive and they challenge him and they say, Why did you excommunicate these people? You must absolve them of this excommunication. He says, I can't absolve them. It wasn't me who excommunicated them. Technically, it's the Pope who excommunicated them. I just had letters from the Pope that I gave applied to them. So anyway, the the knights are furious, they go out to arm themselves. Thomas's clerks, you know, he'd been just doing business in his in his office, they say, This is dangerous, we've got to get you into the church. And the church, of course, is the sanctuary. It's this is the most sacred place in England. It's the sanctuary of the mother church, as you've mentioned, hundreds of years old. And so they drag him into the church. Apparently he's unwilling to go in, they drag him in. So he bursts in the door. The monks are singing vespers, and there are various bystanders there as well. So they break off singing vespers, wondering what's going on. They'd heard rumors that these knights were around. The next thing that happens is they bar the doors, but they start to hear this noise of crashing, of the knights cutting through various doors on their way, and eventually they're they burst their way in. So if you imagine 4 p.m., something like that, end of December, it's getting dark. It's a cathedral, you know, has stained glass windows, whatever, but it's it's also fairly dark, candlelight. The knights come in, they are entirely armed, their visors are down, so all you can see is their eyes. They've got their swords drawn, and they shout out, Where is Becket, traitor to the king? And Thomas apparently says, Here I am, but I'm no traitor. And they approach him and they get into an argument with him. They say, again, absolve these bishops. Why are you taking trying to take the the crown away from the young king? Why have you broken the peace, all of these kinds of things? And he argues back with them. And by the way, why we know about all of this is that at least five of the people who were there witnessing it wrote accounts of it. So we have eyewitness accounts of this. And we can compare the accounts and we can see that they're substantially the same.

Michele McAloon:

Amazing, yeah, amazing.

Professor Michael Staunton :

Yeah. So one of the questions is what were the knights trying to do? It looks like they didn't actually intend to kill him. What they were trying to do is to arrest him, to take him outside of the sanctuary of the church, and to then bring him to Normandy to face the consequences in front of the king. But if you come into a cathedral fully armed, waving your swords around, and you're encountering somebody like Thomas Becket, things can go wrong, and that's what happened. So there was a scuffle between them. It seems that the knights tried to grab him and to drag him outside the church. There's one account, not by an eyewitness, but by somebody who was very close to Thomas, who says that Thomas actually, as when they tried to grab him by his cloak, he pushed one of these knights over, knocked him on the floor, and the knight got up, swung his sword at his head, and that was the first blow.

Michele McAloon:

Yeah, they basically hacked him to death, didn't they? Oh.

Professor Michael Staunton :

It's a very graphic account. I mean, this is the thing, which which I'm not going to go through, but you know, you've got a series of the knights, you know, blow upon blow on his head, and within a fairly short time, the Archbishop of Canterbury, the leader of the English church, is lying dead on the floor of the most sacred place in England. And also one of the most famous men in the Christian world, and somebody who is killed by people who claim to be acting in the king's name. They ride out of the church shouting, King's men, we're the king's men. In other words, we did this for the king.

Michele McAloon:

Oof. Ouch. But what's really amazing about, I mean, all of this, the whole story is amazing. And the the tragedy that ends it is actually an amazing story. But his how quickly his fame spread. How I mean, within two years he was canonized. And canonized means that he was recognized as a saint in the Roman Catholic Church. And there's miracles recorded. He becomes a pilgrimage site. That part to me is his life.

Professor Michael Staunton :

This is also the time when the papacy is gaining control over sainthood. Before this, you'd have somebody, you know, locals say, Oh, this person is a saint. We'll dedicate a church to him. Now you have to submit an official dossier. It's like, you know, going for promotion or something, where it's a dossier of miracles, justifying as well why this person should be a saint and is sent off to the Pope. In many cases, people just decide, you know, our monastery needs a saint. We're going to make various claims for that person. With Thomas, it was entirely spontaneous. And it began with poor, it began with local people in Canterbury. So you start to have people coming to his tomb right from the first night. You have stories where somebody dips his garment in the blood of Thomas and he takes it home. His wife puts it in her bath and she's cured of paralysis. You have people coming to the shrine saying that they had visions of Thomas or that they prayed to Thomas and they were cured. The biggest collection of miracles of any saint apart from the Virgin Mary from the Middle Ages, it's the two collections of miracles of St. Thomas that were written down by people, monks of Canterbury, sitting at the shrine and listening to people's stories. And these are a treasure trove for the history, the lives of ordinary people in England and beyond in the Middle Ages, because this fame spread all over Europe. And they tell us about, you know, people who have difficulty having children, or it talks about people who had injuries and they wouldn't heal and how they're healed, gives us details of their lives. But this is really somebody who appealed to everybody. Then the the appeal starts to go up the social ranks. So you start to get the nobility coming to his throne, to his tomb, all of this. And eventually, the most surprising maybe person comes to promote the cult of St. Thomas, and that is his old friend Henry. And what happens is that after after Thomas has been killed, the accounts say that Henry shut himself off in a room, wouldn't see anybody for days. And you can imagine that he was both probably genuinely upset at the loss of his former friend, but also he knew the consequences for him. He knew that the Pope was going to demand various things from him. He knew that he was weakened in various ways. So he did eventually submit to cardinals that were sent to get his penance. He promised to go on crusade, which he didn't do, made various other promises. But this is for the first time when he really seems weak. He had been such a powerful, young, vigorous ruler. He achieved most of what he wanted. And now there was a crack in that armor. So just two or three years after Thomas's murder, there's a conspiracy against him involving his wife, Eleanor of Aquitaine, his his sons, Richard, future Richard the Lionheart, his son, various other sons of his, the King of France, the King of Scotland, various nobles, even his son Henry, who he had crowned, who leads the rebellion. And Henry manages to fight back against it, but he's still struggling. And then he comes up with a kind of a master stroke of public imagery, which is that he goes to the tomb of St. Thomas, he goes barefoot, his back, he's ceremonially whipped by the monks of Canterbury. He spends the night before the tomb of Thomas, and then the next morning he hears the news that one of the main leaders of the revolt, the King of Scotland, has been captured. And his propagandists start to change the narrative. They say that Thomas and Henry, these two old friends, have been reconciled. That this shows it, this miraculous capture of the King of Scotland. So now Thomas becomes this kind of saint that brings unity to the kingdom. Henry himself and his children promote Thomas as a saint. You know, his daughters marry rulers of Germany or or Spain, and they go and they bring stories, relics of Saint Thomas. They name churches in his honor. And that's really what gives it, gives it a kind of a respectability, but it also takes the sting out of the image of Thomas. He's no longer this hammer of the tyrannical kings. He's an English saint. He's England's greatest saint.

Michele McAloon:

The whole story is amazing because you can actually see threads even now of, you know, in that same story of what we experience daily, of power, of corruption, of money, of wealth, of, you know, of celebrity, of you really do. It's a fascinating story. And it I think it's one of the more unique stories in the long history of the Roman Catholic Church. But what do you take away from the life of Thomas Beckett?

Professor Michael Staunton :

I mean, one of the things that I find so interesting about it, it comes from the fact that we know so much about Thomas. So with most with most saints from the Middle Ages, for most people of the Middle Ages, we have a kind of a two-dimensional figure of them. It's easy to see up to a certain degree what they were like. With Thomas, we know so much about him, and he obviously was such an intriguing figure. The debates about who he was, what his motivations were, who was really the more sympathetic figure, him or Henry, did he really have a spiritual purpose during his life? What was he thinking in his last moment? We'll always be able to argue about these things. We've got evidence on all kinds of sides. And what that gives us is we have in Thomas somebody where we can see a complexity that we don't always see in people of the Middle Ages. Or in a saint.

Michele McAloon:

Or in a saint. Yeah, I mean, you see his humanity and his sainthood. He was a faulted person. So if you believe he's a saint, you can, I mean, there's hope there, right?

Professor Michael Staunton :

Yeah. And he's also extraordinary, no doubt about that. He's extraordinary because of his life and also how he was, but also he's representative. He's representative of so many things of that time. The story of Thomas is representative of that time. So we can see the 12th century, we can see England at this time, we can see the development of urban life, the tensions between the church and the crown, developments in administration, travel, all of these kinds of things. Those are the things that we can see encapsulated in Thomas Beckett's story.

Michele McAloon:

Amazing. I it's a good book. It's not a long book, and it, but it really captures the story really well. And pretty much what we talked about here, it's well worth reading. There's some more things in it. There's some there's like some cool little facts where the exchequer comes from. And and Professor, I love your passion for this for Tom Speckett. And I hope we can have you on again because I'd love to talk to you about all things medieval and the biographies that you're doing and what you're looking at. It's just it's really interesting history.

Professor Michael Staunton :

Thank you, Michelle. I'd love to come back and talk to you again.

Michele McAloon:

Okay, thank you very much.