St. Thomas Becket

Thomas Becket was born around 1118 in Cheapside, London, to a family of Norman merchant background. His father, Gilbert Becket, was a property holder who had served at one point as a sheriff, and the family was comfortably off, if not noble. Thomas received a solid early education, first at a school in Merton Priory and later in London, before going on to study in Paris. After his father's death, circumstances forced him into clerical work, and he served as a minor official in the household of Theobald, the Archbishop of Canterbury. Theobald recognized his talent and sent him to study canon and civil law at Bologna and Auxerre, experiences that would shape his later understanding of the Church's legal traditions.

Through Theobald's patronage, Thomas rose rapidly in the royal administration. He was ordained a deacon and, in 1155, King Henry II appointed him Chancellor of England. Thomas and Henry developed a famously close personal friendship; the king trusted him deeply, and Thomas lived in considerable splendor, even leading a royal military campaign into Toulouse in 1159. When Archbishop Theobald died in 1161, Henry expected his loyal chancellor to be a pliable head of the Church in England. In 1162, Thomas was elected Archbishop of Canterbury, and to the king's surprise, he was ordained a priest and then consecrated bishop, after which he underwent a marked personal transformation. He resigned the chancellorship, adopted austere habits, and devoted himself to defending the liberties of the English Church against royal interference.

The central conflict of Becket's life was the struggle over the Constitutions of Clarendon (1164), a set of statutes Henry devised to subject the clergy to royal jurisdiction. Becket initially accepted the document but soon repented of his compliance and began resisting it, particularly provisions that would have allowed royal courts to try criminous clerks. He was called before the king and the council at Northampton, tried on trumped-up charges, and fled into exile on the continent in late 1164. He spent nearly seven years in France, supported by King Louis VII and later reconciled with Pope Alexander III, who upheld his cause. From his refuge at Pontigny and then Sens, Becket wrote letters, negotiated through legates, and waited for a settlement that would protect the honor of the Church. A tentative peace was reached at Fréteval in 1170, and Thomas returned to Canterbury in triumph on December 1.

The reconciliation proved short-lived. Shortly after his return, Becket excommunicated several bishops who had participated in the coronation of Henry's heir without his permission. Enraged, the king is reported to have cried out words to the effect of “Who will rid me of this turbulent priest?” On December 29, 1170, four knights who had served in his household crossed to England and murdered Thomas in his own cathedral, striking him down before the altar of St. Benedict. The shock of the killing transformed public opinion, and Henry was forced to submit to a public penance at Canterbury in 1174. Thomas was canonized by Pope Alexander III in 1173, only three years after his death, and his shrine became one of the great pilgrimage destinations of medieval Europe.

The feast of St. Thomas of Canterbury was originally observed on December 29, the date of his martyrdom. In the current Roman calendar, his memorial is celebrated on December 28, the day before the anniversary of his death. He is venerated as a patron of archers, bishops, secular clergy, and those seeking a holy or peaceful death. Chaucer's pilgrims in the Canterbury Tales are the most famous literary echo of the cult that grew up around his tomb, and for centuries the archbishop's stand was remembered as a defining moment in the long English struggle for the independence of the Church.