Entry taken from the book The Plantagenets
On December 29, 1170, four English knights entered Canterbury Cathedral and murdered Thomas Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury, in cold blood. This article aims to analyze the causes and consequences of this momentous event.
In 1154, Henry II, the first Plantagenet, came to the throne of England. Like all European monarchs of the time, one of the main obstacles Henry has to deal with is his relationship with the Catholic Church. Issues such as the coronation of kings and their heirs, the dissolution of royal marriages, the right of bishops to leave their dioceses to travel to Rome and, especially, the right of clerics to appeal to the Pope, had been causing great problems among the European kings and the church.
In England there was a particularly sticky question; crimes committed by members of the clergy were tried by ecclesiastical courts. It is estimated that in the twelfth century one in six Englishmen was part of one or another religious order; many of them were simply men of low birth who saw in their legal system a way of guaranteeing their daily sustenance. These clerics commit robberies, rapes or murders that are judged by ecclesiastical and not civil courts. The sentences imposed are less than in an ordinary court, among other things because the English ecclesiastical courts of the twelfth century could not sentence to death or physical punishment.
Henry II tries to tackle this problem in the bud and subject clerics who commit crimes to civil jurisdiction, but is opposed by Theobald, Archbishop of Canterbury. The pulse between Teobaldo and the English monarchs comes from afar, since he already confronted King Esteban by refusing to celebrate a ceremony in which his son was crowned as heir to the throne. Enrique intended to do the same with his own son, and it is likely that Teobaldo would also oppose it.
For this reason, when Teobaldo died on April 18, 1161, Enrique decided to install one of his best friends and one of his most faithful servants at the Archbishopric of Canterbury, who had been promoted in his responsibilities since they met in 1154 and who at that time holds the position of Chancellor of the Kingdom and Archdeacon of Canterbury:Thomas Becket.
Henry thought that with Becket in the most important ecclesiastical position in England he could impose his positions against those of the Church on issues such as the submission of clerics who committed crimes to civil justice and on other issues. However, Becket from the moment he takes over his position undergoes a tremendous transformation in his ideas and in his way of life. He goes from being the main supporter of the ideas of Henry II to a staunch defender of the rights of the church against the State; he goes from leading a luxurious and relaxed way of life to becoming an ascetic and subjecting himself to physical punishment and flogging.
It is not entirely clear what led to this radical change in Becket's attitude. There are those who maintain that he saw the need to demonstrate to a religious community that he did not see his appointment with good eyes that he was not a puppet managed by the king; others see divine intervention in it.
Whatever the reason, Thomas began to systematically oppose royal politics, both in matters directly related to the church such as the competent jurisdiction to judge the crimes of the clerics, and in others that were completely alien to his interests, such as Henry's claim to make the tributes that the nobles paid to the sheriffs be paid directly to the crown.
The intervention of the Pope and other English bishops made Becket give up his arm and bow to the wishes of Henry II; but the king's wrath and vindictiveness of the Plantagenets himself were not going to spare Becket. After demanding the return of all the lands and castles that he had given him when he was chancellor, he made the archbishop swear allegiance to English law before a crowd in Clarendon in January 1164. Days later he published a series of regulations, known as the Clarendon Constitutions, which went far beyond the question of bringing clergymen's crimes to civil justice. And at a meeting of nobles in Northampton on November 6, 1164, he accused Becket of embezzlement.
Morally and politically depressed, Thomas fled to France with the meager company of four servants. He spent five years in France writing bitter letters criticizing Henry and complaining to the Pope. In 1169, several mediation attempts between the two carried out by the King of France failed due to the intransigence and strong personality of one and the other.
Seeing that reconciliation was impossible, Henry decided to fulfill the long-standing wish of crowning his son as heir without Becket's participation, and held the ceremony at Westminster, under the auspices of the Archbishop of York. Becket's indignation caused him to return to England on November 30, 1170; he launched a furious campaign of speeches against all those who participated in the ceremony, threatening to excommunicate some and others.
When Henry finds out, according to legend, he pronounces before his nobles a phrase that has gone down in history:“How is it possible that among all the vagrants and traitors whom I have loaded with riches, none is capable of preventing a cleric from low cradle make fun of me? Whether these or similar words were his, the fact is that four of the gentlemen present in the room take them literally, immediately ride to Canterbury and assassinate Thomas Becket inside the cathedral.
Becket's death made a great impression on Henry I, who probably uttered that sentence in one of his typical fits of rage and without really intending any of his knights to murder Thomas. In proof of penance for this fact, Henry made a pilgrimage to Canterbury where the archbishop's tomb had already become a place of worship; Thomas Becket was proclaimed a saint by the Catholic Church three years after his death.