Saint Thomas Becket

Saint Thomas Becket was archbishop of Canterbury and a martyr. First the chancellor and friend of King Henry II of England, as a bishop he stood up for the freedom of the Church and paid for it with exile and, in the end, with his life. The Church commemorates him on December 29, the day of his death.

He was born in London on December 21, the son of Gilbert, a merchant, and Matilda, who both came from Normandy. The year of his birth is not known for certain: sources give 1118 or 1120. He was taught by the canons at Merton and then studied in Paris. As a young man he joined the household of Theobald, archbishop of Canterbury, who sent him to study law at Bologna and Auxerre, and in 1154 ordained him a deacon and entrusted to him the office of archdeacon of Canterbury.

In 1155 the young King Henry II appointed him chancellor of the realm. Thomas became the ruler’s closest collaborator and friend. He lived in grand style and accompanied the king on hunts and military campaigns, and at the same time he was generous to the poor.

After Theobald’s death the king brought about Thomas’s election as archbishop of Canterbury. At the beginning of June 1162 Thomas, until then a deacon, was ordained a priest and on the following day consecrated a bishop. From then on he changed his way of life: he resigned the office of chancellor, prayed, fasted, wore a hair shirt, and supported the poor. He soon came into conflict with the king, who wanted to bring the Church in England under his control. In 1164 he refused to set his seal to the Constitutions of Clarendon, which restricted the independence of the ecclesiastical courts and the right of appeal to the pope.

In the fall of 1164, after a trial at Northampton, the archbishop secretly left England. In France Pope Alexander III did not accept his resignation from office. Thomas lived with the Cistercians at Pontigny, and when Henry II threatened that order, he moved to Sens under the protection of King Louis VII of France. The exile lasted six years.

In the summer of 1170 a reconciliation with the king was reached, and at the beginning of December Thomas returned to Canterbury. The dispute flared up again, however, when the archbishop would not lift the ecclesiastical penalties from the bishops who, against the rights of Canterbury, had crowned the king’s son. Four knights took literally the angry words that had escaped Henry II. On December 29, 1170, at the hour of Vespers, they killed the archbishop with their swords in his cathedral. According to an eyewitness account, he said before his death that he was ready to die for the name of Jesus and in defense of the Church.

News of the crime shook Christian Europe, and the people at once began to venerate Thomas as a martyr. Pope Alexander III canonized him on February 21, 1173. In the following year Henry II did public penance at his tomb. Canterbury became one of the most important pilgrimage destinations of medieval Europe; the shrine was destroyed in 1538, in the reign of Henry VIII. In 1982 John Paul II recalled in Canterbury Cathedral that beneath its roof Saint Thomas Becket suffered martyrdom.