‘Thomas Becket and His World’
By Michael Staunton
Reaktion Books, 216 Pages

A merchant’s son, Thomas Becket rose to fame and fortune as a royal chancellor and then archbishop of England — all due to the patronage of Henry II, whose eventual fury over Becket’s ecclesiastical effrontery led to the latter’s shocking killing, the disturbing reverberations of which T.S. Eliot dramatized in “Murder in the Cathedral.” 

Becket’s assassination by four noblemen, one of whom took off the top of the prelate’s head with a sword, was done in the king’s name and within the very precincts of Becket’s religious authority. Even those who had opposed Becket — criticizing him for not reaching a compromise with Henry II that maintained the church’s prerogatives while salving the king’s need to exercise his sovereignty — were horrified. They were also deeply impressed by Becket’s saint-like fortitude in dying for spiritual principle.

That Becket’s biography remains of such interest is due not only to the way he courageously met his death, but to how much more is known about him than any of his other 12th century contemporaries. Michael Staunton makes effective use of the historical and biographical record, sifting through conflicting accounts of Becket’s last hours. He also examines why, until he died, it was most unlikely that Becket would be beatified.

Henry II, Mr. Staunton shows, thought he knew his man. For the king, the point of naming Becket archbishop of Canterbury was to bend the English church to his will. Too many clergyman-criminals, for example, had taken refuge in the church as a way of avoiding civil punishment. His concern, the biographer suggests, was entirely understandable, yet so was Becket’s worry that the church would lose a sense of its sacred rights by surrendering to secular power.

Yet Becket had shown no obvious signs of piety or the kind of austerity that many clerics, let alone saints, had practiced. He liked to hunt, enjoy sumptuous meals, and dress well. His early biographers, Mr. Staunton reports, sometimes claimed that Becket had been a secret penitent scourging himself with a hairshirt so as to maintain a check on worldly temptations.

Mr. Staunton does not so much dismiss the idea of a Becket keeping his devout nature and practice to himself, but he does track how while in office as archbishop of Canterbury he felt called to check the power of the very king who had appointed him. As Henry II put more pressure on Becket to make concessions, Becket seems to have thought that to relinquish any of his rightful privileges would mean to lose them all. In modern terms, Becket’s stance might be called anti-appeasement.

Mr. Staunton might have pointed out that for some time in continental Europe the same tensions prevailed between church and state, with secular rulers constantly testing the pope and those exercising papal authority. The church did sometimes gain advantage over secular rulers, but it was always the result of careful, well-understood protocols of negotiation.

Becket parleyed with King Henry, but in letters to his sovereign Becket could seem high and mighty, and relations between them became so fraught that Becket went into a six-year exile in France. He was welcomed there by the French king, surely provoking Henry II’s ire.  

When Becket returned to England, he still hoped to work out some kind of accord with Henry, but by now the king was hardly in a mood for compromise — if, indeed, he ever was. Mr. Staunton makes much of the sovereign’s volatile temper.

Becket knew the risks of returning to England and was prepared to die. His utter sincerity became widely known after his death, and was not only deeply respected but revered. Henry II, realizing the depth of feeling that Becket’s death had aroused, did public penance, denying that he had any direct role in the archbishop’s death but acknowledging that his own intemperate language had created the conditions that led to murder.

By admitting his culpability, Henry II saved his reign, Mr. Staunton believes, while at the same time he never recovered the kind of command and respect that had been his at the height of his power. If Becket’s sacrifice still resonates, it is because he was so Christ-like in his embrace of his destiny, invoking a higher power and moral convictions still capable of moving the world today.

Mr. Rollyson deals with the medieval church in a forthcoming book, “Sappho’s Fire: Kindling the Modern World.”