Becket and Henry II: The New Archbishop - The Second Address in the Becket Lecture Series
BECKET AND HENRY II: THE NEW ARCHBISHOP THE SECOND ADDRESS IN THE BECKET LECTURE SERIES
BY THE HONOURABLE J J SPIGELMAN AC CHIEF JUSTICE OF NEW SOUTH WALES
TO THE ST THOMAS MORE SOCIETY
SYDNEY 15 AUGUST 2000
Upon his appointment as chancellor, Thomas Becket acquired the institutional loyalties of the office, like a robe, a chain or a seal. He wallowed luxuriantly in the secular role, indulging in a level of conspicuous consumption typical of the acute status anxieties of a self-made man determined to proclaim his success. As one contemporary recorded:
“He never dined without the company of Earls and Barons, whom he had invited. He ordered his hall to be strewn every day with fresh straw and hay in winter and with green branches in summer. His board shone with vessels of gold and silver and abounded with rich dishes and precious liquors, so that whatever objects of consumption, either for eating or drinking, were recommended by their rarity. No price was great enough to deter his agents from purchasing them.”
Becket established a reputation as having the most sumptuous furnishings, the most lavish table and the richest wardrobe. His throngs of guests were served by crowds of servants, with obscenely exotic entertainments like monkeys acting as ornaments and wild wolves hunting their kin. None of this was for his own consumption. A delicacy of stomach prevented him from partaking. This was for show.
Henry himself - secure in his noble birth and having nothing to establish by ostentation - would frequently call unannounced on his Chancellor, proclaiming a perverse pleasure in discovering his latest extravagance.
From time to time, of course, Henry had to show who was in charge. On a number of occasions he is reported to have emphasised his position by riding his horse into Becket’s banqueting hall.
Henry acquired the nickname of “Curtmantle” or “Short Cloak”, as he habitually wore only tunic hose and a short riding cape - eschewing the peacock display of sumptuous clothes in which others at court, not least Becket, indulged.
On one occasion the king and the chancellor were riding through London in a severe winter. Henry pointed to a scantily clad old man and in the words of a contemporary chronicler said:
“Do you see that old man? How poor and infirm he his and he is almost naked. Would it not be a great charity to give him a thick warm cloak?”
“It would indeed be a great charity” replied Becket “And you as King ought to keep this matter in your eye.”
“You shall have the credit of doing this great act of charity.”
Henry struggled with Becket, both still mounted, and eventually pulled off his new scarlet and grey cape and gave it to the startled pauper.
Christopher Fry in his play entitled “Curtmantle” added some colour:
“He said ‘We’ll have no naked men. Christ’s
Charity, Thomas, let him have your cloak!’
‘Give him your’s Henry,’ Becket said;
‘This is your deed of grace. Mine’s too old and too short,
Said the King. ‘It would be no charity to his arse”.
The moral was clear. The parvenu chancellor owed everything to the king, even the cloak on his back. Fry has Henry refer to the incident with a smug sarcasm:
“His dignity is shaken, but thanks to me
There’s much joy in heaven over his charity.”
As I said in the first of these lectures, Henry had a compulsive, indeed visceral, need to be in control of every situation in which he found himself.
In his youth Becket had acquired a most unclerical passion for hunting and hawking, under the patronage of his father’s friend, Richard de L’Aigle, whose honour of the town and castle of Peveseny - specifically mentioned in the 1153 Peace Treaty between King Stephen and Duke Henry as having been granted in succession to Stephen’s second son - was the location of Becket’s early blooding in the murder of animals. This was the favourite pastime of the Anglo-Norman aristocracy, at least when they were not murdering Frenchmen, Welshmen or each other. The invasion of Ireland, I digress, would come after Becket’s martyrdom, when Henry was specifically charged by the pope to tame “the barbarous and uncouth races” of Ireland. Indeed Hadrian IV, pursuant to the right of property over all islands purportedly vested in the papacy by the forged Donation of Constantine, had earlier made a gift of Ireland to Henry II, who became the first of many British invaders. The Holocaust is not the only subject that requires an apology. End of digression.
Henry shared the noble passion for the “sport” of hunting, as had his predecessors in office. Huge swathes of the English countryside had been preserved as Royal Forests - national parks for birds, deer and other royal game. These were the greatest national parks that any nation has ever established. They were protected by some of the most ruthless penalties in the contemporary criminal law. This was not done for the purpose of nature conservation, but so that the king could use the forests for his larder and to kill animals for his pleasure and that of his courtiers. This passion was shared by Becket.
The funds for Becket’s extravagant lifestyle were provided from his own income and from his management of the cash flow of the king. Becket did not surrender any of his ecclesiastical sources of wealth. As chancellor he remained an absentee archdeacon of Canterbury - objecting vociferously when Archbishop Theobold tried to reduce his income. He continued to hold the various prebends and churches that he had acquired while on Theobold’s staff. To these were added the gifts of grateful nobles - like the Earl of Augy who gave him the prebend of Hastings - and the king’s rewards, such as the custody of castles at Eye and Berkhamstead, which brought the services of 80 and 23 knights respectively.
Most significant was his control of the king’s revenue. Whenever one of the king’s direct tenants died - an earl, or a bishop or an abbot - feudal custom dictated that the king, who in theory had conveyed all the land on that person in return for stipulated services, could manage the property until a successor was appointed. In the interim the king kept the profits. This was a constant source of tension in medieval life because the king had it in his capacity to defer the succession and an interest to do so for as long as possible. By reason of the stricture against the sin of simony - the purchase of ecclesiastical office - ecclesiastic successors found it impossible to pay a capital sum for accelerating their accession to office, in the way that secular barons were able to do.
Becket’s control of the king’s revenue included the right to spend some of the revenue to pay legitimate expenses he incurred on the King’s behalf. However, there was a freedom from regular account which proved dangerous when he fell out with the king. He did not resist the overwhelming temptation to defray his own lavish expenditure from this royal revenue.
The 12th century was not a time of agnosticism. There is no reason to doubt that both Henry and Becket shared the fervent religious belief of the time. They understood that the path to salvation was enhanced by the simplicity of a life of self denial. The life of a monk was the highest ideal of the era and universally accepted as such. The king and the chancellor would both have accepted that the spiritual dimension represented by the church - especially by the monastic life - belonged to a higher order of discourse than the one in which they were absorbed. Self-effacement was not, however, an advantage in worldly affairs.
All the contemporary biographies - save one which reports a contrary rumour - are unanimous that Becket never succumbed to the temptations of the flesh, notwithstanding numerous invitations by the openly philandering king - the most notorious of whose mistresses was immortalised in poetry as “the Fair Rosemund”.
Christopher Fry has Henry say to Becket:
“Your virginity is as crass and extravagant as the rest of your ways of living.”
The French playwright, Anouilh, regarded the suggestion of sexual abstinence as so obviously incomprehensible, that he cast a mistress for Becket in his play.
There is no reason to doubt that Becket contained his sexual drive. The supporters of the king, who would be in a position to know and had no reason to be reticent, never accused Becket of lapsing in this regard - at least so far as the records which have been permitted to survive suggest. As William Fitzstephen, the contemporary biographer perhaps most critical of Becket, recorded:
“I’ve heard from his confessor, Robert the venerable canon of Merton, that from the time of his becoming Chancellor, he never gave way to licentious habits. This was a subject on which the King was continually tempting him night and day; but as a man of prudence, and ordained of God he was ever sober in the flesh and had his loins girded up about him. As a wise man, he was bent on administering the kingdom, and whilst busy in so many matters, both public and private, he rarely yielded to such temptation. For what says the poet ---
‘For he that hath no leisure hath no time
To shoot shafts from the bow of strong desire.’”
Given the notorious example of Henry II, it seems clear that Fitzstephen had his tongue firmly planted in his cheek.
It was during the occupancy by Becket of the chancellorship that Henry made one of his most daring strategic moves: a grand coalition with the King of France, Louis VII, the first husband of Henry’s own wife Eleanor of Aquitaine. Having divorced Eleanor because of her failure to produce a son and heir - notwithstanding an occasion on which the pope personally prepared their bed chamber - Louis had still only managed another daughter from his second marriage. Henry proposed a formal betrothal for one of Henry’s own sons - whom Eleanor continued to produce in an abundance which Louis must have taken personally - and Louis’ own new daughter. The fact that the boy was only four and the girl not yet one, would not deter such a marriage merger.
Becket was chosen to lead the embassy to Paris to finalise the deal. William Fitzstephen, who had a vivid eye for detail, has left an extraordinary record of the event:
“He had some 200 horsemen, knights, clerks, stewards, men in waiting, men at arms and squires of noble family, all in ordered ranks. All these, and all their followers, wore bright new festal garments. He himself had 24 suits and many silk cloaks to be left behind as presents and all kinds of coloured clothes, furs, hangings and carpets. Hounds and hawks of every kind and 85 horse chariots and on every horse was a sturdy groom in a new tunic and on every chariot a warden. Two carts carried nothing but beer for the French, who are not familiar with the brew, a healthy drink, clear, dark as wine and finer in flavour. The Chancellor’s chapel had a special van, his private room another, his cash a third and his kitchen a fourth. Twelve pack horses with chests of gold and silverplate. His cups, platters, goblets, pitchers, basins, salt cellars, salvers and dishes, money, the sacred vessels of the chapel, the ornaments and books of the altar. Each pack horse had a groom in small turnout, every chariot had a fierce great mastiff on a leash standing in the cart or walking beneath it and every pack horse had a long tail monkey on its back. Then there were about 250 men marching six or ten abreast, singing as they went in the English fashion. At intervals came braces of stag hounds and greyhounds with their attendants, then the men at arms, with the shields and chargers of knights, then other men at arms and falconers carrying hawks on their wrists; after them the stewards, masters and servants of the Chancellor’s household, next the knights and clerks who were riding two by two and last of all came the Chancellor himself surrounded by some of his intimate friends.”
Clearly one of the functions of the embassy was the promotion of English beer exports. Some things change little over the centuries. This was only six years after a series of bad grape harvests had resulted in the then unprecedented, according to a contemporary source, export of beer to France.
The ridiculous waste of Becket’s ostentation offended the King of France, who had never lost the taste for austerity from his early training in a monastery, before the death of his elder brother brought him an unwelcome and unexpected succession to the throne. Eleanor had once complained that life with Louis had been like being married to a monk, rather than a man. Eventually, he became known as “Louis the Pious”. Louis proclaimed that he alone would provide the complete hospitality for Becket’s grotesque retinue and forbade any Frenchmen selling anything to the English party. Becket had to send his servants in disguise into the towns around Paris to acquire provisions and thwart the king’s posturing magnanimity. No doubt Louis had squirmed like one of the eels which, Fitzstephen records, the Chancellor acquired for the obscene price of 100 shillings.
Despite this tension about minor matters, the alliance was agreed. There is no doubt about the mutual interest involved. Henry was Louis’ most unruly and powerful subject. The lands which the King of France in fact controlled abutted the lands of Henry in each of his capacities as Duke of Normandy, Count of Anjou and Duke of Aquitaine. Border tensions between them was frequent. The possibility of insubordination omnipresent.
There was to be nothing sentimental about the dowry. This was a matter of power - a political merger rather than a marriage.
The basic building block of political power in the era, was the castle. In the four years since Henry had acceded to the throne of England in 1154, he had devoted a considerable proportion of his energy destroying the adulterine castles of his earls, including those of some of his strongest supporters before his accession.
Throughout Europe the medieval aristocracy ran what can only be described as a protection racket. Armed forces centred on a fortified base could ensure that all occupants of the surrounding countryside complied with the wishes of the castellan. Centuries after the last vestiges of the rule of law in Roman civilisation had disappeared from Europe, and at a time when a new system for the rule of law was only then being developed by the Church, the political system was founded on force.
The major castles of the era were formidable, smooth faced, dressed stone towers, built on sites with natural barriers like rivers or cliffs, with layers of internal walls and complex fortifications of drawbridges and gatehouses situated at the sole ground floor entrance, with narrow slits of windows, corner turrets and crenulated battlements. A related group of castles constituted defence in depth and completely controlled an area, harassing any army which ventured within a day’s return ride. The garrison within could do whatever it liked to the local farms and villages and expected obedience in return.
When Henry’s father Geoffrey, then only the Count of Anjou, forcibly acquired the dukedom of Normandy in pursuit of his wife’s claim to the inheritance of William the Conqueror, he had to give up control of the castle at Gizors, the most powerful fortification in an area known as the Vexin, a buffer zone between Normandy and the area controlled by the King of France. Henry, himself, when he succeeded his father as Duke of Normandy had to cede the whole of the Vexin region to the king as the price of his elevation. Henry never liked giving anything up. He always used his strengths to reinforce his position.
Vis a vis the king of France, Henry’s strength was the fact that he had produced sons. He sought the return of the Vexin as the dowry. Louis accepted in the knowledge that there was likely to be little practical disadvantage to him for some time. The arrangement was that the three key castles in the Vexin region would be placed into independent hands in the form of the Knights Templar. They would act as custodians during the engagement which, in view of the age of the children, was likely to be a very long one.
Emboldened by his new relationship with Louis, Henry decided to settle one of the few remaining untidy border issues in his empire: his claim as the Duke of Aquitaine to rule the neighbouring province of Toulouse and thus extend his empire across southern France to the Mediterranean.
Becket raised a force of 700 knights from his own resources and commanded them in the field. This was not conduct expected of a cleric. However, what really infuriated his colleagues in the English church, was the imposition of taxes on the church to pay for the Toulouse campaign. In 1159 the tax called scutage - by which the obligation to provide military support in kind was commuted to a money payment - increased dramatically. However, even worse, the king required, for the first time, a gift or donatum from the church - a form of tax hitherto imposed only on boroughs, money lenders, sheriffs and Jews. Thousands of marks of silver were extracted from bishops, abbots and abbesses. On one calculation their tax burden had multiplied six fold.
According to Gilbert Foliot, Bishop of London, this was “a sword plunged in the vitals the holy mother church”. Jean Anouilh in his play Becket, picked up this ringing phrase verbatim, brought it forward in time and had Becket as chancellor reply:
“My Lord and King has given me his seal with the three lions to guard. My mother is England now.”
Years later, John of Salisbury, during their joint exile, dwelt on this “improper and unjust extortion” and, whilst refusing to blame Becket alone, was not prepared to excuse him:
“He did not follow the dictates of greed but the dictates of necessity and I judge him to have fully deserved to be punished, especially at the hands of the King, who he was putting before God.”
John acknowledged that:
“Becket was on this occasion accessory to heavy, and even iniquitous transactions, and we know of no palliation for his conduct, except the fact that he seems never to have forfeited the friendship of Theobold.”
But Theobold had been looked after with a personal exemption from the tax, also extended to his immediate acolytes. This fact was not, it appears from John’s letter, known by either the Bishop of London or of Exeter, who both paid the full tax.
The Toulouse campaign ended in frustration. The Count of Toulouse had formed his own marriage alliance against Aquitaine by marrying the king’s sister. During the siege of Toulouse, Louis raised the stakes by personally coming to the city and entering the walls. Henry was in a great dilemma. He had fought often enough against Louis’ troops but he had never directly attacked the king, his overlord to whom he had sworn loyalty. Becket, impulsively, urged Henry to attack, but Henry would not. He understood better than his advisers what was at stake for Louis. The sons of the Count of Toulouse and of Louis’ sister were then the only males in the Capetian line. The future of his dynasty could turn on this alliance. Henry raised the siege.
Henry had another source of strength. This was a time of a schism in the papacy. Two popes were elected by rival factions in the College of Cardinals, taking the names of Victor and Alexander III. Everyone knew that one of the rival claimants was an anti-pope and that the other represented the true line of direct legitimacy that had been conferred on St Peter. The problem was deciding who was which.
The German Emperor favoured Victor. It took some years for Henry to finally commit himself. The majority of French bishops favoured Alexander and, no doubt, it was inconceivable that Henry as duke of Normandy could deal with one pope in that capacity and another pope as King of England. Henry requested advice, first from the English Church, which met in council at London in June 1160, just after the peace treaty had been finalised between Henry and Louis, and then from the Norman Church which met soon after. Both supported Alexander.
Henry was determined to take full advantage of his temporary power over the pope. He bargained his recognition for control of his border region, the Norman Vexin. Louis had promised to cede control of the area on the eventual marriage of his daughter to Henry’s heir. Practical control rested with the Knights Templar as custodians, upon the promise to hand them over to Henry when the marriage occurred.
Henry told Alexander’s representatives that he would not recognise Alexander unless the Church would turn a blind eye to a marriage of the six year old groom and the three year old bride. Alexander agreed. Notwithstanding Louis’ fury over this trick, the Knights Templar handed over the castles in accordance with their undertaking. Henry’s practical position had been substantially strengthened. In all these twists and turns Becket had been his most trusted adviser.
When Archbishop Theobold of Canterbury died in April 1161, Henry kept the see vacant for over a year. Becket, in his capacity as chancellor, took over the administration of the secular property of the see and collected the revenues on behalf of the king. Such depredations had been anticipated by Theobold himself who, in a formal will issued just before his death said:
“On behalf of almighty God and under pain of anathema we forbid any officer of our Lord the King to presume to lay rash hands on any property that is dedicated for the sole use of the monks of the Church of Canterbury. Further under threat of the same ban we forbid the alienation of any of the lands belonging to the Archbishop, and prohibit all cutting down and damage to the woods until our successor be appointed, save only for some essential purpose of the church or if the King command it with his own lips. Under the same threat we forbid that the clerks of our bishopric be oppressed by any undue exactions or unjust vexations and we order that all liberties and just customs which they had in the days of William of Happy Memory, my predecessor, continued to be observed.”
At the same time, Theobold wrote a last letter to the king:
“I earnestly entreat that you will deign to hear your faithful servant, whose loyalty towards you has never grown cold, now at the hour of his death. To you I commend the Church of Canterbury from whose hand by my ministration you received the governance of the realm. And do you, if it so please you, defend it from the assault of evil men; and make it your study to appoint in succession to myself a shepherd who may seem not unworthy of so great a see, a lover of religion and one who may be deemed acceptable to the Most High by reason of his virtue. In this matter do not seek the things that are yours but the things that are of God.”
It is difficult to see this as an endorsement of Becket. Becket, after all, until that point, had been an aide all of his life. His power had been exercised through his influence at court - first Theobold’s, then Henry’s. This was a derived, not a personal authority. Becket had never known the loneliness, nor the conflicting tensions, of ultimate, direct responsibility. Someone of Theobold’s temperament and experience may well have regarded this as an inadequate foundation for the role of archbishop.
Henry, as always, kept everyone in suspense about his intentions for the succession at Canterbury. He took full advantage of the opportunity to advance his own position. He obtained from the pope two documents. The first entitled him to have his son crowned as his successor by any bishop of his own choosing. The second was an order to Roger, Archbishop of York, requiring him to perform the coronation if Henry ever asked him to do so. The traditional role of the Archbishop of Canterbury to perform coronations was compromised to Henry’s distinct advantage. A future archbishop would not be able to threaten to refuse to perform this task which was, in a practical sense, the archbishop’s most important power over the monarchy. Henry never allowed any opportunity to pass until he had fully maximised the advantages for his own position, particularly his absolute freedom of action.
Nevertheless, the rumours were persistent that Henry intended to promote the appointment of Becket. During this period, whilst Becket was recuperating from an illness at the Church of St Gervais in Rouen, he was visited by an old acquaintance, the prior of the Augustinian monastery at Leicester, who must not have seen him during his entire chancellorship. The prior declaimed:
“What’s this? So you go in for capes with sleeves now, just like fowlers when carrying hawks! And you a clerk - unique I know, but plural in your benefices: Archdeacon of Canterbury, dean of Hastings, provost of York, canon here and canon there, custodian of the archbishopric and, as court rumour has it, archbishop to be.”
Becket denied any ambition for such an appointment, a statement he often repeated with a “whatever you do don’t throw me into the briar patch” quality about it. There is, however, no reason to doubt Becket’s additional observation, which the monk has passed on for posterity:
“For if it should come about that I am promoted, I know the King so well, indeed, inside out, that I would either have to lose his favour or, God forbid! neglect my duty to the Almighty.”
According to Herbert of Bosham - later the most intense zealot on Becket’s personal staff - when the king finally revealed to Becket that he intended to appoint him, Becket drew the king’s attention to his secular dress and said:
“How religious, how saintly, is the man whom you would appoint to that holy see and over so renowned and pious a body of monks. I know of a truth that, should God so dispose it, you would speedily turn your face away from me, and, the love which is now so great between us would be changed into the most bitter hatred. I know indeed that you would make many demands - for already you presume over much in ecclesiastical affairs - which I could never bear with equanimity.”
Herbert is not a reliable chronicler. It is not conceivable that Henry would have let so obvious a threat lie. It is probable that what had passed between the king and the chancellor was a general reference to the inevitability of a divergence of institutional interests and the effect that that must have on their hitherto excellent personal relationship. It is most unlikely that Becket ever said anything like “for already you presume overmuch in ecclesiastical affairs”. That observation has all the hallmarks of ex-post hagiography.
Nevertheless, it appears that Becket knew from the outset that conflict of a substantive character was inevitable. John of Salisbury confirms Becket’s opinion in the following terms:
“He rightly drew the conclusion that, if he accepted the post offered to him, he would either lose the royal favour of God or of the King. For he could not cleave to God and obey the royal will, or give precedence to the laws of the saints without making an enemy of the King.”
Another contemporary observer, Roger of Pontigny similarly records:
“Thomas knew full well that it was impossible to serve two masters, whose wills were so much at variance and that whoever was made Archbishop of Canterbury would be sure soon to offend either God or the King.”
Neither John nor Roger suggested Becket told Henry anything like this. Herbert of Bosham - who admits he was not present for the discussion he recounts - was no doubt anxious to protect his martyred master from any charge of false pretences.
Henry must have fully appreciated the tensions which the conflict of institutional interests would inevitably bring. Nevertheless he appeared to be confident of Becket’s ultimate loyalty. He had every reason to be.
The Empress Matilda, Henry’s mother, who had given him much useful realpolitik advice in the past - when he listened to her - was opposed to the appointment. She recalled how her first husband, the Holy Roman Emperor, Henry V, had promoted his Chancellor Adalbert - until then his loyal supporter in promoting imperial authority over the church against the papacy - to be Archbishop of Mainz, the most significant in Germany, as Canterbury was in England. Henry V had lived to regret this appointment. Adalbert used his power base as chancellor and archbishop to promote his personal ambitions, embracing the ideology of the reform papacy, including the independence of the church from secular rulers. Eventually Henry V imprisoned him for three years.
Henry II may also have forgotten the miraculous transformation wrought by his grandfather, namesake and model, Henry I, when he appointed his personal chaplain and longserving intimate at court to the office of Archbishop of York. Like Becket, Thurstan of York was not even a priest but a mere subdeacon at the time. Startling the canons of his new cathedral, Thurstan turned on his benefactor and refused to obey Henry’s demands that he profess obedience to the Archbishop of Canterbury. Henry had been outraged at Thurstan’s ingratitude. Like his father, William the Conqueror, Henry I found it administratively convenient to have a church organisation which was precisely parallel with his own territory - just as the Archbishop of Rouen covered the same area as his duchy of Normandy.
Casting aside these precedents, Henry II determined to promote Becket’s appointment as Archbishop of Canterbury.
The selection of a new archbishop was, formally, a matter for the monks of the cathedral chapter. This was of considerable political significance. The claims of the reform papacy for the independence of the church from secular influence had been the major political conflict of Christendom for almost a century.
By canon law, no ecclesiastical office could be invested by secular hand. To do so was to taint the sacred nature of the lineal line of descent of legitimate authority from Christ and his Apostles. On the other hand the king had a very real interest in determining the identity of one of his major barons who, in the case of the Archbishop of Canterbury, would hold as much land, with attendant obligations of service upon the king, not least the provision of knights, as any secular baron. According to the Domesday Book, the Archbishop of Canterbury held land of the value of £1500, which put the occupant in the top echelon of barons.
Nevertheless, the church was at pains to ensure that it, and it alone, determined by a process of canonical election who would occupy each office. Only a few years before, on 1 February 1156, Hadrian IV, the only English pope, had promulgated a formal edict which prohibited the consecration of a bishop “who had not been freely elected and without previous nomination by the secular power”.
In the case of Becket’s selection, Henry made it clear where his preference lay. A delegation to the monks of the cathedral chapter was led by Henry’s chief administrator, the co-justiciar Richard de Luci, accompanied by his brother, Walter the Abbot of Battle and three bishops: Hilary of Chichester, Bartholomew of Exeter and Walter of Rochester, Theobold’s brother. Richard addressed the packed chapter house:
“The King is most zealous in everything which concerns the things of God and displays the utmost devotion to Holy Church, especially towards this Church of Canterbury, which he recognises in all humility, loyalty and filial affection as his particular mother in the Lord. Wherefore be it known that the King accords you freedom of election, provided however, that you choose a man worthy of such great office and equal to the burden thereof.”
This was the barest possible obeisance to the form of “free election” by the cathedral chapter. The reservation by the king of the right to decide who was “worthy”, reflects the substance. After some controversy about the fact that Becket was not a monk - and no doubt other unrecorded reservations - the chapter bowed to the inevitable and “elected” Becket, “unanimously” as the record proclaims. In practical terms there could be no question that the king’s wish would prevail.
The monks themselves, particularly the senior officeholders of the chapter, had family connections whose property and interests could be subject to depredation by a hostile king. Even more significantly, the chapter itself and its future abbot, the archbishop, had a wide range of interests that could be adversely affected by Royal disapproval. I give only one example concerning a legal dispute in 1127 during the time of Henry I.
I mentioned in the last lecture that there was considerable conflict between Christchurch and the other local monastery, St Augustine’s. The town of Sandwich was a significant port and Christchurch claimed a monopoly over the tolls and customs duty on trade through the port. On the other side of the harbour there was some land owned by the abbot of St Augustine’s. It was also a convenient place for ships to tie up. St Augustine’s had secretly received the tolls and custom of foreign traders. This had led to frequent disputes, including physical conflicts between the agents of the Abbot of St Augustines and agents of the Archbishop of Canterbury. As the formal record of the case recorded:
“Wherefore many disputes and quarrels, without number broke out among them, while the ministers of Christchurch rightfully and consistently tried to retain the ancient custom, [the Abbot’s men], with cunning and guile and daring fierceness, tried to strengthen their hold on what they had wrongfully seized.”
Henry I ordered that an assembly of local residents should determine where the rights lay. The truth was to be found by “twelve lawful men of Dover and twelve lawful men of the neighbourhood of Sandwich who are neither the men of the Archbishop nor the men of the Abbot”. This early form of jury declared that the port, tolls and maritime customs of Sandwich belonged to the monks of Christchurch.
In this as in many other ways, the freedom, autonomy and prosperity of the cathedral chapter depended upon the exercise of royal justice. The chapter and many of the monks were potentially litigants in the kings’ court - no doubt some were so engaged at the very time. In those courts, justice was personal and not infrequently arbitrary. In any such matter Thomas, if he remained as chancellor, could seek revenge.
The next step in the appointment was the acceptance of the nominee by all the social orders. Bishops, abbots, priors and barons from throughout the realm, gathered in the monks’ refectory at Westminster Abbey, in the presence of Henry’s son and heir, also called Henry, then seven years of age, acting as the king’s representative.
Summoned into the refectory, Becket maintained the facade of reluctance, as if all this furious energy occurring at the direction of the king could somehow prove completely futile. He referred, no doubt by a prearrangement hammered out in detailed private negotiations between the king’s representatives and those of the Church, to the fact that he was “unredeemed from his own burden”, namely the chancellorship. Speaking as the senior bishop on behalf of the English Church, Henry of Winchester addressed the king’s son who had been given formal delegated authority by his father with an undertaking that his “decisions” would be ratified:
“The Chancellor, our archbishop elect has now for long enjoyed the highest place in the household of the King your father and in the whole realm, which he has had entirely under his governance and nothing has been done in the kingdom during this time of office save at his command. We demand that he should be handed over to us and God’s church free and absolved from all ties and service to the court and from all suits, accusations or other charges and that from this hour and henceforth he may be at liberty and leisure to pursue freely the service of God.”
The fact that such a release was thought necessary may indicate the degree of suspicion with which Becket was greeted by significant elements of the church. No doubt with the king’s prior knowledge, the young Henry accepted the condition in his name. Decades later five of Becket’s biographers referred to the release giving, as is quite usual with recollection of such oral promises, five different versions of its terms.
Becket himself, according to his biographers, muttered some further expressions of humility and reluctance - the veracity of which can be judged by the fact that he must have sworn fealty to Henry for the archbishop’s secular property before he left Normandy, such an oath being an absolute precondition to his consecration and there being no suggestion of any visit by Becket to Normandy after the assembly at Westminster, which confirmed his selection as archbishop.
Henry of Winchester, now an elder statesman and a somewhat mellowed power-broker, acknowledged Becket’s expression of sorrow for past offences and urged the archbishop elect to let the future atone for the past. Drawing on a pertinent precedent he reminded Thomas of Paul who had been transformed from Saul, a great persecutor of the church into, and I quote Bishop Henry’s words, “the greatest prop of her in word and example and glorified her at last in his blood at his death”. Many in that conclave would have reason to recall the analogy as prophetic.
On 2 June 1162 Becket was ordained a priest by his first patron, Theobold’s brother Walter. The Archbishop of York, Roger of Pont L’Èveque, his contemporary and at different times ally and rival in the Theobold household, claimed by formal seniority the right to consecrate Becket as archbishop. Roger, however - personal feelings no doubt reinforcing the longstanding institutional rivalry between York and Canterbury - refused to make a formal profession of obedience. Becket, slipping naturally into his new institutional role, refused to accept consecration from Roger unless he made such a profession. Accordingly, Henry of Winchester performed the ceremony in Canterbury Cathedral at an early hour on 3 June, the Sunday after Pentecost, which Becket would later nominate as a national festival of the Holy Trinity, already celebrated as such by the monks of his cathedral chapter dedicated to the Trinity, and which was eventually adopted as such by the whole Church.
With the barons and knights thronging in the knave and the choir packed with bishops, abbots and priors and the clergy and common folk packing and surrounding the cathedral, Becket, whom many had seen only in the most sumptuous of clothes, emerged from the vestry, clad only in the black cassock and white surplice of a priest. He stood before the elite of England, knowing that not one of them expected any spiritual guidance from him.
In accordance with ceremonial tradition the gospels were opened at random and the adventitious text - like a cryptic message from the Delphic oracle - was Christ’s curse in Matthew 21:19:
“ ‘Let no fruit grow on thee henceforth forever.’ And presently the fig tree withered away.”
None of the later hagiographers were prepared to say that this text contained an omen.
The new priest celebrated his first mass as primate of the English Church.
Becket’s institutional metamorphosis was immediate. Without Henry’s permission - indeed without his knowledge - Becket discarded the chrysalis of the chancellorship.
Henry had every reason to expect that the two roles could be successfully combined. His grandfather, Henry I, when similarly preoccupied with his claims in France, had made Roger Bishop of Salisbury, his viceroy in England. Throughout Henry I’s reign, Roger remained the second most powerful man in England. Louis VII of France had relied on Abbot Suger of St Denis as his closest adviser and, indeed, as regent of France during his absence on crusade. Archbishop Lanfranc of Canterbury had performed a similar function of regency during William I’s absences from England.
The requirements of the canon law, that a priest could not hold secular office, had been frequently breached or modified. The papal dispensation - which on one account had already been granted by Pope Alexander III for Becket - had been readily available for Louis VII of France when his chancellor Hugh of Champfleury was appointed Bishop of Soissons in 1159. The precedents in the Holy Roman Empire, on the other side of the papal schism, were just as clear. The Archbishop of Mainz had served as Frederick I’s chancellor for Germany and the Archbishop of Cologne was performing similar functions in Italy and, as was notorious throughout Europe, had become the Emperor’s most trusted confidante.
Becket who had never had any difficult being both chancellor and archdeacon, found that he could not accept any such overlapping lines of loyalty as an archbishop.
As Ralph Decito - perhaps the most objective and perceptive contemporary chronicler - put it:
“As he put on those robes, reserved by God’s command to the highest of his clergy, he changed not only his apparel but his caste of mind.”
William Fitzstephen - an accurate reporter but no stranger to exaggeration - was more lyrical:
“In his consecration, Thomas was anointed with the visible unction of God’s mercy: putting off the secular man, he now put on Jesus Christ … The glorious Archbishop Thomas, contrary to the expectation of the king and everyone else, so utterly abandoned the world and so suddenly experienced that conversion, which is God’s handiwork, that all men marvelled thereat.”
In the intricate web of interlocking loyalties that provided the moral framework of medieval society, it was common for a person to owe loyalties to more than one superior, perhaps holding land from rival lords. Conflict was often resolved by acknowledging one relationship as dominant, so that the feudal oath of fealty to one’s “liege lord” would take priority in case of dissension. Becket plainly intended to give the Church, as an institution, priority in this sense, over his loyalty to the monarchy as an institution and, therefore, over any personal loyalty to the monarch. It was quite clear that he regarded this, from the outset, as a matter of a duty.
None of the chroniclers record any reasons advanced by Becket for resigning as chancellor. No doubt there were numerous pros and cons which he considered in his own mind, before taking the final decision, on balance. He knew Henry well enough to realise that the king would make demands on him, in relation to the administration of the church, which would be adverse to the interests of the church. Resistance to Henry’s will was not often possible and never welcome. Becket may well have thought that the inevitable confrontation would be even more bitter, precisely because of the loyalty which the king would feel to be his due by reason of Becket’s occupation of the office of chancellor. Henry may not be able to make demands, or at least not make demands in the same way, in the case of an arms length archbishop.
Perhaps, paradoxically, Becket understood that he could not truly perform the office of chancellor with the singleminded loyalty which he believed - as his entire conduct of that role attested - that the position demanded and deserved. As a matter of duty, he knew he would give priority to the interests of the church.
His resignation - which came as much of a surprise to his supporters as his detractors - was the clearest possible manifestation of his devotion to his new duties and his determination to meet the expectations of his new constituency. Becket had a very strong sense of duty. It was now his duty to show leadership by example, based on a recognition of the worth and validity of the beliefs and practices of the community which he now led.
Becket gathered around him a personal staff on the Theobold model. They spent hours listening to scripture readings during the household dinners and thereafter disputing religious issues in the archbishop’s presence, disputes which were heavily weighted to the new canon law and to theology. His staff did not include ascetic monks who gave greater weight to personal devotion than to practical matters. One visiting monk to the archbishop’s table permitted himself a smile at dinner and immediately felt the lash of the archbishop’s tongue:
“If I mistake not brother there is more greediness in your eating of your beans than in my eating of this pheasant.”
One is reminded of the rebuke by the ascetic Cicstercian abbot during Becket’s later exile, who dismissed Becket’s fear of martyrdom with the observation:
“You eat and drink too much to be made a martyr.”
The commentators are unanimous about the transformation in Becket’s demeanour and personal conduct after his appointment. However, these biographies were all written after the martyrdom. It is not always possible to identify the hagiography. Most likely to be true is William Fitzstephen’s version when he recounts a new “gravity” in Becket’s speech and makes the observation that the new priest “handled the holy sacraments with utmost reverence”, noting his “diligence” in prayer and in the study of scriptures. William Fitzstephen said: “He was at pains to fulfil the functions of a good archbishop.”
It is much more difficult to accept the later assertions of strict personal piety including mortification of the flesh by the wearing of a hairshirt, regular flagellation and the intensity of his private prayer frequently leading to tears. All of these recollections, which post date the martyrdom, share a common characteristic. The acts were all performed in secret.
In January 1163, Henry returned to England. Becket greeted him at Southampton accompanied by the young Prince Henry, whom the king had placed in Becket’s household for training. The warmth of the reunion was obvious to all, though some contemporary chroniclers claimed Henry dissembled a gathering resentment.
For the next few days, king and archbishop displayed all their former intimacy: riding together and engaging in private conversation of which there is no record. Henry had kept the position of chancellor vacant - probably hoping that Becket would change his mind. He allowed its functions to be performed in an acting capacity by Geoffrey Ridel, Becket’s own protégé and former deputy. Until this moment, Becket had continued to hold the fiefs, honours and benefices which he had accumulated over the years. He even continued to hold the lucrative archdeaconry of Canterbury, to which he had originally been appointed by, Theobold. Apparently at Henry’s insistence, Becket now resigned as archdeacon and appointed Ridel to the office. Significantly, this may have been a function of Henry’s impish sense of humour. This transfer emphasised the fact that the archbishop, who now proclaimed the impossibility of serving two masters, had not always been punctilious in this regard. On Henry’s part, the incident revealed a degree of posturing that could easily descend into a determination to humiliate.
A number of tensions accumulated during the first year of Becket’s occupancy of the archbishop’s office. His strength lay, of course, in his role in the European order of Christendom. I have addressed the significance of this European dimension in a lecture to the Selden Society in May of this year. The role of the church was in significant measure governmental. The church levied taxes called tithes. Baptism was a kind of citizenship. Western Christendom had performed the ultimate act of a supernational authority: it went to war as a single polity in the crusades. The church, under the monarchical authority of the papacy, exercised legislative, executive and judicial authority over, broadly, the same territory as the European Union now exercises similar authority.
The year after his appointment, Becket was summoned to a meeting of the European Parliament, a Council of the Church, to be held at Tours. From the time of his landing at Gravelines, where he was welcomed by the Count of Flanders, Becket proceeded by triumphal procession via Normandy and Maine to Tours, in the heart of Henry’s ancestral territory.
At the meeting of the Council, which opened on 19 May 1163, Becket found himself in the presence of a magnificent assembly: 17 cardinals, 24 bishops and 414 abbots.
The pope presiding at this Council was a cautious Siennese intellectual and canon lawyer, Roland Bandinelli, who had assumed the name Alexander III. He found himself driven into exile to France, with the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick Barbarosa in control of Germany and much of Northern Italy, supporting the schismatic pope, Victor.
As a cardinal and chancellor to his predecessor Pope Hadrian IV, Alexander had publicly defied Frederick at an Imperial Diet at Besançon. He delivered a letter from Hadrian in which reference was made, ambiguously, to the emperor holding his title from the pope, in a feudal sense. Amidst the uproar provoked by this assertion in the Imperial Court, Alexander had stood his ground and proclaimed defiantly:
“From whom then does he have the empire if not from our Lord the Pope”.
Frederick, like King Henry II, thought that he held his title directly from God.
Alexander had been driven into exile by the combined force of the Emperor and the always turbulent factions within the city of Rome. He convened the Council at Tours to re-assert the central role of the papacy and proclaim the unity of the church.
At the Council, the Archbishop of York, Roger of Pont L’Èveque pressed a claim for precedence over the Archbishop of Canterbury. According to one monk: “he made everything resound with a great whirl of words”.
Roger, who was Becket’s predecessor as Archdeacon of Canterbury, had taken the worldly ways of that office, to York. One, somewhat jaundiced contemporary, observed:
“Roger was a learned and eloquent man, and in worldly affairs, prudent almost to singularity. In his episcopal office, that is in the cure of souls, he was less conscientious …”
Adding for good measure:
“His design was rather to shear than to feed the sheep of God.”
Roger had, for some years, been challenging Canterbury’s claim of primacy over York. He relied on the original appointment of St Augustine himself by Pope Gregory the Great, which had indicated that the primacy should follow seniority of appointment. Indeed in January 1161, Alexander had confirmed this position in a letter to Roger, when he said:
“We forbid by apostolic authority that the Archbishop of Canterbury should demand from York, or that York should offer to Canterbury, any sort of profession. Nor in any way should York be subject to the authority of Canterbury. But according to the Constitution of St Gregory, this honorific distinction should apply perpetually: whoever has been consecrated first, takes precedence.”
The conflict between York and Canterbury had caused divisions in the English Church for almost a century.
When Alexander’s emissaries had first visited England to issue invitations to the Council, they communicated the pope’s regrets that the king supported Canterbury in its dispute with York. Alexander suggested that the issue should be resolved by the Council. Henry believed that this was a matter for England and, no doubt, for him. He insisted on a condition for permitting his clergy to attend the Council that “no new custom would be brought into the kingdom, nor its dignity in any way reduced by any action of the Council.”
A key component of the papal reform movement was the expansion of the direct administrative and judicial oversight by the centralised papacy. Henry’s demand was inconsistent with this programme in two ways. First, it asserted a non-canonical lay interference in ecclesiastical affairs. Secondly, the intervention of regional overlords circumscribed the direct administrative and judicial authority of the papacy.
At the height of the schism, Alexander was in no position to resist Henry’s demand, which may well have been sought by Becket. He accepted the condition imposed by the king.
Becket had attended a meeting of the European Parliament before. A general Council of the Church had met in Rheims in March 1148. King Stephen had forbidden the then new Archbishop of Canterbury, Theobold, from attending. Stephen had taken that step in retaliation against Pope Eugenius III, who had appointed an Archbishop of York without consultation with the king. This was the subject of my address to the Selden Society.
Theobold decided to defy his king. He set sail on a tiny fishing boat to cross the channel in stormy conditions. Theobold described his voyage as “more a swim than a sail”. He was accompanied by a single aide, Thomas Becket. This was no doubt a formative experience for the young cleric.
As I indicated in my address to the Selden Society, one of the issues that Theobold raised at Rheims was the question of the primacy of Canterbury over York. It was not an auspicious time to raise this issue. On the agenda of the Council were a series of identical legal appeals.
The Bishop of Paris claimed jurisdiction over the Abbot of St Germain, the Bishop of Autun claimed jurisdiction over Vezelay, the Archbishop of Rouen over Fècamp, the Archbishop of Sens over Ferriers and St Colombe, the Archbishop of Lyons asserted primacy and right of obedience from the Archbishops of Rouen and Sens, as well as Tours, the Archbishop of Vienne claimed the subjection of Bourges, the Archbishop of Bourges claimed the subjection of both the Archbishop of Norbonne and the Bishop of Le Pui. The greatest merriment was occasioned by the claims of Alberic, Archbishop of Trèves, to the subjection of Rheims itself. John of Salisbury reported that the gathering thought him mad. A few months later, at the succeeding conference of Italian bishops, Eugenius would have to deal with the mutual claims of precedence over each other between the Archbishops of Ravenna and Milan, the claims of Milan over Genoa, the claims of Ravenna over Piacenza and other such jurisdictional spats. All these claims were rejected or deferred.
Becket could not have failed to notice the contrast between his furtive departure for Rheims in 1148 as Theobold’s sole aide, with his new status in 1163, as a prince of the church in his won right, at Tours.
Alexander went out of his way to court Becket - sending most of his attendant cardinals to greet him outside the city walls, rising to meet him almost as an equal, in the ante-chamber of the papal rooms. He sat him on his right hand during the Council. Roger of Pont L’Èveque, was pointedly seated on Alexander’s left. Alexander, always the diplomat, indicated that the cathedral at Tours was “short and narrow” and accordingly it was not such as to permit an organised arrangement of the participants. He emphasised that no precedent would be set by the seating pattern and, in accordance with condition imposed by Henry - possibly at Becket’s behest - that no “custom” of England would be upset.
Becket did, however, have a corporate project at Tours, a project that indicated the extent to which he identified with his new office. He sought the canonisation of Anselm, one of his predecessors as archbishop.
This proposal could well have been regarded by Henry as a provocation. In 1163, Anselm was probably best remembered as the archbishop who had openly defied both William Rufus and Henry I, sons of and successive successors of, William the Conqueror, the present king’s great uncle and grandfather. The practices of Henry I were - as was well known to everyone, not least Becket -Henry II’s universal reference point and abiding model.
St Anselm was probably the greatest theologian between St Augustine of Hippo and St Thomas Aquinas. Accepted today as the founder of scholasticism, the dominant philosophical school of the era, he is perhaps best known as the originator of the ontological argument for the existence of God: the very fact that we can conceive of so perfect a concept, proves that God must exist. This reasoning besotted great philosophers like Hegel, although Schopenhauer dismissed it as a “charming joke”. The central premise of the argument - if I can think of it, it must exist - is reasoning for which Anselm should, long since, have been adopted as the patron saint of science fiction writers.
Anselm’s personal preoccupation was that of a monk. This was manifest in the deepest personal conviction that his own salvation lay in the monastic life. He always exhibited disdain for personal ambition. He left his native Italy attracted by the ideological fervour that focused on the abbey at Bec under the inspired leadership of the Italian canon lawyer Lanfranc, who himself had sought spiritual fulfilment in this isolated monastery in Normandy, and whom Anselm would eventually succeed, both as prior of the abbey and as Archbishop of Canterbury. Reluctantly accepting successive administrative posts as prior, abbot and archbishop, Anselm adopted as the overriding goal of ecclesiastic leadership, the precept of Gregory the Great - founder of the English church - “the art of arts is the guidance of souls”.
From the time that Gregory had sent Augustine on a special mission to England in 597, the relationship between the English church and the papacy had been direct and close. On St Peter’s day each year, the English church collected what was known as “Peter’s pence” or the “Rome penny”. No other kingdom paid such a tax to the papacy.
It is, perhaps, the most revealing manifestation of the central significance of institutional loyalty for the temper of the times that St Anselm, of all people, accepted the preservation of the institutional interests of the archbishopric of Canterbury as an overriding obligation. This was a man who was preoccupied with a life of study and of teaching and of spiritual contemplation. His primary focus in life was the rigid observance of religious and liturgical routine. His leadership consisted of endless rounds of ordinations, consecrations, visitations, of discipline and of judgment, the inspection of churches, abbeys, priories and whenever possible, writing the great works that have stood the test of philosophical time. Nevertheless, Anselm devoted an enormous amount of personal energy to protecting the inherited rights of his see.
His determination in this respect was clear from the outset. When William Rufus, son and immediate successor of the Conqueror, offered Anselm appointment to Canterbury, Anselm demanded as a condition of acceptance that he would be invested with all of the Canterbury land exactly as it had been held by Lanfranc. William agreed, with some minor exceptions of enfeoffments which he had made during the three years he deliberately kept the office vacant and collected the profits thereof. They were minor matters as far as the property of the Archbishop of Canterbury was concerned. Anselm refused to accept appointment if there was any exception and the king had to back down.
Throughout his life Anselm, manifested a complete inability to compromise on any matter which he regarded as one of principle. He regarded the property of the see as in this category. A good example is the case of the manor Church of St Marys, which stood on the peak of Harrow Hill - overlooking the flat clay country of Middlesex, with panoramic views backed to the walled city of London. It still exists with some of the original structure, next to Harrow School.
Like most local churches at the time, St Marys remained the property of the land owner. Throughout Christendom, the Roman Catholic Church had struggled to ensure that consecration was the function of the church’s own administrative representative, i.e. the bishop of the particular diocese. The manor of Harrow, together with its new church, was on the property of the Archbishop of Canterbury held by him in his capacity as a feudal lord. However, it lay within the diocese of London. The Bishop of London made a claim to be entitled to dedicate the church. Within the interstices of every such right, there lay the prospect of a fee. Anselm rejected the bishop’s request. On 4 January 1094 he dedicated the church himself.
Anselm had twice chosen exile, rather than accept the assertion by the king of England of an alleged customary right to interfere with the free conduct by the church of its affairs. The first disputes with William Rufus were about land. In general, Anselm displayed a great respect for royal authority, but he would not yield on any aspect of the property of the see, and when this led to conflict with the king, Anselm chose exile.
In his absence, Henry I succeeded his brother William Rufus, after a fortuitous hunting accident which, by what is unlikely to have been a coincidence, Henry was in a position to immediately exploit at the expense of his elder brother in Normandy. Henry had, to the consternation of all concerned with the rights of Canterbury, been crowned as king by the Archbishop of York.
Anselm returned to England, but within three years was in exile again. During his first exile, he had personally attended a Council of the Church at which Urban II reaffirmed the prohibition against lay investiture of ecclesiastical office. Anselm returned with an unshakeable opposition to any form of lay investiture by reason of his duty of obedience to the pope. He had no sense of inconsistency - Anselm had originally been invested by William Rufus with crozier and ring. Consistency, of course, is a virtue only for mediocrities.
No-one at the time knew that they were living during the period of the “investiture dispute”, but it was the central political conflict of the era. The claim of the church to libertas ecclesiae was the ideological and symbolical centrepiece of the papal program that created a united Europe. The clergy, in its organisational structure of the church, provided both the intellectual and the administrative infrastructure of a European order.
The program of Gregory VII was based on the independence of the church from all lay interference in ecclesiastical appointments, in the exercise by the church of its religious functions and, much more controversially, in the administration by the church of its temporal rights of property. To this had been added the claim for the immunity of clerics from secular jurisdiction. This corporate independence of the ecclesiastical organisation and the clerical caste was to become of central significance in the relationship between Becket and Henry II. That, however, was only the most dramatic example of an institutional conflict that pervaded Europe for centuries.
Anselm had approached this conflict as one on which he could not compromise. Eventually, the papacy and the monarchy negotiated a settlement which was reflected in the Concordat of Bec in 1107, a compromise which proved a model for the rest of Europe. This permitted bishops to do formal feudal homage for their worldly possessions, so long as the act of homage took place prior to their consecration as bishops or abbots. In exchange, Henry I had given up any claim on the part of the monarchy to confer the insignia of ecclesiastical office.
Anselm regarded it as his duty to ensure that nothing which had once been dedicated to God or the saints should be withdrawn or diminished. To do so was a sin. This was a matter of religious observance. Like every abbot or bishop, he believed that in some ways he became the persona of the saints to whom his church was dedicated. In a sense he stood in their place. He was accountable to them as a trustee and custodian. This obligation was assumed by him with his consecration oath of fidelity to the church of Canterbury and its saints.
This role as trustee or custodian had behind it the driving force of the corporate identity of the monastic community of the cathedral. The intensity of an all encompassing communal life created a complete identification with the monastery and elevated corporate continuity to the standing of a dominant virtue. As Sir Richard Southern, Anselm’s most recent biographer has said, in pursuit of the institutional prerogatives of his see, no compromise was possible. He “knew no moderation, moderation was sin”. To surrender would be to endanger his soul.
During his period of office, Anselm asserted, for the first time an authority over the Welsh church, his realm advancing with the Norman invasion. He asserted a permanent legatine authority in an ex-officio capacity and opposed the various papal legates sent to England as inconsistent with his function. He also asserted ecclesiastical jurisdiction over the whole British Isles and, in particular, primacy over the only other archbishop in the area, the Archbishop of York.
No messenger of his went to Rome in the early years of Henry I’s reign without a plea for papal recognition of Canterbury’s primacy. Lanfranc had forced the then Archbishop of York to acknowledge the primacy, but that did not bind his successors. Only the pope could ensure that that occurred.
When a new Archbishop of York hesitated before making the profession of obedience, Anselm wrote to the pope that without such submission:
“… The Church of England will be torn asunder and brought to desolation … and the vigour of apostolic discipline will in no small measure be weakened. As for myself, I could on no account remain in England, for I neither ought to, nor can, suffer the primacy of our church to be destroyed in my life time.”
His last recorded act, just before his death in 1109, was a letter threatening ex-communication to the new Archbishop of York, if he assumed office without a profession of obedience to Canterbury. The fervour of his identification is manifest in this correspondence:
“Thomas, in the sight of God, I Anselm, Archbishop of Canterbury and Primate of all Britain, speak to you and speaking in the name of God himself I now forbid you to assume the priestly office which you undertook at my bidding in my diocese as my sovereign and I charge you not to presume to intermeddle in any pastoral care until you abandon the revolt which you have started against the Church of Canterbury and make the profession of submission to that church which your predecessors … made following the old established custom … on you yourself too, Thomas, under penalty of the … curse in God’s name I lay this prohibition, that you are never to accept consecration to the episcopate of York without first making the profession which your predecessors … made to the Church of Canterbury.”
Becket’s pursuit of the canonisation of Anselm was revealing in a number of respects. No-one, including Pope Alexander, would have any doubt that such an act could be regarded as provocative by Henry II. As I have said Henry I, with whom Anselm was in almost continual conflict over the prerogatives of the church, was well known to be Henry II’s universal reference point and abiding model. No doubt for that reason, notwithstanding Becket’s representations at the Council of Tours, Alexander deferred Becket’s proposal that Anselm be canonised until the English church as a whole could consider it.
Of particular note was the sense of identification that Becket appeared to display with Anselm’s extraordinary rigidity and his inability to compromise on matters relating to the interests of the church as a whole and, in particular, relating to the interests of the office of archbishop of Canterbury.
Anselm’s canonisation would have to wait. Immediately upon his return from Tours, Becket would take the first steps towards his own.
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