Father Corapi's Biography

But the early days were not auspicious. In 1125 the ex-abbot Pontius came out of Italy with an armed following, threw himself into Cluny when Peter was absent, drove out all who would not accept him, and proceeded to conduct the monastery and its affairs in a most disorderly way. Both parties were summoned to Rome, and Pope Honorius II sentenced Pontius to be degraded and imprisoned. An unhappy controversy sprang up between Citeaux and Cluny, St Bernard accusing the Cluniacs of being relaxed, and they retorting that Cistercian life impracticable. The general trend of the controversy showed Abbot Peter as more representative of the tolerant wideness of St Benedict’s rule and in so far as the Cistercian complaints were justified Peter, together with Abbot Suger of Saint-Denis, ultimately met the criticism by inaugurating a reform and tightening up discipline. It was at this time, in 1130, that Abbot Peter visited England, when an attempt was made to bring the abbey of Peterborough under Cluny. In 1139 he journeyed into Spain, where he found two translators who knew Arabic, and for the advancement of learning he paid them well to make for him Latin versions of the Koran and of some astronomical works.

Peter the Venerable was revered as a saint by the faithful at large as well as by his own congregation. The Holy See has never formally approved this cultus, but his name was inserted in French martyrologies and his feast is observed in the diocese of Arras on December 29.

Two medieval lives of Peter the Venerable are preserved to us. The first and more important is by Rodulf, his constant companion. The second is not properly a biography but a collection of extracts from the chronicle of Cluny. Both are printed in Migne, PL., vol. clxxxix, cc. 15—42, and some other materials in the form of poems or panegyrics are added in the same prolegomenon to Peter’s own writings and letters. It is from these last that our knowledge of him and his character is mainly derived. An excellent account of the holy abbot and his literary work is furnished by P. Séjourné in DTC., vol. xii (1933), cc. 2065—2082 and there is also a good article by G. Grützmacher in the Realencyklopadie für protestantische Theologie und Kirche, vol. xv, pp. 222—226. The bulk of this article may be read in English in the Expository Times for 1904 (vol. xv, pp. 536—539). See further, J. de Ghellinck, Le mouvement théologique au XII^e Siècle (1914); Manitius, Geschichte der lateinischen Literatur des Mittelalters, vol. iii (593,), pp. 136—144; and J. Leclercq, Pierre le Vénérable (1946), an excellent work.

1170 Thomas Becket (of Canterbury) BM (RM)
 Cantuáriæ, in Anglia, natális sancti Thomæ, Epíscopi et Mártyris, qui, ob defensiónem justítiæ et ecclesiásticæ immunitátis, in Basílica sua, ab impiórum hóminum factióne percússus gládio, Martyr migrávit ad Christum.
       At Canterbury in England, the birthday of St. Thomas, bishop and martyr, who, for the defence of justice and ecclesiastical immunity, was struck with the sword in his own basilica by a faction of wicked men, and thus went to Christ as martyr.

Others say that her name was Rohesia; she was a Norman like her husband. Their son was born on St Thomas’s day 1118, in the city, and he was sent to school with the canons regular at Merton in Surrey. When he was twenty-one he lost his mother, and soon after his father. Gilbert’s means had been seriously diminished, and Thomas went into the office “of a relative in London, one Osbert Eightpence (Huit­deniers). He was also employed by Richer de l’Aigle, who used to take him out hawking and hunting and encouraged in Thomas the love of field-sports that never left him. One day when he was in pursuit of game his hawk made a stoop at a duck and dived after it into a river. Thomas, fearing to lose his hawk, leaped into the water and the rapid stream carried him down to a mill, where only the sudden stopping of the wheel, which appeared miraculous, saved him. This incident is characteristic of Thomas’s impetuosity, rather than a cause of his “taking life more seriously” {It is traditionally located at a place called Wade’s Mill in Hertfordshire, on the Rib between Ware and St Edmund’s College, a spot better known for its association with another Thomas, viz. Clarkson, the slavery abolitionist.}

In the Norse Thomas Saga Erkibyskups the brilliant young ecclesiastic is described as, “slim of growth and pale of hue, with dark hair, a long nose and straightly-featured face. Blithe of countenance was he, winning and loveable in his conversation, frank of speech but slightly stuttering in his talk, so keen of discernment and understanding that he could always make difficult questions plain after a wise manner.” It is such men that monarchs like to have around them. Moreover, it was the diplomacy of Thomas of London that had obtained from the pope, Bd Eugenius III, discouragement of the succession to the throne of Stephen’s son Eustace, thus making the crown secure to Henry of Anjou. Accordingly we find him in 1155, at the age of thirty-six, appointed chancellor by King Henry II.

“Thomas now”, says his secretary, Herbert of Bosham, “as it were laid aside the archdeacon and took on the duties of chancellor, which he discharged with en­thusiasm and ability”, and his talents had full scope, for only that of the justiciar equaled the importance of the chancellor. As a later chancellor and martyr named Thomas was the personal friend as well as the servant of his sover­eign, Henry VIII, so Becket was a friend of Henry II—but with a yet greater degree of intimacy. It was said that they had but one heart and one mind, and this being so it can hardly be questioned that to Becket’s influence were partly due those reforms for which Henry is justly praised, e.g. his measures to secure justice and equitable dealing by a more uniform system of law. But their friendship was not confuted to a common interest in affairs of state, and their personal relations at times of relaxation have been aptly described as “frolicsome”.

One of the outstanding virtues of Thomas the Chancellor was unquestionably magnificence—but it is to be feared that he erred by excess of it. His household compared with that of the king, and when he was sent into France to negotiate a royal marriage his personal retinue numbered two hundred men there were several hundred more, knights and esquires, clerics and servants, in the column, eight wagon-loads of presents, music and singers, hawks and hounds, monkeys and mastiffs.* {*Two wagons, FitzStephen tells us, were laden with beer in iron-bound casks, to be given to the French, “who like that kind of drink; for it is wholesome, clear, wine-coloured and of a better taste.”}  The French gaped and asked, “If this is the chancellor’s state, what can the king’s be like?” His entertainments were on a correspondingly generous scale, and his liberality to the poor proportionate. In 1159 Henry raised an army of mercenaries in France to recover his wife’s county of Toulouse. In the resulting war Becket served, followed by seven hundred of his own knights, and showed himself not only a good general, but a good fighting-man as well. Clad in armour he led assaults and even, cleric though he was, engaged in hand-to-hand encounters. It is not surprising that the prior of Leicester, meeting him at Rouen, exclaimed, “What do you mean by dressing like that? You look more like a falconer than a cleric. Yet you are a cleric in person, and many times over in office archdeacon of Canterbury, dean of Hastings, provost of Beverley, canon of this church and that, procurator of the archbishopric—and likely to be arch­bishop too, the rumour goes!”  Thomas took the reproach in good part, and said 

He knew three poor priests in England any one of whom he would rather see archbishop than himself, for he would inevitably have to choose between the royal favour and God’s. Though immersion in public affairs and a secular grandeur of state was the predominating aspect of Becket’s life as chancellor, it was not the only one. He was proud, irascible, violent and remained so all his life; but we also hear of “retreats” at Merton, of taking the discipline and of prayer in the nightwatches and his confessor during the first part of his career testified to the blamelessness of his private life under conditions of extreme danger and temptation. And if he sometimes co-operated too far in schemes of his royal master that infringed the rights of the Church, he was not afraid to withstand him in such matters as the marriage of the abbess of Romsey.

Theobald, archbishop of Canterbury, died in 1161. King Henry was then in Normandy with his chancellor, whom he had resolved to raise to that dignity.
Thomas flatly told the king, “Should God permit me to be archbishop of Canter­bury I should soon lose your Majesty’s favour, and the affection with which you honour me would be changed into hatred. For several things you do in prejudice of the rights of the Church make me fear you would require of me what I could not agree to; and envious persons would not fail to make this the occasion of endless strife between us.”
The king paid no regard to his remonstrance; and Thomas refused to acquiesce in accepting the dignity till Cardinal Henry of Pisa, legate from the Holy See, overruled his scruples. The election was made in May 1162; Prince Henry, then in London, gave his consent in his father’s name; and Becket set out immediately from London to Canterbury. On the road he gave private charge to several clergy of his church to warn him of the faults which they should observe in his conduct, “for four eyes see more clearly than two”. On Saturday in Whit-week he was ordained priest by Walter, bishop of Rochester, and on the octave of Pentecost was consecrated by Henry of Blois, bishop of Winchester. * {*St Thomas decreed that this anniversary should be observed throughout his province as a feast of the Most Holy Trinity, over a hundred and fifty years before the feast was made general in the West.}

Soon after he received the pallium from Pope Alexander III, and by the end of the year there was a notable change in his manner of life. Next his skin he wore a hair-shirt, and his ordinary dress was a black cassock and linen surplice, with the sacerdotal stole about his neck. By the rule of life which he laid down for himself he rose early to read the Holy Scriptures, keeping Herbert of Bosham by him that they might discuss the meaning of passages together. At nine o’clock he sang Mass, or was present when he did not celebrate himself. At ten a daily alms was distributed, and he doubled all the ordinary alms of his predecessor. He took a siesta in the afternoon, and dined at three o’clock among the guests and household in the great hall, and, instead of music, a book was read. He kept a notably good table, decently served for the sake of others, but was himself now very temperate and moderate. He visited the infirmary and the monks working in the cloister nearly every day, and sought to establish a certain monastic regularity in his own household. He took an especial care for the selection of candidates for holy orders, examining them personally, and in his judicial capacity exerted a rigorously even-handed justice “the letters and requests of the king himself were of no use to a man who had not right on his side”.

Accumulation of conflicts of these kinds provoked him in October 1163 to call the bishops to a council at Westminster, at which he demanded the handing over of criminal clergy to the civil power for punishment. The bishops wavered, but St Thomas stiffened them, Then Henry required a promise of observance of his (unspecified) royal customs. St Thomas and the council agreed, but “saving their order”. So far as the king’s object was concerned this was equivalent to a refusal, and the next day he ordered Thomas to give up certain castles and honours which he had held since he was chancellor. In a stormy interview at Northampton the king in vain tried to make his old friend modify his attitude, and the trouble came to a head at the Council of Clarendon, near Salisbury, at the beginning of 11164. For a brief space St Thomas, having received little encouragement from Pope Alexander III, was very conciliatory and promised to accept the customs but when he saw the constitutions in which were expressed the royal customs which he was to uphold, he exclaimed, “By the Lord Almighty, no seal of mine shall he put to them” “ They provided inter alia that no prelate should leave the kingdom without the royal licence or appeal to Rome without the king’s consent no tenant-in-chief was to be excommunicated against the royal will (this had been claimed from the time of William I, but was a clear infringement of spiritual jurisdiction) the custody of vacant benefices and their revenues was to be held by the king (this abuse had been recognized during the reign of Henry I); and-—what proved to be the critical point—that clerics convicted and sentenced in ecclesiastical courts should be at the disposition of the royal officers (involving a possibility of double punishment).

The archbishop was bitterly remorseful for having weakened in his opposition to the king and setting an example that other bishops were too ready to follow. “I am a proud, vain man, a feeder of birds and follower of hounds”, he said, “and I have been made a shepherd of sheep. I am fit only to be cast out of the see which I fill.” For forty days and more, while awaiting absolution and permission from the pope, he would not celebrate Mass. He tried assiduously to heal the breach, but Henry now pursued him with persecution which culminated in a suit for 30,000 marks alleged to be owing from the time when he was chancellor (although he had received a clear discharge on becoming archbishop). At Wood-stock the king refused him audience, and Thomas twice made vain attempts to cross the Channel to put his case before the pope. Then Henry summoned a council at Northampton. It resolved itself into a concerted attack on the archbishop, in which the prelates followed in the wake of the lords. First he was condemned to a fine for contempt in not appearing at a case in the king’s court when summoned; then various monetary causes were brought against him, and finally the demand to produce certain chancery-accounts. Bishop Henry of Winchester pleaded the chancellor’s discharge; it was disallowed. Then he offered an ex gratia payment of 2ooo marks of his own money; it was refused. On Tuesday, October 13, 1164, St Thomas celebrated a votive Mass of St Stephen the Protomartyr. Then, without mitre or pallium, but bearing his metropolitan’s cross in his own hand, he went to the council-hall. The king and the barons were deliberating in an inner room. After a long delay the Earl of Leicester came out and addressed the archbishop. “The king commands you to render your accounts. Otherwise you must hear judgement.” “Judgement?” exclaimed St Thomas, “I was given the church of Canterbury free from temporal obligations. I am therefore not liable and will not plead concerning them.” As Leicester turned to report this to the king, Thomas stopped him. Son and earl, listen: You are bound to obey God and me before your earthly king. Neither law nor reason allows children to judge their father and condemn him. Wherefore I refuse the king’s judgement and yours and everybody’s; under God, the pope will judge me alone. You, my fellow bishops, who have served man rather than God, I summon to the presence of the pope. And so, guarded by the authority of the Catholic Church and the Holy See, I go hence.” Cries of “Traitor” followed him as he left the hall. That night St Thomas fled from Northampton* {*St Thomas of Canterbury is a principal patron of the present diocese and cathedral of Northampton.} through the rain, and three weeks later secretly embarked at Sandwich.

St Thomas and his few followers landed in Flanders and, arriving at the abbey of St Bertin at Saint-Omer, sent deputies to Louis VII, King of France, who received them graciously and invited the archbishop into his dominions. The pope, Alexander III, was then at Sens. The bishops and others from King Henry arrived there and accused St Thomas before him, +{+His chief clerical enemy, Gilbert Fount, bishop of London, began to harangue with great vehemence. The pope interrupted him “Spare, brother.” “Shall I spare him, my lord?” asked Gilbert. “Brother, I did not say spare him, but spare yourself.”} but left again before the arch­bishop reached the city. Thomas showed the pope the sixteen Constitutions of Clarendon, of which some were pronounced intolerable, and he was rebuked for ever having considered their acceptance. On the day following he confessed that he had received the see of Canterbury, though against his will, yet by an election 

perhaps uncanonical, and that he had acquitted himself ill in it. Wherefore he resigned his dignity into the hands of his Holiness and, taking the ring off his finger, delivered it to him and withdrew. The pope called him again and rein­stated him in his dignity, with an order not to abandon it for that would be visibly to abandon the cause of God. Then Alexander recommended the exiled prelate to the abbot of Pontigny, to be entertained by him.

St Thomas regarded this monastery of the Cistercian Order as a religious retreat and school of penance for the expiation of his sins; he submitted himself to the rules of the house and was unwilling to allow any distinction in his favour. His time he passed in study, but also in writing both to his supporters and oppon­ents letters, which were increasingly unlikely to help on a peaceful settlement. King Henry meanwhile confiscated the goods of all the friends, relations and domestics of Thomas, banished them, and obliged all who were adults to go to the archbishop that the sight of their distress might move him. These exiles arrived in troops at Pontigny. When the general chapter of the Cistercians met at Citeaux it received an intimation from the King of England that if they continued to harbor his enemy he would sequestrate their houses throughout his dominions. The abbot of Citeaux can hardly be blamed for hinting to St Thomas that he should leave Pontigny, which he did, and was received at the abbey of St Columba, near Sens, as the guest of King Louis. Negotiations between the pope, the archbishop, and the king dragged on for nearly six years. St Thomas was named legate a latere for all England except York, excommunicated several of his adversaries, and was menacing as well as conciliatory, so that Pope Alexander saw fit to annul some of his sentences. King Louis of France was drawn into the struggle. In January 1169 the two kings had a conference with the archbishop at Montmirail, whereat Thomas refused to yield on two points a similar conference in the autumn at Montmartre failed through Henry’s last-minute intransigence. St Thomas prepared letters for the bishops ordering the publication of a sentence of interdict on the kingdom of England; and then suddenly, in July 1170, king and archbishop met again in Normandy and a reconciliation was at last patched up, apparently without any overt reference to the matters in dispute.

On December 1 St Thomas landed at Sandwich, and though the sheriff of Kent had tried to impede him the short journey from there to Canterbury was a triumphal progress the way was lined with cheering people and every bell of the primatial city was ringing. But it was not peace. * {*In the previous March St Godric had sent St Thomas a message foretelling that he would return to England and die soon after. His farewell words to the bishop of Paris were, “I am going to England to die”.}

On St John’s day the archbishop received a letter warning him of his danger, and all southeast Kent was in a state of suppressed ferment and ominous expecta­tion. In the afternoon of December 29 the knights from France came to him. *{*It was a Tuesday. Becket was born and baptized on a Tuesday; his flight from Northampton, his leaving England, a vision of martyrdom he had at Pontigny, his return from exile, his death, all took place on Tuesday. Henry II was buried and the martyr’s relics were translated on Tuesdays.} There was an interview, in which several demands were made, particularly that St Thomas should remove the censures on the three bishops; it began quietly and ended angrily, the knights departing with threats and oaths. A few minutes later, shouting, breaking of doors and clangor of arms was heard, and St Thomas, urged and hustled by his attendants, began to move slowly towards the church, his cross carried before him. Vespers was being sung, and at the door of the north transept a crowd of terrified monks met him. “Get back to choir” he exclaimed, “I will not come in all the time you are standing there.” They drew back a little, and as he entered the church armed men were seen behind in the dim light of the cloister (it was nearly dark). Monks slammed the door and bolted it, shutting out some of their brethren in the confusion. These beat loudly at the door. Becket turned round. “Away, you cowards!” he cried, “a church is not a castle”, and re-opened the door himself. Then he went up the steps towards the choir. Only three were left with him, Robert, prior of Merton, William FitzStephen, and Edward Grim; {Respectively, his aged adviser and confessor, a cleric of his household, and an English monk.} the rest had fled to the crypt and elsewhere, and soon Grim alone remained. The knights, who had been joined by a subdeacon named Hugh of Horsea, ran in, shouting, “Where is Thomas the traitor?” “Where is the archbishop?” “ Here I am”, he replied, “no traitor, but archbishop and priest of God”, and came back down the steps, standing between the altars of our Lady and St Benedict.

Even after making full allowance for the universal horror which such a deed of sacrilege—the murder of a metropolitan in his own cathedral—was bound to excite in the twelfth century, the indignation and excitement which soon spread throughout Europe and the spontaneous canonization of Thomas Becket by the common voice testify to the fact that the inner significance of his death was realized on all hands: that a necessary vindication had been made of the rights of the Church against an aggressive state and that the archbishop of Canterbury, in some ways an unsympathetic character, whose methods were not beyond reasonable criticism, was a martyr and worthy to be venerated as a saint.* {* Even in the moment of his death Grim overheard a monk declare that it was the deserved penalty for his obstinacy, and at the University of Paris and elsewhere could be found some who maintained that it was a just execution of one who “ wished to be more than king”.} The discovery of his hair-shirt and other evidences of an austere private life, and the miracles which from the very first were reported in large numbers at his tomb, added fuel to this fire of devotion.

It is very doubtful how far Henry II can be held directly and deliberately responsible for the murder; but the public conscience could not be satisfied by anything less than that the most powerful sovereign in Europe should undergo a public penance of a most humiliating kind. This he did in July, 1174 {When news of the murder was brought to him he shut himself up lamenting, and fasted alone for forty days.} He narrowly escaped an interdict, which, indeed, his French dominions were put under for a short time. His first penance, when he received absolution from the papal legates, was at Avranches in May 1172. A pillar still marks the spot, at the site of the old cathedral.} eighteen months after the solemn canonization of St Thomas as a martyr by Pope Alexander at Segni. {In his interesting and valuable Historical Memorials of Canterbury Dean Stanley discusses the subsequent careers of the murderers. In reference to the legend that three of them went to Palestine, died there, and were buried in Jerusalem “ante ostium templi” he adds a footnote:” The front of the church of the Holy Sepulchre is, and always must have been, a square of public resort to all the pilgrims of the world, where no tombs either of murderer or saint could ever have been placed. The church of the Templars was the Mosque of the Rock, and the front was the sacred platform of the sanctuary—a less impossible place, but still very improbable. Nothing of the kind now exists on either spot.” The learned dean was here mistaken on both points. In the square before the Holy Sepulchre church there is the tomb of an Anglo-Norman knight, one Philip d’Aubigny—not one of Becket’s murderers. On the south side of the platform of the Dome of the Rock is the mosque called al-Aksa, formerly a church. Herein, some thirty years ago, the present writer was shown by the imam the place where tradition says the three knights were buried. It was then covered with matting, but I was assured there was no trace of the inscription, which Roger Hoveden mentions. But the place is also called the tomb of the sons of Aaron.{On July 7, 1220, the body of St Thomas was solemnly translated from its tomb in the crypt to a shrine behind the high altar by the archbishop, Cardinal Stephen Langton, in the presence of King Henry III, Cardinal Pandulf, the papal legate, the archbishop of Rheims, and a vast gathering. From that day until September 1538 the shrine of St Thomas was one of the half-dozen most favoured places of pilgrimage in Christendom, famous as a spiritual sanctuary, for its material beauty and for its wealth. No authentic record of its destruction and spoliation by Henry VIII remains; even the fate of the relics is a matter of uncertainty, though they were probably destroyed at that time when his memory was, naturally enough, particularly execrated by the king (but that he held a form of trial at which “Thomas, sometime archbishop of Canterbury”, was convicted of treason and his bodily remains ordered to be publicly burnt, is almost certainly apocryphal). The feast of St Thomas of Canterbury is kept throughout the Western church, and in England he is venerated as protector of the secular clergy; the city of Portsmouth has the privilege of observing as well the anniversary of the translation.