It has been an interest of mine to better understand Becket. He even had a 1964 movie "Becket" made about him, where none less than Richard Burton depicted Becket as an idealistic noble "Catholic" who defended the Church against quasi-"Anglican" dictators and statists. That Roman propaganda theme always irritated me, because it was almost identical to the 1966's "A Man for All Seasons" where the pure and idealistic "Catholic" Thomas More (again) defends the Church against Henry VIII and the (again) corrupt, semi-atheist Anglican dictators. The propaganda laughable, because the facts were literally the opposite of that in both cases, but no one has made a movie that depicted the facts. (I'm told the recent British series Wolfhall corrects the record by depicting Thomas More as the fallen man that he was.) Anyway back to Becket; I came across this fascinating survey of his life here, which I wanted to ask all of yours opinion on: https://www.firstthings.com/article/2021/01/becket-and-his-critics It mentions the obligatory fans of Becket from recent centuries (wearing their strongly rose-tinted glasses), but the article also cites much from the actual historical record which indicts the man. His death was not a martyrdom; his great stand against the king was for personal vainglory rather than any high principles; the 'Church' he defended was a rotten kingdom owned by a greedy bishop of Rome who was trying to bring the world under the sword. The article briefly mentions Anglican reformers' attitude on Becket, who I know to a man had contempt for Becket. During his time as bishop he is known to have waged actual wars against his neighbors, used swords and killed and beheaded men on a battlefield for bloodlust and personal glory. The article continues: alongside the centuries-long devotion to Becket is a rival tradition, summed up by one of his fellow-bishops, Gilbert Foliot, who was heard to remark: “He always was a fool and he always will be.” In the sixteenth century, Pope Paul III wrote privately that he couldn’t understand why Becket was venerated as a martyr. As far as Paul could tell, the archbishop had been motivated not by high principle but by self-interested vanity. To early Protestant writers, Becket was an egregious example of blind loyalty to the papacy; to Enlightenment historians, the Dark Ages personified; to sober-minded Victorians—as the medievalist Nicholas Vincent puts it—a “weird Romish extremist.” In 2006, BBC History magazine ran a readers’ poll to find the “worst Briton of the last 1,000 years”: Becket was nominated for being divisive, hypocritical, and the “founder of gesture politics,” and eventually came in second behind Jack the Ripper. The Dictionary of National Biography, from which you might expect more sympathy, gives the verdict that Becket’s “brilliant, if chequered, career had a mostly harmful effect on all those connected with it.” On a 2017 episode of the BBC radio program In Our Time, the historian Danica Summerlin was asked to gauge Becket’s honesty, and said: “[It] depends how cynical you want to be.” What do you all think about his legacy?
It was sad for me to see a US politician recently praise Becket, as a champion of 'religious liberty': The myth and the fantasy surrounding Becket's persona continue to exert their pressure in our times. People seem to prefer the candyland 20th century version of Becket, rather than look at original manuscripts of who Becket actually was, and the things he actually did. In a brief summary, Henry II was not a villain and Becket was not a saint. Henry II was a Christian king of England, one of the last truly Anglican kings of England before Roman Catholicism took over in the aftermath of the Norman Conquest. In the period from 1100 to 1540, England was under the shadow of Romanism, and Roman theology. There were a few shining lights: John Wycliffe, Bishop Robert Grossateste (1175-1253), and others, testifying to the remnant of the ancient Anglican piety. King Henry II is another example of this. Opposed to him stood Thomas Becket, a 'bishop' who was preferred to ride in battles and slaughter his enemies. His appointment as archbishop of Canterbury was schemed by the Bishop of Rome, to strengthen his hold over the English Church. Thomas Becket was his agent and lackey. Henry II tried to unsuccessfully defend the English Church against Roman encroachment; but Henry II, the very king and potentate over the Realm, lost. That's how powerful the Pope's international mafia was in the middle ages. It was in opposition to Rome that England had developed the Magna Carta, formulated its Common Law, and birthed the concept of religious liberty in the West, and in the world. Thomas Becket's legacy is that he led many astray, increased the dominion of error, and helped grow the rotten ecclesiastical beast, until it became so strong, that the tree of liberty had to be watered with the blood of martyrs in the Reformation. And as for 'religious liberty', rather than dying for it, Becket death caused the reach of the Papacy to grow, creating one of the most cruel and torturous periods of persecution in English history. The serious 'traditional' Roman Catholics know all this:
I still love the movie. That might have been Richard Burton’s greatest role. It was also one of Peter O’Toole’s best. To me it presents a very loving portrait of medieval piety that is sadly lacking in more contemporary films about the same period, such as Kingdom of Heaven.