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Tag Archives: Canterbury

The Great Heart Heist: The Stunning Theft of Saint Laurence O’Toole’s Preserved Heart

28 Tuesday Apr 2020

Posted by Reliquarian in "Speaking" Reliquary, Heart Reliquary, Reliquary

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

Canterbury, Charlemagne, Christ Church, Dublin, heart, Ireland, reliquary, Saint Laurence, Saint Laurence O'Toole, Saint Thomas Becket, Saint Valentine

Heart Reliquary of Saint Laurence O'Toole 3

Heart Reliquary of Saint Laurence O’Toole, Christ Church Cathedral, Dublin, Ireland.  Photo by Reliquarian.

Christ Church Cathedral opened as usual at 9:30 AM on 4 March 2012.[1]  Visitors trickled in to view the cathedral’s many sights, including the tomb-effigy of Strongbow (Richard de Clare, 2nd Earl of Pembroke) on the south side of the nave, and the mummified bodies of “The Cat and the Rat,” recovered from the church’s organ frozen mid-chase, on display in the crypt.  (James Joyce mentioned both these unfortunate animals in Finnegans Wake.)[2]  One sight apparently not on view that morning was a curious relic of Saint Laurence O’Toole, a 12th century Archbishop and Patron Saint of Dublin.  The saint’s heart, preserved in a heart-shaped reliquary, had been kept in the cathedral since the 13th century.  Around lunchtime, however, cathedral officials made a startling discovery:  The reliquary was gone, along with the heart of Saint Laurence.[3]

The Cat and the Rat - Christ Church Cathedral

“The Cat and the Rat,” Christ Church Cathedral, Dublin, Ireland.  The mummified remains of a cat and a mouse were recovered from Christ Church’s organ in the 1860s.  James Joyce mentioned both these unfortunate animals in Finnegans Wake when he described a man as being “as stuck as that cat to that mouse in that tube of that christchurch organ.”  Photo by Reliquarian.

Losing Heart

No one is quite sure when the heart went missing.  Evidence suggested the thieves acted deliberately and that they had stolen the reliquary overnight after hiding in the church before it closed.[4]  At the time, a spokeswoman for the cathedral noted that other valuable objects, including gold chalices and gold candlesticks, had been left untouched by the intruders.[5]  “It’s completely bizarre,” she proclaimed.  “They didn’t touch anything else.  They specifically targeted this, they wanted the heart of St Laurence O’Toole.”[6]  The dean of Christ Church Cathedral lamented that while the heart had “no economic value,” it was nevertheless a “priceless treasure” linking the church to its founding father, Saint Laurence O’Toole.[7]

Christ Church Cathedral - Exterior 2

Christ Church Cathedral, Dublin, Ireland.  Photo by Reliquarian.

Open Heart Procedure

Purloining the heart from Christ Church would have taken some effort and advanced planning.  At the time, the heart was kept in a small chapel known as the Peace Chapel of Saint Laud.[8]  The heart itself was housed in a heart-shaped reliquary, which was secured to the wall inside an iron cage.  The reliquary was further attached to the wall by a chain, though the chain may have been more aesthetic than functional.[9]  To extract the heart, the thieves surgically cut through the iron bars of the cage and detached the chain before making their getaway.  According to investigators, there were no other immediate signs of damage indicating a break-in.[10]

Christ Church Cathedral - High Altar 2 (low)

High Altar, Christ Church Cathedral, Dublin, Ireland.  Photo by Reliquarian.

The Heart of the Matter

As noted above, Saint Laurence O’Toole (Lorcán Ua Tuathail) was not only an Archbishop of Dublin but also patron saint of the city.  Born in 1128 probably near Castledermot in County Kildare, Saint Laurence was appointed abbot of Glendalough at the age of 25.[11]  In 1162, he was elected Archbishop of Dublin upon the death of the city’s first archbishop, Gregory.  As archbishop, he was known for his discipline, generosity to the poor, and skill at negotiations.  As a negotiator, for example, he had been called upon to negotiate with a group of Norman knights, including Strongbow, who had marched on Dublin in an attempt to restore the deposed King of Leinster, Dermot McMurrogh.[12]  During the negotiations, however, “Dermot’s Anglo-Norman allies seized the city and gave themselves over to massacre and rapine.  Laurence returned to succour the sufferers and defend the survivors, and to be a centre of strength in the new danger.”[13]  Incidentally, in 1171, King Henry II of England, who had supported the Norman knights, arrived in Ireland.  That year, Henry II attended Christmas service at Christ Church and took communion for the first time since Thomas Becket was killed by his knights in Canterbury Cathedral in 1170.[14]

Saint Laurence O'Toole - Christ Church

Saint Laurence O’Toole (detail), stained glass window, Christ Church Cathedral, Dublin, Ireland.  Photo by Reliquarian.

Heart to ♥

The heart shape (♥) we recognize as an ideogram for the heart or a symbolic representation of love or affection did not bear those associations at the time of Saint Laurence O’Toole’s death.  Geometrically the heart shape is a cardiodid, and it is a shape that occurs commonly in nature.[15]  It is, for example, evident in leaves and flowers and can be expressed in certain animal behaviors—imagine a pair of swans facing each other with necks bent and beaks touching.[16]  In art, the ♥ has been depicted since ancient times, but it was initially used to represent objects and ideas other than the human heart and romantic love.  Iain Gately notes, “The ♥ entered Western iconography via the Greeks, who used it to depict ivy or vine-leaves, respectively the symbols of constancy and regeneration.”[17]  Gradually the ♥’s association with constancy inspired a further association with courtly or romantic love.  In the medieval period, Gately explains, “[t]he ♥, indicating steadfast love for a damsel, and derived from the ivy leaf of Classical Grace,” became the emblem of romantic love and affection.[18]

Yellow Woodsorrel (Oxalis Stricta)

Yellow woodsorrel (Oxalis stricta).  The cardiodid or heart shape occurs commonly in nature.  The leaves of yellow woodsorrel appear as three connected ♥s.  Photo by Reliquarian.

Incidentally, the first depiction of someone offering his heart to another in a show of love can be traced to a 13th-century illustration in a manuscript known as the Roman de la poire (Romance of the pear).[19]  Significantly, the heart depicted in the manuscript does not bear the cardiodid form but, rather, is shaped like a pinecone.  The Greek physician Galen had described the human heart as appearing like a pinecone, and that misconception persisted for centuries.[20]  Still, the illustration in the Roman de la poire may be, in some roundabout way, the inspiration for the modern Valentine’s Day card.

Heart Reliquary of Saint Laurence O'Toole 2

Heart Reliquary of Saint Laurence O’Toole, Christ Church Cathedral, Dublin, Ireland.  The reliquary bears the cardiodid shape we associate today with the heart and emotions such as love and affection.  Photo by Reliquarian.

By the 15th century, however, the use of the ♥ as a symbol of love and a representation of the human heart had become well-established.[21].  For example, the iconography of the Sacred Heart, which developed during the Counter-Reformation, prominently featured the ♥ as a symbol of Jesus’ divine love.[22].  In these depictions, the Sacred Heart could be shown independently or emanating from Christ’s breast as a flaming heart, encircled with a crown of thorns, pierced and bleeding from a lance wound.  The ♥, however, also began appearing in non-secular contexts.  In 1480, for example, commercial playing cards in France began using the ♥, rather than more traditional cups representing the Holy Grail, to symbolize the clergy for a deck of card’s second suite.[23]

Sacred Heart Card - Univ of Dayton Libraries

Card Depicting the Sacred Heart of Jesus (c. 1880).  Auguste Martin Collection, University of Dayton Libraries, Dayton, Ohio.  Photo courtesy Wikimedia Commons.

Leaden Heart

Media reports have described the reliquary of Saint Laurence O’Toole’s heart as being a “wooden box” or a “wooden heart-shaped container.”[24]  We note that a similar vessel, discovered at a different Christ Church—this one, located in Cork City, Ireland—which also contained a human heart, was made of lead.[25]  Both heart-shaped containers were discovered in the 19th century, though nearly 160 miles apart.  (The Cork City heart case, now in the collection of the Pitt Rivers Museum, can be seen here.  The embalmed heart it contained looks like an old, wadded up leather glove.)  According to the Journal of the Co. Kildare Archeological Society and Surrounding Districts, Saint Laurence’s heart was not rediscovered until the 19th century.[26]  The Journal states, “Some few years ago there was found among rubbish in vaults of Christ Church, Dublin, a sort of vessel in the shape of a heart.  It has been surmised that the heart of Saint Laurence is or was contained therein.”[27].

Chapel of Saint Laurence - Christ Church

Portrait of Saint Laurence O’Toole, Christ Church Cathedral, Dublin, Ireland.  This depiction is located not far from the heart reliquary of Saint Laurence O’Tool.  Photo by Reliquarian.

So, who created Saint Laurence O’Toole’s heart reliquary, and when was it created?  Those answers remain unclear, though given the art historical evolution of the ♥ symbol, the reliquary was likely made hundreds of years after the saint’s death and the translation of his heart to Dublin.  Today, the heart reliquary of Saint Laurence O’Toole is displayed in an arrangement designed by Eoin Turner, a Cork-based artist.[28]

Curse of Saint Laurence O’Toole?

Nearly six years after it was stolen from Christ Church, the heart reliquary of Saint Laurence was recovered and returned to its home in the cathedral.[29]  Some reports suggested the Gardaí were tipped off by the thieves themselves.  The Irish Examiner, for example reported that the thieves had come to believe Saint Laurence’s heart was cursed after several people close to them died of apparent heart attacks.[30]  At the time of this writing, no other cardiac arrests have occurred in connection with the Great Heart Heist of Saint Laurence O’Toole’s Preserved Heart.  The thieves remain at large.

Heart Reliquary of Saint Laurence O'Toole

Heart Reliquary of Saint Laurence O’Toole, Christ Church Cathedral, Dublin, Ireland.  The reliquary was restored to Christ Church Cathedral in 2018.  It is currently housed in this glass display case resting on a soft, white pillow.  Photo by Reliquarian.


[1] Dublin Patron Saint’s Heart Stolen from Christ Church Cathedral, Mar. 4, 2012, BBC, https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-17248394.

[2] James Joyce, Finnegans Wake.

[3] Dublin Patron Saint’s Heart Stolen from Christ Church Cathedral, supra note 1.

[4] Id.

[5] Id.

[6] Sarah Burns, Heart of St Laurnce O’Toole To Be Returned Six Years After It Was Stolen, Apr. 26, 2018, Irish Times, https://www.irishtimes.com/news/ireland/irish-news/heart-of-st-laurence-o-toole-to-be-returned-six-years-after-it-was-stolen-1.3475027.

[7] Dublin Patron Saint’s Heart Stolen from Christ Church Cathedral, supra note 1.

[8] Burns, supra note 6.

[9] Id.

[10] Dublin Patron Saint’s Heart Stolen from Christ Church Cathedral, supra note 1.

[11] 4 Butler’s Lives of the Saints 341 (Herbert J. Thurston, S.J. & Donald Attwater eds., 2d ed. 1956).

[12] Id.

[13] Id.

[14] Maurice Curtis, The Liberties:  A History (2013).

[15] Iain Gately, A Heart-Shaped History, Feb. 14, 2010, Lapham’s Quarterly, https://www.laphamsquarterly.org/roundtable/heart-shaped-history; see also Pierre Vinken, The Shape of the Heart (1999).

[16] Gately, supra note 15.

[17] Id.

[18] Id.

[19] Ben Davis, How Did the Heart Become a Symbol of Love?  The Clues Lie in This Medieval French Illustration, Feb. 14, 2019, Slate, https://news.artnet.com/opinion/heart-as-symbol-love-medieval-illustration-1464961 (describing the illustration as “the first artistic depiction of someone giving their heart to their beloved as a symbol of love”).

[20] See, e.g., id.; Davis, supra note 19.

[21] Davis, supra note 19.

[22] Gately, supra note 15.

[23] Id.

[24] See, e.g., Saint Laurence O’Tooles Heart Found Six Years After Theft, Apr. 26, 2018, BBC, https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-43905526 (“wooden box”); Burns, supra note 6 (“wooden heart-shaped container”).

[25] Irish Archeology, A Medieval Heart-Shaped Reliquary from Cork City, Feb. 14, 2019, https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/#drafts/KtbxLvhRZGJNhgNfcQrdHqKPxGFqSpHnwL (“This heart-shaped lead casket containing an embalmed human heart was discovered inside the medieval crypt of Christ Church, Cork city (now the Triskel Arts Centre) during the 19th century.  An unusual find, it is not without parallel in Ireland, as a similar example is also known from Christ Church Cathedral, Dublin.”); see also Human Heart in a Lead Heart-Shaped Case, Pitt Rivers Museum, http://objects.prm.ox.ac.uk/pages/PRMUID127977.html.

[26] 2 Journal of the Co. Kildare Archeological Society and Surrounding Districts 165 (1899).

[27] Id. The Journal continues, “There is a tradition among the people of Eu that Saint Laurence’s heart, immediately after his death, was taken to his native country.  We know that it was not uncommon for people to leave in their wills, or when dying to ask their friends to take their heart and deposit it in some church or shrine to which they had a special devotion.”  Id.  The Journal then notes that many of Christ Church’s holy relics were lost when a portion of the cathedral’s roof collapsed in the 15th century or as a result of the Reformation.  “Whether this one survived by being hidden away, and then forgotten, to again come to light accidentally in the nineteenth century, is a matter of conjecture.”  Id.

[28] Gregg Ryan, “Heart of Saint Laurence O’Toole Returned to Dublin, Church Times, Nov. 16, 2018, https://www.churchtimes.co.uk/articles/2018/16-november/news/world/heart-of-st-laurence-o-toole-returned-to-dublin.

[29] Burns, supra note 6.

[30]  Saint’s Heart Returned to Dublin Cathedral As Thieves Thought It Cursed, Irish Examiner, Apr. 17, 2018, https://www.irishtimes.com/news/ireland/irish-news/heart-of-st-laurence-o-toole-to-be-returned-six-years-after-it-was-stolen-1.3475027; see also Jesse Harrington, The Curse of Saint Laurence O’Toole, History Ireland (July/August 2018), https://www.historyireland.com/volume-26/issue-4-july-august-2018/the-curse-of-st-laurence-otoole/.

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Saint Thomas Becket: Murder at Canterbury Cathedral

12 Thursday Jul 2018

Posted by Reliquarian in Metal Reliquary

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

archbishop, Canterbury, cathedral, England, King Henry II, London, martyr, pilgrim, pilgrimage, Saint Denis, Saint Thomas Becket, shrine, sword, Thomas à Becket, Thomas of Canterbury, Thomas of London

IMG_0371 copy

Chasse with the Martyrdom of Saint Thomas Becket (detail), gilded copper with champlevé enamel (c. 1190).  Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

In the introduction to his acclaimed play Becket, Jean Anouilh describes how he became inspired to write about his most famous protagonist, Saint Thomas Becket.  Unlike the zealous pilgrims of Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales or the ardent knights of T.S. Eliot’s Murder in the Cathedral, Anouilh did not purposely set out in search of Becket.  Rather, he discovered Becket by happenstance—in the pages of a winsome old history book about the Norman Conquest. 

“I am not a serious man,” he freely admits.  “I wrote Becket by chance.”[1]  In his introduction, Anouilh recounts how he purchased Augustin Thierry’s The Conquest of England by the Normans from one of the many book sellers that line the Seine.[2]  “I did not expect to read this respectable work, which I assumed would be boring,” he explains.  “I bought it because it had a pretty green binding and I needed a spot of green on my shelves.”[3]

Anouilh returned home and was gently browsing its pages—he insists he is “well-mannered with old books”—when he happened on the story of Saint Thomas Becket.[4]  The story “might have [been] taken to be fiction,” he writes, “except that the bottom of the pages were jammed with references in Latin from the chronicles of the twelfth century.”[5]  Anouilh was “dazzled.”[6]  “I had expected to find a saint—I am always a trifle distrustful of saints, as I am of great theatre stars—and I found a man.”[7]

The Life of Thomas

According to the Butler’s Lives of the Saints, Thomas Becket was born in London on 21 December 1118, the Feast Day of Saint Thomas the Apostle.[8]  At the age of 21, Becket lost both his mother and father in short succession, and after working for several employers, Becket obtained a post in the household of Theobald, Archbishop of Canterbury.[9]  Theobald trusted and respected Becket, and in 1154, Theobald nominated Becket to become Archdeacon of Canterbury.[10]  A year later, King Henry II appointed Becket Chancellor of England.[11]

Saint Thomas Becket

Detail of Saint Thomas Becket, stained glass window, Canterbury Cathedral. Courtesy Wikimedia Commons.

Thomas and Henry II developed more than just a close professional relationship during Thomas’s Chancellorship.  As Butler explains, “their friendship was not confined to a common interest in affairs of state, and their personal relations at times of relaxation have been aptly described as ‘frolicsome.’”[12]  When Theobald died in 1161, Henry II told Thomas he intended to appoint him the new Archbishop of Canterbury.[13]  Becket was reluctant.  “Should God permit me to be archbishop of Canterbury,” he told the king, “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 . . . .”[14] 

The king remained undeterred, and on 23 May 1162, Becket’s election was confirmed.[15]  Many of Staunton’s biographers suggest that Becket underwent a genuine conversation following his elevation to Archbishop.[16]  Suddenly Becket, who had grown accustomed to wealth and luxury as Chancellor—his household apparently rivaled that of the king—exchanged the finery of his previous life for a simple black cassock, linen surplice, and sacerdotal stole, under which he wore a hair-shirt.[17]  More significantly, he wholly immersed himself in the life of an ascetic.  He regularly celebrated Mass at 9 o’clock in the morning, and at 10 o’clock distributed alms—which he had doubled—to the poor.  He cherished the “monastic regularity” of his new office, and he personally examined and selected candidates for holy orders.[18]

Thomas’s commitment to the Church would eventually bring him into open conflict with the king.  After a series clashes that pitted the king’s secular power against Thomas’s authority as Archbishop of Canterbury, Henry II’s anger finally boiled over when he learned that Thomas had excommunicated three bishops who had participated in his son’s coronation.[19]  “Will no one rid me of this turbulent priest?” Henry raged.  Four knights interpreted the king’s appeal as a call to action, and they hastened to Canterbury in search of Thomas. 

Death Comes for the Archbishop

In the years immediately following Saint Thomas Becket’s death, a number of Vitae detailing Becket’s life and death were written.  Though the exact number of works is unknown, the volume of biographical accounts produced was unusually high.  In his insightful book Thomas Becket and His Biographers, Michael Staunton suggests Becket’s popularity was due in large part to his compelling life story.  Staunton writes, “That so many people chose to write about him in the years immediately after his murder is due not only to the explosion of popular veneration in the early 1170s but to the fact that his life and death provided such rich biographical material.”[20]  Thomas Becket and His Biographers examines ten such works, nine of which were written within seven years of Becket’s death. [21]

Five of Staunton’s chosen biographers actually witnessed Becket’s assassination, and their accounts are vivid.[22]  Staunton reminds us that while our familiarity with Becket’s story has “dimmed the shock of the event,” for Becket’s contemporaries, the event would have been far more visceral and alarming.[23]  After all, Becket was “the leader of the English Church at the height of his fame, murdered in his own cathedral by agents of the king in a place and time where such martyrs must have seemed an exotic reminder of a distant past.”[24]

IMG_0373 copy

Reliquary Casket with Scenes from the Martyrdom of Saint Thomas Becket, gilded silver with niello and glass (1173-80).  Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

The biographer known as Anonymous I provides one of the most concise accounts of Becket’s final moments.  After discovering Thomas in the cathedral at Canterbury, Henry’s knights confronted him.  Becket, sensing his impending death, “joined his hands and opened his eyes” before addressing his prospective executioner, the knight Reginald FitzUrse.[25]  “I commend myself to God and St Denis and St Aelfeah,” he told the knight.  At this, Reginald “approached and struck him powerfully from the side in the head, and cut off the top of his crown, and knocked off his cap.  The sword fell upon the left shoulder-blade, and cut all his clothes to nakedness.”  Then the knight William de Tracy “approached, and struck him with a great blow on the head; but still he did not fall.  The same William struck another powerful blow and at this the holy man fell prone on the pavement.”  The knight Richard le Bret then took a turn, striking Becket “as he lay on the pavement,” shattering his sword in the process.  Finally, the knight Hugh Mauclerk, “the most wicked of all men, approaching as he lay, put his foot on his neck and thrusting the point of the sword into his head spread his brains on the pavement, crying out and saying, ‘Let us go, the traitor is dead.’”[26]

Staunton notes that for some of Becket’s biographers, the act of scattering Becket’s brains on the cathedral floor was an outrage.[27]  John of Salisbury, for example, compares the knights unfavorably with Jesus’ executioners, who at least refrained from breaking Jesus’ legs when they realized he was already dead.[28]  In Edward Grim’s account, once Becket’s crown had been separated from his head, “the blood white from the brain, and the brain equally red from the blood, brightened the floor with the colors of the lily and rose, the Virgin and Mother, and the life and death of the confessor and martyr.”[29] 

In art, Saint Thomas Becket is sometimes portrayed with a bleeding head, signifying the first blow of his attackers.[30]  Becket’s other attributes in art are a long sword, representing the sword with which he was martyred, and the palm branch or martyrdom.[31]  In some cases, the sword is shown cleaving, or inserted in, the saint’s head.  The presence of a bishop’s mitre also helps identify him.

Pilgrims’ Progress

Soon after the assassination, miracles were attributed to Becket’s intercession, and a cult quickly grew around the saint.  Staunton attributes the cult’s popularity to its versatility.  “One of the reasons for Thomas’s broad appeal as a saint is that he meant many different things to different people.  Each could take from his memory and his image what they sought, whether it was the miracle-worker, the martyr, the champion of the Church, or a combination of these.”[32]

IMG_0381 copy

Gold Reliquary Pendant with Queen Margaret of Sicily Blessed by Bishop Reginald of Bath (1173-77).  Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.  On the opposite side, the pendant used to contain a crystal under which a number of relics were kept.  An inscription on the pendant indicates the relics included “blood of St. Thomas Martyr” as well as parts of his vestments stained with blood, including his cloak, belt, hood, shoe, and shirt.

The notoriety of the Becket’s death and reports of his miracle-working relics naturally attracted pilgrims to Canterbury.  Pilgrimages, though certainly not unique to Christianity, were a common form of religious expression in Medieval Europe.[33]  Christians regularly undertook these journeys to shrines and other holy places to fulfill vows, to seek cures, as penance, or merely to deepen their faith.[34]  Indeed, The Canterbury Tales begins with a paean to the religious pilgrimage: 

When the sweet showers of April fall and shoot
Down through the drought of March to pierce the root,
Bathing every vein in liquid power
From which there springs the engendering of the flower,
When also Zephyrus with his sweet breath
Exhales an air in every grove and heath . . .
Then people long to go on pilgrimages . . . .[35]

The text further hints that at least some of the pilgrims on the road to Canterbury are veterans of previous pilgrimages.  The Wife of Bath, for example, is described as having “thrice been to Jerusalem,” as well as “to Rome and also to Boulogne, / St James of Compostella and Cologne.”[36]  The Pardoner is portrayed has having sewn a “holy relic on his cap,” most likely a pilgrim’s badge commemorating an earlier trip to some holy site.[37]  Their tales and the tales of their fellow pilgrims unfold as they wend their way to Canterbury.

Saint James - Metropolitan Museum

Saint James the Greater, pine with paint and gilding, South German (1475-1500), Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Saint James is depicted here with one of the earliest and most recognizable pilgrim’s badges—a scallop shell—attached to his cap. Sea shells like this were associated with pilgrimages to Saint James’s shrine at Santiago de Compostela.

Once at Canterbury itself, a number of sites would have formed part of the pilgrimage experience.  As Paul Webster explains in The Cult of St. Thomas Becket in the Plantagenet World, key pilgrimage sites at Canterbury Cathedral included “the site of the martyrdom, the crypt tomb, the principal shrine itself, and the chapel known as the Corona, housing ‘Becket’s crown’, the shrine of that part of his head removed by his murderers.”[38] 

As at many medieval shrines, pilgrimage souvenirs, including pilgrim’s badges or ampullae, were available for purchase at Canterbury.  Most depicted scenes from Saint Thomas Becket’s life or death, or featured images from the cathedral itself.  Depictions of the saint’s assassination—scenes restless with fretful knights and drawn swords—were popular.  Renderings of the saint’s shrine were also common and help establish what the shrine might have looked like to a medieval visitor. 

A pilgrim’s badge in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York includes a representation of the shrine dating to the late 14th century.[39]  The jeweled shrine, ordered by Archbishop Thomas Langton and dedicated on 2 July 1220, rested above a golden tomb containing an effigy of Saint Thomas in ecclesiastical vestments; the effigy is clearly visible on the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s pilgrim’s badge.[40]  The shrine itself was “encrusted with jewels on a trellis-like ground and surmounted by two ship models.”[41]  It also featured what was purportedly the largest ruby in the world, donated to Canterbury by the king of France in 1179.[42]  (Look closely and you may spy a small figure pointing directly at the famed ruby.)

Pilgrim's Badge

Pilgrim’s Badge of the Shrine of Saint Thomas Becket at Canterbury, cast tin-lead alloy (1350-1400).  Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.  Courtesy Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Conclusion

Following his elevation to Canterbury, Thomas Becket underwent a religious conversion, the sincerity of which has remained a subject of much speculation ever since.  Citing John of Salisbury, Stauton describes how some “deliberately misrepresented his behaviour, interpreting his zeal for justice as cruelty, his magnificence as pride, his pursuit of God’s will as arrogance, his protection of the Church’s rights as rashness.”[43]  Staunton further observes how Thomas’s character “seemed to feature a preponderance of traits which could be interpreted either way,” noting that “there is a thin line between bravery and foolhardiness, between constancy and stubbornness.”[44]

At the end of Anouilh’s Becket, King Henry is shown kneeling before Becket’s tomb, naked, as monks whip him with ropes.  The play, which is told in flashback, begins as it will conclude.  “Well, Thomas Becket, are you satisfied?” Henry exclaims.[45]  “I am naked at your tomb and your monks are coming to flog me.  What an end to our story!  You, rotting in this tomb, larded with my barons’ dagger thrusts, and I, naked, shivering in the draughts, and waiting like an idiot for those brutes to come thrash me.  Don’t you think we’d have done better to understand each other?”[46]

Understanding Saint Thomas Becket may, perhaps, have been too much to expect.


[1] Jean Anouilh, Becket at xvii (Lucienne Hill trans., 1960).
[2] Id.  The stalls Anouilh describes are still a familiar sight along the Seine, and many continue to sell curious and wonderful books.
[3] Id.
[4] Id.
[5] Id.
[6] Id.
[7] Id.
[8] 4 Butler’s Lives of the Saints 629 (Herbert J. Thurston, S.J. & Donald Attwater eds., 2d ed. 1956).
[9] Id.
[10] Id.
[11] Id.
[12] Id. at 630.
[13] Id. at 631.
[14] Id.
[15] Id.
[16] See, e.g., id. at 631; Michael Staunton, Thomas Becket and His Biographers (2006).
[17] 4 Butler’s Lives of the Saints, supra note 8, at 630-31.
[18] Id. at 631.
[19] Id. at 634-35.  The Archbishop of York, who performed the actual coronation, had usurped Canterbury’s right in conducting the coronation.  Id. at 634.
[20] Staunton, supra note 16, at 216.
[21] In particular, Thomas Becket and His Biographers describes the works of John of Salisbury, Edward Grim, William of Canterbury, William Fitzstephen, Guernes of Ponte-Ste-Maxence, Herbert of Bosham, Anonymous I, Anonymous II, Benedict of Peterborough, and Alan of Tewkesbury.  Staunton suggests that the various Vitae, or Lives of Thomas, “are not only exceptional witnesses to Thomas’s life and death and the events in which he was involved,” they are also “literary works of high quality, more complex and sophisticated than has always been recognized.”  Id. at 2.
[22] Id. at 184.
[23] Id.
[24] Id.
[25] Id. at 195.
[26] Id.
[27] Id. at 198.
[28] Id.
[29] Id.  Notably, Edward Grim was standing next to Becket during the attack, and his arm was nearly severed by the blow that cleft the top of the saint’s head.  In Grim’s own account, he identifies the first blow to Saint Thomas Becket’s head as the “same blow [that] almost cut off the arm of this witness.”  Id. at 196.
[30] Rosa Giorgi, Saints in Art 354 (Thomas Michael Hartmann trans., Stefano Zuffi ed., 2002).
[31] Id. at 353.
[32] Staunton, supra note 16, at 216.
[33] Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History, “Pilgrimage in Medieval Europe,” Metropolitan Museum of Art, https://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/pilg/hd_pilg.htm.
[34] Id.
[35] Geoffrey Chaucer, The Canterbury Tales 25 (Nevill Coghill trans., 1952) (1392).
[36] Id. at 37.
[37] Id. at 44
[38] The Cult of St Thomas Becket in the Plantagenet World, c. 1170-1220 (Paul Webster and Marie-Pierre Gelin eds., 2016).
[39] “Pilgrim’s Badge of the Shrine of St. Thomas Becket at Canterbury,” Metropolitan Museum of Art, https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/473470.
[40] Id.
[41] Id.
[42] Id.
[43] Staunton, supra note 16, at 216-17.
[44] Id. at 217
[45] Anouilh, supra note 1, at 1.
[46]  Id.

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