Becket and Chaucer

Each year on this, his feast day, I write a short article about Saint Thomas Becket. Having the birth name “Thomas”, I take Becket and Aquinas as patrons.

Last year, I quoted a small passage from G.K. Chesterton on the matter of Becket’s martyrdom.

This year, I’d like to focus a moment on the idea of pilgrimage.

Following his death, Thomas was recognized as a martyr and a saint almost immediately by the people of Britain. His tomb at Canterbury became a center of pilgrimage from all over Europe, and indeed Chaucer’s pilgrims were bound for it.

What is it that draws us to these holy places? The venerable Douay Catechism of 1649 has this to say:

Q. How do you prove it lawful to go on pilgrimages to the shrines of Saints?

A. Because, as you have read already, their relics are holy and venerable things, and God is pleased to work great cures and miracles by them for such as are devout honourers of them.

While treating of the licety of pilgrimage, the Catechism also gives a spiritual reason: cures and miracles. In addition, many people also go as a penance. Some people go as a prayer, either for themselves or for others. Some walk in thanksgiving. Some are trying to fill that God-sized hole in their hearts.

Some folks are just going for a long walk.

As I’ve written elsewhere, I feel simply called to the Camino. Who can know God’s reasons?

Perhaps I am simply joining Chaucer’s company.

When fair April with his showers sweet,
Has pierced the drought of March to the root’s feet
And bathed each vein in liquid of such power,
Its strength creates the newly springing flower;

When the West Wind too, with his sweet breath,
Has breathed new life – in every copse and heath –
Into each tender shoot, and the young sun
From Aries moves to Taurus on his run,
And those small birds begin their melody,
(The ones who ‘sleep` all night with open eye,)
Then nature stirs them up to such a pitch
That folk all long to go on pilgrimage

And wandering travellers tread new shores, strange strands,
Seek out far shrines, renowned in many lands,
And specially from every shire’s end
Of England to Canterbury they wend
The holy blessed martyr there to seek,
Who has brought health to them when they were sick.

Geofrey Chaucer, The Canterbury Tales
Prologue (in Modern English)
(source)

Previous articles on Saint Thomas Becket:

2011: Saint Thomas Becket (G.K. Chesterton on Becket’s martyrdom)
2010: Becket (Becket, More, and Henry VIII (that jerk))
2009: Saint Thomas Becket (Becket’s martrydom, an eyewitness account)