The Fifth Day of Christmas: Saint Thomas Becket
Happy fifth day of Christmas! Today the Church celebrates the 850th anniversary of the martyrdom of Saint Thomas Becket. Even the White House has released a proclamation for the day. While the history is good, its conclusion – drawing a straight line from Becket to Magna Carta to the U.S. Constitution – is, to be polite, suspect. But that’s politics for you.
To me, a far more interesting article appeared recently on the BBC: “Has Thomas Becket’s treasured ‘little book’ been found?“
In exile he would need money, so before leaving Northampton, Becket had secretly sent his closest confidant, the scholar Herbert of Bosham, to Canterbury, to gather as much as he could and to take it to the Abbey of St Bertin, near Calais. But there was also one other thing he wanted Herbert to find – a certain little book.
“The implication is that it was a book that was very important to Becket, and that Herbert would know what it was,” Anne Duggan says.
“It’s quite interesting that he doesn’t tell us – so there is a mystery there. It wasn’t a law book, it wasn’t a gospel, it was a little book – a codicella.”
What was the book? The rest of the article reads like a detective story, and the train of logic and circumstances makes a fascinating read. The answer is obvious in hindsight. What other book would a cleric be desperate to bring with him into exile?
De Hamel and Poleg gazed at the 8in-by-6in manuscript “trembling with excitement”, de Hamel writes in a short book published earlier this year, The Book in the Cathedral: The Last Relic of Thomas Becket. There was no jewelled Anglo Saxon silver-gilt binding – this would have been torn off and melted down during the Reformation, but here was a book, de Hamel now felt, that was surely a lost holy relic of the Middle Ages.
Check out the article here: https://www.bbc.com/news/stories-55370722.
Over the years, I’ve written many articles on St. Thomas Becket, one of my favourite saints. Check them out below!
Previous articles on Saint Thomas Becket:
2018: Becket
(On martyrdom and liberty, with some help from Dom Prosper Guéranger, O.S.B.)
2016: On Obedience and Confusion
(Ruminations on obedience as the greatest freedom, touching on both the saint and more recent history)2015: On Pilgrimage
(Further thoughts on pilgrimage)2014: A Happy Death
(Thoughts on the saint’s martyrdom and the grace of a happy death)2012: Becket and Chaucer
(A meditation on pilgrimage)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)
In 2013 and 2017, I failed to post anything. That’s going to happen from time to time. In 2019, his feast was trumped by the Sunday feast of the Holy Family. I encourage you to peruse the past articles and see if you can’t watch the magnificent film, Becket.
Here follows one of the film’s many memorable scenes.
Saint Thomas Becket, pray for us.