Welsh Journals

Search over 450 titles and 1.2 million pages

THOMAS BECKET AND WALES* THOMAS BECKET'S death, late in 1170, at the hands of four assassins in Canterbury Cathedral was one of the most sensational crimes ever committed in the entire history of Christendom. It involved persons of the highest rank and turned on one of the key issues of the day. The story of that great drama and the events leading up to the final tragedy are too well known to be retold here, but now, 800 years on, it may be fruitful as well as timely to recall the phenomenal popularity of Becket's cult in the middle ages and measure its impact upon Wales and the Welsh. Becket was, of course, a great champion of the Church and its rights, and one would expect that that would appeal to Welsh churchmen at least, if not to Welshmen at large; but he did also represent the supremacy of Canterbury over the Welsh Church and therefore, by implication, the overlordship of England over Wales. How did Welshmen regard Becket, England's most famous saint for 350 years and more before Henry VIII decreed otherwise in 1538? Before attempting to answer the question, it is as well to be reminded of the spectacular, almost instantaneous, growth in the cult of Thomas Becket after his death and of how widely diffused it was.1 Becket died on 29 December 1170. Almost overnight he became a household name throughout Christendom, and popular pressure was such that it compelled an ever-cautious papal Curia to move with unprecedented speed and have him canonised as early as 21 February 1173, a mere two years or so after his death.2 Shortly after his canonisation an order of knights was named after him in the Holy Land and the cult grew by leaps and bounds. The story of his life and martyrdom was told and retold over and over again, in various forms-in verse, in prose, in miracle plays, in frescoes, in paintings, in sculpture-in countless places throughout Europe, and particularly western Europe, throughout the middle ages. Henry 11's daughters married princes in Italy, Germany, and Spain, and they carried the story with them, at first hand as it I am grateful to Professor J. Gwynn Williams for reading this article and making valuable comments on it. 1 The best account is in Paul Alonzo Brown. The Development of the Legend of Thomas Becket (1930). The material in this paragraph and the next is based almost entirely on themes developed in Dr. Brown's book. E. W. Kemp. Canonization and Authority in the Western Church (1948). pp. 86-88.