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Show more ‘Gregorian’ position: ‘Christian kings ought to submit their administration to ecclesiastics, not impose it upon them. . . . Christian princes should be obedient to the dictates of the church, rather than prefer their own authority, and princes should bow their heads to bishops rather than judge them.’ Most of the English bishops disapproved of Becket's attitude, and of his tactics throughout the dispute. Becket's own election had been improper; the forms had been observed, but he had in fact been forced on the Church in 1162 by pressure from the royal justiciar, Richard de Lucy. There was a feeling that, because of the nature of his appointment, Becket was anxious to impress the monks of his own chapter that he was independent of the royal will. Running through the vast number of clerical letters which surround the Becket drama there is a perceptible mood of resentment among many of his nominal allies, at his posturing and intransigence. His murder was the most celebrated state crime of the entire Middle Ages; it brought him almost instant canonization; and his shrine became, after Rome itself and St James's at Compostella, the most celebrated in Europe. Until the Reformation, St Thomas was the most frequently portrayed of all English saints, at home and abroad, and more English boys were called after him than any other namesake. Yet he did no service to Christianity. Henry II often used words he later regretted: he cannot have intended his angry words to his knights to be taken seriously. As John of Salisbury, a friend of Becket's points out, he had used a similar expression on at least one earlier occasion, in 1166: 'They were all traitors who could not summon up the zeal and loyalty to rid him of the harassment of one man.' As a matter of fact, the expression ‘one man is significant; Henry felt he was fighting not so much the system as one outrageous individual who prevented any sincere attempt to work it on a basis of compromise. By the time the climax of the dispute came, Becket was virtually isolated: martyrdom was a spectacular, and theatrical, way out from the impasse into which he had driven himself. The actions of the four knights were a series of confused blunders. Their object in going to Canterbury was not clear: it was Becket who forced them to decide between killing him, or returning to court looking like fools. One of Becket's biographical eulogists, Edward Grim, virtually conceded this point: 'He who had long yearned for martyrdom now saw that the occasion to embrace it had arrived.’ Another, William Fitz Stephen, adds: 'Had he so wished, the Archbishop might easily have turned aside and saved himself by flight, for both time and place offered an opportunity to escape without being discovered.’ Becket's Episcopal colleagues must have viewed his canonization, and the wild and immediate popularity of his relics, with a good deal of cynicism. One such, well-disposed to Becket personally, was John aux Bellesmains, Bishop of Poitiers. John regarded the archbishop as ‘always a follower of his own wil and opinion. . . it was a great misfortune and an immense hurt and danger to the Church that he had ever been made a ruler of it.' He himself had opposed Henry II'S Constitutions of Clarendon as going too far in upholding royal rights; and he had successfully protected a clerk, accused of treason, from trial in a royal court; yet he remained on excellent terms with Henry (as well as the curia), was promoted Archbishop of Lyons, and lived in harmony with Church and State until his eighties, long enough to receive a respectful visit from Innocent Ill. In the eyes of men like John, the real danger of Becket was not just that he antagonized decent kings like Henry, who were perfectly well disposed to the Church, but that Becket-style gestures, rewarded with the martyr's palm, tended to create a climate of clerical opinion which forced other prelates to insist on church rights more than they thought prudent. It says a lot for the practical sagacity of Henry and Pope Alexander III that the cleavage in society opened by the murder was so soon healed. In practical terms Becket achieved nothing by his death. Alexander endorsed Henry's choices for vacant bishoprics - faithful royal supporters, variously denounced by Becket as ‘archdiabolus' 'that offspring of fornication’, and 'that notorious schismatic'. At Canterbury, Henry got the sort of man he wanted, Richard, Prior of Dover, who gave first place to the reform of the clergy and cooperation with the State. Alexander warmly supported Henry's policy of conquering Ireland, and threatened excommunication to anyone who declined to aid 'this catholic and most Christian king’. On the question of appeals t@ Rome, it was evident that Henry did not oppose them in Principle; he merely 53 |