Newsgroups: bit.listserv.christia
Date:         Tue, 29 Dec 1992 16:47:16 EST
From:         JEK@NIHCU.BITNET
Subject:      Thomas of Canterbury (29/30 Dec)

   THOMAS OF CANTERBURY (29 DEC 1170) (transferred to Wed 30 Dec)

On December 29, we remember Thomas a Becket, Archbishop of
Canterbury, slain in his own cathedral in 1170, for his defiance of
King Henry II. The death of Thomas reminds us that a Christian, even
when safe from pagans, can be in danger from his fellow-Christians.
It also reminds us that one can be martyred in a cause where the
merits of the particular issue at hand are not obvious to all men of
good will. The issue here, or one of the issues, was one of court
jurisdiction. King Henry claimed that a cleric accused of an
ordinary crime ought to be tried in the King's Courts like any
layman. Thomas, who was Henry's Chancellor and his close friend,
vigorously upheld the king's position.  However, when he was made
Archbishop of Canterbury with the king's support, he reversed
himself completely and upheld the right of clergy to be tried only
in Church courts, which could not inflict capital punishment. Henry
wanted an arrangement by which (for example) a priest accused of
murder would be tried by a Church Court, which if it found him
guilty would degrade him to the rank of a layman, whereupon a King's
Court would try him, and if it found him guilty would order him
hanged. Thomas objected that a man could not be tried and punished
twice for the same offense.

   [Historical Digression: In the United States, what is often
   counted as the first bloodshed of the War of Independence was
   that of the Boston Massacre (5 Morch 1770), when a mob threw
   stones at a group of sentries, who eventually fired at them,
   killing five. The soldiers were tried for murder, and defended
   by John Adams (later the 2nd President of the United States).
   The jury found them guilty of manslaughter rather than murder,
   and Adams promptly said, "I claim for my clients the benefit of
   clergy." Under law, the penalty for murder was "death without
   benefit of clergy," whereas the penalty for manslaughter was
   simply "death." The former penalty was supposed by Mark Twain
   (see his novels THE PRINCE AND THE PAUPER (about England in
   1547) and A CONNECTICUT YANKEE AT KING ARTHUR'S COURT)
   to mean that the accused was to have no access to a clergyman
   before being killed, and that the law thus sought to destroy
   his soul as well as his body. In fact, "death without benefit
   of clergy" meant simply that anyone convicted of murder was to
   be put to death even if a cleric. On the other hand, conviction
   of manslaughter meant death only if the accused was a layman.
   But what was the legal definition of a cleric (or clerk, or
   scholar)? The courts had developed the principle that in order
   to claim benefit of clergy it was sufficient to be able to read.
   Moreover, the literacy test had become extremely standardized.
   The convicted man approached the court clerk, who opened a
   Bible, pointed to a verse, and said, "Read this." The verse
   pointed to, known as the Neck Verse, was Psalm 56:13 "Thou hast
   delivered my soul from death, and my feet from falling. I will
   walk before the LORD in the land of the living." (The Hebrew
   word "nephesh," here translated "soul," is derived, like our
   word "spirit," from a root meaning "breath," and can also,
   where the context permits, be translated "throat" or "neck," a
   translation that would make the verse even more appropriate
   than it already is.  I must check to see whether there are any
   old translations that so render it.) The accused would read the
   verse, or recite it from memory, and be certified as a clerk.
   He would then be branded on the thumb with a hot iron, as a
   sign that he was now a convicted felon, and could never claim
   the benefit of clergy again. That is why, when one takes an
   oath in court, one holds up one's right hand. The court must
   see that the witness has no brand on the hand, and is therefore
   not a convicted felon, and is therefore presumed to be
   trustworthy under oath. Thus some remnants of the issue
   disputed between Henry and Thomas were with us (in
   English-speaking countries at least) until the 1700's, and others
   are still with us. End of digression. Back to Thomas.]

Henry, being angered at opposition from someone whom he had counted
on for support, was heard to exclaim in anger, "This fellow who has
eaten my bread has lifted up his heel against me [see Psalm 41:9].
Have I no friend who will rid me of this upstart priest?" Four of
his knights promptly rode to Canterbury, where they confronted the
Archbishop and demanded that he back down. When he did not, they
killed him. Public reaction was immediate and vigorous, and reckoned
Thomas as a saint and a martyr, and Henry as a blaspheming murderer.
Henry swore that he had not intended his remark to be taken
seriously, and had himself publicly whipped at the tomb of Thomas.
Thomas was very soon canonized, and his tomb was one of the most
popular places of pilgrimage in Europe for the next three-and-a-half
centuries.  (Chaucer's CANTERBURY TALES is concerned with a group of
pilgrims on their way to the tomb of Thomas.)

The chief moral that I draw from Thomas's life and death is that
when a man seeks to serve God, God graciously accepts that service,
even if the man is quite wrong about what it is that God expects of
him.

I close by quoting a section from T.S. Eliot's play, "Murder in the
Cathedral," which deals with the death of Thomas. Note that the
words are Eliot's and not Thomas's. I quote it not as applicable
simply to Thomas, but as applicable to all martyrs (and thus
appropriate during the Witness Days) and indeed as directed to all
Christians in their understanding of the Christian life, and how it
involves both sorrow and joy.

The Archbishop preaches in the Cathedral on Christmas morning, 1170.

                            SERMON

"Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward
men." The fourteenth verse of the second chapter of the Gospel
according to Saint Luke.  In the name of the Father, and of the Son,
and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.

Dear children of God, my sermon this morning will be a very short
one. I wish only that you should ponder and meditate on the deep
meaning and mystery of our masses of Christmas Day. For whenever
Mass is said, we re-enact the Passion and Death of Our Lord; and on
this Christmas Day we do this in celebration of His Birth. So that
at the same moment we rejoice in His coming for the salvation of
men, and offer again to God His Body and Blood in sacrifice,
oblation, and satisfaction for the sins of the whole world. It was
in this same night that has just passed, that a multitude of the
heavenly host appeared before the shepherds at Bethlehem, saying,
"Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward
men"; at this same time of all the year that we celebrate at once
the Birth of Our Lord and His Passion and Death upon the Cross.
Beloved, as the World sees, this is to behave in a strange fashion.
For who in the World will both mourn and rejoice at once and for the
same reason? For either joy will be overcome by mourning or mourning
will be cast out by joy; so that it is only in these our Christian
mysteries that we can rejoice and mourn at once for the same reason.
But think for a while on the meaning of this word "peace." Does it
seem strange to you that the angels should have announced Peace,
when ceaselessly the world has been stricken with War and the fear
of War? Does it seem to you that the angelic voices were mistaken,
and that the promise was a disappointment and a cheat?

Reflect now, how Our Lord Himself spoke of Peace. He said to His
disciples: "My peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you."
Did He mean peace as we think of it: the kingdom of England at peace
with its neighbors, the barons at peace with the King, the
householder counting over his peaceful gains, the swept hearth, his
best wine for a friend at the table, his wife singing to the
children? Those men His disciples knew no such things: they went
forth to journey afar, to suffer by land and sea, to know torture,
imprisonment, disappointment, to suffer death by martyrdom. What
then did He mean? If you ask that, remember that He said also, "Not
as the world giveth, give I unto you." So then, He gave to his
disciples peace, but not peace as the world gives.

Consider also one thing of which you have probably never thought.
Not only do we at the feast of Christmas celebrate at once Our
Lord's Birth and His Death: but on the next day we celebrate the
martyrdom of his first martyr, the blessed Stephen. Is it an
accident, do you think, that the day of the first martyr follows
immediately the day of the Birth of Christ? By no means. Just as we
rejoice and mourn at once, in the Birth and Passion of Our Lord; so
also, in a smaller figure, we both rejoice and mourn in the death of
martyrs. We mourn, for the sins of the world that has martyred them;
we rejoice, that another soul is numbered among the Saints in
Heaven, for the glory of God and for the salvation of men.

Beloved, we do not think of a martyr simply as a good Christian who
has been killed because he is a Christian: for that would be solely
to mourn. We do not think of him simply as a good Christian who has
been elevated to the company of the Saints: for that would be simply
to rejoice:  and neither our mourning nor our rejoicing is as the
world's is. A Christian martyrdom is no accident. Saints are not
made by accident. Still less is a Christian martyrdom the effect of
a man's will to become a Saint, as a man by willing and contriving
may become a ruler of men. Ambition fortifies the will of man to
become ruler over other men: it operates with deception, cajolery,
and violence, it is the action of impurity upon impurity. Not so in
Heaven. A martyr, a saint, is always made by the design of God, for
His love of men, to warn them and to lead them, to bring them back
to His ways.  A martyrdom is never the design of man; for the true
martyr is he who has become the  instrument of God, who has lost his
will in the will of God, not lost it but found it, for he has found
freedom in submission to God.  The martyr no longer desires anything
for himself, not even the glory of martyrdom. So thus as on earth
the Church mourns and rejoices at once, in a fashion that the world
cannot understand; so in Heaven the Saints are most high, having
made themselves most low, seeing themselves not as we see them, but
in the light of the Godhead from which they draw their being.

I have spoken to you today, dear children of God, of the martyrs of
the past, asking you to remember especially our martyr of
Canterbury, the blessed Archbishop Elphege; because it is fitting,
on Christ's birthday, to remember what is that peace which he
brought; and because, dear children, I do not think that I shall
ever preach to you again; and because it is possible that in a short
time you may have yet another martyr, and that one perhaps not the
last. I would have you keep in your hearts these words that I say,
and think of them at another time. In the name of the Father, and of
the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.

                         END OF SERMON

PRAYER (traditional wording)
   O Almighty God, by whose grace and power thy holy martyr Thomas
   triumphed over suffering and was faithful even unto death:
   Grant us, who now remember him with thanksgiving, to be so
   faithful in our witness to thee in this world, that we may
   receive with him the crown of life; through Jesus Christ our
   Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit,
   one God, for ever and ever.

PRAYER (contemporary wording)
   O Almighty God, by whose grace and power your holy martyr Thomas
   triumphed over suffering and was faithful even unto death:
   Grant us, who now remember him with thanksgiving, to be so
   faithful in our witness to you in this world, that we may
   receive with him the crown of life; through Jesus Christ our
   Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit,
   one God, for ever and ever.
Comments: Gated by NETNEWS@AUVM.AMERICAN.EDU