Life of Thomas à Becket

by Henry Hart Milman

A second time Henry's ungovernable passion betrayed him into a step which, instead of lowering, only placed his antagonist in a more formidable position. He determined to drive him from his retreat at Pontigny. He sent word to the general of the Cistercian order that it was at their peril, if they harbored a traitor to his throne. The Cistercians possessed many rich abbeys in England; they dared not defy at once the King's resentment and rapacity. It was intimated to the Abbot of Pontigny, that he must dismiss his guest. The Abbot courteously communicated to Becket the danger incurred by the Order. He could not but withdraw; but instead now of lurking in a remote monastery, in some degree secluded from the public gaze, he was received in the archiepiscopal city of Sens; his honorable residence was prepared in a monastery close to the city; he lived in ostentatious communication with the Archbishop William, one of his most zealous partisans.[112]

Controversy with English clergy.

But the fury of haughtiness in Becket equaled the fury of resentment in the King: yet it was not without subtlety. Just before the scene at Vezelay, it has been said, the King had sent the Archbishop of Rouen and the Bishop of Lisieux to Pontigny, to lodge his appeal to the Pope. Becket, duly informed by his emissaries at the court, had taken care to be absent. He eluded likewise the personal service of the appeal of the English clergy. An active and violent correspondence ensued. The remonstrance, purporting to be from the Primate's suffragans and the whole clergy of England, was not without dignified calmness. With covert irony, indeed, they said that they had derived great consolation from the hope that, when abroad, he would cease to rebel against the King and the peace of the realm; that he would devote his days to study and prayer, and redeem his lost time by fasting, watching, and weeping; they reproached him with the former favors of the King, with the design of estranging the King from Pope Alexander; they asserted the readiness of the King to do full justice, and concluded by lodging an appeal until the Ascension-day of the following year.[113] Foliot was no doubt the author of this remonstrance, and between the Primate and the Bishop of London broke out a fierce warfare of letters. With Foliot Becket kept no terms. "You complain that the Bishop of Salisbury has been excommunicated, without citation, without hearing, without judgment. Remember the fate of Ucalegon. He trembled when his neighbor's house was on fire." To Foliot he asserted the pre-eminence, the supremacy, the divinity of the spiritual power without reserve. "Let not your liege lord be ashamed to defer to those to whom God himself defers, and calls them 'Gods.'"[114] Foliot replied with what may be received as the manifesto of his party, and as the manifesto of a party to be received with some mistrust, yet singularly curious, as showing the tone of defence taken by the opponents of the Primate among the English clergy.[115]

The address of the English prelates to Pope Alexander was more moderate, and drawn with great ability. It asserted the justice, the obedience to the Church, the great virtue and (a bold assertion!) the conjugal fidelity of the King. The King had at once obeyed the citation of the Bishops of London and Salisbury, concerning some encroachments on the Church condemned by the Pope. The sole design of Henry had been to promote good morals, and to maintain the peace of the realm. That peace had been restored. All resentments had died away, when Becket fiercely recommenced the strife; in sad and terrible letters had threatened the King with excommunication, the realm with interdict. He had suspended the Bishop of Salisbury without trial. "This was the whole of the cruelty, perversity, malignity of the King against the Church, declaimed on and bruited abroad throughout the world."[116]

John of Oxford at Rome.

The indefatigable John of Oxford was in Rome, perhaps the bearer of this address. Becket wrote to the Pope, insisting on all the cruelties of the King; he calls him a malignant tyrant, one full of all malice. He dwelt especially on the imprisonment of one of his chaplains, for which violation of the sacred person of a clerk, the King was ipso facto excommunicate. "Christ was crucified anew in Becket."[117] He complained of the presumption of Foliot, who had usurped the power of primate;[118] warned the Pope against the wiles of John of Oxford; deprecated the legatine mission, of which he had already heard a rumor, of William of Pavia. And all these letters, so unsparing to the King, or copies of them, probably bought out of the Roman chancery, were regularly transmitted to the King.

John of Oxford began his mission at Rome by swearing undauntedly, that nothing had been done at Wurtzburg against the power of the Church or the interests of Pope Alexander.[119] He surrendered his deanery of Salisbury into the hands of the Pope, and received it back again.[120] John of Oxford was armed with more powerful weapons than perjury or submission, and the times now favored the use of these more irresistible arms. The Emperor Frederick was levying, if he had not already set in motion, that mighty army which swept, during the next year, through Italy, made him master of Rome, and witnessed his coronation and the enthronement of the Antipope.[121] Henry had now, notwithstanding his suspicious—more than suspicious—dealings with the Emperor, returned to his allegiance to Alexander. Vast sums of English money were from this time expended in strengthening the cause of the Pope. The Guelfic cities of Italy received them with greedy hands. By the gold of the King of England, and of the King of Sicily, the Frangipani and the family of Peter Leonis were retained in their fidelity to the Pope. Becket, on the other hand, had powerful friends in Rome, especially the Cardinal Hyacinth, to whom he writes, that Henry had boasted that in Rome everything was venal. |Dec. 1166.| It was, however, not till a second embassy arrived, consisting of John Cummin and Ralph of Tamworth, that Alexander made his great concession, the sign that he was not yet extricated from his distress. He appointed William of Pavia, and Otho, Cardinal of St. Nicholas, his legates in France, to decide the cause.[122] Meantime all Becket's acts were suspended by the papal authority. At the same time the Pope wrote to Becket, entreating him at this perilous time of the Church to make all possible concessions, and to dissemble, if necessary, for the present.[123]

If John of Oxford boasted prematurely of his triumph (on his return to England he took ostentatious possession of his deanery of Salisbury[124]), and predicted the utter ruin of Becket, his friends, especially the King of France,[125] were in utter dismay at this change in the papal policy. John, as Becket had heard (and his emissaries were everywhere), on his landing in England, had met the Bishop of Hereford (one of the wavering bishops), prepared to cross the sea in obedience to Becket's citation. To him, after some delay, John had exhibited letters of the Pope, which sent him back to his diocese. On the sight of these same letters, the Bishop of London had exclaimed in the fullness of his joy, "Then our Thomas is no longer archbishop!" "If this be true," adds Becket, "the Pope has given a death-blow to the Church."[126] To the Archbishop of Mentz, for in the empire he had his ardent admirers, he poured forth all the bitterness of his soul.[127] Of the two cardinals he writes, "The one is weak and versatile, the other treacherous and crafty." He looked to their arrival with indignant apprehension. They are open to bribes, and may be perverted to any injustice.[128]

John of Oxford had proclaimed that the cardinals, William of Pavia, and Otho, were invested in full powers to pass judgment between the King and the Primate.[129] But whether John of Oxford had mistaken or exaggerated their powers, or the Pope (no improbable case, considering the change of affairs in Italy) had thought fit afterwards to modify or retract them, they came rather as mediators than judges, with orders to reconcile the contending parties, rather than to decide on their cause. The cardinals did not arrive in France till the autumn of the year.[130] Even before their arrival, first rumors, then more certain intelligence had been propagated throughout Christendom of the terrible disaster which had befallen the Emperor. Barbarossa's career of vengeance and conquest had been cut short. |A. D. 1167. Flight of Frederick.| The Pope a prisoner, a fugitive, was unexpectedly released, restored to power, if not to the possession of Rome.[131] The climate of Rome, as usual, but in a far more fearful manner, had resented the invasion of the city by the German army. A pestilence had broken out, which in less than a month made such havoc among the soldiers, that they could scarcely find room to bury the dead. The fever seemed to choose its victims among the higher clergy, the partisans of the Antipope; of the princes and nobles, the chief victims were the younger Duke Guelf, Duke Frederick of Swabia, and some others; of the bishops, those of Prague, Ratisbon, Augsburg, Spires, Verdun, Liege, Zeitz; and the arch-rebel himself, the antipope-maker, Reginald of Cologne.[132] Throughout Europe the clergy on the side of Alexander raised a cry of awful exultation; it was God manifestly avenging himself on the enemies of the Church; the new Sennacherib (so he is called by Becket) had been smitten in his pride; and the example of this chastisement of Frederick was a command to the Church to resist to the last all rebels against her power, to put forth her spiritual arms, which God would as assuredly support by the same or more signal wonders. The defeat of Frederick was an admonition to the Pope to lay bare the sword of Peter, and smite on all sides.[133]

Becket against the legates.