Thomas Becket
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the man who was Henry II’s Chancellor and then Archbishop of Canterbury and who was murdered by knights in Canterbury Cathedral (depicted by Matthew Paris, above). Henry believed that Becket owed him loyalty as he had raised him to the highest offices, and that he should agree to Henry’s courts having jurisdiction over ‘criminous clerics’. They fell out when Becket agreed to this jurisdiction verbally but would not put his seal on the agreement, the Constitutions of Clarendon. The rift deepened when Henry’s heir was crowned without Becket, who excommunicated the bishops who took part. Becket’s tomb became one of the main destinations for pilgrims for the next 400 years, including those in Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales where he was the ‘blisful martir’.
Guests
- Laura Ashe
10 episodes
Associate Professor of English at Worcester College, University of Oxford -
Michael Staunton No other episodes
Associate Professor in History at University College Dublin -
Danica Summerlin No other episodes
Lecturer in Medieval History at the University of Sheffield
Reading list
-
Thomas Becket
Frank Barlow (Orion, 1997) Google Books → -
The Making of Europe: Conquest, Colonization and Cultural Change 950 - 1350
Robert Bartlett (Penguin, 1994) Google Books → -
Medieval Canon Law
James A. Brundage (Routledge, 2016) Google Books → -
The Quest for Becket's Bones
John Butler (Yale University Press, 1995) Google Books → -
The Struggle for Mastery: The Penguin History of Britain 1066-1284
David Carpenter (Penguin, 2004) Google Books → -
From Becket to Langton: English Church Government, 1170-1213
C. R. Cheney (Manchester University Press, 1986) Google Books → -
Thomas Becket
Anne Duggan (Bloomsbury Academic, 2004) Google Books → -
Thomas Becket: Warrior, Priest, Rebel
John Guy (Random House, 2012) Google Books → -
Thomas Becket
David Knowles (Adam & Charles Black, 1970) Google Books → -
The Becket Conflict and the Schools
Beryl Smalley (Blackwell, 1973) Google Books → -
The Penguin History of the Church: Western Society and the Church in the Middle Ages
R.W. Southern (Penguin, 1990) Google Books → -
The Lives of Thomas Becket
Michael Staunton (Manchester University Press, 2001) Google Books → -
Thomas Becket and his Biographers
Michael Staunton (Boydell & Brewer, 2006) Google Books → -
Thomas Becket: His Last Days
William Urry (Sutton Publishing Ltd, 1999) Google Books → -
Henry II
Wilfrid L. Warren (Yale University Press, 1973) Google Books → -
The Cult of St Thomas Becket in the Plantagenet World, c. 1170-c.1220
Paul Webster and Marie-Pierre Gelin (eds.) (Boydell & Brewer, 2016) Google Books →
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Programme ID: b09hp2rm
Episode page: bbc.co.uk/programmes/b09hp2rm
Auto-category: 270 (Christian church history)