 |
Canterbury is the seat of
the origins of English Christianity, the site where St. Augustine, the
monk sent by Gregory the Great to Christianize the English, baptized King
Etherbert of Kent on Whit Sunday in 597. Augustine became the first
Archbishop of Canterbury, and his church, dedicated to Christ Jesus, was
later burned by the Danes during the reign of Archbishop
Alphege. |
Augustine's monastery today
In 1067, the cathedral was destroyed by a fire. Lanfranc, the first
Norman archbishop, reorganized the monastery and initiated the rebuilding
of the cathedral which was dedicated in 1077. Lanfranc's successor, the
internationally renowned scholar and theologian Anselm added the towers
abutting the eastern transepts and the crypt, the largest of its period in
England. The quire was dedicated in 1130, but in 1174, another fire
destroyed the entire eastern arm of the cathedral. William of Sens
was hired to supervise the rebuilding, and his work on the transept, the
vault, and the quire at Canterbury was some of the earliest work in what
came to be known as the Gothic style.
right: the southeast end of the
cathedral |
 |
The Bell Harry |
South side, looking west |
| William's successor added the Trinity Chapel to the quire as a setting
for a new shrine to Thomas Becket, which stood there from 1220 to
1538 when it was destroyed by order of Henry VIII.. Thomas Becket,
the archbishop of Canterbury under Henry II, "the hooly blisful martyr,"
whose shrine is the object of the Canterbury pilgrims' journey, was
martyred in 1170 at the behest of Henry II, traditionally as the result of
an ill-framed wish, something on the order of, "would that there were
someone to rid me of this pesky priest" which was taken literally by four
of his followers. On December 29, four knights, Richard Brito, Hugh
de Moreville, Reginald FitzUrse, and William de Tracy, erupted into the
cathedral and demanded to see the archbishop. At the urging of the monks,
Becket left the monastery and met his attackers in the cathedral, in the
north transept . Following the conventional pattern of accusation and
rebuttal, the four charged Becket with treason to the king. Becket
resisted fiercely, but was attacked and killed by the sword of Richard
Brito. Becket's body was placed in the crypt, and a few days later began a
series of miracles which in 1173 resulted in Becket's
canonization. |
 |
 |
Canterbury quickly became the most popular and lucrative pilgrimage
site in England, as the wealth of the cathedral deorations attest.
This panel (left) from a window in the south quire aisle depicts
medieval pilgrims journeying to Canterbury.
At the heart of the disagreement
between Henry and his sometime Chancellor of England was an intense power
struggle between the church and the monarchy. There were two
fundamental causes of conflict between Becket and the Henry II. The
most immediate was a disagreement over Henry's coronation of his son,
known as the Young King (since he pre-deceased his father and never
assumed effective control), in the presence of the Archbishop of York and
other clerics but without the participation of the most powerful
representative of the Church in England. Henry wished to crown his son
king in his own lifetime, a decision he presumably came to regret since
his son's restiveness at being king in name only, without effective power,
finally led him to revolt against his father and to die as a result of his
rebellion. Henry took this controversial step while Becket was absent on
the continent, one which infuriated Becket as an affront to his office and
a symbolic statement of the autonomy or the monarch. When Becket returned
from France, he excommunicated all the clerics who had taken part in the
ceremony, causing Henry to utter his fateful wish.
Note
the placement of the figures in the panel below which shows the larger and
centrally placed bishop dominating the smaller figure of the king below
him. |
| The issue of the monarch's
ability to designate and crown his own successor without the participation
of the head of the church was part of a larger controversy over the
relative powers of the church and state that had as its most inflammatory
expression the Constitutions of Clarendon issued by Henry in 1164. The
Constitutions of Clarendon were, from top to bottom, an extreme challenge
to the authority and the autonomy of the Church in England. The
proclamations in this document effectively reduced the Church from a
separate and parallel governing institution to one that was subject to the
crown. One of the most contentious issues was the punishment of the
criminal clergy, which the Constitutions of Clarendon arrogated ultimately
to the royal courts rather than giving the final say to the ecclesiastical
courts. In addition, the Constitutions made many other provisions that
lessened the autonomy of the Church. For example, they provided that no
tenant in chief of the king could be excommunicated without the assent of
the king, that the archbishops, bishops, and priests could not travel
abroad without the permission of the king, that any dispute regarding the
patronage and presentation of a church should be litigated in the royal
courts, that all revenues from vacant archbishoprics, bishoprics, abbeys,
and priories of the king's demesne reverted to the king, that the filling
of those vacancies was at that king's discretion, that the clerics elected
to these positions had to perform homage and fealty to the king, that no
church of the king's demesne could be permanently bestowed without a grant
of the king.
Thomas at first agreed to the
Constitutions of Clarendon but later recanted, resulting in a six- year
period of exile and the confiscation of all his revenues and those of his
property. He had only just returned from exile when the new controversy
over the coronation of the Young King arose. Henry believed that Becket
had accepted the irregular coronation when word reached him in Normandy of
additional measures Becket was taking against the participants in the
ceremony.
|
 |
Above: windows from the Corona, at the eastern end of the
cathedral
Right: south transept window
Below left: the southwest porch
Below right: Bell Harry towers above the medieval city
walls |
 |
 |
 |
 |
. |
| The Norman water tower, built in the twelfth
century, still supplies water to the cathedral |
The tomb of the Black Prince, eldest son of Edward
III |
Christ Church Gate, completed 1517 |
The Warriors' Chapel, datng from the fourteenth
century |
| The exterior of the cathedral, decorated with figures of
gargoyles, saints, kings, and the Virgin Mary, sends extraordinarily
complex messages of mercy, compassion, desire, power, hope, and terror.
|
 |