Word: beckets
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...author delights in turning history on its head in smaller matters too. T.S. Eliot notwithstanding, he makes a strong case against the 12th century martyr of Canterbury, Thomas a Becket, whom he sees as a willful, grandstanding prelate who egotistically courted martyrdom. Becket, he says, "did no service to Christianity." Flouting popular myth, Johnson points out that the great medieval cathedrals were generally not the work of inspired volunteer artisans but of skilled hired hands, who sometimes went on strike and had to be chided for goofing off. He clears Alaric and his Goths of the charge that they destroyed...
THERE ARE ALSO more subtle attitudes at work in The Canfield Decision and The Company. For instance, Agnew's portrayal of Canfield makes him out to be similar to Henry II in his relationship to the assassination of Thomas a Becket. Canfield joins forces with certain devious elements, but only involuntarily at first and eventually in an indirect way. According to the evidence in the book, Canfield is guilty of lesser crimes than those with which he's finally charged. He's only guilty of misfeasance, not malfeasance (though he can't prove it because important witnesses have disappeared...
Lion In Winter. Much fun. Katherine Hepburn plays Eleanor of Aquitaine and gets to turn all her regal frigidity on Henry II. Not to be relied on for your History 30 midterm, but good clean fun without the masochism of Becket or the high-flown rhetoric of Man for All Seasons...
...part of a church-state struggle, four knights assassinated Thomas a Becket, the Archbishop of Canterbury, in 1170, believing (with some reason) that Henry II wanted his former friend eliminated. The Reformation brought with it assassination as an instrument of religion, if not foreign policy, especially in the struggle between Roman Catholics and Huguenots in France. Before his accession to the throne, Henry III helped his mother, Catherine de Medicis, plot the assassination of Admiral Coligny and other Huguenot leaders. He himself was assassinated in 1589 by a monk; his successor, Henry of Navarre, a Huguenot who later became...
...forgiven. King David of Israel, warned by the prophet Nathan of impending punishment for his crime in stealing Bathsheba, threw himself into days of fasting and prayer to avert divine wrath. King Henry II of England, whose burst of temper led to the murder of Thomas a Becket, submitted to a barebacked scourging by the monks of Canterbury as part of his penance for his complicity in the crime. Such dramatic mortifications may have sometimes masked a lack of genuine contrition in the sinner, but they were at least impressive symbols of repentance...