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The Murder in the Cathedral of Thomas Becket It
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The Biographical Process
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VICTOR TURNER 6 Religious Paradigms and Political Action: The Murder in the Cathedral of Thomas Becket It has been said that almost every schoolchild in England knows the main outlines of the story of Thomas Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury, who was murdered in his cathedral on December 29, 1170, by four knights of King Henry II, the first royal Plantagenet. I beg leave to doubt the literality of this statement after having heard in the Canterbury cloisters last summer a mother tell her ten year-old daughter that Becket was a 'bishop whose 'ead was cut off by old 'Enery the Heigth.' Nevertheless, the tale and the myth of Becket have survived eight centuries and can still arouse fierce partisanship. For there was a clash of wills between monarch and prelate which both masked and milked a fatal affinity of temperament; this was caught up into an accelerating cleavage between Church and State and compounded by the first serious stirrings of nationalist sentiment in England and France. In the complex social field within which both arch-antagonists operated there were many other opposed and developing social trends which reinforced their personal quarrel: the rift between urban and rural social sub-systems, between country aristocracy and town burghers, between feudal relations and market relations; the still unresolved ethnic tension between Norman conquerors and Anglo-Saxon indigenes; the incipient struggle for secular power between the throne and the Barony; the opposition between secular and regular clergy - and other conflicts and struggles which we will encounter in the course of this analysis. These and other social conflicts drew cultural support from divergent theories: one school of thought held that a papal monarchy should direct all the spiritual and temporal affairs of Christendom, another that society ought to be dualistically orga-nized into separate but equal spheres of state and church; then there was the polarization, memorably discussed by Fritz Kern,1 between the complex of rights summarized under 'the divine right of kings' and the right of resis-tance to the arbitrary use of royal power, a right which conflated ancient Germanic tribal custom and the Christian tenet that it is one's bounden duty to resist tyrants as expressed in Acts, V: 29, 'We ought to obey God rather 153

VICTOR TURNER 6 Religious Paradigms and Political Action: The Murder in the Cathedral of Thomas Becket It has been said that almost every schoolchild in England knows the main outlines of the story of Thomas Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury, who was murdered in his cathedral on December 29, 1170, by four knights of King Henry II, the first royal Plantagenet. I beg leave to doubt the literality of this statement after having heard in the Canterbury cloisters last summer a mother tell her ten year-old daughter that Becket was a 'bishop whose 'ead was cut off by old 'Enery the Heigth.' Nevertheless, the tale and the myth of Becket have survived eight centuries and can still arouse fierce partisanship. For there was a clash of wills between monarch and prelate which both masked and milked a fatal affinity of temperament; this was caught up into an accelerating cleavage between Church and State and compounded by the first serious stirrings of nationalist sentiment in England and France. In the complex social field within which both arch-antagonists operated there were many other opposed and developing social trends which reinforced their personal quarrel: the rift between urban and rural social sub-systems, between country aristocracy and town burghers, between feudal relations and market relations; the still unresolved ethnic tension between Norman conquerors and Anglo-Saxon indigenes; the incipient struggle for secular power between the throne and the Barony; the opposition between secular and regular clergy - and other conflicts and struggles which we will encounter in the course of this analysis. These and other social conflicts drew cultural support from divergent theories: one school of thought held that a papal monarchy should direct all the spiritual and temporal affairs of Christendom, another that society ought to be dualistically orga-nized into separate but equal spheres of state and church; then there was the polarization, memorably discussed by Fritz Kern,1 between the complex of rights summarized under 'the divine right of kings' and the right of resis-tance to the arbitrary use of royal power, a right which conflated ancient Germanic tribal custom and the Christian tenet that it is one's bounden duty to resist tyrants as expressed in Acts, V: 29, 'We ought to obey God rather 153

Chapters in this book

  1. Frontmatter I
  2. Preface V
  3. Contents IX
  4. Introduction 1
  5. PART I: Essays in Sacred Biography
  6. The Many Lives of Buddha 37
  7. Following the Beloved 63
  8. The Life of Saṅkarācārya 87
  9. Religious Biography in India: The ‘Nectar of the Acts’ of Caitanya 109
  10. PART II: Biographical Traditions and Individual Lives
  11. The Story of Tukbaw: ‘They Listen as He Orates’ 121
  12. Religious Paradigms and Political Action: 153
  13. Ralph Waldo Emerson: The Birth of a Seer 187
  14. Newman’s Illness in Sicily: The Reformer as Biographer 201
  15. PART III: Individual Lives and Cultural Innovation
  16. Personal Identity and Cultural Crisis 221
  17. The Beecher Family 253
  18. Psychohistory and Communal Patterns 273
  19. The Uses and Limits of Psychobiography as an Approach to Popular Culture: The Case of ‘The Western’ 297
  20. PART IV: From Individual Life to Hagiography
  21. Kūkai as Master and Savior 319
  22. The Death and ‘Lives’ of the Poet-Monk Saigyō 343
  23. The Loneliness of Matsuo Bashō 363
  24. Lincoln’s Martyrdom 393
  25. Bibliography 413
  26. Index of Proper Names 430
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https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110805833.153

Chapters in this book

  1. Frontmatter I
  2. Preface V
  3. Contents IX
  4. Introduction 1
  5. PART I: Essays in Sacred Biography
  6. The Many Lives of Buddha 37
  7. Following the Beloved 63
  8. The Life of Saṅkarācārya 87
  9. Religious Biography in India: The ‘Nectar of the Acts’ of Caitanya 109
  10. PART II: Biographical Traditions and Individual Lives
  11. The Story of Tukbaw: ‘They Listen as He Orates’ 121
  12. Religious Paradigms and Political Action: 153
  13. Ralph Waldo Emerson: The Birth of a Seer 187
  14. Newman’s Illness in Sicily: The Reformer as Biographer 201
  15. PART III: Individual Lives and Cultural Innovation
  16. Personal Identity and Cultural Crisis 221
  17. The Beecher Family 253
  18. Psychohistory and Communal Patterns 273
  19. The Uses and Limits of Psychobiography as an Approach to Popular Culture: The Case of ‘The Western’ 297
  20. PART IV: From Individual Life to Hagiography
  21. Kūkai as Master and Savior 319
  22. The Death and ‘Lives’ of the Poet-Monk Saigyō 343
  23. The Loneliness of Matsuo Bashō 363
  24. Lincoln’s Martyrdom 393
  25. Bibliography 413
  26. Index of Proper Names 430
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