The Martyrdom of Thomas Becket
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- čas přidán 25. 08. 2021
- In 1170, Archbishop Thomas Becket was murdered in Canterbury Cathedral by knights of King Henry II of England. John Hamer of Toronto Centre Place looks at this famous martyrdom within the broader context of the battle of church vs. state in Medieval England and beyond.
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Such great lectures! A+
I know this movie pretty well, though not so well as "Lion in Winter"; I read the stage play first, then saw the movie on a tv broadcast. Our Spanish father loved it, especially Peter O'Toole's characterization of Henry II, and would enthusiastically quote from memory the climactic scene where Henry, sotto voce, praises Becket. I read that, on stage, O'Toole and Burton knew the play and understood the characters well enough to trade off if they felt like it.
Donald Wolfit as the Bishop of London. John Gielgud, is, in fact, the King of France here.
Louis VII was about 17 when he married Eleanor. She was about 15.
The treatment of the two queens was one of the things that always detracted from my enjoyment of the movie. The casting was wasted, too: Martita Hunt, a very talented woman, was Mathilda, and Pamela Brown, who hardly ever got her due in movies, was Eleanor.
I agree that, generally, and on several levels, "Lion in Winter" is better than "Becket", but this is not to take away the magnificence of both O'Toole and Burton in their wonderful and emotional interactions in "Becket".
Thanks for this discussion of church and lay law: this is what happened in the case of Joan of Arc: the church had to turn her over the secular arm of the law in order to be able to be rid of her by execution (the trial itself was horribly irregular, and the possibility of the Rehabilitation of her reputation with the re-trial was basically due to the integrity of the trial recorders, Guillaume Manchon, Nicolas Taquel and Guillaume Colles).
Some interesting parallels between the court of Castile and England, both of which had a peripatetic court (though for different reasons), and both of which allowed for female regnancy.
No Q&A... :/
I love your lectures! Thank you!
Felix Alymer played Archbishop Theobald of Canterbury. John Guilgud turns up later as King Louis VII of France. Donald Wolfit plays Gilbert Foliot.
I love Geddy Lee
The details of the four knights after the assignation are vague and contradictory. At least two returned from the Crusades. One of them being my ancestor, Richard Le Breton.
It is curious that the secular arm made no attempt to arrest the Knights for murder during the year they spent at Knaresborough while the penance imposed on them by The Pope was remarkably light.
@@alanpennie8013, was a near twenty year stint in the Crusades light? As for secular forces not arresting them, it is a matter of context. Even before I had done the family research and made tentative links, I had read up on Becket. I eventually came to the conclusion that he was a bit of a fool and pushed the matter too far. I am left with the impression that many contemporaries thought he had it coming. Today he is a saint but at the time he was just a pain the arse. Also these knights would not have been without influence. As members of the Royal Household, who would have dared to arrest them?
@@thechatteringmagpie
It was extraordinarily light. This was murder aggravated by sacrilege of the most extreme kind.
It was equivalent to what we would call a hate crime, though even more disturbing and horrifying.
There's something very odd about this story.
You suggest that Henry would habitually spend the evening raging and cursing at Becket so why on this one particular occasion did a bunch of Knights decide to interpret his tantrum as an instruction to commit murder?
I get a sense of someone behind the scenes who decided things couldn't go on like this and it was better for everyone if Becket died.
But why would this hypothetical plotter (or was it Divine Providence?) make use of such blundering fools as the Knights as instruments?
You made more sense the first time, lol.
shairi law
I have no sympathy for Beckett who was an arrogant power hungry egotist. The film though well acted was embarrassing as history. Films are not documentaries but one would like to think they would try to at least get some of the fundamentals right. The film represents this as a Saxon v Norman, despite Beckett himself being Norman.
..skipping to the essential point; man is not learning. The bombs blow, the powerful crush, those once in need ask now what? The hungry cry for food and fed say... I mean come on, humans, time is ever shorter! Thanx for listening!🤗
STM Henry II was in the right. Becket stood for a clericalism that exempted clerical criminals from being punished for their crimes, for a clericalism that made the clergy a caste separate from, and superior to, the "mere" laity. That the hyper-exaltation of the priesthood goes back at least to John Chrysostom (d. 407) does not make this notion of the priesthood and clergy legitimate - it means that the aberration that is clericalism has deep roots in the past. The effect of Becket's death was to make an archbishop with a very bad idea seem a martyr (which is absurd, since he was not killed out of hatred for the Catholic Faith, nor by non-Catholics) and to discredit his critics. How dangerous to the Church and its members clericalism can be, Catholics have been finding out since 2002 🥺🥺🥺 Clericalism, for all its occasional benefits to the Church, is a distortion of the Church's character.
Atleast we managed to get rid of not just royal , but royal and clerical hierarchies controlling the lives of everyone in society. I can't even begin to imagine how much people have suffered under these corrupted institutions over the centuries.