BECKET’S BONES
Continued from Page 40 their escape.
Despite immediate care, the Archbishop did not survive his wounds. The monks, fearing that the murderers would return to steal and desecrate the body, hurriedly placed his unembalmed body in a crypt whose doors were then barred.
In life Thomas Becket had many devotees. In death, his new role as martyr fur- thered the devotion and many made the pilgrimage to Can- terbury to pray for him. Some prayed to him. Immediately there were reports that prayers were being answered. Due to the miracles being performed, or perhaps to spite the king, Becket re- ceived a very quick canonization. And the king, whom eve- ryone suspected of playing some role in the murder, was forced to accept a very severe penance. In 1174, one year after St. Thomas Becket’s canoniza- tion, the king was publicly whipped by bishops, abbots, and monks and forced to spend a night in the crypt praying.
After resting for fifty years, Becket’s fame had not dimin- ished although his corpse was reduced
to mere bones. A magnificent new crypt was built to house his remains, such as they were. Several of Becket’s bones were subse- quently given away to various dignitaries and churchmen alike. Saint’s bones, after all, were very important relics, and every church was supposed to have one or two somewhere behind or within the altar. They would be traded and even stolen from one church to another, as the greater the saint, the more likely that visitors would come to the church. Increased visits meant increased alms. The trade was called “translation” which would come to mean the same thing as theft. The logic was that the saint would have wanted to be in a better location, so it was not stealing.
The trade in relics became a mania in medieval times. Critics of the Church claim if all the pieces of the “True Cross” were put together, they could rebuild Noah’s Ark. The
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to explain to a judge just what role they were playing. They had no interest, they protested, in stealing anything.
Despite the gifts of his bones, most of Becket, including his damaged skull would remain in Canterbury. The fervor of the Ref- ormation would again disturb what was left of St. Thomas Becket’s earthly remains. A more vicious anti-Church Henry, this time Henry VIII, had Becket disinterred in order to be put on trial for treason. Since Becket reportedly had little to say on his behalf, the ruse was seen as one more attempt at dese- cration. In 1538 the magnificent new tomb was destroyed and the bones of the saint burned. Or were they?
Rumors persisted that the bones had been switched with the bones of the Abbott of Evesham before the king’s agents could arrest Becket’s remains. It was the hapless Abbott, they said, whose remains were
ades to come. In 1949 the tomb was opened again, and Thomas Becket, if it was indeed Becket, was brought to St. Bartholomew’s Hospital. The autopsy on an 800-year-old col- lection of bones would be difficult under the best of circumstances, but after the 1888 in- ternment, the tomb was allowed to collect moisture thus permitting mold to age the bones further. The result led the doctors to conclude that this group of bones was of a man older than Becket’s 52 years and the skull wounds were not compatible. The con- clusion only served to further fuel the de- bate.
Just where the bones of the Archbishop might be has divided historians, churchmen and researchers into several camps. They may have been burned in 1558. They may have escaped the wrath of Henry VIII and might lie in some undisclosed safe location. They could be the bones unearthed in 1888. >
Number 85 • ATLANTIS RISING 67
bones of 100 of the 12 apostles lie in Euro- pean crypts, some 38 in Germany alone. While the trade would lose the manic levels of the middle ages it is still conducted on a regular basis by the church. In research con- ducted for Treasures From Heaven, I bought a relic of St. Therese of Lisieux from an Ebay seller in Ireland for less than $10 U.S. Be- cause it would be a sin to actually sell a saint’s bones, each listing contained the dis- claimer that you were actually buying the reliquary that held the bones. Tell that to a judge.
Peregrine and Risto would actually have
burned.
Fast forward to 1888, a certain coffin sus- pected of harboring the elusive saint was opened and then-modern forensic techniques were used to examine the remains. The skull was determined to be that of a 50-year-old man, tall enough to be the Archbishop, with serious wounds. A local surgeon W. Pugin Thornton stated that the wound to the head was more likely made by a pickaxe, although he conceded a large two-handed broad sword could have caused the damage. While two out of three wasn’t bad, the skull damage led to a raging debate in scientific papers for dec-
Martyrdom of Thomas Becket (fresco in Brunswick Cathedral)
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