The Church and the King in the Middle Ages

 

Bishops and abbots were used to power in the Middle Ages. By 1150 the church in Britain was huge and very rich organization.it owed its power and wealth to that fact almost everyone in Britain was a Christian and there was only one church – the Roman Catholic Church. The Archbishop of Canterbury was the leading priest in the church in England. He looked for spiritual guidance to the Pope in Rome-the head of western Christendom.

You can get some idea of the power of the Church if you visit a great Cathedral like Ely. A building like this would be a magnificent achievement if built today with the aid of modern machine, but medieval cathedrals were built by hand. The cost was enormous.

The church was immensely rich. It wealth came from different sources. As you have seen, the peasants paid tenth of their produce to the Church as a tithe. Rich people gave money and sometimes property when they died. These funds paid for new cathedral and met the cost of running the church. Great wealth gave the abbots and bishop great power. They were treated as they were early and barons.

The Kings of England

The medieval kings of England were Christian. But they did not want the pope interfering in the way they ruled the country. In particular, they insisted that it was their right to appoint the Archbishop of Canterbury and other leaders of the Church, such as abbots and bishops. To the king, they were the same as the barons. They had been granted huge estates. In return he expected them to do homage as vassal. This meant the king must have the right to appoint and dismiss them.

The Church didn’t like this at all. Some churchmen thought that kings should be vassals of the pope since, in their eyes, the authority of a king to rule a country was granted by God at the coronation ceremony, and the Pope was God’s representative on earth. They wanted the church to be distinct from the state. The church had its own laws-called canon law to control priest and other clergy. Canon law was often more lenient with offenders than the Kings’ law. This did not seem fair to the king or to other lay people (people who are not priest).

The pope and the Archonship of Canterbury had a number of powers they could use to force a king or baron to do as they wanted. In particular, they could excommunicate. This was a terrible punishment for a devout Christian. It meant excluding them from Holy communion.

Relationship between the Church and the king reached a crisis when king Henry II appointed his leading minister, Thomas Becket, as Archbishop of Canterbury in 1162. Becket was Chancellor of England and one of Henry’s closest friend.

The quarrel between Henry II and Becket

As Becket had forecast, the two men soon quarreled over who should control the church. Henry II wanted the clergy to be the subject to the same laws as other people. Up to than they had the right called ((benefit of clergy) to be tried by ac church court instead. In 1163 Henry demanded that offending priest be handed over for punishment. Becket refused. In 1164 he opposed Henry once again and was forced into exile. While there he excommunicated some of the Kind’s advisers.

He returns in 1170 after the pope arranged a truce for him with the king. But Becket was suborning. He still believed he was right. He made clear his opposition to the king’s proposals and suspended three of the bishop who had taken the king’s side

Henry was furious when he heard the news, “Will no one rid me of this turbulent priest?”, he cried. Four Knights-Reginald FitzUrse, William de Tracy, Hugh de Moville and Richard le Breton-look him at this word.

Without waiting to see if the king really meant what he said, they set off for Canterbury. Edward Grim and William Fitz-Stephen were both in the Cathedral on 29 December 1170 when the four knights burst in.

The pope was horrified, was were most people in Christendom, Becket was canonized in 1173 and became St Thomas. The day of the murder, 29 Decmeber, became St Thomas’s Day and his tomb in Canterbury Cathedral became a shrine.

Henry II was filled with remorse and came back to England to do penance at the tomb of his former friend. On Saturday 12 July 1174, he walked barefoot into Canterbury wearing a woolen smock. All day he ley at the shrine and was flogged by all the bishops, abbots and monks in the Cathedral. An eyewitness said he prayed all day and night. But although Henry II did penance for his crime, he still kept control of the England Church.