VI. Coronation

SO, as says William, the Norman monk, "ends the Passion of the glorious Martyr Thomas, on the fourth day before the Kalends of January.

"He suffered on this day, who was Primate and Legate, in the Church and on behalf of the Church, about the hour of the evening prayer, while the choir of monks sang psalms round about, and the clergy and the company of the people stood by, and while reigned our Lord Jesu Christ to whom be honour for ever and ever. Amen."

"Nor," he says again, referring to the white brains and the pool of blood that lay before the altar, "were roses and lilies wanting to his death."

"So," says another writer, "our high priest, not without blood, entered into the Holy Place."

For an hour or so after Thomas' soul was gone to God his tall body lay stretched there in the dark transept — at the foot of St. Bennet's altar. And then they came with lights, weeping and wailing — Osbert, his chamberlain, first veiling the wounded head — and lifted it on to a bier.

The face was as if he slept; those great eyes closed, and the colour fresh on the cheeks. His head was crowned with his own blood, and one streak ran across the face. While they made ready, binding up the wound, and arranging the body, more and more of the monks and people crowded in, dipping handkerchiefs in the precious blood, filling little phials from the great pool before the altar, crossing themselves with it, and invoking his name. The body lay all night before the high altar; and it was here that his confessor, old Prior Robert, shewed the brethren for the first time what manner of man this had been. There, next the tender skin, extending even down his thighs, lay the cruel hair shirt that marked him as a penitent and a lover of the Crucified.

Then, even on that day, the miracles began.

It was an uncritical age; that is to say, it was a time when men thought it natural that a God who had made the world and sustained it by His Power should shew that Power round the lives and deaths of His greatest servants. I do not say that every one of the five hundred marvels attributed to St. Thomas' intercession was inevitably a miracle; but I do say, with my whole heart, that many of them were, and that they were in accordance with what our Lord Himself promised as to the signs that should follow them that believe.

For example: on the same night a paralytic woman, drinking a little water in which a dried drop or two of the martyr's blood had been dissolved, was restored to health. A day or two later a blind woman who invoked his name received her sight. On the Saturday a girl of sixteen, living in Gloucester, was cured of a disease of eleven years' standing, upon her mother's making a vow to visit the shrine of the Saint.

And so the miracles went on. The Christian world went wild with enthusiasm, as is proper when a saint goes to God by the 156 road of blood. Faith was kindled, and God rewarded it according to His promise. Devotions sprang up; pilgrimages began; men returned from Canterbury bearing little leaden phials filled with " St. Thomas' water" — that is, water in which a minute drop of the holy blood had been mixed; and the shrine of Canterbury began to take its place with the great centres of the world's devotion — with Rome, Jerusalem, and Compostella. Still the fame increased. Even Gilbert of London, once his friend and lately his enemy, was healed of disease by a drop or two of " Thomas' water"; as Henry himself, a little later, when his sons rebelled against him, gained the upper hand, as he himself confesses, through the intercession of the Saint whom he had done to death. On the Continent altars were dedicated in his honour; and particularly worthy of notice is one little chapel in Notre Dame de Fourvieres at Lyons which the Saint himself, years before, had been asked to consecrate. He had consecrated the rest of the church, but, upon being asked to name a saint for this chapel, had refused, 157 saying it must be kept for the honour of the next martyr that should die. That honour was his own, and the chapel was dedicated to himself. Again, in England especially, there now began, and continued for many centuries, the custom of choosing Tuesdays for the saying of votive masses of St. Thomas, since it was on Tuesday that his first and second Birthdays fell — that on which he came into the world, and that on which he went to God; it was on Tuesday that he faced Henry at Northampton, and landed again in England after his six years' exile. And it was almost immediately after his death that he began to be considered the Patron of Secular Clergy, since he was one himself, and it was for their rights that he livedanddied — aposition which he now holds by the authority of the Supreme Pontiff.

So his fame increased.

Persons in all parts of Europe in great need vowed a candle of so many pounds' weight to be burned by the body of the martyr. Little by little as the years went by a shrine rose behind the high altar, of which the traces can be seen even to this day. 158

Kings and prelates poured in gifts; the shrine became covered with plates of gold, rich with jewels. The " Regal " of France, a huge ruby, given by the French King, shone there for centuries until the bitter day when another Henry, stripping the shrine for "his own use," carted away the jewels and gold in a string of carts, and set the gem in a ring upon his own thumb. Yet within that shrine for nearly four centuries lay that which was more precious than all jewels, vested in the robes of his consecration,— the body of the martyr himself.

On theContinent an equaldevotion sprang up to the Saint who had spent his exile there; and many places in Flanders claimed the honour of having had visits from St. Thomas in his lifetime, some of which are very hard to establish. Vestments which he had worn at the altar were preserved as holy relics, inscriptions were put up to record that in this or that place he had stayed or said Mass; in one place even a wooden cup was kept from which it was reported that he had once drunk. So, too, in France and Belgium and Italy there were shown many relics and 159 memorials of the martyr; the picture of his passion was worked on many vestments; a part of his brain and his blood-stained dress are preserved in the great Church of St. Mary Major in Rome; but of course, for the most part, his relics never left England. In countless abbeys and churches were kept tiny fragments of his dress, his hair shirt, his Pallium, and even his knife and boots. These nearly all disappeared in the storm ol the Reformation, and can never be recovered; even those that were preserved in his own shrine at Canterbury vanished under the hands of Henry VIII. All this eagerness, however, abroad as well as at home, to claim some share in the martyr, shows what an immense impression his death made upon Christendom. There was no shadow of doubt in men's minds that here was one who was a martyr as fully as any martyr of the Catacombs and the Roman persecutions — one who had died as surely for the cause of Christ, though at the hands of a Christian King, as any who died under Nero or Diocletian. It is wiser surely even for Protestants to take the opinion of the age in 160 which he lived, than of an age when Christian principles are so marvellously misunderstood, and to acknowledge that at least he died unselfishly and nobly on behalf of a cause which he was fully convinced was that of God. Catholics do not need such arguments: it is enough for them that the Church has raised him to her altars.

To return then to our history.

Henry was at Argentan, in France, when the news came to him of what his own passionate words had wrought. Instantly he retired from the world for forty days, fasting and afflicting himself. "Oh! that it should have happened! Oh! that it should have happened! " he cried out over and over again. So, too, for eight days Pope Alexander went into retirement, forbidding any member of the English nation to be admitted into his presence.

Henry's grief was certainly sincere. It is true he made no great difference in his treatment of the Church; but at least his sorrow for the death of his friend and his share in the murder was deep and lasting. 161 M

In the following summer he undertook his own penitential pilgrimage to the shrine, after seven months' exclusion from all churches and sacred rites.

Upon his landing at Southampton he be-gan to fast on bread and water, and for four days rode so, avoiding the crowds, but praying outside the churches as he went. When he first caught sight of Canterbury and the great golden four-winged angel that rose on the central tower he dismounted. At St. Dunstan's Church outside the walls he stripped off his shoes and went barefoot over the sharp stones till his feet dripped with blood. Then after a public acknowledgement of his sin before the tomb in the crypt, in the presence of the bishops, in the great church, still "unreconciled," with its bare altars and its penitential silence, he bent down his head, and, throwing back his cloak and shirt, received from each prelate five strokes on his bare shoulders, and from each of the eighty monks three. Then, still kneeling on the stones, he remained before the tomb all night, bleeding and travel-stained.

The four knights, too, did their penances-One of them, it is said, William de Tracy, went on pilgrimage to Rome and Jerusalem, and built a church in Devonshire, that still bears his name, in reparation of his crimes. For they had added crime to crime. After their double sacrilege in killing a priest in a House of God they had sacked his palace, carrying away for their own reward a great knife of the Saint's, his ring, his chalice; robbing his stables of their horses, and his treasury of stuffs and jewels designed for the service of God. They found, too, to their shame rather than to their joy, two of the hair shirts he was accustomed to wear. For months no man would speak to them or eat with them; even the dogs, it is said, turned away from the remnants of their masters' food. The loathing that men had for their crime was shown by the bitter punning upon their names: Fitz-Urse was named Ursus, the "Bear"; Hugh de Morville "of the Town of Death"; De Tracy became "Thraso"; and Brito "Brutus." It was said of those who assisted them that many died violent and terrible deaths, and scarcely one received 163 the Last Sacraments before he went to God. It is even said, by persons alive now, that in the gatehouse of Mailing Abbey, where one at least came on the night of the murder, there is still heard the sound of feet going up and down, and up and down, as if some restless soul were there that cannot lie still nor sleep.

Of those who were the Saint's especial friends other strange stories are told. For almost a year after the martyrdom the arm of Edward Grim, wounded in the Martyr's defence, remained unhealed. Then one night, in dream or vision, Thomas stood by him, and, taking his arm, wrapped it in a linen cloth, wet with the famous " water."

"Go, you are healed! " said the apparition.

"And this is the arm itself," writes Grim, "the hand of which has written these things for you to read."

On the night of the martyrdom a monk, sleeping in the crypt beside the body, saw the Saint himself enter in red vestments, bearing a lighted censer; he saw him mount the steps of one of the two altars and say mass there, censing both the altar and his 164 own tomb. To others the Saint appeared, bearing still the streak of blood across his face, as it had been at his death.

To Benedict he appeared three times on successive nights, " white and ruddy," going to the altar.

" My lord, art thou not dead?" he cried on the third night.

"I was dead, but am alive again," said the figure.

" If thou art alive," said Benedict trembling, "and amongst the martyrs, why dost thou not shew thyself to the world? "

" I bear a light," said the figure, " but it is not seen for the cloud that is between."

Herbert of Bosham, too, relates a wonderful story.

A monk in the Holy Land, dying about the day on which the Saint was martyred, promised to his Superior that, if it were permitted, he would appear to him and tell him of his condition. Nothing was of course known at that time of the event at Canterbury. A few days later the monk appeared to the Abbot and told him how, when he was admitted to the presence of God, he saw 165 come into that same Presence a man named Thomas, wounded in the head, led by a multitude of saints and angels. He saw that Saint crowned, and heard the welcome that he received.

" Thomas," said our Lord, " thus oughtest thou enter into the Courts of thy Lord. The glory that I have given to Peter, the same will I give to thee.",

And this, said the monk, was Thomas, Bishop of Canterbury, dead in those days and gone to God.

This story was told to Herbert by the Patriarch of Jerusalem fourteen years after the event.

So then lived and died Thomas, who reigns with Christ. "So our Abel, made perfect in the glory of martyrdom, fulfilled many times in a short space."

The priest mho has written this book has written it at Cambridge whence came Edward Grim. In the Church of our Lady and the English martyrs that now stands at Cam-bridge there is, as there ought to be, an altar to St. Thomas, Bishop and Martyr, and 166 above it is a window presenting his martyrdom, and Edward Grim standing beside the Saint, with outstretched hand to receive the first blow. Six miles away, in the little Church of Hauxton, now in Protestant hands, there is still shown upon the eastern wall of the south aisle a fresco, representing St. Thomas in pontifical vestments above the spot where his altar once stood.

Finally, the monk of St. Bennet who edits this book is a monk of St. Thomas' A bbey at Erdington, where are preserved to this day great and precious relics of the Sainfs body, and the amice which he wore around his neck at Holy Mass.

Help us, then we say with Henry, O Martyr of Christ! Saint Thomas assist us!