Pilgrimage to Canterbury

"Thanne longen folk to goon on pilgrimages …
And specially from every shires ende
Of engelond to caunterbury they wende,
The hooly blisful martir for to seke,
That hem hath holpen whan that they were seeke."

 Chaucer, Canterbury Tales

 I kept thinking about the prologue to Chaucer's Canterbury Tales yesterday as I made a pilgrimage by train to the cathedral that once housed one of Europe's most celebrated shrines.  In 1170 St. Thomas Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury, was assassinated in his cathedral by soldiers of King Henry II.  People began venerating the martyred archbishop as a saint almost immediately after his death, and the Benedictine monks who cared for the cathedral reverently laid St. Thomas Becket in the crypt and carefully gathered up his blood that had spilled onto the floor.

Pilgrims began coming soon after, visiting the stone sarcophagus in the dark crypt and petitioning the archbishop to cure their diseases and intercede for them with God.  There were holes in the sarcophagus so that the pilgrims could touch the coffin enclosed within.  Unbelievably, one of the first pilgrims to the new shrine was King Henry II!  The king had ordered St. Thomas's murder--or at least passively endorsed it--because the archbishop opposed his initiative to appoint new English bishops without the pope's approval.  After the murder, the king came to Canterbury on his knees to do penance and to ask for St. Thomas's pardon.

St. Thomas Becket's cult spread throughout Europe, and for 350 years, hoards of pilgrims journeyed to Canterbury.  King Henry VIII destroyed the martyr's shrine as part of his break with the Roman Catholic Church, and today Canterbury is the mother church for the Anglican Communion with the Archbishop of Canterbury acting as spiritual head for the Church of England, the American Episcopal Church, and the Anglican Church in Africa.

 My "pilgrimage" to Canterbury only took about two and a half hours on the train, and although I've been complaining about the price of the ticket, it really was nothing compared to the finances a medieval pilgrim would have needed for the journey!  This is the road through the city to the cathedral.

The cloister adjoining the north side of the cathedral was once home to Benedictine monks who would have walked through its vaulted corridors on their way to the sanctuary to sing the divine office and daily mass.

Huge stone piers in the "Perpendicular Gothic" style extend up into the shadows of the nave.

Ascending a flight of stairs from the nave floor, you come to a richly carved stone choir screen, and through the central doorway you see the choir, sanctuary, and high altar.

 This contemporary altarpiece marks the spot where St. Thomas Becket was murdered, in the first transept on the northern side of the cathedral.  It was very moving to recall the story of the martyrdom in the very spot where it took place.

St. Thomas Becket had entered through this door, followed by the monks coming from the cloister.  They were on their way into the church to assist at the service.  As the archbishop climbed the stairs towards the altar, Henry II's soldiers entered through the door behind the monks.  St. Thomas turned around to face them and walked back down the stairs.  They drew their swords and killed him.

In 1220, Canterbury constructed a beautiful new shrine to enclose St. Thomas's body, and the archbishop's remains were relocated to Trinity Chapel, right behind the high altar.  Nothing remains of the shrine, but today a single candle burns hauntingly on the spot where it once stood.  Behind Trinity Chapel is yet another chapel, called the "Corona."  In this space, pilgrims venerated a fragment of St. Thomas Becket's skull--the "corona"--which had been struck from his head by a blow from one of Henry II's soldiers.

To reach Trinity Chapel, I climbed the "Pilgrims' Stairs," the same flight of steps that countless diseased and crippled people have hobbled up over the centuries.  From so many thousands of feet and crutches going up and down them, the stones are dramatically warped and deeply worn.

Trinity Chapel is lined with thirteenth-century stained glass depicting the miracles wrought by St. Thomas Becket for the pilgrims who came to his tomb.  You can walk up very close to the windows and see the details painted onto the glass.

In this scene, attendants prepare "Becket Water" by mixing a few drops of St. Thomas's blood into water.  This will then be given to the sick woman on the left to drink in the hope that it will cure her.

After a wonderful afternoon in one of the most historic cathedrals in Europe, I concluded the day by hearing the Canterbury Cathedral choir sing Evensong.  From my seat I could just see the candle on St. Thomas Becket's grave glowing in the darkness.  The magnificent organ blaring through the sanctuary was Anglican music at its finest.  And the reverent a cappella singing of the choir brought to mind the unending cycle of sung prayers and masses that have echoed from the walls of Trinity Chapel during the medieval centuries when St. Thomas Becket continued  to preside over the cathedral from the gilded shrine of his tomb.