In any English TV news, newspaper or website, Dover it is no longer the seaside town on the Sleeve, famous for the white cliffs and the delicious sole, but now it is only associated with migrants: the continuous landings have transformed the town into the Lampedusa of the United Kingdom. Too bad, because in this way no one pays any attention to the imposing castle, on top of the cliff, right above the city, which has played a big role in the history of all of Europe: right inside the castle Winston Churchill had the guns placed against the air invasion of the Luftwaffe. The Battle of Britain was won at Dover and from there began the liberation of the continent from Nazism.
Da Dover a Canterbury
For centuries those cliffs have been a natural strategic point: there the Channel is only 20 kilometers wide and, on a clear day, you can also see the France. And in fact the Romans built a faro: and the oldest of the Great Britain. After the legionaries, the Saxons who built a small church next to the lighthouse and finally the Normans who built the castle next to the church. Very similar in style and shape to the Tower of London, Dover Castle was built for the sake of mere propaganda and of earning goodwill: appease the Papa and curry favor with i pilgrims. He re Enrico II he had to be forgiven for the abominable murder of a priest. And he was not even just any priest, but even theArchbishop of Canterbury, the most important religious figure in the country. At ChristmasAnno Domini 1170, three assassins of the King of England, who however spent most of his time in Normandy, the homeland of his dynasty, enter the monumental Canterbury Cathedral, at the time a powerful and rich religious center, and slaughtered, in front of the faithful, Thomas Becket. Martyrdom did outcry across Europe: the death of the priest in the house of God became the most tragic event of the Middle Ages. And throngs of devotees begin to disembark in Dover to head to St Thomas’s tomb in Canterbury.
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A politicized martyr
St. Thomas, a martyr of the Catholic Church but snubbed by the Anglican Church, is the man who embodied the Caesaropapism, the fierce power struggle between the British crown and the Church, a clash that shaped the history of Europe up to the 1600s. British Museum retraces a crucial junction of the Middle Ages. In a few rooms, and a short path, it traces the history of the assassination of the Archbishop of Canterbury, but above all of the historical effects of the event over the centuries. The brutality of the murder, the mangled body and pieces of smashed brain in the churchyard, contributed to the outrage and shock of the whole Christian world which at the time coincided with all of Europe. In just two years, lightning speed in an era without social media, the internet, electricity, traveling only on horseback, the cult of the martyr Thomas it spread everywhere. And it has taken root a lot in Italy, especially in the South. A ceramic casket from limoges and from Naples, exhibited in the exhibition, testifies to the great fortune of the cult in Southern Italy. The piece dates back to the 1700s: seven centuries after the murder, Thomas was still revered in Kingdom of the Two Sicilies. There is also a historical reason: the daughter of Henry II ed Eleanor of Aquitaine, Joan of England, married King William II of Sicily, but with Norman origins and therefore linked to the Henry dynasty. The echo of the murder of Thomas Becket has reached the present day: still in 19xx, another Thomas, but with a surname Stearns Eliot, future Nobel Prize, writes the theatrical play Assassinio nella Cattedrale, inspired by the death of the archbishop.
Santo Immediately
Saint to the Roman church, Becket is something of an impostor to the British. When Henry II appointed him Archbishop, Thomas he wasn’t even a priest, but an ordinary citizen, he hadn’t even taken vows. It was the chancellor of the king and the choice was purely political. Becket’s sacred promotion ceremony – who until then had led a worldly life, was officiated by Henry of Blois, the brother of Re Stefano, who had fought a bloody civil war with Henry’s mother – is a act of defiance to the pope. As the king’s trusted man in an anti-papal key, however, Becket over time comes into conflict with the sovereign. The clash becomes more and more bitter until the archbishop himself, fearful for his life, is forced to go into exile. He takes refuge in France, from the pro-Roman king Louis VII. The Papa Alessandro III, threatened by the Barbarossa, and a bond is created between the two. So when Thomas returns to England, and Henry makes yet another scar on the Church, the appointment of his son as King without asking for the seal of Rome, theArchbishop has the King’s accomplices bishops excommunicated by the pope. At that point, Becket’s fate is sealed. But faced with the murder, Alexander III goes to counterattack, with the arms of the Church: the Pope canonizes Thomas after only three years. Becket is Santo Subito, also a political move. At that point, Becket is the most revered and famous saint in Europe. For Enrico, the murder becomes a political boomerang that threatens to unseat him from the throne. He asks for forgiveness twice and then humiliates himself with a public penance in Canterbury: he undresses in the cathedral and lets the priests whip him in front of his subjects. Having paid his penance, Henry tries to ride the cult of his saint to his advantage: in Dover he has an imposing castle built to house the most important pilgrims.
An Enrico does, another Enrico undoes
Tommaso was dead, but his principal uses his image to increase his power. He will not be alone: after three centuries, another Henry, the eighth, in 1500, will still use the tortured body of St. Thomas for his battle against the church of Rome. The King of the Anglican schism, even more at war with the Pope than his predecessor Henry II was, In 1538 Henry VIII forbids the cult of St. Thomas and no longer recognizes holiness, as a gesture of war against the Pope: it is an overwhelming decision also because over time Thomas had become the most famous saint in England: he has the largest number of churches dedicated to him. Thomas Becket, however, played a huge role in the history of England and throughout Europe: as a consequence of the martyrdom, in 1215 King John will approve the Magna Charta, the first English “constitution” and the first charter of human rights. The archbishop’s legacy, however, goes even further: English literature itself was born thanks to Becket. A century after his death, the unknown secretary of King Edward III, named Geoffrey Chaucer, writes the first novel in English, i Canterbury Tales: Chaucer, the Dante of England, was inspired by the pilgrims who went to the tomb of the saint. Without the son of a modest trader of Cheapside, London’s plebeian market, medieval Europe would never have existed.