CONCLUSIONS

If a tragedy is a conflict in which both sides are right, then the conflict between Archbishop Thomas and King Henry was undoubtedly a tragedy, for each side could make a good case, based on both history and policy, for its interpretation of the proper relationship between church and state. The tragedy, however, mutates into melodrama when we consider the behavior of the two protagonists, as there can be little doubt that both men behaved very badly and thereby made the conflict much worse than it need have been. It is almost impossible to attempt to evaluate Thomas of Canterbury without citing the definition by Saint Augustine that it is the cause, not the suffering, that makes the martyr. Undoubtedly, Thomas suffered. But whether his cause was his own advancement, the liberty of the church, clerical tyranny over lay society, or something else is in the eye of the beholder. Whether the methods he used to fight for his cause were appropriate or inflammatory is also an irresolvable dispute. The one thing on which scholars largely agree, now that some of the sectarian fires that overheated previous generations’ discussions have died down, is that the “Becket Controversy” made relatively little difference to the evolution of church-state relations. Nonetheless, the most famous of all murders of a bishop in his cathedral is an unforgettable story that became and remains a subject of endless fascination.