The great center of the cult of Saint Thomas was, of course, Canterbury itself. Chaucer’s pilgrims in the Canterbury Tales were off to see “the holy blissful martyr.” Indeed, Canterbury became certainly the most popular pilgrimage site in England and perhaps the fourth most popular site for all Europeans, after Jerusalem, Rome, and Saint James of Compostella. As was usual with a canonization, the monks of Canterbury Cathedral were ordered to translate—that is, move—the new saint’s body to a place of honor in the church. Unfortunately, there was a major fire in the cathedral on September 5, 1174. While it did not damage either the site of the murder or the tomb of the saint, which was then in the crypt, rebuilding took so long that the formal translation of Saint Thomas’s remains to the elegant shrine in the Trinity Chapel behind the main altar of the cathedral—where they would stay for more than three centuries—did not take place until 1220, the fiftieth anniversary of his martyrdom. The ceremony was conducted, of course, by the archbishop of Canterbury of the day, Stephen Langton, and attended by King Henry III. That shrine was magnificent. Its most notable feature was a great ruby, known as the Regale of France, which King Louis VII had presented to the cathedral on a visit on 1179, allegedly to pray for the welfare of his son and heir. There was also a shrine enclosing the sword point that had broken off in the course of the attack on the archbishop, and visitors to the cathedral were also shown a separate relic alleged to be the piece of the saint’s skull that was struck off in his murder. Trinity Chapel was adorned with a magnificent series of stained-glass windows depicting the miracles the saint had performed.
The Shrine of Saint Thomas
No particularly good depictions of the shrine survive, but from the extant evidence John Butler has derived this description of the monument: "The shrine. . . was raised up on steps and fronted by an altar and consisted of three parts: a stone plinth with an open arcaded base, the richly gilded and decorated wooden casket in which the feretrum [reliquary] containing the relics of the saint was laid, and a painted wooden canopy, suspended from the roof by a series of pulleys that enabled it to be raised or lowered to reveal or cover the casket itself. The casket was covered in gold plate and decorated with fine golden trellis-work. Affixed to the gold plate were innumerable jewels, pearls, sapphires, diamonds, rubies and emeralds, together with rings and cameos of sculptured agates, cornelians and onyx stones. Also attached to the casket was the great Regale of France." Writing of his visit to the cathedral in about 1512, the great humanist Desiderius Erasmus said of the shrine that "every part glistened, shone, and sparkled with rare and very large jewels, some of them larger than a goose's egg."
The Trinity Chapel is raised above the level of the main body of the cathedral by flanking flights of steps. "After making their way [up one of these flights of stairs] from the site of the martyrdom and the crypt, many of [the pilgrims] crawling on their hands and knees and prostrating themselves before the shrine, the climactic moment came for the canopy to be raised on its pulleys and the glistening casket revealed." According to Erasmus's narrative, "silver bells tinkled and one of the officers of the priory came forward with a white wand, touching the many jewels with it, indicating their quality and value, and naming their donors. After prayers and intercessions had been offered and gifts surrendered, the canopy descended and the pilgrims withdrew.. . down the opposite flight of steps from that by which they had ascended."
It was apparently not possible for anyone actually to see the portions of the saint's body that were enclosed in the feretrum. Most of the relics of Saint Thomas that were separately housed at Canterbury and elsewhere were either cloth soaked in the blood he shed when he was murdered or items he had used, or at least touched, while alive. Archbishop Langton, however, was reported to have retained some small bones when Thomas's body was laid in the feretrum in 1220 so that they could be distributed elsewhere, and the part of Thomas's skull that was struck off at the time of his murder was kept in a separate shrine. By the sixteenth century, the monks were apparently claiming that this was the whole of the saint's skull: Erasmus described this item as the "perforated skull of the martyr. . . covered in silver, but the forehead is left bare for people to kiss." Other contemporary descriptions agree. As Butler says, "With the removal [in 1538] of Becket's bones from the shrine, skull and all, the abuse became openly known."
World History
