Thomas was joined in exile by many of his staff, some of whom had actually preceded him in fleeing. Probably the most important to the unfolding of events were Herbert of Bosham and, arriving somewhat later, John of Salisbury. John was one of the great political theorists of the twelfth century, author of the Policraticus (1159). He and Thomas had worked together in Archbishop Theobald’s household, and this work was dedicated to Thomas. The Policraticus actually argues that a tyrannical ruler may be assassinated, hardly a common idea in a period when the usual teaching was that God placed rulers in their positions and the faithful were required to suffer in patience even their most high-handed actions. Despite this, John often tried to tone down the heat of Thomas’s actions and statements in the course of the quarrel with Henry. Herbert of Bosham was another university-trained theologian and writer. Of all Thomas’s companions, he was perhaps the most adamant in insisting on the complete independence of the church from interference by secular authorities. He clearly wrote some of Thomas’s most important letters as the archbishop pursued his quarrel with Henry over the six years of exile and may have been especially responsible for Thomas’s most vociferous pronouncements and dramatic actions.
By appealing to the pope and fleeing to France, Thomas became a player, sometimes little more than a pawn, in a diplomatic game that had been going on at least since Henry became king of England in 1154. The major parties were Henry, King Louis VII of France, who was Henry’s overlord for his
French domains (as well as his wife’s former husband), Pope Alexander III, and Frederick Barbarossa the Holy Roman Emperor, whose quarrels with Alexander had led him, by 1164, to advocate the right to the papal throne of an “antipope.” Indeed, in the course of the years of Thomas’s exile, Frederick supported no less than three men in sequence as pope instead of Alexander. In the very complicated diplomacy of these years, Louis and Henry, as overlord and overly powerful vassal, formed one axis of tension, and Alexander and Frederick formed the other. Because Alexander needed the support of other monarchs against Frederick’s attempts to oust him from the papacy, Henry had a strong card to play: if Alexander supported Thomas wholeheartedly, Henry would side with Frederick and recognize the antipope as the rightful pope. Louis, however, found Thomas very useful: by supporting Thomas against Henry he could blacken his vassal’s reputation by publicizing his maltreatment of a man of the cloth. Louis also offered Alexander refuge from Frederick, who, in 1164, was in military control of most of the Italian peninsula, including the city of Rome itself. Indeed, in 1164 the pope was residing in the French town of Sens. In the crosscurrents of diplomacy as it came to be structured from the moment of Thomas’s flight on, the usual alliance was Louis and Thomas against Henry, with Alexander supporting them as passively as he could and Frederick hovering in the background hoping to detach Henry from Alexander if the pope went too far in his support of the archbishop.
Emperors, Popes, and Antipopes
In the early Middle Ages, popes were elected by the clergy and people of Rome, often with much interference from outsiders. From time to time, disputes meant that two men at a time claimed to have been chosen. The title used for the ones who, in the long run, failed to vindicate their claims is "antipope." In 1059, the power to choose the next pope was given to the College of Cardinals, but this hardly ended the phenomenon of antipopes. Indeed, the heyday of antipopes coincides with the period of the greatest conflict between popes and emperors over control of the church, of Rome, and of Italy. Between 1058 and 1138, there was an antipope more than half the time. Later, the Emperor Frederick Barbarossa supported four men successively against Alexander III (pope 1159-81): antipopes who called themselves Victor IV, Pascal III, Callistus III, and Innocent III. Thereafter, the phenomenon of antipopes disappears until the fourteenth century.
Naturally, therefore, once in France Thomas went first to the court of King Louis. With his departure from England, he passed in one moment from being one of the richest men in western Europe to being so poor that it was often a question how he was to support those who had accompanied him or pay for even the most basic necessities of life, his food, lodging, and travel. Louis was quite generous despite the fact that he himself was none too rich and had many calls on his purse. Thomas then traveled to Sens, where the pope had already entertained an embassy from Henry, whose members had been disappointed by Alexander’s failure to grant what they wanted. Thomas may have offered to resign his office into the pope’s hand, but, if he did, the pope restored him. He certainly presented Alexander with a copy of the Constitutions of Clarendon, which both he and the king’s main supporter in the papal curia, William the cardinal of Pavia, then expounded. At the end of the day, the pope ruled that, while none of the constitutions was ideal, some were tolerable. Neither now nor at any time later, however, did the pope issue a written ruling against the intolerable customs.
After his visit to the pope, Thomas and a few companions took up residence at the Cistercian abbey of Pontigny, in Burgundy, which was not part of the domain of either king. He did not become a monk, although he adopted monastic garb while he was living at Pontigny. He lived in the abbey for about two years, until threats by Henry against the Cistercian order in England made it prudent for him to leave. Thereafter, Thomas and his small household made their base an abbey just outside of Sens, although they moved around a good deal. Throughout the years of exile, many of Thomas’s supporters had to be accommodated elsewhere in France and Flanders.
World History
