From Murder to Cult
Thomas Becket, archbishop of Canterbury, was killed inside his own cathedral by knights of King Henry II in December 1170, after a long quarrel between king and archbishop over the rights of the church. The details of that conflict belong to the story of the murder of Becket; here the focus is on what happened to his body afterward.
Within days, people reported cures linked to the dead archbishop. Monks collected the accounts, and the cathedral community soon promoted him as a martyr. The pope declared him a saint in 1173, only a few years after his death, which was quick by medieval standards. In 1174 Henry II came to Canterbury and did public penance at the tomb, an event that boosted the cult further.
The Cult Site
Becket was first buried in the crypt of the cathedral, and the early cult centered there. Following a fire in the choir in 1174, the east end was rebuilt in the new Gothic manner, and part of the design provided a grand setting for the saint. In 1220 his remains were moved, in a ceremony called a translation, to a richly decorated shrine in the Trinity Chapel behind the high altar. Medieval sources describe it as a gold-covered structure encrusted with jewels and offerings, though precise details vary in the surviving descriptions.
Visitors did not simply walk up to the saint’s coffin. Pilgrims were guided through the cathedral in a set sequence. They could see the spot of the murder, the crypt where he was first buried, and finally the shrine itself, which was raised above the floor so that pilgrims knelt or approached it from beneath. Monks managed access, collected offerings, and kept records of gifts. Stained glass in the Trinity Chapel depicted miracles attributed to Becket, which functioned as visual advertisements of his powers.
Canterbury Water and Souvenirs
One of the best-known Canterbury items was a small flask, called an ampulla, that held a drop of what was described as Becket’s blood diluted in water. Pilgrims took it home to drink or apply to the body, hoping for health. The flasks were typically made from lead alloy and had loops so they could be hung from a cord or sewn to clothing.
Other items for sale included small badges showing the saint’s head or the figure of an archbishop on horseback, as discussed in the account of pilgrim badges. They allowed a visitor to display proof of the trip and to carry a small portion of the saint’s protection. The cathedral and the town both earned money from such trade, as well as from inns and offerings.
Who Came
Canterbury drew visitors from every level of society. Kings and nobles gave gifts, while ordinary people came as part of local groups. The shrine was an obvious stop for those traveling from London, about a few days’ journey on foot, and the route through Kent became one of the best-known pilgrim ways in England. Foreign visitors came too, since Becket’s cult spread across Europe, with images of him appearing in churches far from England.
The popularity of the pilgrimage was so well known that Geoffrey Chaucer chose it as the frame for the Canterbury Tales, written in the later fourteenth century. The pilgrims in that work are fictional, but the setting reflects how familiar the road to Canterbury was.
Records of offerings suggest that pilgrim numbers fluctuated. Special festival years, including the anniversary of the translation, brought larger crowds. Later in the Middle Ages the flow of gifts seems to have declined compared with the first century of the cult, although historians debate how steep the decline was.
The End of the Shrine
In the 1530s Henry VIII broke with Rome and began dissolving religious houses. Becket’s cult was a symbol of the church’s independence from the crown, which made it politically awkward. The shrine was dismantled in 1538, its treasures were taken for the crown, and the saint’s name was ordered removed from service books. What happened to the bones is uncertain; later stories claim they were destroyed or hidden, but no firm answer exists.
Canterbury remains an important church today, and a candle and a plaque mark the place where the shrine once stood. The pavement worn by centuries of kneeling pilgrims is among the few physical traces of how many people came.
Why Canterbury Matters
The cult shows how a shrine could develop quickly from a single dramatic event: a death, reports of cures, official recognition, a grand building project, and a thriving trade in tokens. It also shows how closely a cult could be tied to politics, since the same saint who drew crowds in 1220 became a target of a king more than three centuries later.