The 5th Day of Christmas - Rewriting History To Erase the Assassination of Thomas Becket (Series, Part 5.a.)
Thomas Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury and Primate of England, was assassinated in the middle of the Christmas season, on 29, December, 1170. He was canonized quickly in February of 1173, considered a martyr and a kind of folk hero for resisting expansion of royal authority over things then believed to be matters of the church. Henry II was forced to apologize and to do penance for his role (intentional or not) that prompted Becket’s killing. Nearly four centuries later, about five years after Henry VIII had first sought annulment from his first wife to marry his mistress, Anne Boleyn, Henry broke from Rome, became head of England’s church, and received an English annulment instead of a Roman one. In another five years, he (along with Protestant reformers) suppressed Becket veneration and pilgrimage, claiming it idolatrous, disliking the idea of superstitious miracles that transcended scriptural truth. Henry didn’t want his power over his church to be challenged or limited by a Beck...