The Passion of St. Thomas Becket
The surviving extracts from Benedict’s Passion begin with a vivid description of the confrontation between Thomas Becket and four of Henry II’s knights in the archbishop’s palace on the day of his death, Tuesday, December 29, 1170. The chief point of contention was the coronation of the Young King Henry in June 1170 and the ensuing excommunications and suspensions of the archbishop of York and the English bishops who had officiated at the ceremony. After a heated argument, their tempers raised, the knights left to arm themselves.
Benedict was an eyewitness to the chilling events he describes. He draws numerous parallels between Becket’s last hours and death with the story of Christ’s passion in the Gospels. Though we are missing Benedict’s account of the first blow that struck the archbishop, it is likely that we have a very significant proportion of the original text. The headings included below may have been Benedict’s, but they were most likely written by the compiler of the Quadrilogus II, the text in which the extracts from Benedict’s Passion were preserved.