Christ Crucified in TS Eliot’s Murder in the Cathedral

Anastasia Cherygova

About the Author: Anastasia graduated with an Honours BSc and an MA in political thought from the School of Political Studies at the University of Ottawa. Her thesis described the theologico-political justifications given by the French State in the nationalisation of the Catholic Church during the French Revolution. She has also written on the topics of secularism, urbanism, and political philosophy. Anastasia works as a teacher of French in Ottawa, where she also volunteers in offering formation sessions in the city’s Anglicanorum Coetibus parish, the Annunciation of the Blessed Virgin Mary. She is also the female voice of Tradition Magazine.

—

“For the word of the cross, to them indeed that perish, is foolishness; but to them that are saved, that is, to us, it is the power of God. For it is written: I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and the prudence of the prudent I will reject. Where is the wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the disputer of this world? Hath not God made foolish the wisdom of this world? For seeing that in the wisdom of God the world, by wisdom, knew not God, it pleased God, by the foolishness of our preaching, to save them that believe. For both the Jews require signs, and the Greeks seek after wisdom: But we preach Christ crucified, unto the Jews indeed a stumbling block, and unto the Gentiles foolishness: But unto them that are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God, and the wisdom of God.” (I Cor 1:18–24)

I was recommended to read T.S. Eliot’s play Murder in the Cathedral by a good friend in the context of my thesis defense preparation, since the abovementioned murder of Saint Thomas Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury, is likely the most famous case of State-Church conflict in pre-Reformation England. As skeptical as I have been of T.S. Eliot’s style particularly and of the 20^th century theater generally, I did eventually read the play, knowing that whatever my opinion of his writing may be, T.S. Eliot was a faithful Anglo-Catholic, likely to do justice to the martyr’s story.

It was true—the 1935 play even contains liturgical pieces, such as Mass introits, and the singing of famous sequences, like Dies Irae. Seeking to incorporate the aspects of classical Greek tragedy, like a chorus composed from the women of Canterbury, T.S. Eliot describes the events of December 1170 immediately preceding the martyrdom of Saint Thomas. The first part describes how the archbishop returned to England after seven years in exile, fully anticipating his own demise for putting himself at odds with King Henry II, hinted by a dark foreboding December atmosphere around him. Opposed to the three priests at his side, Thomas finds himself approached by four tempters, indicated as a foreshadowing of four knights who will later murder him. The first reminds him of the past temporal pleasures shared with the now-vexed king; the second brings up the pragmatic interests of the kingdom jeopardized by the archbishop’s religiosity; the third offers a more “subsidiary” alliance with the regional barons against the king. But the least expected seducer sneaks upon Thomas to offer the ever more dangerous temptation: a twisted image of his own desires:

Save what you know already, ask nothing of me.
But think, Thomas, think of glory after death.
When king is dead, there’s another king,
And one more king is another reign.
King is forgotten, when another shall come:
Saint and Martyr rule from the tomb.
Think, Thomas, think of enemies dismayed.
Creeping in penance, frightened of a shade;
Think of pilgrims, standing in line
Before the glittering jewelled shrine,
From generation to generation
Bending the knee in supplication,
Think of miracles, by God’s grace,
Think of your enemies, in another place.

But Thomas soon enough deduces the wicked intention, the bait in this “damnation in pride.” How diabolical! How wary we too must be of this, of being consumed by our own designs, of being so absorbed in our own comprehension of doing good as to lose the sight of Christ. How much evil came out of the brilliant minds of those who sought to build better worlds, to “write [their] names upon the shards” of the old order.

The Cross of Christ is not hard to see in this heaviness. Jesus too spoke of His own enmity with the prince of this world, open about His own forthcoming violent death at the hands of people who thought Him too much for the contemporary political climate. He too was confronted by His frightened disciples; He too faced the tempter desiring His ruin. This is most clearly on display in Saint Matthew’s Gospel, chapter 16. It opens with both the Sadducees and the Pharisees seeking to entrap Christ. The former, falling prey to the power in this world; the latter, while zealous for the Law, losing the forest for the trees—we too can see their interests reflected in T.S. Eliot’s tempters. The chapter ends with the famous confrontation between Our Lord and Saint Peter, perplexed at how openly his master spoke of His impending death in Jerusalem, warranting this famous rebuke:

“Go behind me, Satan, thou art a scandal unto me: because thou savourest not the things that are of God, but the things that are of men. Then Jesus said to his disciples: If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me. For he that will save his life, shall lose it: and he that shall lose his life for my sake, shall find it. For what doth it profit a man, if he gain the whole world, and suffer the loss of his own soul? Or what exchange shall a man give for his soul? For the Son of man shall come in the glory of his Father with his angels: and then will he render to every man according to his works.” (Mt 16:23–27)

We too with the disciples must remember that Jesus’ messianic mission was contrasted to the expectation borne of the title of Son of David: the hope was likely for a figure like King David as we see him in II Samuel, a brave and daring warrior, wise to when he must hide from danger and reign destruction upon his many enemies, foreign and domestic. How different it is from a meek rabbi who willingly gives Himself up for a humiliating sacrilegious death. In the same steps follows Thomas Becket.

The first part of the play is followed by an interlude of a real sermon given on Christmas morning 1170 by Archbishop Becket to a congregation that waited for him for seven years. Becket offers his congregation “a very short” sermon on the paradoxical nature of Christian faith, and by extension, Christian martyrdom.

“For whenever Mass is said, we re-enact the Passion and Death of Our Lord; and on this Christmas Day we do this in celebration of His Birth. So that at the same moment we rejoice in His coming for the salvation of men, and offer again to God His Body and Blood in sacrifice, oblation and satisfaction for the sins of the whole world. […] Beloved, as the World sees, this is to behave in a strange fashion. For who in the World will both mourn and rejoice at once and for the same reason? For either joy will be overborne by mourning, or mourning will be cast out by joy; so it is only in these our Christian mysteries that we can rejoice and mourn at once for the same reason.”

This paradox ultimately points us at the mystery of Christ’s whole life, on display perhaps most vividly in His crucifixion: the most humiliating death brings about the most triumphant victory; we lament at the extreme violence of Our Lord’s demise, all while rejoicing in the reconciliation and mercy brought about by it. A cause of scandal for many, then and now, it is our cause for eternal happiness. And just like Christ Himself said above in Matthew 16, the one who follows the Lord must be ready to lose this life; Becket’s concurrent proof for this lies in the Church’s own calendar:

“Consider also one thing of which you have probably never thought. Not only do we at the feast of Christmas celebrate at once Our Lord’s Birth and His Death: but on the next day we celebrate the martyrdom of His first martyr, the blessed Stephen. Is it an accident, do you think, that the day of the first martyr follows immediately the day of the Birth of Christ? By no means. Just as we rejoice and mourn at once, in the Birth and in the Passion of Our Lord; so also, in a smaller figure, we both rejoice and mourn in the death of martyrs. We mourn, for the sins of the world that has martyred them; we rejoice, that another soul is numbered among the saints in Heaven, for the glory of God and for the salvation of men.”

This point was not lost on T.S. Eliot: he begins the second part of the play demonstrating how the three feast days that follow Christmas are those of various kinds of martyrs: Saint Stephen the Protomartyr, Saint John the Evangelist, spared of red martyrdom only to face white martyrdom in exile, and the Holy Innocents. The archbishop’s own feast day shall be on the fourth day. He continues in his sermon:

“Beloved, we do not think of a martyr simply as a good Christian who has been killed because he is a Christian: for that would be solely to mourn. We do not think of him simply as a good Christian who has been elevated to the company of the Saints: for that would be simply to rejoice: and neither our mourning nor our rejoicing is as the world’s is. […] So thus as on earth the Church mourns and rejoices at once, in a fashion that the world cannot understand; so in Heaven the Saints are most high, having made themselves most low, and are seen, not as we see them, but in the light of the Godhead from which they draw their being.”

Jesus is the eternal model of this path; His life our example, and His crucifixion the most paradoxical of it. Our archbishop is sober about his own future:

“I do not think I shall ever preach to you again; and because it is possible that in a short time you may have yet another martyr, and that one perhaps not the last.”

Archbishop Becket faces his own violent death the same way Christ did: he does not hide when the four assailants force themselves into his hall; it is his own well-wishing clergy that forcibly drag him into the Canterbury Cathedral, only for him to insist that they keep its doors open. Soon enough the foes, all drunk, follow, and Thomas Becket offers himself as a living sacrifice. The scene of the titular event, the murder in the cathedral, is lengthy, going on to the heart-wrenching lamentations of the chorus.

Yet once the bludgeoning is over, T.S. Eliot begins a scene that to me was the most shocking of the whole play: the four murderers, having done their deed, turn to the audience, addressing it in the most gentile English prose, presenting each other by their real names: Reginald Fitz Urse, Hugh de Morville, William de Traci, and Richard Brito. Each one of them corresponds to the the four tempters in the first part of the play—and each reprises the motif of his tempting counterpart to justify, as if in the House of Commons, why it was paramount that they kill Thomas Becket.

Reginald Fitz Urse, the ringleader, appeals to procedures and precedent, like a chairman directing the committee of harrowing soliloquies, “that is in accordance with our long-established Trial by Jury.” Hugh de Morville, the pragmatic politician, suggests that Thomas put too much stock in religion, upsetting the King’s meticulously strategic plan of combining the office of Chancellor and Archbishop, assuring peace and balance in England: “had Becket concurred with the King’s wishes, we should have had an almost ideal State: a union of spiritual and temporal administration under the central government.” William de Traci, “the eldest member” and the advocate for the barons, says “We are four plain Englishmen who put our country first, […] we are not getting anything out of this.” Finally, Richard Brito, introduced as “coming as he does of a family distinguished for its loyalty to the Church,” casts doubt on the most obvious, asking the audience “Who killed the Archbishop?” His answer is that Thomas Becket’s death was a “Suicide while of Unsound Mind”—in these words, Becket is not a martyr or a saint, but “a monster of egotism.” His death thus becomes a folly of a megalomaniacal churchman determined to make a name for himself in his demise, pouncing upon the first opportunity to die, much how Percy Shelley persistently sought to drown in a boating accident to cement himself as a romantic hero. He ends by saying that this is “the only charitable verdict you can give, upon one who was, after all, a great man.” The goods that tempted the archbishop in his life, sought to become his detractors upon his death.

“If the world hate you, know ye, that it hath hated me before you,” says He who before that utters “these things I command you, that you love one another.” His whole being full of paradoxes, His death, a disgrace and a triumph at once, and all those who love Him must walk in His footsteps. Just like His master, Thomas Becket faced a death that was politically expedient, surrounded by tempters and liars who saw him as inconvenient and controversial, killed in a place that doubled as a throne of his power. We must ask ourselves: where will we be if we find ourselves in the proximity of someone akin to Thomas Becket? Will we be like the mournful chorus of the women of Canterbury, decrying our own woe and wishing that our shepherd saved himself in exile? Will we be like the priests of his cathedral, dragging him into safety against his will? Or will we remember the Master who, alive again after He was dead, declared to His disciples “I am with you all days, even to the consummation of the world.”

Canterbury did not lose its shepherd—He, like a faithful servant, followed his Master to that abode where no intrigue can reverse his glory and no king can condemn his memory. T.S. Eliot concludes with the chant of the triumphant Te Deum, as the cathedral’s priest’s words close the play:

“Forgive us, O Lord, we acknowledge ourselves as type of the common man,
Of the men and women who shut the door and sit by the fire;
Who fear the blessing of God, the loneliness of the night God, the surrender required, the deprivation inflicted;
Who fear the injustice of men less than the justice of God;
Who fear the hand at the window, the fire in the thatch, the fist in the tavern, the push into the canal,
Less than we fear the love of God.
We acknowledge our trespass, our weakness, our fault; we acknowledge
That the sin of the world is upon our heads; that the blood of the martyrs and the agony of the saints
Is upon our heads.
Lord, have mercy upon us.
Christ, have mercy upon us.
Lord, have mercy upon us.
Blessed Thomas, pray for us.”