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And forthwith four
knights took their counsel together and thought they would do to the
king a pleasure, and emprised to slay S. Thomas, and suddenly departed
and took their shipping towards England. And when the king knew of
their departing he was sorry and sent after them, but they were on the
sea and departed ere the messengers came, wherefore the king was heavy
and sorry. These be the names of the four knights: Sir Reginald
Fitzurse, Sir Hugh de Morville, Sir William de Tracy, Sir Richard le
Breton … |
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Then he received a
second blow on the head but still stood firm. At the third blow he
fell on his knees and elbows, offering himself a living victim, and
saying in a low voice, "For the Name of Jesus and the protection of
the Church I am ready to embrace death".
Then the third
knight inflicted a terrible wound as he lay, by which the sword was
broken against the pavement, and the crown which was large was
separated from the head. The fourth knight prevented any from
interfering so that the others might freely perpetrate the murder.
Edward Grim, a monk, observed
the assassination of
Thomas à
Becket (Thomas a Becket) from the safety of a hiding place
near the altar, writing this account some time after the event
I am
prepared to die for Christ and His Church.
Last words of St Thomas à Becket, before he was
struck dead by Sir William de Tracy on December 29, 1170
If
all the swords in England ere brandishing over my head, your terrors
did not move me.
(Alternative) last words of St
Thomas à Becket
In Syria, the divine and excellent
Marcellus [St Marcellus the Righteous, Abbot of the Acaemetes,
whose feast day this is – PW], as he is styled by Theodoret, a
bishop animated with apostolic fervour, resolved to level with the
ground the stately temples within the diocese of Apamea. His attack
was resisted, by the skill and solidity with which the temple of Jupiter had
been constructed. The building was seated on an eminence: on each of
the four sides, the lofty roof was supported by 15 massy columns, 16
feet in circumference; and the large stones of which they were
composed, were firmly cemented with lead and iron. The force of the
strongest and sharpest tools had been tried without effect. It was
found necessary to undermine the foundations of the columns, which
fell down as soon as the temporary wooden props had been consumed with
fire; and the difficulties of the enterprise are described under the
allegory of a black daemon, who retarded, though he could not defeat,
the operations of the Christian engineers.
Edward Gibbon
(1737 - 1794), on St Marcellus
the Righteous, and the Christian
destruction of paganism; Decline
and Fall of the Roman Empire
Elated with victory, Marcellus took the field in person against the powers of darkness; a numerous troop of soldiers and gladiators marched under the episcopal banner, and he successively attacked the villages and country temples of the diocese of Apamea Whenever any resistance or danger was apprehended, the champion of the faith, whose lameness would not allow him either to fight or fly: placed himself at a convenient distance, beyond the reach of darts. But this prudence was the occasion of his death: he was surprised and slain by a body of exasperated rustics; and the synod of the province pronounced, without hesitation, that the holy Marcellus had sacrificed his life in the cause of God.
Edward Gibbon, ibid
The
disease of an evil conscience is beyond the practice of all the
physicians of all the countries of the world.
William Gladstone, British prime minister, born
on December 29, 1809
National
injustice is the surest road to national downfall.
William Gladstone
Selfishness
is the greatest curse of the human race.
William Gladstone
In soil and
climate South Australia is said to resemble Castille, and peculiarly
adapted to the olive and the vine, the orange, lemon and pomegranate, and
the productions of Southern Europe. It is believed that the currant and
gooseberry will not succeed ...
The Working-Man's Companion;
or, Year-Book for 1840
The PIONEER has before declared that our only safety depends upon the total extirmination [sic] of the Indians. Having wronged them for centuries we had better, in order to protect our civilization, follow it up by one more wrong and wipe these untamed and untamable creatures from the face of the earth.
L Frank Baum,
publisher and editor of The Aberdeen Saturday Pioneer, and later author of the
Wizard of Oz books. The Wounded Knee massacre took place on December 29, 1890
December 29 is the 363rd day
of the year in the Gregorian calendar
(364th
in leap years), with 2 days remaining.
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Feast day of St Thomas à Becket (Thomas a Becket)
(Senista heath, Erica genistopha, is
today's plant,
dedicated to St Thomas à Becket,
whose feast day this is.
Thomas à Becket (1115 - December 29, 1170) was the child of a couple of Bretons who lived in Cheapside in London, and where the story of the Saracen mother came from, nobody knows. However, an old romantic tale says that the mother of Thomas à Becket was a Saracen princess and his father, Gilbert Becket, was a London merchant. While on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, he was taken prisoner by a Saracen lord whose beautiful daughter fell madly in love with Gilbert and expressed a desire to become a Christian, marry him and escape with him.
Gilbert escaped, but did not take the princess with him; soon his love for the beautiful Saracen maid faded until he all but forgot about her. However, while his love was decreasing, her love was increasing. Putting on a disguise, she left her father's home and followed her true love, using the only two English words she knew: 'London' and 'Gilbert'. She went from ship to ship repeating the name of the city she so desperately wanted to get to, and eventually found a ship going to London. She paid for her passage with her jewels and finally arrived in London.
As Gilbert was sitting
in his office one day his servant, Richard, came running in saying, "The
Saracen lady! As I live, she is going up and down calling out, 'Gilbert!
Gilbert!'" Gilbert Becket went out and found her in the crowds of
London, and soon they were wed.
According to The Saint, by Conrad Ferdinand Myer, which was first
published in German as Der Heilige in 1880, Thomas distanced
himself from his middle-class Saxon/Saracen background as soon as he was
able, entering the service of a Norman bishop. After coming into a
fortune when his father died, Becket travelled in Moorish Spain, where
he practiced astrology and other secret arts, using these upon his
return to England to bind King
Henry II to
him. While there is no evidentiary basis for these legends and fictions,
there is much that is known about Becket's life – and his death.
On this day in 1170,
Thomas à Becket,
40th Archbishop
of Canterbury, was
murdered
in his own cathedral by four knights acting, as they perhaps mistakenly
believed, on orders of King Henry II of England.
The
assassination shocked
contemporaries in an age that was relatively used to deeds of violence. Becket's
life has been the subject of two 20th-Century plays: Jean Anouilh's Becket
and TS Eliot's Murder in the Cathedral.
"What a parcel of fools and dastards have I
nourished in my house," Henry had said earlier that month in an
outburst in his court, "and not one of them will avenge me of this one
upstart clerk". Some of his knights took his words literally.
While he was alive, St
Thomas à Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury, had turned water into wine
before the eyes of Pope Alexander
III. On one occasion, a brewer named
Ralph of Hatfield couldn't get his beer to ferment until he put some of
Thomas's blood into the brew. The saint who was martyred on this day
once was visiting the Archbishop's Palace in Otford, Kent. Noticing that
there was not a reliable water supply there, he stuck his staff in the
ground. Water came to the surface, and the well which was dug has ever
since been called St Thomas's Well. Or, so it is said.
Becket had been the
king's chancellor, living in luxury as Henry's favourite, but after
his consecration as Archbishop of Canterbury (1163) he changed his ways
and became modest in his living and a champion of the people. Henry grew
impatient with the upstart cleric and probably ordered his assassination.
Miracles and wonders
On the night before his assassination, visions of the foul deed were experienced by people as far away as Normandy, or so it is said. The crime brought its own revenge. Becket was revered by the faithful throughout Europe as a martyr, and canonized by Alexander in 1173, probably on the orders of Henry. On July 12 of the following year Henry humbled himself to do public penance at the tomb of his enemy, which remained one of the most popular places of pilgrimage in England until it was destroyed in the Dissolution of the Monasteries. A shrine was later re-established there and remains popular with tourists today.
There were many miracles after Becket's death,
such as the raising of children from the dead and the curing of leprosy,
paralysis and madness, or, so it is said. Even a member of the De Broc
family, one of whom had taken part in the plot against him, was healed, as
was Henry II.
WJ Williams has suggested that the story of the murder of Thomas à Becket may have inspired the masonic legend of the death of Hiram Abiff. This theory included reference to a company of masons in the City of London making a procession to St Thomas's Chapel on his saint's day. He suggests that they may have been an emblematic performance concerning the death of Thomas on that day. They also supported St Thomas's Hospital, which was the headquarters of the Knights of St Thomas, a military order during the crusades which was very close to the Templars.
Canterbury Tales
The travellers in Geoffrey Chaucer's
Canterbury Tales
were on a pilgrimage to the murdered cleric's shrine. The word 'canter' entered the English
language from the pace of the horses headed there, called the
'Canterbury gallop'.
De Tracy's curse
William de Tracy was the leader of the knights who assassinated Thomas à Becket, the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Canterbury, and for his crime all those of that surname were cursed by the Church with this ban:
Wherever by sea or land they go,
For ever the wind in their face shall blow.
Hence the old expression All the Tracys have the wind in their
faces, which means that those who do wrong will always be punished.
Becket was born on December
21 and died on December 29. Coincidentally, the cyclone named Tracy
destroyed the Australian city of Darwin just about right in between these
two days, on Christmas
Eve 1974.
Substitutionary death?
The practice of electing (and originally, sacrificing) a king at the Winter Solstice celebration has deep significance. It's tempting to wonder whether the death of Thomas à Becket might have occurred because he deliberately chose to die as a substitute for Henry II, and arranged for his death on the cathedral steps to coincide with the setting of the Winter Solstice sun. (See Sir James George Frazer (1854 - 1941), The Golden Bough, 1922, on sacrificial kingship.)
William the Conqueror and King Edmund were crowned on Christmas Day, and two of the pagan Plantagenet kings were murdered at the time of the solstice.
Robin Hood's death (December 24) and the Hunting of the Wren (December 26) may be seen as allegories of the practice of killing the king or chief at the Solstice. Lammas (Lughnasadh, August 1) was another cross-quarter of the year; this practice possibly occurred on approximately Lammas in the cases of England's King William Rufus and Norway's King Olaf (Olav).
It's widely believed amongst neo-Pagans that William and other kings who died violent deaths on or near Celtic cross-quarter days, such as this one, were actually victims of sacrificial kingship. Such sacrifice was also practised in ancient Greece, and the Celts might have acquired the practice from there.
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