A Short History of EnglandChesterton, G. K. (Gilbert Keith)
History
A Short History of England
Chesterton, G. K. (Gilbert Keith)
Great Britain -- History
At the grave of the dead man broke forth what can only be called an
epidemic of healing. For miracles so narrated there is the same evidence
as for half the facts of history; and any one denying them must deny
them upon a dogma. But something followed which would seem to modern
civilization even more monstrous than a miracle. If the reader can
imagine Mr. Cecil Rhodes submitting to be horsewhipped by a Boer in St.
Paul's Cathedral, as an apology for some indefensible death incidental
to the Jameson Raid, he will form but a faint idea of what was meant
when Henry II. was beaten by monks at the tomb of his vassal and enemy.
The modern parallel called up is comic, but the truth is that mediaeval
actualities have a violence that does seem comic to our conventions. The
Catholics of that age were driven by two dominant thoughts: the
all-importance of penitence as an answer to sin, and the all-importance
of vivid and evident external acts as a proof of penitence. Extravagant
humiliation after extravagant pride for them restored the balance of
sanity. The point is worth stressing, because without it moderns make
neither head nor tail of the period. Green gravely suggests, for
instance, of Henry's ancestor Fulk of Anjou, that his tyrannies and
frauds were further blackened by "low superstition," which led him to be
dragged in a halter round a shrine, scourged and screaming for the mercy
of God. Mediaevals would simply have said that such a man might well
scream for it, but his scream was the only logical comment he could
make. But they would have quite refused to see why the scream should be
added to the sins and not subtracted from them. They would have thought
it simply muddle-headed to have the same horror at a man for being
horribly sinful and for being horribly sorry.
But it may be suggested, I think, though with the doubt proper to
ignorance, that the Angevin ideal of the King's justice lost more by the
death of St. Thomas than was instantly apparent in the horror of
Christendom, the canonization of the victim and the public penance of
the tyrant. These things indeed were in a sense temporary; the King
recovered the power to judge clerics, and many later kings and
justiciars continued the monarchical plan. But I would suggest, as a
possible clue to puzzling after events, that here and by this murderous
stroke the crown lost what should have been the silent and massive
support of its whole policy. I mean that it lost the people.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account