Thomas Becket and the Construction of Clerical Masculinity

During the reigns of Henry II and his sons, powerful figures, both ecclesiastical and secular, used violence or the threat of violence to intimidate and coerce monks, priests, and other clerics. For instance, Archbishop Baldwin of Canterbury who was involved in a dispute with the monks of his cathedral besieged the monks three times. Rarely did the religious suffer serious harm due to the belief that laying hands on them was sacrilegious. Instead, those who challenged them employed proxy violence against servants and animals, limited violence, or mere threats. Nonetheless, such confrontations could be very tense, and serious violence was always a possibility. Medieval society, like most societies, had multiple constructions of masculinity, but the masculinity of aristocratic warriors can be considered hegemonic. Thus, the confrontations directed at monks, priests, and clerics could threaten their masculine self image. However, clerical writers generally only acknowledged this indirectly, by frequently using the vocabulary of manliness in describing how monks and priests stood up to those confronting them. Early Christianity had developed a type of masculinity that could accommodate pacifism. Medieval clerics appropriated the early Christian models and transformed them to create their own image of manly clerical warriors who resisted aggressors peaceably but stalwartly. Thomas Becket backed down during several tense, potentially violent confrontations during his conflict with Henry II, but eventually returned after a supposed peace with Henry, determined not to back down again. Though Becket’s biographers and indeed Becket himself talked in terms of martyrdom, they also used the language of masculinity. By refusing to give way to the men who then chose to murder him, Thomas became a storied martyr, but he also became a new exemplar of the manly yet peaceful Christian warrior.