Pilgrim Ways

Canterbury At Last The last staging post would be Harbledown, from where the city may be seen. In 1084 Archbishop Lanfranc founded the Hospital of St.Nicholas, close to a well whose waters were said to heal. The Black Prince‟s Well was so-named because, when he was dying in 1376, he requested healing waters to be brought from here. At Canterbury the pilgrim entered at city which was first occupied by an Iron Age Celtic tribe, the Cantii. The Romans town of Durovernum Canticorum is still home to one of the two British churches founded by Romans and still in use ; the other being Old St.Pancras in London. Canterbury‟s church of St.Martin is the church St.Augustine reoccupied when in 597 he arrived at the end of his journey from Rome‟s Trajan Market. The pilgrim‟s main destination was the magnificent cathedral church.

Dominated by the high altar, communicants ascend the steps as Christ would have climbed the hill to Calvary. Replicating Jerusalem‟s Holy Sepulcher, chapels are built below the altar, deep into the ground.

Alfred Lord Tennyson captured the thought of ascending to God in his poem In Memoriam: “I falter where I firmly trod, And falling with my weight of cares Upon the world‟s great altar- stairs That slope thro darkness up to God, I stretch lame hands of faith, and grope...”

The cathedral is designed to allow pilgrims to process past the shrine of St.Thomas, down to the crypt chapels, and up to the high altar. The chapel of Adam‟s Skull reminds the penitent that he is dead with Adam and that as he rises heavenward he becomes alive in Christ. This is recalled in the medieval hymn: “Adam lay in bondage, bound in fetters strong; four thousand winters, thought he not too long: and all was for an apple, an apple that he took, as holy men find written, in their holy book.”

Becket and The Canterbury Saints Thomas a Becket was born in 1118, the son of a London merchant. His mother was a Muslim who fell in love with Gilbert ( Thomas‟ Crusader father), she followed him to Europe, and converted to Christianity. A small gilded crescent above Becket‟s tomb captures this intriguing part of the saint‟s origins. In 1142 he joined the household of Theobald, Archbishop of Canterbury. The worldly Thomas was an unlikely candidate to become Archbishop himself butin 1162, with Henry II‟s patronage, he secured the post. He underwent a deep interior change and increasingly found himself pitted against the secular authorities in upholding religious belief and the rights of the Church. Infamously this led to Henry‟s plaintiff “who will rid me of this turbulent priest” and his death wish turned into reality by four of Henry‟s knights. Mass was about to be celebrated as they arrived at Canterbury. As Thomas came to the altar the knights surrounded him and murdered him. Two years later the Pope canonised him. Four years passed before Henry finally did penance by walking barefoot through Canterbury, whipped by priests as he walked. In venerating Thomas‟ shrine, the King was joining the armies of pilgrims who were already flocking to Canterbury.

By atoning for his bloody outrage, Henry had been forced to capitulate before a higher authority than his own. Little wonder that in a world where brutality and force were regularly deployed by aggressive temporal leaders, ordinary people rejoiced in the power of the Church to subdue and civilise. The curbing of kings and barons by the Church, and the