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Monarchy and Church

Monarchy and Church

Henry and Becket

The quarrel between Henry II and Becket had its roots deep in the past. To understand it we must trace the history of the dealings of the Crown with the Church since that Norman Conquest which had made so many great changes in England.

We have already spoken of that school of Cluniac monks which had striven to set up a purer standard of life and duty in the Church. One result of their efforts has been already remarked - the increased reputation of the monks who led strict lives, and the decline from favour of secular and parish clergy, who were less particular. But it is necessary to examine the objects of the Cluniacs more deeply. They saw with alarm that churchmen were every year becoming more involved in affairs of the world, more occupied with the administering of wide estates and the gathering of riches, more concerned with the cares of state, more interested in keeping themselves on an equality with the great nobles. They felt that the world was mastering the spirit, the thorns choking the wheat. It was needful to cut off this connection with the world. Thus they strove to make the clergy celibate, because they thought that marriage entangled men in worldly concerns; they cried out against the offence of simony, because when men could buy promotion or office in the church, they were led to covet riches, or be unduly influenced by them; and (though this came later) they objected to churchmen receiving offices at the hands of laymen. Lay investiture, as this was called, was an abuse, because it was likely that laymen were often guided in their choice by unworthy reasons. Churchmen would be appointed to livings, preferments, bishoprics, and so forth, not for their zeal or piety, but because they were popular and easy-going; they would thus be tempted to work for the favour of men, not for the cause of God.

All of the Cluniac aims were laudable in themselves, and to the first two no objection could reasonably be raised. That the clergy should be celibate was an old rule which had been somewhat loosely kept, and clerical marriages caused great scandal. Simony was an offence that the Church had long battled with, having complete right on its side. But to attack lay investiture was another and a novel matter. The Cluniacs wished to cut the Church loose from all lay control, to make it a body apart, independent, an imperium in imperio. But the fact was that the greater churchmen, the bishops and abbots, held large masses of landed property. Herein lay the wealth of their sees and foundations; and as landowners they owed duties to the state like other landowners. They had no claim to escape taxation or the task of sending tenants to fight in the field. If the Cluniac reformers wished the Church to be entirely free from the world, the Church must abandon the wealth that bound it to the world. This, of course, it had no intention of doing.

Chronology

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