Kentish Gazette Canterbury & District
Strange story of the Archbishop’s finger
With 2020 marking 850 years since Thomas Becket’s death, a bona fide piece of history is on display at a Canterbury church...
Last week the Gazette reported how a robe thought to have been worn by Thomas Becket at the time of his murder in 1170 will be put on display at Canterbury Cathedral this summer.
Venerated by pilgrims for hundreds of years, the holy relic is returning from the Santa Maria Maggiore church in Rome as part of commemorations to mark 850 years since the death of the former Archbishop.
A huge programme of services, events and exhibitions are being held in Canterbury and London under the banner Becket2020.
But there is one less wellknown piece of Becket history which doesn’t feature on the agenda – the former Archbishop’s finger. Tucked away in St Thomas’ Catholic Church in Burgate Street, you will find a small display chest above the altar of the martyr’s chapel.
And within the glass case is a finger bone presented to the church in 1953 by Father Thomas Becquet, Prior of
Chevetogne in Belgium, a collateral descendant of Becket himself.
The chest also displays a piece of Becket’s vestment, given to the church in the 19th century.
When St Thomas’ opened for worship in 1875 it was the first Roman Catholic church to operate within the city since the Reformation. Until then, local Catholics had met more than a mile away at the Hales Place chapel.
The new building was designed by the Canterbury architect John Green Hall (who also designed the Congregational Church in Guildhall Street) and was built of Kentish rag stone. It stood beside the site of St Mary Magdalen church which had been substantially demolished in 1871.
The church took its name from the canonised Becket, made a saint by Pope Alexander III. His remains became a major centre of European pilgrimage but they are said to have been burnt on the orders of Henry VIII in the early years of the Reformation. However, there is evidence that the relics of St Thomas were not, in fact, destroyed in 1538. Two 16th century clerks of the Privy Council, Thomas Derby and William Thomas, each recorded that Becket’s bones had been taken to a place where they could no longer be a focus of piety or pilgrimage.
Becket’s death has been a source of fascination over the centuries. It inspired
T. S. Eliot’s Murder in the Cathedral, which will be performed at the Canterbury landmark in October.
■ Information and pictures used with kind permission of Canterbury Historical and Archaeological Society. Visit www.canterbury-archaeology. org.