Beguines and Beghards 99Becket and Henry II met in July 1170 and seemed to
move closer to resolving their differences. Becket decided
to return to Canterbury. He arrived in early November
and excommunicated all the bishops who had partici-
pated in the coronation of Henry “the Young King” and
publicly repeated these sentences at Christmas Mass in
Canterbury Cathedral. When Henry II, who was in Nor-
mandy, heard this news, he flew into a rage. To his dinner
guests and his household, he furiously demanded, “Will
no one rid me of the turbulent priest?” Four knights took
him at his word. Immediately leaving Henry’s court, they
crossed the channel, arrived at Canterbury on the
evening of December 29, 1170, and brutally murdered
Thomas Becket while he was celebrating vespers in the
cathedral.
INFLUENCE OF POLICY AND MARTYRDOMThomas Becket’s influence on the English church contin-
ued long after his death. In the matter of church and
royal policy, however, his martyrdom was only in the
short term a victory for his cause. Henry was ultimately
able to extend gradually royal control over the institu-
tional church in England. Ecclesiastical resistance to the
Crown, however, was to last through the rest of the Mid-
dle Ages. Thomas Becket was made a saint in 1173, and
his shrine at Canterbury became one of the most popular
pilgrimage sites in Europe. His situation reflected the
issues raised by the emergence of a national state and the
role of the church and religion in an increasingly secular
world.
Further reading:Anne J. Duggan, ed., The Correspon-
dence of Thomas Becket: Archbishop of Canterbury,
1162–1170, 2 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2000);
Frank Barlow, Thomas Becket (Berkeley: University of
California Press, 1986); John Butler, The Quest for Becket’s
Bones: The Mystery of the Relics of St. Thomas Becket of
Canterbury (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press,
1995).
Bede the Venerable, Saint( the Venerable Bede, Beda)
(672/673–735)Anglo- Saxon monk, scholar, theologian
Bede was born in 672 or 673 in Northumbria, near Jar-
row. When he was seven, his relatives took him to the
BENEDICTINEabbey at nearby Wearmouth. He spent the
remainder of his life at Wearmouth and later at a new
monastery at Jarrow. This era has been called a “golden
age of English MONASTICISM,” when relations with the
papacy and the Continent resulted in a fruitful exchange
of ideas and culture in a Northumbrian Renaissance.
Bede’s works were many and various. He considered
his major achievement to be his biblical commentaries,
which were firmly rooted in traditional biblical exegesis,
with the use of allegory to explain and enrich scriptural
meaning. He wrote two scientific treatises on chronology
and the formation of the church CALENDAR. Bede also
wrote a number of saints’ lives, that were full of edifying
MIRACLES, including two versions of the metrical life of
Saint Cuthbert. All of Bede’s interests joined most pro-
ductively in 731 in his Ecclesiastical History of the English
People. Its theme was the conversion of the ANGLO-
SAXONS, after their settlement in Britain, by missionaries
from ROMEand IRELAND. Exemplary miraculous passages
illustrated the benefits derived by the English from
accepting the message of the GOSPEL and the well-
deserved merits of any who devoted their life to propa-
gating that message. Bede included many documents that
provide important information about the early English
church, and in addition he narrated many fascinating
tales, such as that of CAEDMON, the unlettered peasant
who miraculously became the first religious poet in
English. Bede died at Jarrow on May 25, 735. He became
a doctor of the church and is still revered for his holiness
and learning.
See alsoBIBLE.
Further reading: Bede, A History of the English
Church and People, trans. Leo Sherley-Price (Har-
mondsworth: Penguin, 1978); George Hardin Brown,
Bede the Venerable(Boston: Twayne, 1987); The Age of
Bede,ed. D. H. Farmer and trans. J. F. Webb (New York:
Penguin Books, 1965); Peter Hunter Blair, The World of
Bede,2d ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1990).beer SeeFOOD, DRINK, AND NUTRITION.Beguines and Beghards Dating from late-12th-century
western Europe, Beguines and Beghards were new reli-
gious experiments for women and men. They combined a
lay state with a life of penance and contemplation.
Though consecrated to the service of GOD, the Beguines
and Beghards were not bound to monastic vows, the
common life, or a rule approved by the ecclesiastical
hierarchy. They were to be celibate.BEGUINES
The movement was mainly urban; in the cities there was
demographic imbalance, an excess of women. Some
lived alone, leading an itinerant existence or remaining
under a family roof. Others shared a house. Others lived
in “courts” called beguinages, veritable villages within a
town, formed of several houses or convents and pro-
vided with a chapel, an infirmary, and other common
buildings. The Beguines lived on alms, but also off their
own labor.
Beguinewas originally a disparaging term, used for
“heretics” by the movement’s many detractors. In 1216,
the pope approved such communities, but many
churchmen were reluctant to accept such an “interme-
diate situation” blurring a distinction between the
clergy and the laity. The secular and parish clergy were