John Guy
A revisionist new biography reintroducing readers to one of the most subversive figures in English historyâ€”the man who sought to reform a nation, dared to defy his king, and laid down his life to defend his sacred honor, Â , Becketâ€™s life story has been often told but never so incisively reexamined and vividly rendered as it is in John Guyâ€™s hands. The son of middle-class Norman parents, Becket rose against all odds to become the second most powerful man in England. As King Henry IIâ€™s chancellor, Becket charmed potentates and popes, tamed overmighty barons, and even personally led knights into battle. After his royal patron elevated him to archbishop of Canterbury in 1162, however, Becket clashed with the King. Forced to choose between fealty to the crown and the values of his faith, he repeatedly challenged Henryâ€™s authority to bring the church to heel. Drawing on the full panoply of medieval sources, Guy sheds new light on the relationship between the two men, separates truth from centuries of mythmaking, and casts doubt on the long-held assumption that the headstrong rivals were once close friends. He also provides the fullest accounting yet for Becketâ€™s seemingly radical transformation from worldly bureaucrat to devout man of God., Â , Here is a Becket seldom glimpsed in any previous biography, a man of many facets and faces: the skilled warrior as comfortable unhorsing an opponent in single combat as he was negotiating terms of surrender; the canny diplomat â€œwith the appetite of a wolfâ€ who unexpectedly became the spiritual paragon of the English church; and the ascetic rebel who waged a high-stakes contest of wills with one of the most volcanic monarchs of the Middle Ages. Driven into exile, derided by his enemies as an ungrateful upstart, Becket returned to Canterbury in the unlikeliest guise of all: as an avenging angel of God, wielding his power of excommunication like a sword. It is this last apparition, the one for which history remembers him best, that will lead to his martyrdom at the hands of the kingâ€™s minionsâ€”a grisly episode that Guy recounts in chilling and dramatic detail., Â , An uncommonly intimate portrait of one of the medieval worldâ€™s most magnetic figures, ,Thomas Becket, breathes new life into its subjectâ€”cementing for all time his place as an enduring icon of resistance to the abuse of power.,NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY,Kansas City Star â€¢ ,Bloomberg
History,Biography,Nonfiction,Religion,Historical,Medieval,European Literature,British Literature,History,Medieval History,Religion,Christianity,History,European History,Politics
Thomas Becket: Warrior, Priest, Rebel