Stoics and Saints - College of Stoic Philosophers

ST.
THOMAS OF CANTERBURY.
a very able coadjutor in his really noble life-work when he
gave him the archbishopric ;
but as he had made him arch
bishop really as a stroke of statecraft in the hope that
he would thereby secure, in the Primacy,
if not a pliant
tool at any rate a man who would take a secular view of
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spiritual affairs we have no need to spend much pity upon
him, when he found that he had exalted to the Primate s
throne, one who proved himself the most imperious of
ecclesiastics.
A writer of the time draws an almost idyllic picture of
the state of England after a very few years
of Becket s
rule as chancellor. It must not be taken too
literally;
but still there can be no doubt that he restored order and
developed progress in the State, in a very effective manner.
Had he remained at the head of affairs it is
probable that
he would have left one of the greatest names in our secular
history ;
and he might so have consolidated the political
order as to have spared some of the bloody struggles through
which, in after generations, it had to
fight its way. His
great fault in his secular administration was a certain vulgar
love of mere splendour and pomp of state. In intellectual
gifts he towered, like Saul, a head and shoulders above his
contemporaries ;
and being by nature vain and ostentatious,
he was somewhat dazzled by his sudden rise from obscurity
to power. He delighted in a sumptuous establishment, in
troops of menials, in a great following of retainers. When
he went as the king s envoy to Paris, he filled the French
men with amazement at the magnificence of his
appointments,
and the lavish bounty of his gifts. There was policy here
no doubt. Henry was the most powerful monarch in
Europe,
while for some of his domains he was vassal to the
French king. Becket, from motives of State policy, may
have been very desirous to impress the Frenchmen with the
resources and splendour of his master s
kingdom ;
but there
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