Thomas Becket in Italy — Where my wheels go

An English Saint in the Abruzzi

Between a wood and an abandoned field lies a simple rectangular church with an apse. It is several kilometres away from the village that it has served for more than 800 years, on the other side of a deep ravine. Salle, the ancient village in the Abruzzi, has long been abandoned, ruined by earthquakes and the failure of the soil to feed its people. Mountains tower on all sides. Local legends hang like mist in the air. One such explains that a lonely and nearly broken priest walked through the open door into the church, his crozier tapping the sloping aisle of the nave. His robes were of the finest cloth but were dirty and torn. He looked to have been strong once as he knelt on the stone before the wooden crucifix and he prayed.

The legend continues;a villager passed the church and saw the traveller at prayer. He waited until he was finished and enquired after his name, his place of birth and reason for being here. Thomas Becket answered that he was no more than a wayfarer in need of charity. The villager took him in and fed him with the little the family had. Next day at sunrise the stranger left, asking directions for the road to Rome.

Year’s later, after the news of the Archbishop’s murder had been shared throughout the towns and villages of Europe, the villagers concluded that it was he who stayed whilst he was exiled from England. Time turned the legend into fact - Becket was here. So when the old church in which the Archbishop had prayed needed re-building thirty years after his martyrdom, who better than to dedicate it to than the saint who had sought refuge in the village?

The chroniclers tell us that Becket came to Italy at least three times - to study law at Bologna University, and twice to appeal to the Papal Curia on behalf of his king. The dedication of the church is more likely the result of a Norman lord in the old castle of Salle, shocked by the death of one of his countrymen. (Becket’s parents were Norman and the Normans controlled Southern Italy at the time).

Inside the church, the silence is profound. The air is damp and stone cold. Supplications hang like invisible banners from the unadorned walls and a single beam of golden light shines from the apse window onto the altar’s cross. Motes dance in the spilled light around the altar and the painted saints are impassive on their pillars. Unlike the many great city churches including Rome, Florence and Treviso, there are no statues of the saint nor paintings and certainly no relics (a piece of shoulder bone and some brain tissue are held in a casket in the S. Maria Maggiore in Rome).

This pilgrimage seems more apt than being in a grand cathedral. For here is the man without his pomp. For all his love of riches and power, of the finest silks and wines, and for all his rapid fall and gruesome death, Becket was as fallible as all men are. His human frailty and inconsistencies, his determination and weaknesses were as real as any other man’s who has ever lived upon this earth.

In the stoney silence we are joined, he and I, across the ages, by the themes of his times which still rage on mine; the conflict between monopolistic law and ancient customs, the conflict of serving the two masters of state and a god, of martyrdom or resigned acquiescence.

Time passes in its rapid and silent way. A cloud outside covers the sun and the beam is extinguished, closing time on our meditations. We rise, he and I, from the pew and pat the two lions at the foot of the chancel steps whose well-worn heads are turned upwards like a dog’s wanting a stroke behind the ears. We walk back down the slope of the aisle to the west door and out into birdsong and woods.

The chroniclers say that Becket would have loved this simple scene of birds and trees. It is a panacea for all men in a constantly troubled world. I mumble a goodbye and imagine his wave as he sets off back into the pages of history whilst I jump on my bike to ride back into the mountains.