The Cult of St. Thomas of Canterbury in Music

The Cambridge Core website recently announced:

British Catholic History, the journal of the Catholic Record Society, is delighted to announce the winner of its Best Article Prize in 2022:

Katherine Emery, ‘Destruction, Deconstruction, and Dereliction: Music for St Thomas of Canterbury during the Reformation and Counter-Reformation, 1530-1600’

Katherine’s article was described by the judges as follows:

‘This is an impressive piece of innovative and interdisciplinary scholarship at the forefront of the 'sonic turn’ in the study of lived religion. Focusing on music written and performed in honour of St Thomas of Canterbury, this carefully researched article looks back to the pre-Reformation world but concentrates on the Tudor period, offering a new narrative of English cultural and religious history. Interleaving rich manuscript research with the parsing of a substantial historiography on devotion to the saint, it offers an original angle on pre-Reformation and Counter-Reformation music making and liturgical performances. This is an outstanding article from an early career scholar which eloquently attests to, and will further advance, the expansion and diversification of British Catholic studies.

The article is available for free now (don't know how long) and here is the abstract:

Between the late-twelfth and early-sixteenth centuries, much music (both liturgical and non-liturgical) was written in honour of St Thomas of Canterbury. However, in the 1530s his cult became a major target for reformers and, in 1538, Henry VIII (1491-1547) ordered the destruction of his shrine and the obliteration of all music written in his honour. This article will examine how music composed to memorialise St Thomas was treated during the Reformation and Counter-Reformation. It explores the process of self-censorship prompted by Henry’s proclamation on the cult of St Thomas that led to his erasure from liturgical books in England. It analyses the attempts by reformers to discredit music concerning St Thomas, particularly by radical reformer John Bale (1495-1563). Finally, it examines music that was composed by Catholics for St Thomas during the Counter-Reformation and asks what it can tell us about the state of the cult in the late sixteenth century. This approach results in an overview of St Thomas’ cult during the later sixteenth century and contributes to our understanding of changing conceptions of the saint by Catholic communities in the post-Reformation world.

I'm still reading the article now, but one thing we should keep in mind is that St. Thomas of Canterbury was and is not just a saint in England--he was and is a saint honored by the whole Catholic Church (and he is recognized on the Church of England sanctoral calendar)! For example, in 2016 a relic of St. Thomas was brought back to Canterbury from Hungary. As a British Museum article stated in 2019: "In death Becket remained a figure of opposition to unbridled power and became seen as the quintessential defender of the rights of the Church. To this end you can find images of his murder in churches across Latin Christendom, from Germany and Spain, to Italy and Norway. Becket was, and remains, a truly European saint." That's why Pope Paul III finally issued the Bull announcing Henry VIII's excommunication in 1538 after the King ordered the destruction of St. Thomas's shrine and the desecration of his remains. 

So, for example, when Emery writes: "Yet Becket’s paramount cultural position was not to last forever. Although reformer James Bainham was burnt at the stake partly for daring to question Becket’s saintly status in 1532, by the late 1530s the mood had turned decisively against St Thomas.", her comment applies to England at that time--not to the Catholic Church as a whole.