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The Lives of Thomas Becket (Manchester Medieval Sources)

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Thomas Becket's extraordinary life broke into distinct parts separated by abrupt boundaries. Editor Michael Staunton has catalogued the life in five parts. Curiously, he chose not to assign a separate section to Becket's time as King Henry II's chancellor. The editor's sixth and last part cleverly gives expression to the unofficial opposition, the dissenting voices opposing the prevailing view that Becket was a saint. I happen to agree with an opinion expressed elsewhere that "The man was a martyr to his own pig-headedness."

Staunton does a fine job of leading his readers through commentators' voices on the life of Becket, starting with his mother, Matilda. She was a font of mystical pronouncements about her son, during her pregnancy, through the boy's infancy and into his maturity. She would come to be known as the "Venerable Matilda." (After you read Staunton's first pages you may share my point of view: that Matilda was a wildly effective medieval stage-mother.)

The author is just as thorough when he marshals commentators to discuss each stage of Becket's life, and his death. Staunton would write about these people again, in a later book, "Thomas Becket and his Biographers" (2006).

Was the uncommon figure of Thomas Becket justly sanctified, or was he more than a little sanctimonious? Staunton empowers his readers to decide, giving us all the evidence a jury could desire--although we might have expected smoother English in some of these translations from medieval tongues. This book is thorough. We will have only ourselves to blame if we close "The Lives of Thomas Becket" without discoving every facet and rumor about this sainted being.

Robert Fripp, author of
"Power of a Woman. Memoirs of a turbulent life: Eleanor of Aquitaine"