was murdered after he returned from exile in Sens, which resulted from his arguments with King Henry II. In the north transept of the crossing, four knights, acting in support of the king, stabbed Becket to death. Afterwards, a hair shirt swarming with lice was found under his robe. He was recognised as a saint, and Henry II performed penance at his tomb, being flagellated by monks. The tomb of Thomas Becket became the most important pilgrimage destination in medieval England, as Becket became a symbol of resistance to tyrannical authority. The Canterbury Tales of Chaucer were inspired by the journey along the Pilgrim’s Way from London to Canterbury to see the shrine. So many offerings accumulated at the shrine that by 1538, when it was destroyed by Henry VIII, who was determined to destroy the symbol of resistance to the king, twenty-six wagons were required to cart all the offerings away.
Stained-glass windows, called the Becket Miracle Windows, were installed around Trinity Chapel. Completed by 1220, the windows portray images of pilgrimage and miracles associated with Becket. A Becket Window was also installed in Chartres Cathedral in France in the early 13th century, illustrating the exploits and death of the saint in 1170. Earlier stained-glass windows at Chartres include the Blue Virgin Window, the Jesse Window, and the Life of Christ Window, all installed around 1150.
The importance of Canterbury was established long before the murder of Becket. In 597 CE, the missionary St Augustine was sent by Pope Gregory from Rome to Canterbury to convert England to Christianity. He gave a sermon to the Anglo-Saxon King of Kent, Ethelbert, and later that year Ethelbert was baptised, according to St Bede the Venerable’s history of England. Augustine became the first Archbishop of Canterbury, and Canterbury became the see of the primate of England. Following the Norman Conquest, the Archbishops Lanfranc and Anselm, who initiated the building of the great cathedral, would also come to be considered the fathers of English Scholasticism, based on their writings and sermons. Archbishop Lanfranc built the largest monastery in England, with a complex of Benedictine buildings, including a cloister, chapter house, dormitory, refectory, and cellarer’s lodgings on the north side of the cathedral.
Choir, 1175–1185. Canterbury Cathedral.
The rebuilding of the eastern end of Canterbury was directed by William of Sens, a French architect who imported stone from Caen in Normandy for the project, from 1174 to 1179. William of Sens’ work consists of the choir, which contains stalls for the monks across five bays between the central tower and the eastern crossing; the presbytery or retrochoir, across three bays east of the crossing, with a high altar raised on a few steps; and a final bay of the presbytery, containing the throne of St Augustine, the first Archbishop of Canterbury in the 6th century. William of Sens was able to replace the piers in the new French Gothic style, but he was limited to the original Norman plan. The resulting new building was much higher, with thinner proportions, pointed arches, and a ribbed vault. While Gothic elements appeared at Durham, and at Ripon and Roche Abbey, Yorkshire, around 1170, the choir of William of Sens is considered to be the earliest surviving Gothic building in England.
The architecture is a compromise between the desire to build a new cathedral in a French style, and existing local requirements. The architecture is French in that it has a semicircular ambulatory, flying buttresses hidden under the aisle roofs, coupled columns, acanthus capitals, and two-bay sexpartite vaults. While the walls along the plan are thick Norman walls, with thick piers alternating between cylindrical and octagonal, a combination repeated in the sculpted capitals, the height of the arcade suggests the French cathedral; it comprises about sixty percent of the elevation, and the gallery and clerestory above look diminished in relation to it. Responds rising from the cylindrical columns support transverse ribs which transform a quadripartite vault into a sexpartite vault in the French style, but the continuity of the French system is interrupted by the alternating piers. A single shaft supports the extra transverse ribs, while tripartite bundled shafts support the diagonal ribs and the main transverse ribs, creating an alternation which expresses the hierarchy of supports, as at Notre Dame in Paris or Laon.
The ribs of the vault rise from corbels with alternating square and canted abaci, corresponding to the alternating circular and octagonal piers at the bottom of the respective responds. The square abaci are placed on top of the single slender shafts, which support the extra transverse ribs which intersect with the diagonal ribs at a boss along the ridge line of the vault, while the canted abaci are placed on the tripartite bundled shafts, which support the diagonal ribs and the main transverse ribs which delimit the bays of the vault. The corbels are placed at the bottom of the round arches of the gallery, at the same level of the abaci of the arches and sub-arches, so the springing of the vault is carried to below the base of the clerestory, in contradiction to French standards. The diagonal ribs receive the most well-articulated support. The responds rest on top of the abaci of the piers, propped up on their projecting ledges, as in contemporary French cathedrals, such as Notre Dame in Paris (similar arrangements can also be found at Ripon, Reims, Laon, Senlis, Sens, and Vézelay). While the arcade is extended and the gallery is well-articulated with arches set in arches and doubled Purbeck columns, the clerestory is pushed back behind Purbeck columns and almost hidden under the severies of the vault.
The sexpartite vault was the first in England, and its use was short-lived, as variations developed by the end of the 12th century, beginning with the ridge rib at Lincoln. The sexpartite vault was used at St Denis in France in the 1140s, and at Senlis and Noyon, though those vaults have not survived. The best example of the sexpartite vault in France can be found at Sens, though it was partially reconstructed in the 13th century. As at Canterbury, the diagonal ribs at Sens are semicircular arcs, and the transverse ribs are pointed and all the same pitch, reducing the thrust of the vault. Unlike Canterbury, the shafts in the elevation are designed to correspond to the static forces from the ribs; they rise from the ground, and continue in front of the clerestory, forming a complete skeletal structure, as opposed to the variety of subdivisions to which the shafts are subjected in the elevation of the Canterbury choir. This is made possible in part at Sens by the use of the flying buttress, which allowed the vault to be supported without a heavily articulated clerestory level, like the one at Canterbury, and allowed for greater expanse of glass in the clerestory, thus more light. The profiles of the ribs at Sens were excessive and inconsistent, and this problem was corrected at Notre Dame in Paris, begun in 1163. The culmination of the development of the sexpartite vault in France occurred at Bourges, begun 1172, and soon thereafter it was replaced by the quadripartite vault, as the additional thrusts were no longer needed in the development of the flying buttress.
Corona (Becket’s Crown), 1175–1182. Canterbury Cathedral.
St Hugh’s Choir. Lincoln Cathedral.
West front. Lincoln Cathedral.
Angel Choir, 1256–1280. Lincoln Cathedral.
Choir and Angel Choir vaults. Lincoln Cathedral.
Along with the sexpartite vault, the proportions of the elevations in the choir, the profiles of the bases and archivolts, and paired columns with attached shafts, have been cited as derived from the cathedral at Sens, the home town of the architect in France. The cathedral at Sens had an important symbolic connection to Canterbury, as it was where Thomas Becket spent his years in exile, and it contained the only important relics of Becket outside of Canterbury, namely his mass vestments. The necessity to build in relation to the original Norman church at Canterbury prevented the result from being French Gothic architecture, so the architecture consists of elements of pure French Gothic architecture, distorted French Gothic architecture, and local Norman traditions. The upper walls of the elevations at Canterbury are much thicker than in France; they are supported by transverse arches in the galleries and aisles, and an internal passage above in the
