“Pro Honore et Libertate Ecclesiae Invicta Fortitude Sustinuit”—The Oratory of St Thomas Becket in the Cathedral of Anagni

Abstract

On the 9th of October, 1170 Pope Alexander III resided in Anagni, which had been the ancient residence of the court of the Popes for at least two centuries. He wrote to two influential local archbishops for help in pacifying King Henry II and Archbishop Thomas Becket, who had been in dispute for six years. Sensing Becket’s looming tragic fate, Alexander III began slowly to encircle the archbishop with rhetoric of the new martyr of Libertas Ecclesiae. When he had to flee from Rome besieged by factions led by Frederick I, the pope found refuge in Segni, where he canonised Thomas Becket on 21 February 1173. However, it was in faithful Anagni that he settled on and off from March 1173 through the following years (November 1176; December 1177–March 1178; September 1179). It was here that he decided to elaborate a powerful speech in images. In an oratory in the crypt of the grandiose cathedral, Alexander III had the last painful moments of the Archbishop’s death painted in a program imitating that of St. Peter’s in the Vatican. Becket thus became the new imitator of Christ, the new Peter, the new martyr on the altar of the Church of Rome.

Keywords

• Anagni
• Canterbury
• Saint Thomas Becket
• medieval wall painting
• papacy