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“It’s no overstatement to say that Becket’s murder was the crime of the century, and one of the most notorious events of the entire medieval period, ” says Naomi Speakman, one of the curators. Recognising his martyrdom, onlookers dipped their cloaks in the blood. News of his death quickly reached the king —and the pope. Becket had been “ a real mover and shaker across Europe”, says Ms Speakman, and his bones were carried across the continent in jewelled reliquaries, examples of which are on display in the show. It brings home how enmeshed medieval England was with the European mainland. Like Becket, Henry had French ancestry; he ruled more French territory than the French king did.
大英博物馆馆长之一的内奥米·斯帕克曼说：“毫不夸张地说，贝克特谋杀事件是那个世纪的罪行，是整个中世纪时期最臭名昭著的事件之一。”认识到贝克特殉教的旁观者们把自己的斗篷浸在他的鲜血之中。贝克特去世的消息很快传到国王和教皇那里。斯帕克曼女士说道，贝克特是“真正推动和震撼整个欧洲的人”，他的尸骨被放在镶有宝石的圣物箱里游遍了整个欧洲大陆，比如，此次大英博物馆的展览便展出了圣物箱。它让我们深切地体会到中世纪的英格兰是如何与欧洲大陆紧密相连的。和贝克特一样，亨利二世也有法国血统；他统治的法国领土比法国国王还多。
Eagerly repeated stories of people being cured after drinking “Thomas’s water”, an essence of blood so diluted it was hardly pink, led quickly to calls for Becket’s canonisation and the birth of a cult. Three years after his murder, he was made a saint. For Henry, amid all that, there was no forgiveness— however much he insisted that he had not intended Becket’s death. A 12th-century baptismal font, still in use in a small church in southern Sweden, shows Becket kneeling in prayer as the knights fall upon him. A crowned man encouraging the violence is labelled REX.HRICVS.
人们迫不及待地重复着喝了“圣托马斯之水”后痊愈的故事，“圣托马斯之水”的本质是稀释后几乎没有血色的血液。这个故事很快引起了人们对贝克特封圣的呼吁，对圣托马斯的崇拜也顺势而生。贝克特在被谋杀三年后被封为圣人。犯下一切罪行的亨利二世不可饶恕，尽管他一再坚称自己没打算杀害贝克特。瑞典南部一座小教堂里仍在使用的12世纪的洗礼圣水盘显示着，当骑士们向贝克特扑来时，他正跪着祈祷。煽动暴力的戴着皇冠的男子则被打上了REX.HRICVS的标记。
If the king’s offhand thuggery became an archetype, so did his belated fear: fear of the man who will not be cowed. Three and a half centuries after Becket’s demise, Henry VIII was so wary of his cult’s power that he had it suppressed by Thomas Cromwell— like Becket, a commoner elevated by a monarch’s caprice, then destroyed by it. In Martin Luther King, Archbishop Oscar Romero (killed as he celebrated mass in San Salvador in 1980) and perhaps, today, Alexei Navalny, Becket’s steadfastness in the face of death found modern avatars too. That dual legacy makes the story recounted in this show enduringly gripping.
如果说国王仓促之间的暴行成为典型，那么他迟来的恐惧也成为了范例，即对不会被吓倒之人的畏惧。贝克特去世三个半世纪后，亨利八世非常忌惮于崇拜贝克特的势力，因此就让托马斯·克伦威尔压制了这股势力（托马斯·克伦威尔与贝克特的经历相同，身为平民的他先是因君主的反复无常而节节高升，然后因此被毁掉）。在马丁·路德·金、奥斯卡·罗梅罗大主教（1980年在圣萨尔瓦多主持弥撒时被杀）以及今天的阿列克谢·纳瓦尔尼身上，我们同样能找到贝克特面对死亡的坚定态度的现代化身。这种双重遗产使这个展览中讲述的故事永远扣人心弦。
译文由可可原创，仅供学习交流使用，未经许可请勿转载。
