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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.
大英博物館館長之一的內(nèi)奧米·斯帕克曼說：“毫不夸張地說，貝克特謀殺事件是那個世紀的罪行，是整個中世紀時期最臭名昭著的事件之一。”認識到貝克特殉教的旁觀者們把自己的斗篷浸在他的鮮血之中。貝克特去世的消息很快傳到國王和教皇那里。斯帕克曼女士說道，貝克特是“真正推動和震撼整個歐洲的人”，他的尸骨被放在鑲有寶石的圣物箱里游遍了整個歐洲大陸，比如，此次大英博物館的展覽便展出了圣物箱。它讓我們深切地體會到中世紀的英格蘭是如何與歐洲大陸緊密相連的。和貝克特一樣，亨利二世也有法國血統(tǒng)；他統(tǒng)治的法國領(lǐng)土比法國國王還多。
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.
人們迫不及待地重復著喝了“圣托馬斯之水”后痊愈的故事，“圣托馬斯之水”的本質(zhì)是稀釋后幾乎沒有血色的血液。這個故事很快引起了人們對貝克特封圣的呼吁，對圣托馬斯的崇拜也順勢而生。貝克特在被謀殺三年后被封為圣人。犯下一切罪行的亨利二世不可饒恕，盡管他一再堅稱自己沒打算殺害貝克特。瑞典南部一座小教堂里仍在使用的12世紀的洗禮圣水盤顯示著，當騎士們向貝克特撲來時，他正跪著祈禱。煽動暴力的戴著皇冠的男子則被打上了REX.HRICVS的標記。
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.
如果說國王倉促之間的暴行成為典型，那么他遲來的恐懼也成為了范例，即對不會被嚇倒之人的畏懼。貝克特去世三個半世紀后，亨利八世非常忌憚于崇拜貝克特的勢力，因此就讓托馬斯·克倫威爾壓制了這股勢力（托馬斯·克倫威爾與貝克特的經(jīng)歷相同，身為平民的他先是因君主的反復無常而節(jié)節(jié)高升，然后因此被毀掉）。在馬丁·路德·金、奧斯卡·羅梅羅大主教（1980年在圣薩爾瓦多主持彌撒時被殺）以及今天的阿列克謝·納瓦爾尼身上，我們同樣能找到貝克特面對死亡的堅定態(tài)度的現(xiàn)代化身。這種雙重遺產(chǎn)使這個展覽中講述的故事永遠扣人心弦。
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