{"id":6036,"date":"2005-12-29T01:13:48","date_gmt":"2005-12-29T01:13:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2005\/12\/enemy-of-the-state.html"},"modified":"2005-12-29T01:13:48","modified_gmt":"2005-12-29T01:13:48","slug":"enemy-of-the-state","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2005\/12\/enemy-of-the-state.html","title":{"rendered":"Enemy of the State"},"content":{"rendered":"

Well, just in time for his memorial, <\/a> (today), St. Thomas a Becket has been voted worst person of the 12th century by historians surveyed by the BBC history magazine. The Independent<\/em> explains:<\/a><\/p>\n

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As the patron saint of Roman Catholic secular clergy, Becket is nominated for the divisions he caused England. These seemed unlikely when the previously carefree and pleasure-loving courtier Becket became Archbishop of Canterbury in 1162. Yet once in office he became an ascetic prelate, devoted to the ecclesiastical hierarchy. In the schism which at that time divided the church, Becket sided with Pope Alexander II, who was devoted to the same strict hierarchical principles and, he dismay of Henry II, sought to exempt the church from all civil jurisdiction and secure unfettered control for the clergy. After returning from exile, he excommunicated the bishops who had crowned the king and an enraged Henry uttered his fateful plea to be rid of Becket. His subsequent murder brought Becket everlasting revenge on Henry. He was canonised and credited with martyrdom. A shrine to him remains at Canterbury.<\/p>\n

Nominated by John Hudson of St Andrews University. He said: "He divided England in a way even many churchmen thought unnecessary."<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n

To be fair, the worst person of the 16th century was Titus Oakes, an anti-Catholic fanatic…<\/p>\n

\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Well, just in time for his memorial, (today), St. Thomas a Becket has been voted worst person of the 12th century by historians surveyed by the BBC history magazine. The Independent explains: As the patron saint of Roman Catholic secular clergy, Becket is nominated for the divisions he caused England. These seemed unlikely when the…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":180,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6036","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\nEnemy of the State - Via Media<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2005\/12\/enemy-of-the-state.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Enemy of the State - Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Well, just in time for his memorial, (today), St. Thomas a Becket has been voted worst person of the 12th century by historians surveyed by the BBC history magazine. 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The Catholicism comes from her side. Amy grew up in a number of places - Indiana - Washington, DC - Lubbock Texas - Arlington, Virginia - DeKalb, Illinois - Lawrence, Kansas - and Knoxville, Tennessee, where the family settled in 1973. She attended Knoxville Catholic High School, then the University of Tennessee where she majored in history. She received an MA in Church History from Vanderbilt University, where she wrote a thesis on the changing role of women in 19th century American Protestantism, and the ways Scripture was used to justify those changes. She worked as as a teacher in Catholic high schools and a Parish Director of Religious Education and started writing for the diocesan press - the Florida Catholic - in 1988. Amy has written columns for Our Sunday Visitor and Catholic News Service at times over the past twenty years. Her articles have been published in venues ranging from Our Sunday Visitor to the New York Times to Commonweal. She has written 17 books. 18, if you included the as yet tragically unpublished novel. Amy has five children, ranging in age from 26 to 4 and was married to Michael Dubruiel, who died unexpectedly in February 2009. She lives in Birmingham, Alabama.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/author\/awelborn"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6036","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/180"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6036"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6036\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6036"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6036"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6036"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}