The Witness of St. Thomas Becket| National Catholic Register

LONDON — An exhibition, the largest of its scale, on St. Thomas Becket is currently on display at the British Museum in London to mark 850 years since the saint’s martyrdom. “Thomas Becket: Murder and the Making of a Saint” charts more than 500 years of history, from Thomas Becket’s remarkable rise from humble origins to become the archbishop of Canterbury, one of the most powerful figures in England, to his death at the hands of the king’s men in his own cathedral on Dec. 29, 1170. The saint’s story is told through 100-plus objects, including illuminated manuscripts, brought together for the first time through rare loans from across the United Kingdom and Europe as well as from the museum’s own collections.  The exhibition’s centerpiece is an entire medieval stained-glass window from Canterbury Cathedral. It is one of the surviving “Miracle Windows,” so called because they depict miracles attributed to Becket in the three years following his death. Made in the early 1200s, they were created to surround Becket’s shrine, now lost, in the cathedral’s Trinity Chapel. This is the first time that one of these windows has been lent to a museum and the first time the glass has ever left the cathedral since it was created 800 years ago. 

The Witness of St. Thomas Becket| National Catholic Register