All language subtitles for BBC.Goodbye.to.Canterbury.720p.HDTV.x264.AAC.MVGroup.org.eng

For 14 centuries,
Canterbury Cathedral has been

the spiritual headquarters
of the nation.

A place of historic sacred power,

coveted by kings, popes,
pilgrims and princes,

and the focus of forces
which have torn the country apart,

and fought for the souls
of everyone in it.

This is the mother church
of England.

And for most
of the cathedral's history,

you didn't have a choice about which
church you belonged to in England.

That meant that what happened here
in the mother church had a lot to do

with what happened everywhere else,
and what everyone thought and felt,

how they prayed,
how they imagined themselves.

A battle about how this space
was going to be used

was in part a battle
for the very soul of England.

'Over the last ten years,
I've seen a few of those battles

'between forces that want
to define and divide us,

'or in some sense
lay claim to us.'

'In my final weeks as Archbishop,

'I want to search out for
the last time the hidden corners,

'the hidden messages in a place
that has taught me more

'about God and more about
this country than anywhere else.'

'It's time to say
goodbye to Canterbury.'

BELLS PEAL

While the rest of the world changes,

some things seem timeless,

indestructible.

It's easy to forget that
70 years ago,

we almost lost Canterbury Cathedral.

AIR RAID SIREN

For three nights in 1942,

Canterbury was attacked
by the Luftwaffe.

130 high explosives

and over 3,000 firebombs
landed on the medieval city.

The bombers' target?

Not the town itself,
but the cathedral.

A symbol of Britain's will
to resist.

But they underestimated
the people of Canterbury.

Townspeople worked in shifts,

throwing flaming incendiaries
from the roof of the cathedral.

The town was devastated,
but the cathedral was saved.

In fact, what the raid achieved
was to remind us

that this was somewhere
worth saving.

People risked their lives
to leave us Canterbury Cathedral,

and the least those who follow them
can do is to stop

and ask why they did it.

I don't imagine that all of them
were just enthusiasts

for Gothic architecture,
and probably a lot of them

weren't even Christians.

So what was it about this building
that was so important to protect?

'It's a question
that I take to heart,

'because, ten years ago, the duty to
safeguard that legacy fell to me.'

'On February 27th 2003,

'I entered here
a fairly anonymous bishop,

'and was asked to add my name
to the pages of history.'

'Above my head a vault erected
during the reign of King Henry IV.

'Beneath my feet,

'foundations dug before there
even was a King of England.'

'This is a space that Chaucer knew,
and Elizabeth I.

'It's seen Saxons, Vikings,
Normans come and go,

'empires rise and fall.'

'And when each new archbishop
is enthroned,'

a new generation of our leaders
is asked to think about

what this building
and its heritage might mean.

I do wonder a bit what was going on
in some people's minds that day.

It can't have been a very usual
sort of experience.

There must've been
a lot of people wondering

what on earth they were doing there
and what this was really all about.

And they could be forgiven
for thinking an occasion like this

no longer demands our attention
in the present day.

Just a peculiar legacy
of Britain's past.

But I don't think so.

To me, Canterbury Cathedral
is a potent reminder

of another way
of looking at England.

'A country you can't define
just by its prime ministers,

'its kings and queens.

'A nation whose heritage
is more than just political.'

This is the throne of
the Archbishop of Canterbury -

the cathedra, as it would've been
called in Latin and in Greek.

And that, of course, is where
the word cathedral comes from.

It's the church that houses
the bishop's chair.

And if it's true that this chair
makes the cathedral what it is,

it's also true that the cathedral
makes the person who sits here

what and who he is.

'When you sit in this chair,

'you become the leader
of the Church of England,

'a role that, uniquely,
asks you to try

'and speak to every soul
in the country.'

Whatever you've done before,
this is different.

Here, you're never just speaking
to the people in front of you,

preaching to the converted.

What gets said here gets noticed
throughout the country,

and beyond.

And you've got to find a way to
articulate the concerns of everyone,

'young or old,
Christian or non-Christian.'

And believe me, that feels
like a pretty tall order.

It's physically impossible
to fill this throne,

and that shouldn't be surprising

since it's certainly spiritually
impossible to fill it.

The first time you sit here,

you realise that you have countless
new ways of getting things wrong,

countless new responsibilities and
expectations laid on you, and that

the likelihood is that you're going
to make a mess of most of them.

'It's a daunting prospect,

'but the cathedral itself
is there to guide you.

'It reminds you you're not
the first to take on the job.

'Of the 104
Archbishops of Canterbury,

'50 are still in this building.

'I'm just the only one
who can get up and walk.'

They're a diverse bunch.

There are a few stern
Victorian headmasters,

18th-century gentlemen,

scholars, cardinals and princes
of the medieval church.

Each had his own approach

to sitting on
England's spiritual throne.

And they give you an opportunity
to get a word of advice

from the people who actually built
Canterbury Cathedral.

Here's one of the most spectacular
monuments in the entire cathedral -

a bishop in his full vestments,
an Archbishop, in fact,

surrounded by saints and angels.

At his feet, a couple of very tiny
choirboys holding books for him,

and angels smoothing his pillow.

And here's who he is.

"Hic iacet Henricus Chichele."

"Here lies Henry Chichele, doctor
of laws and Chancellor of England."

Henry V's Archbishop, one
of the great public men of his time.

Then, bring your eye down a bit.

And here is not Henry Chichele,
Archbishop of Canterbury,

Chancellor and doctor of laws.

Here is a naked corpse,
emaciated, almost a skeleton,

loosely wrapped in its shroud.

And underneath, an inscription
which tells us what to think.

"Pauper eram natus,
post primas hic elavatus.

"Iam sum prostratus
et vermibus esca paratus."

"I was born a poor man. Then I was
raised up here to be Archbishop.

"Now I am laid low
and turned into food for worms."

And just in case you haven't got
the point, at the very end,

a very blunt instruction.

"Ecce meum tumulum.
Cerne tuum speculum."

"Here is my tomb.

"Look into your mirror."

And who did he think he was
talking to there, I wonder.

And there is an answer
to that question.

Chichele built his tomb

right opposite
the Archbishop's seat in the choir.

So all of us have had to sit here
looking at him ever since.

It calls to mind fairly dramatically
the central message of the Church.

You're going to die,

and how is money or power
going to help you then?

It jolts you back into the mindset
of the people who built

this cathedral in the Middle Ages.

The magnificence around us

was intended to remind
those who stood here

of the kingdom of heaven...

..and how small and how temporary
our lives are on earth,

to provoke us to ponder
what might be beyond.

BELLS PEAL

'Strip the cathedral
of all its adornment

'and it's a purpose-built
factory for prayer,'

'and has been since AD 602.'

It's our oldest national institution

and the only building
we share as a nation

that's been used for the same
purpose since the nation began.

CONGREGATION SINGS

Prayers were said here
for 300 years

before there was
a single kingdom of England,

and the building around us

we owe mostly to the period
from the 11th to the 15th century.

It's a building whose very shape
brings the way we do things today

into direct contact with the beliefs

and the practices
of our medieval past.

To state the obvious,
this looks like a church.

Even people who never go to church
have a pretty clear idea

of what to expect
when they come into a church.

A big old building, a large space.

And yet, in the Middle Ages,
this would have been very different.

This would have felt much more
like a huge entrance hall,

an oversized church porch, almost.

When people came here, they often
did rather worldly things.

They'd gossip and do business
and discuss market prices.

Sometimes they used this part
of the church as a sort of short cut

between different bits of the town,
and there are complaints

in the records about people doing
that too often and too noisily.

Centuries ago,

when there wouldn't have been
an altar or a pulpit there,

just this great empty space,

the sense would have been
of something immensely important

happening just out of sight,
just beyond that screen.

'If you mount the steps to the east,
you enter a different world.'

'A place most of our ancestors
never set foot.'

'The choir.'

'Coming here, you are walking into
the medieval holy of holies.'

'Then, Canterbury wasn't just
a cathedral, it was a monastery,

'and this spot was the exclusive
domain of its 80-100 monks.'

In the Middle Ages, this was
the very heart of the building.

This was where the most important
thing of all happened -

where the monks,
several times a day, would gather
to sing the praise of God

in what was called the divine
office, literally the divine duty.

The duty you owe to God.

And they'd offer prayers for all
those who'd asked for their prayers,

for the whole society around them,

for all those people wandering
around in the rest of the church

while the monks were getting on
with their business,

the core business of this cathedral.

The whole country could rest easier
while the monks sat here,

the people who knew how
to make contact with God.

'Those prayers were the focus
of everyone's hopes.'

That children be born healthy,

that dead relatives go to heaven,
not suffer in hell.

Ultimately, these are the kind of
issues Canterbury is here for -

the really difficult things that
never change about being human.

'You can't always solve them,
but you can look beyond them.'

But how do you look beyond
your everyday experience?

It's not something that's easy
to do in the supermarket

or on the bus to work.

For many of us, it's something
we look for, if at all,

in the arms of lovers
or the company of friends.

And don't be fooled
that things were ever different.

But Canterbury is a reminder
that our ancestors

went out of their way
to create a space for those issues.

They walled off
both buildings and people,

people who could wrestle with
eternity on behalf of the rest of us

who didn't have the time.

Everybody had an investment
in Canterbury's cloisters.

The monks here were
a specialised tier of society

with a charge from the rest of us
to explore the unknown.

Their lives rarely strayed
from the walls of the monastery.

But their horizons were broader
than anyone's outside.

Ancient texts and new scientific
ideas were sought out

by the monks in their mission
to rise above the ordinary,

not just in the life of the mind,

but in architecture that seemed
to defy nature and gravity,

and in art that still feels
genuinely miraculous.

These are amazing, aren't they?
Absolutely, yes.

Wonderful to be so close to them,
isn't it?

Yes, they're meant to be
20 metres up in the air!

'These are two 13th century
stained-glass masterpieces

'depicting Old Testament figures.

'They've come down to the workshop
for restoration by Leonie Seliger.'

What you realise, seeing them
close up, is how lively,

how much movement there is.
Oh, yes, yes.

These are made by one of the
great masters of European art,

who is actually called the Methuselah
Master after this very figure.

If we knew his name,
we might actually mention him

in the same breath as Michelangelo
and, I don't know, Jackson Pollock.

The cutting edge designs
that he produced,

the way he fills the space with
his big sweeps of an arm

all the way down to the foot.

Whirlpools of lines here,
these rhythmic strokes here.

There are cascades there.

You just have to enjoy the way
he confidently puts on these lines

in such a rhythmic way,
with a long-handled brush,

not hanging about,
just sort of painting this.

He was one of the superstars
of cutting edge art

in Europe at the time.

So Canterbury got the best of the
best to work on the new building.

The detail is extraordinary,
because, of course,

these weren't as close
as we are to them.

They were yards and yards away.
They were out of sight.

They are designed to work
on that long distance,

so they have that
really monumental feel.

But, of course, the detail is there
because God sees it.

And why stained glass at all?

I know there's a lot of thinking
and philosophising about light,

the uses of light and the meaning
of light in buildings like this.

Of course, there was this wish
to have more and more light

in the building.
But not any old daylight.

It had to travel through these
very, very richly coloured

and very expensive
stained-glass windows.

Light on the outside

is then transmitted
through the stained glass,

and picks up the essence
of the figures

and of the stories and the deeds
that are told in the stained glass,

and is enriched and refined by that.

So, inside the building, you have
enriched superlight, if you will.

So it's as if the light coming
from God is received by these

holy figures and is separated
out into the colours

and by a kind of alchemy, really,
comes through to you

and makes a difference to your life?

Yes, yes. The quintessence
of light they create. Yes.

Today, they still create
a sense of wonder,

changing with every passing cloud.

The nearest thing the world
had to the moving image

before the modern age.

The medieval eye,
as it settled on these windows,

could see not only
the hand of the painter,

but the hand of God.

Canterbury is much more
than a functional building.

'It's an effort to make sense
of the cosmos

'and reach out to its maker.'

Whether or not
you want to talk about God,

you can't help but stand back
and admire what humans can achieve

in pursuit of transcendence.

From the 7th to the 16th century,
the people of this country,

the labourers, the masons,

the monks, the benefactors,

came together as never
before or since

to focus their efforts
on conjuring heaven,

a vision of a nation
and its god in harmony.

But delve deeper
and there's another story.

Ten years getting to know Canterbury
as a working building

has taught me not to take anything
about this place at face value.

If you know where to look,
you can see some of the cracks

'and the joins in that
medieval vision of harmony.'

In the cathedral's upper reaches,

you get a sense of how many
other Canterbury Cathedrals

there have been
that we no longer see.

'It feels like being backstage
in Britain's oldest theatre.'

'Lovingly crafted Regency
fixtures and fittings

'now clutter the cathedral's attic,
gathering dust.'

'What one generation treasures,
another buries in bubble wrap.'

'And I find that time spent here

'can start to shift your perspective
on the process that's brought

'the cathedral to the form
it takes today.'

This is a building
that doesn't stand still.

It's been rebuilt almost
in its entirety more than once.

But even over the last
600 or 700 years,

work has gone on, on the building.

It's constantly reinventing itself,

rethinking itself for different
purposes and different visions.

At Canterbury,
change has always been about
more than just architecture.

'This church once determined
the beliefs of the whole country.'

The people who erected
these columns, this vaulting,

'weren't simply celebrating
the glory of God.'

'They were shaping the perspective
of the people below,

'imposing their vision
on everyone in England.'

Changes in vision
aren't always easy or bloodless.

That means that battles over
what the vision should be

that shapes a building like this

are not always going to be
smoothly resolved.

There's a darkness in this building,
as well as light.

Conflict as well as harmony.

All the medieval magnificence
around us

is a shadow of the cathedral
as our forebears would've seen it.

So much has been lost
to England's wars of religion.

Below stairs, the Norman crypt
conceals the last traces

of a world of mysterious splendour

swept away in
the English Reformation.

These wonderful paintings
were rediscovered by workmen

in the 19th century.

They belong to
the very earliest days

of this bit of the cathedral,

painted on almost as soon
as the crypt was built,

and they remind us that almost
the whole of the cathedral

would've been covered
with painting like this.

We see here the birth
of St John the Baptist.

We see other saints
in roundels under the arches.

And looking at all this, and
sensing just how much of the life

of the imagination flows into
all this, you wonder what on earth

would've prompted people to want
to cover over these paintings.

What would have motivated people
to want to destroy beauty like this?

These 12th century paintings,
the crypt itself,

hint at the magic
of medieval Canterbury,

a building that used every device
at its disposal to access your soul,

to work its way into the darker
recesses of your mind -

your inborn sense of fear
and wonder.

I love bringing parties
of schoolchildren into this chapel,

because I can show them the monsters
on the pillars here.

Quite friendly monsters,
quite cheerful ones, in fact.

Here's a couple making music,
one playing a fiddle,

one playing a sort of oboe.

On the corner, there's even one
playing a harp

with some bits of paintwork
still visible there.

I suppose that in a slightly
thin and rational world,

all of this has tremendous charm
and attraction.

This is a world
where imagination can run riot.

This is a world of colour
and splendour and drama,

a world where all sorts of emotions

and all sorts of imaginative
strands weave in together.

Why should anyone want
to destroy it?

I think that part of the answer
is that this can induce

a kind of claustrophobia in people.

If you look at the end
of the Middle Ages,

the beginning of
the Reformation period,

that's the sense you may have.

This is a world absolutely crowded,
packed with images.

As much as an American
shopping mall today,

you're assailed on every hand
by images telling you what to think,

how to feel, how to make connections
between one thing and another.

It must sometimes have seemed

as if nothing was ever allowed
just to be itself,

and so it's not entirely surprising

if an impulse begins to rise up
in the European soul

to break through all this,
to break through the screen

or the dome of images
that covered life over,

looking for something more direct.

A world of mystery was giving way
to a world of reason.

As the Middle Ages came to an end,

people had begun to see
a contradiction

between the simple message
of Jesus and the Gospels

and what they were seeing
in the cathedral.

In 1514, the Dutch theologian
Erasmus visited Canterbury

and wrote...

"Good God! What a pomp
of silk vestments was there,

"of golden candlesticks.

"What possible excuse can there be

"for decorating
and enriching churches

"when meanwhile our brothers
and sisters waste away

"from hunger and thirst?"

It was a foretaste for Canterbury
of the Protestant Reformation,

a conflict in which the Archbishop
would have to take sides.

This is the monument
of Cardinal John Morton,

Archbishop of Canterbury,
who died in 1500.

For many years, he'd been one of the
great figures of English politics,

in effect Prime Minister
to King Henry VII.

He represented a kind of fusion,

a kind of balance of powers
in church and state.

And here, in his monument,
he is depicted,

like so many of his predecessors,
wearing all his regalia

and surrounded by these
small figures of monks and clergy

who are there to say prayers
for him.

But these praying figures have
lost their heads and their hands.

It's not just the ravages of time,

because if you look at the whole
of the monument, you will see

that the saints around the edge have
lost their heads and their hands.

All of them have been
carefully vandalised,

vandalised as a result
of the revolution in religion

that took place under Henry VIII.

That was the time when
the cardinal's hat disappeared,

literally, from English life,

and what remained was the Crown,

the red and white Tudor roses,

the Tudor monarchy in all its power.

One bit of Morton's carefully
balanced world of church and state

had quite literally
displaced the other.

Only decades after Morton's death,

the church in England
was taken over by the state.

Henry VIII was incensed
at the church authorities in Rome

when the Pope refused him a divorce,

and the King became
an unlikely champion of reform.

Your experience at church
would no longer

be centred on mysterious images
or the monks' rituals in Latin,

but on the Bible in English,

there for anyone who could read.

Radical Protestants had found
a licence from the top

to tear apart the fabric of
the English Church and start again.

Bare walls, plain glass,

and empty niches remain where
once there were glorious images

whose intoxicating power
the reformers so abhorred.

A battle raged here
for over a century

between the cult of the image
and the cult of the word.

It has left the cathedral
a divided building,

one part telling us, "Be inspired,
surrender to the imagination."

Another saying,
"Don't be taken in by the beauty.

"Decide for yourself
in the clear light of day."

When today symbols, images and idols
are built up and smashed down,

I'm glad to have this place
to retreat to

and remember that these are
arguments that never go away.

It's a mistake we make too easily
to think we've progressed

beyond the moral questions
of the past.

But what we can put behind us
are institutions that fail us.

The monastery was the other casualty
of the Reformation,

a once radical institution that had
grown complacent and comfortable.

The king's agents came here in 1539

and left with 26 wagonloads
of treasure.

Few protested at the demise
of the monastery

or all the hope once invested in it.

I suppose it's quite a sobering
lesson to be learned here for today.

Institutions develop because people
invest a lot of trust in them.

They meet real needs, they represent
important aspirations.

Whether it's monasteries,
media or banks,

people begin by trusting
these institutions,

and gradually the suspicion develops

that actually they're working for
themselves, not for the community.

We've been through a major crisis
of trust in our own culture

in the last couple of years
where banking is concerned,

and it's perhaps worth
thinking about

that, at the end of the Middle Ages,
nobody would really have expected

the monasteries to be vanishing
from the scene within a generation.

Yet they did. Change does happen.

That's the advantage for me

of keeping one place at the centre
of our lives for centuries.

It's a reference point when
the same problems rear up again,

as they always do.
And not just the religious ones.

Canterbury is England's church,
and it's always been asked to bear

the scars of England's conflicts,

to fly the flag
for a vision of nationhood.

But a national church is bound
to struggle to accommodate

the symbols of national identity
alongside the symbols of God.

The cathedral manifests physically
one dilemma we can all recognise.

What do you put first?

Loyalty to the country you live in,

or loyalty to things wider
than the borders of nations?

It's a question
that goes right back

to the origins of the cathedral...

Origins that lie a long way
from Canterbury.

For a national church,

Canterbury Cathedral isn't where
you'd expect it to be.

It's on the edge,

not in the heart of the country,
but in the far South East.

It's only seven miles
to the English Channel.

It's easy to forget how near
the sea Canterbury is,

but that fact tells us, of course,

at Canterbury has always looked
in two directions,

not just inland to England,

but across to the continent
of Europe as well.

Of course, it's no accident
that Canterbury Cathedral

is where it is,
because according to local tradition

it was somewhere around this spot

that the first Archbishop
of Canterbury

landed for the first time
on the English coast.

His name was Augustine,
he was a monk from Rome

who'd been sent by Pope Gregory

to convert the heathen English
to Christianity.

Coming as he did from Rome -
Rome, with its long traditions,

Rome with its wonderful churches,
with the papal court -

I wonder what on earth Augustine
felt at the prospect of confronting

the heathen barbarians
and trying to convert them?

In AD 597, this side of the Channel
was beyond the pale,

the domain of pagan Angles
and Saxons.

Augustine's mission?

To convert and to civilise,

to bring them into the fold
of the Catholic Church in Rome.

The success of his mission was due
in part to a cultural import,

both Christian and Roman, which
miraculously survives even today,

conserved by historian
Christopher de Hamel.

The Augustine Gospels
were my first introduction

to the incredible antiquity of the
mission to which I'd been called.

I regard it as one
of the most important

and evocative artefacts
in Christendom.

It is the earliest illustrated
Gospel book in the Western tradition.

It has been in England
since the late sixth century.

I think it is probably the oldest
object in England of any kind,

which is not archaeological.

Of course, there are things
that are older, like Stonehenge,

still in the ground, or things
that have been dug up and brought in.

It's always been above ground.

Always belonged to somebody,
always been in use, since the 500s.

I can't think of anything else that
could have survived as long as that.

And we've got here pictures,

especially of the last week
of Jesus's life, it seems.

Yes, this is the opening
of Luke's Gospel.

These are scenes which are
either characteristic of

or unique to Luke's Gospel.

They're very vivid little pictures,
aren't they?

Jesus entering Jerusalem
on a donkey.

What's that?
"Iudas Iesum osculo tradit."

"Judas betrays Jesus with a kiss."
Yes. And the Last Supper.

Indeed,
one of the earliest illustrations
of the Last Supper in Europe.

The Gospels have inspired more art
than probably any other text.

But this is the earliest example
we have of European art

which is based directly
on the Gospels.

But the very fact of a book
must have been extraordinary

for the Anglo-Saxons.
They wouldn't have seen a book,

they wouldn't have seen pictures
like this.

Christianity, like Judaism and Islam,

is one of the three great religions
of the book

and they would have turned up
to us pagan Anglo-Saxons with this,

what then must have been
a revolutionary message,

bringing books and literacy
to England for the first time.

And when... I expect people argued
with them and when people said,

"How do you know?" they would
have said, "We have a book.

"We can prove it."

And it plugs England back
into the classical world,

because one of the things
that strikes me,

I know this is a picture
of St Luke, isn't it?

This is Luke shown
almost like a Roman senator.

It's a very graphic reminder
that mainstream Christianity

in the late sixth century came
to England from the Mediterranean.

This is southern and classical
and rounded arches and pale colours

and those soft terracottas.

This is absolutely mainstream
Mediterranean into Canterbury.

So this is really plugging England

into Continental culture
in a big way. Absolutely.

From that moment on,

Canterbury remained a foothold
in England for European culture.

The first place to see Romanesque
architecture and then Gothic.

A forest of mosaics
and classical columns.

This building never let you forget

it drew its spiritual authority
from Rome.

But it couldn't forget either
what made that authority a reality.

The conversion and the support of
King Ethelbert and his successors.

The land that the Crown granted
to us in the old town of Canterbury.

Canterbury was born
with two different royalties.

To the country around it

and to the wider Christian world.

Today, there are millions
of Anglican Christians abroad.

And millions in Britain
with religious leaders overseas.

Relations between what we owe to God
or our fellow believers

and what we owe to our country
don't get any simpler.

As Archbishop of Canterbury today,

you have a particular loyalty
to the British state.

But your faith compels you
to think internationally.

It was a quandary I found myself in
within weeks of arriving here,

when Britain went to war with Iraq.

I've been fairly vocal
in my criticisms of plans for war,

not least because of a sense

that Iraqi lives mattered,
as well as British ones,

that war could suck the whole
region into chaos

and also because of an interest
in the concerns,

the vulnerability of Christian
minorities in the region,

a factor which not everybody seemed
very much aware of at the time.

But once the war
had actually broken out

and once there were
British troops on the ground,

putting their lives at risk,

it then seemed
a little bit of a luxury

just to sound off from a distance.

It could sound a bit
like grandstanding

when other people
were really paying the price.

And so I found my focus was much
more then on what would

an exit to the war look like,

what would justice
after the war look like,

and trying to insist on people
focusing on that kind of question.

And that leaves you satisfying
nobody, in principle.

People who think you ought to be
swinging behind the Government
are disappointed,

people who think you ought always
to be making loud and clear noises

about global ethics
will be disappointed.

But I still think
it's a path worth treading,

because the important thing
about archbishops speaking in public

is I believe that they shouldn't
ever be speaking in ways

that have no cost when
other people are paying a price.

Risking unpopularity,
taking the flak,

is what archbishops are here for.

It's the stuff of the job.

It's something you realise
the more you work here,

that maybe Britain benefits from
having someone to get angry with.

And that compared to my predecessors
I've got off lightly.

I share a house, as well as a job,
with men burned at the stake,

men executed for treason,
men lynched by the mob.

And when I look across
the garden at the cathedral,

I can't help remembering

that the whole place
was once built around martyrdom.

The price paid by an archbishop
when Church and state clashed.

Much of the building we have now is
a monument to its most famous son,

murdered here,

Archbishop St Thomas Becket.

Becket has become a symbolic figure,

the embodiment worldwide
of the treacherous fault line

between religion
and political power.

The son of a merchant from Cheapside
in London, a man of the world,

who become fixer in chief
to King Henry II.

In 1162, Henry made him
Archbishop of Canterbury.

He was charged to take on
the power of the Church,

to bring the bishops in line
with the will of the King.

But the job seemed somehow
to transform Thomas Becket.

He refused to sign the document
that made Henry's word law,

an act of treachery that a king
like Henry could never forgive.

What happened to Becket
reverberated around Europe.

And in the Victoria and Albert
Museum, you can get a sense why.

This beautiful object shows

the end of Thomas Becket's career
as Archbishop of Canterbury

and the beginning of his career

as an international
spiritual superstar.

Here we see Becket's murder.

Standing in front of an altar,

being attacked by three
of the knights who killed him,

and two shocked clerics
on the right-hand side.

Up above, we see Becket's body
laid out for burial,

his soul ascending into Heaven.

In fact, it's not an accurate
depiction of what happened

when Becket was killed.

He wasn't celebrating mass
at an altar.

But that's how it felt
to people across Europe,

as if the very heart of
the Church's life and worship

had been brutally interrupted
by this act of terrible violence.

All across Europe,
the story was spreading,

people were turning their eyes
towards Canterbury

and then beginning to travel to it.

We know that within just
a couple of years of the murder,

people were celebrating
his memory in Hungary.

And pilgrims came
because they wanted to be in touch

with this great figure.

Quite literally to touch
where he had suffered and died.

And caskets like this

were meant to hold
little containers for his blood,

bits of his bone, perhaps bits
of cloth that had been on his body.

Everybody, you could say, wanted
a piece of Becket, quite literally.

In death, Becket became
a saint and a popular hero.

Roads across Europe became thronged

with pilgrims making their way
towards Canterbury.

Becket's body, it was said,
had begun to perform miracles.

Proof that here,
conscience could defeat a king.

It gave the cathedral
a completely new focus.

It transformed the building, both
spiritually and architecturally.

A dramatic new journey took you
upwards and eastwards

to the cathedral's new climax...

..The Shrine of the Saint.

The very bones of Thomas Becket.

The shrine itself
has long since disappeared.

But what hasn't disappeared
is this groove in the stone,

worn by the knees of hundreds
of thousands of pilgrims

over the centuries.

In front of them,
they'd see a stone superstructure

of the saint's actual tomb,

blazing with gold and colour
and jewels and coloured marble.

We know from the pictures

that there were large holes
in the side of that superstructure,

so that if you wanted,
you could put your hand in

to touch the saint's sarcophagus.

You could even put your head inside
to kiss it.

Because it mattered to be
physically close to the saint,

that's what you'd come for, to be as
close as you could to a holy body.

The shrine was destroyed
by King Henry VIII.

And that says a lot.

It was a symbol of an authority
distinct from the King's.

People thought of Becket
as one of their own.

Someone who could stick up for them
in high places,

who could put in a word with God
in the highest place of all.

The windows that still ring
the site of the tomb

show not prophets or angels,

but the ordinary people who came
to this spot in search of a miracle.

There are some very poignant
stories recorded here.

About halfway up this window,

we see a woman in a long dress
with two attendants.

One of them with his stick raised,
as if he's going to beat her.

Her name was Matilda
and she came from Cologne.

Her brother had murdered her lover.

And Matilda, driven mad
by this traumatic experience,

had killed her own newborn child.

She was violent and uncontrollable
and in the Middle Ages,

the only way they knew to deal
with that was to beat people,

to try and restrain them.

So there she is in the middle,
at the shrine itself, being beaten.

But she's cured.

And on the right,
she kneels in prayer at the shrine.

The attendants are putting down
their sticks.

And one of the monks
is getting ready

to listen to what
she's been through.

Somebody profoundly disturbed

and somebody who at last finds
a place where there's a person

who will listen to her and do
something about her condition.

As reasonable 21st century people,
we're bound to ask,

"Did all this really happen?

"Are all these stories
real history?"

Well, nobody's going to be able
to answer that question in detail.

But look at the vigour
and the variety of the stories here.

Something was going on here.

Something extraordinary
and intensely hopeful

for a lot of ordinary people with
their troubles of mind and body.

They came here, they were
caught up in this big story.

Their lives changed and that's
what we really need to know

about the impact of St Thomas here.

Miraculous or not,
there is a power in this space

that hasn't diminished since the
bones were taken away and burned.

We're left with a gap.
A ghost of a shrine.

A space to fill with
our own thoughts and ideas.

But that's one thing I feel
today's Canterbury offers.

A question and the broken relics
of the past's attempts at an answer.

But it's not just the building.

It's the rhythms, the rituals,

that can make those
unsettling connections across time.

Every night for 14 centuries,
someone's been here,

saying evening prayer.

And it was at that time of day
that the knights came to get Becket.

He was at home, where I live today.

Ten years in this job
have forced me personally

to confront Canterbury's
difficult questions.

And the answers
still don't seem easy at all.

These vestments
that have been laid out for me

here in the chapel
of the Archbishop's Palace

are exact copies of vestments that
belonged to Thomas Becket himself.

Every year, I put on these vestments
on the 29th of December

to celebrate the Eucharist on
the spot where Thomas Becket died.

Putting on these vestments
and standing in the place

where Thomas was martyred produces
some very complicated feelings.

It can feel like play-acting,
dressing up as a saint.

And yet, at the same time,

like other kinds of drama,

it has its effect.

It invites you to think about
what it might be like

to have the kind of courage,
the kind of inner stillness

that Thomas seems to have shown
on that occasion

and that other people
in similar situations show

right up to the present day.

Trying to imagine that
from a very, very long way away.

It's an experience that pushes you
to the edge of your comfort zone

and a good bit beyond.

CHOIRBOYS SING

Last chorus then? Good.

Let's try it again, really get
the words to the front of the mouth.

THEY SING

My last few hours
as Archbishop in Canterbury

will be spent in the same place
Thomas spent his.

It's one way the cathedral can make
ordinary experiences extraordinary.

Abstract terms turn into
concrete dilemmas.

Would I give up my life?

Would I desert my loved ones
to make a point, however important?

And perhaps that's the ultimate
legacy of Becket's choice

to die in this spot.

Making for the cathedral,
rather than making for safety.

Thomas and his attendants came to
the church by the cloistered door,

just as evening prayer
was beginning.

Not surprisingly, there was a great
rush to bolt and bar the doors.

Thomas said, "No, I'm not having the
Church of God turned into a castle."

He was determined to die
in this building.

The silliest thing in the world
is to dramatise yourself,

to imagine yourself
in the position of people

greater, holier,
more heroic than you are.

But every year,
as I stand in this place

and hear those doors being flung
open, I have to ask myself -

"What is it that makes it possible

"to take a stand
for the Kingdom of God?

"What is it that's going
to make that possible for me,

"for the people standing around?"

As long as there's one cathedral
for the whole country

that looks out beyond our borders,
that talks to the state,

there'll be someone like me
confronting these problems.

Should governments be able
to dictate people's beliefs?

Should images that offend
be allowed or banned?

Should religious leaders abroad
have influence in Britain?

The more diverse we get,
the more I think we need Canterbury.

We need a shared space
to have these arguments.

And we need someone
at the heart of it,

trying to point to a way forward.

If there's one thing

that nothing really prepares
you for in this position,

it's the level of public scrutiny.

All your mistakes and errors
of judgment are out there
in public straight away.

If you say anything silly

or anything that could be made
to sound silly,

it's out there immediately
for comment,

with plenty of people to tell you
exactly what you should have said
or should have done.

So these years have been more
about old-fashioned patience

than martyrdom.

And in any case, ten years is
the blink of an eye in this story.

What matters most about this place
is that it goes on.

It goes on,
never mind the personality

or the agenda of this
archbishop or that.

It goes on standing for
what it stands for.

It's the point of intersection

between the Kingdom of God,
the values of God,

and all the skill, the art,

the problems, the politics
of human beings.

Every Archbishop, I think,
needs to know

how very, very important
this place is for their ministry.

I can only say
that as I look back on

ten years of association
with this building,

I do so with the most
immense gratitude.

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