The Holy Blissful Martyr
Robert Hugh Benson
ISBN 978-1602100015 132
pp. $18.00 (U.S.) £12.00 (U.K.) $18.00 (AUD)
There is a 20% discount on
bulk/wholesale orders (quantities of ten or more). Shipping is extra. Please send an e-mail to “publications [at]
cesj [dot] org” for details.
Unique
among the works of Robert Hugh Benson (1871-1914), this short biographical
sketch of St. Thomas à Becket, “the holy blissful martyr,” began as research
for a historical novel undertaken in collaboration with the sinister “Baron
Corvo”: Frederick Rolfe. The project
fell apart when Benson realized Rolfe’s true character and cut the connection. Benson reworked the material into a compelling non-fictional
portrait of one of England's most popular and significant historical figures.
The
story of Becket is well known. His
murder at the instigation of Henry II launched the famed pilgrimage to Canterbury
and inspired countless works of literature and films.
Seeing
the rapid increase of State power that characterized the late nineteenth
century and the whole of the twentieth, Benson seems to have used the “passion”
of Becket to illustrate the dangers of an all-powerful State released from the
moral guidance of organized religion and freed from the bonds of respect for
the sovereignty of the human person under God.
Becket’s martyrdom can be taken as the exemplar of what happens when the
State subsumes all rights unto itself, and only recognizes those it deems
expedient.
This
deluxe edition is particularly well-designed and formatted, and features an in-depth foreword by Benson scholar Michael D. Greaney
