Thomas Becket: Warrior, Priest, Rebel by John Guy

Thomas Becket: Warrior, Priest, Rebel


Thomas.Becket.Warrior.Priest.Rebel.pdf
ISBN: 9781400069071 | 448 pages | 23 Mb

Download Thomas Becket: Warrior, Priest, Rebel



Thomas Becket: Warrior, Priest, Rebel John Guy
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group


A revisionist new biography reintroducing readers to one of the most subversive figures in English history—the man who sought to reform a nation, dared to defy his king, and laid down his life to defend his sacred honor Becket’s life story has been often told but never so incisively reexamined and vividly rendered as it is in John Guy’s hands. The son of middle-class Norman parents, Becket rose against all odds to become the second most powerful man in England. As King Henry II’s chancellor, Becket charmed potentates and popes, tamed overmighty barons, and even personally led knights into battle. After his royal patron elevated him to archbishop of Canterbury in 1162, however, Becket clashed with the King. Forced to choose between fealty to the crown and the values of his faith, he repeatedly challenged Henry’s authority to bring the church to heel. Drawing on the full panoply of medieval sources, Guy sheds new light on the relationship between the two men, separates truth from centuries of mythmaking, and casts doubt on the long-held assumption that the headstrong rivals were once close friends. He also provides the fullest accounting yet for Becket’s seemingly radical transformation from worldly bureaucrat to devout man of God. Here is a Becket seldom glimpsed in any previous biography, a man of many facets and faces: the skilled warrior as comfortable unhorsing an opponent in single combat as he was negotiating terms of surrender; the canny diplomat “with the appetite of a wolf” who unexpectedly became the spiritual paragon of the English church; and the ascetic rebel who waged a high-stakes contest of wills with one of the most volcanic monarchs of the Middle Ages. Driven into exile, derided by his enemies as an ungrateful upstart, Becket returned to Canterbury in the unlikeliest guise of all: as an avenging angel of God, wielding his power of excommunication like a sword. It is this last apparition, the one for which history remembers him best, that will lead to his martyrdom at the hands of the king’s minions—a grisly episode that Guy recounts in chilling and dramatic detail. An uncommonly intimate portrait of one of the medieval world’s most magnetic figures, Thomas Becket breathes new life into its subject—cementing for all time his place as an enduring icon of resistance to the abuse of power.

MORE EBOOKS:
Download The Mozart Effect ebook
Managers Not MBAs: A Hard Look at the Soft Practice of Managing and Management Development epub free download
Download Visible Thought - The New Psychology of Body Language epub
The River of Doubt: Theodore Roosevelt's Darkest Journey epub free download
The Sportswriter epub free download







Tags: Thomas Becket: Warrior, Priest, Rebel ebook pdf epub djvu mobi rar
Thomas Becket: Warrior, Priest, Rebel pdf epub djvu free download
Download Thomas Becket: Warrior, Priest, Rebel free ebook pdf epub
Thomas Becket: Warrior, Priest, Rebel read online free book
Thomas Becket: Warrior, Priest, Rebel cheap ebook for kindle and nook
John Guy ebooks and audio books
Thomas Becket: Warrior, Priest, Rebel download pdf epub rar rapidshare mediafire fileserve 4shared torrent depositfiles scribd