The Afterlife of Becket in the Modern Imagination

Abstract

After the dismantling of Becket’s shrine during the Protestant Reformation, the holiness associated with the saint has been diffused in and through material and aural culture. Drawing on the vernacular devotional use of Becket’s relics from the Middle Ages onwards, including ‘Canterbury water’, I argue that songs associated with the saint have similarly been perceived to have healing, protective and apotropaic capacities. The primary case study is the interreligious, musical and ritual practices engaged today along the ‘Old Way’ pilgrimage to Canterbury and at the cathedral itself, as imagined, mapped and facilitated by the British Pilgrimage Trust, founded in 2014 by Guy Hayward and Will Parsons. An interdisciplinary art historical and ethnographic approach using participant observation is employed to highlight the integral role of music and object-based ritual praxis in translating perceived pilgrimages of the past into the present. Music, I argue, can be understood as ‘Canterbury water’ for the 21st century.