Defying Kings, Protesting Loyalty: Thomas Becket, Salzburg, and the Uses of Diocesan History

This article explores the dilemmas of loyalty faced by archbishops – both at Canterbury in the English kingdom and at Salzburg in the Empire – who sought to argue that their defiance of kings did not constitute an act of treachery. By examining episcopal biographies and letters in the late eleventh and twelfth centuries, it explores and contrasts the use of diocesan history in both Angevin England and the Empire, as well as the connections between the two. The article argues that appeals to the past – provided these prelates with a means to claim that it was they, in their concern for the monarch’s soul, who displayed genuine loyalty and that, in so doing, they were in fact preserving the noblest traditions of their predecessors rather than introducing a radical break from them. This essay is part of a Special Issue on Loyalty in Medieval Europe.