The Quest for Becket's Bones: The Mystery of the Relics of St. Thomas Becket of Canterbury by John Butler (review)

100BOOK REVIEWS and modally broader introduction to the Reformation than is normally possible. Susan C. Karant-Nunn Portland State University The Questfor Becket's Bones: The Mystery of the Relics ofSt. Thomas Becket ofCanterbury. By John Butler. (New Haven: Yale University Press. 1995. Pp. xii, 180. $25.00.) In 1992 two men, searching for the bones of St. Thomas Becket, attempted to break into a tomb in Canterbury Cathedral. The continuing debate over the existence and location of Becket's bones forms the subject matter of Butler's book. He begins with a careful and detailed recounting of the murder and burial of Becket using medieval sources. Butler establishes die credentials of his chroniclers and their proximity to die scene diey are describing, a practice he repeats diroughout die book. Advancing to 1538, he reconstructs die bones' loss when Henry VIII orders the destruction of English shrines. The question remains whether Henry burned or buried the bones. The continuing argument over die bones' whereabouts began widi the discovery in 1888 of a shallow grave close to Becket's original tomb, a grave in which bones, including a skuU, were found. Identified as the skeleton of a man about fifty years old and of great strength and height (whose head could have been wounded with a sword), a description suggesting that the bones were Becket's, the discovery set off a debate that continued untU 1952. In 1949 these bones were again disinterred, but eventuaUy an examiner concluded that they could not have been Becket's. Butler leaves the reader with questions about the identity of die bones and about what happened to die archbishop's: in short, he does not attempt to force closure of what remains open. The book might have profited from tighter organization (there is some repetition) and from a chronological table and a list of its principal characters. Butler seems to have two conflicting purposes: to present a complex and scholarly argument about die bones in which readers might expect a straightforward presentation of all evidence and to present the unfolding ofa mystery story with a surprise ending that would require selective presentation of information at various times during the story. Despite these quibbles (also, one illustration is mislabeled), the book merits commendation. It is well-researched, and its complexity derives partly from die presentation ofa plethora ofcharacters and contradictory evidence. Butler demonstrates historical expertise in die several periods with which die book is primarUy concerned, placing each actor in die religious and political context BOOK REVIEWS101 that may have influenced him. He juxtaposes people and their arguments, not attempting to provide simple answers to complicated questions, and reiterates and outlines the main debates often. Butler leaves die reader with suggestions about several possible locations of Becket's bones. Teachers in research mediods courses could use the book as a model of careful and endiusiastic scholarship. Although graduate students interested in historical research might profit more from it, the general reader wUl find the book, as the author Eamon Duffy says, "a gripping story and a good read." M. Diane Krantz University of California, Davis The Phoenix and the Flame: Catalonia and the Counter Reformation. By Henry Kamen. (New Haven: Yale University Press. 1993. Pp. xvi, 527. $45.00.) Can one say that the Counter-Reformation succeeded if forty years after the CouncU of Trent it was stUl possible to find cathedral canons trying to murder their own reforming bishop? Is die faUure of the Council of Trent made evident by the remark made by a Spaniard to a Jesuit superior: "I reaUy don't know why the fathers of die company go to Japan and the Philippines to look for lost souls, when we have here so many in die same condition who do not know whether or not they believe in God"? A decade ago Gerald Strauss generated a significant controversy when he proposed in Luther's House ofLearning (Baltimore, 1978) that die German Reformation had failed in many ways. Henry Kamen has now made a similar claim about Catholic attempts at reform widi this impressive study of the Counter-Reformation in Catalonia. Whether or not mis book causes a comparable debate remains to...