December 29th is the Feast Day of St Thomas Becket. On this day in 1170, Archbishop Thomas Becket was killed in Canterbury Cathedral. His assassins were followers of King Henry II with whom Becket was in conflict over the rights and privileges of the Church. Little over two years later, on February 21st 1173, Becket was canonised by Pope Alexander III (r. 1159-81). There are several churches in Rome dedicated to St Thomas Becket, including San Tommaso di Canterbury in the centro storico. The 19th century church belongs to the Venerable English College, a seminary for the training of priests in England and Wales, which was founded in 1579. The campanile was built in 1685 and is not attached to the church. The weather-vane takes the form of a hippocampus (or hippocamp), a mythological creature that has the upper body of a horse (with wings) and the lower body of a fish. One of the powers ascribed to the hippocampus is atmokinesis: the ability to control the weather. San Tommaso di Canterbury is home to a fine funerary monument (1739) to Sir Thomas Dereham, a close friend of James Francis Edward Stuart (the Old Pretender). Comments are closed.
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My name is David Lown and I am an art historian from Cambridge, England. Since 2001 I have lived in Italy, where I run private walking tours of Rome.
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