In the 12th century, King Henry II of England threatened the Vatican with abandoning Christianity and converting to Islam, angered by Thomas Becket, the Archbishop of Canterbury, who was trying to pressure the Pope to depose him, according to Claudia Gould, who wrote about the matter in BBC History. In the spring of 1168, Henry II of England wrote to Pope Alexander III. While correspondence between a king and a pope was normal, this particular letter was unusual because Henry threatened to convert to Islam.

But who was Henry II? The Encyclopædia Britannica says that Henry II was born on March 4, 1133 in Le Mans, in what is now northwestern France, and died on July 6, 1189 near Tours. He held the titles of Duke of Normandy (1150), Count of Anjou (1151), Duke of Aquitaine (1152), and King of England (1154).

Empress Matilda, mother of Henry II

His father was Count of Anjou and his mother was Matilda, daughter of Henry I of England. Henry had named Matilda as his successor, but her cousin Stephen seized the throne.

Beginnings

After receiving a good education, Henry became Duke of Normandy in 1150, and Count of Anjou, Maine and Touraine on the death of his father Geoffrey Plantagenet in 1151.

Although his mother Matilda, daughter of Henry I, claimed the throne, her cousin King Stephen refused to comply.

In 1152, Henry doubled his fortune by marrying the beautiful and talented Eleanor, who had been divorced from King Louis VII of France.

Henry invaded England in 1153, claiming his mother's throne. King Stephen acquiesced and accepted him as his heir. When Stephen died the following year, Henry succeeded unopposed to the throne, becoming ruler of lands stretching from Scotland to the Pyrenees. The young king was stocky, with a freckled face, short black hair, and gray eyes. But his personality commanded attention and attracted men to serve him.

Dover Castle built during the reign of Henry II
 

His reign

His reign can be viewed from three perspectives: the defence and expansion of his influence, his involvement in two long and disastrous conflicts, and his administrative and judicial reforms.

At the beginning of his reign, Henry found England in chaos, with civil war and the violence of the feudal lords destroying royal authority in the country.

In the first months of his reign, the king, with the help of his energetic and versatile adviser Thomas Becket, struck down the rebellious feudal lords and their castles, and began to restore order to the country.


But a few years later he came into conflict with Becket after becoming archbishop, over the alleged right of clerics to be tried for crimes by an ecclesiastical court. The dispute with Becket, Henry's trusted and successful adviser between 1154 and 1162, broke out shortly after Becket was elected Archbishop of Canterbury in May 1162. The dispute resulted in a complete rupture between them, and strained Henry's relations with both King Louis VII of France, who supported Becket, and Pope Alexander III.

Henry was furious when he discovered that he had appointed a religious fanatic whose first loyalty was to the church, not to the throne. He was also furious when Becket resigned as chancellor after being elected archbishop.

In an attempt to get the Vatican to remove Becket as archbishop of Canterbury, Henry II wrote a letter in 1168 in which he threatened to convert to Islam.

Illustration showing the murder of Archbishop Thomas Becket.

But was Henry familiar with Islam?

Henry was familiar with Islam, having studied the works of Petrus Alphonsus, the physician of his grandfather Henry I, who wrote the earliest reliable account of the Prophet Muhammad, and Peter the Venerable, who commissioned the first translation of the Qur’an into Latin.

In addition to Islam, Henry was taught Arabic from an early age. He received a privileged education from scholars familiar with the “new” knowledge emerging from Sicily, Spain, and the Middle East.

Western Europe had never experienced such an intellectually exciting period during the 12th century, a period later called the Twelfth Century Renaissance, fuelled by the rediscovery of the classical thinkers of Greece and Rome (especially Rome after the conversion of Constantine to Christianity), and contact with the Arab world and its rich intellectual traditions in astronomy, medicine, music, architecture and mathematic

Henry’s parents had the best teachers in Europe to educate him. Among them was the famous philologist Adelard of Bath, who had a profound influence on Henry’s education. Adelard had travelled for seven years in Italy, Sicily, Antioch and the southern coast of what would become Turkey, devoting himself to “Arab studies”. He was famous for his translations from Arabic into Latin, and for introducing Arab innovations in mathematics to England and France.

Henry’s interest in Arab culture continued even after he ascended the throne, as he welcomed Arab scholars to his court. He was so impressed by Islamic art that when he built a palace for his mistress Rosamund Clifford at Woodstock, he imitated Sicilian palaces with fountains and courtyards. The palace was later destroyed, but its rich Arab-inspired style was unique in northern Europe. Thus, Henry knew a great deal about Islam and Arab culture when he sent his letter to the Pope in the spring of 1168.

But how serious was that message?


The king had a great appreciation for Islam and Arab culture. But what prompted Henry to make the threat in the first place? The answer can be found in Henry’s letter telling Pope Alexander that he would “soon accept the path of Nur ad-Din [the Sultan of Aleppo] because of his sufferings at the hands of Thomas Becket in Canterbury Cathedral.”


It was not unusual for Henry to make threats, which were essential to his royal arsenal, but was Henry serious? He was not just the King of England, he was also the Duke of Normandy and Aquitaine, the Count of Maine, Anjou and Touraine, and the owner of vast tracts of France. He was one of the most powerful men in the world, with his influence stretching from the Scottish Borders to the Middle East, where his uncles ruled the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem. According to Claudia Gould in BBC History.

Since 1097, European Crusaders had been fighting Muslim armies in the Middle East, clinging tenaciously to the territories they had conquered—the Kingdom of Jerusalem, the Principality of Antioch, the counties of Edessa and Tripoli—and Muslims were seen as enemies of Christendom.

Saint and Martyr Thomas Becket was the Archbishop of Canterbury who fell out with Henry II and was murdered in Canterbury Cathedral on 29 December 1170 by 4 of the King's knights.


If Henry had been serious about his threat, the repercussions in 12th-century Europe would have been seismic.


There had been conversions between Islam and Christianity for hundreds of years, but the converts were not kings or queens. What would have happened if Henry II had converted to Islam?


Henry II had not shown much interest in religion, and historians have criticized his lack of piety, claiming that he was bored in church and would not sit still.


But he was fascinated by Islam, which, unlike Christianity, had no central authority, no supranational power, and no Muslim pope could prevent him from dismissing his archbishop.


It is clear, then, that his desire for the Vatican to dismiss Archbishop Becket was the reason for his threat.

Henry had elevated Thomas to the position of chancellor shortly after his accession, and he was considered the second most powerful figure at court after the king.


After the death of Theobald, Archbishop of Canterbury, in 1161, the king pushed a reluctant Becket into the dual office of chancellor and bishop, despite warnings from Henry's mother, the Empress Matilda.


Henry ignored all objections, ignored his mother, and even threatened the monks of Canterbury (who did not want Thomas as their archbishop) with his wrath if they did not elect his candidate.


His primary concern was to ensure the succession by having his eldest son crowned in his lifetime, to avoid the bloodshed that had occurred on his death, as had happened on the death of every king except Stephen since the Norman Conquest.


The right to crown the kings of England lay with the archbishops of Canterbury, and Henry expected Thomas Becket to accede to his wish.

His disagreements with Becket continued for years, and attempts to reconcile them failed, and Becket punished the priests who cooperated with Henry. On hearing this, Henry II said: "Will no one rid me of this strange priest?" Four knights took his words literally, and Becket was killed in Canterbury Cathedral in December 1170.


Family disputes

His relationship with his wife Eleanor, who was 11 years his senior, remained good for a long time, and between 1153 and 1167 she bore him eight children.


Of these, four survived: Henry, Geoffrey, Richard and John, whose disagreements with their father escalated because he divided his kingdom between them, while retaining real power for himself.


His wife Eleanor supported her sons' position, and in 1173 a general rebellion of the barons broke out in England and Normandy, supported by Louis VII of France and William I (the Lion) of Scotland.

Henry's prestige had been in decline after Becket's death, but he won in Normandy and Brittany and crossed into England, where fighting continued for a year.


By July 1174 he had successfully suppressed the rebellion in England, and pardoned his sons, but Eleanor remained in prison until her husband's death.


A second rebellion broke out in 1181, with a dispute between his sons Henry and Richard, but the young Henry died in 1183. In 1184 another dispute broke out between his sons Richard and John, and in 1186 his son Geoffrey died.


After Geoffrey's death, things calmed down for a while, but the king's attempt to secure an inheritance for John led to an alliance against him between his son Richard and Philip Augustus, who had succeeded his father Louis VII as king of France.


Henry was defeated and forced to abdicate, and news that John had also joined his enemies hastened the king's death near Tours in 1189.

Henry II's Legacy

In his long reign of 34 years, he spent a total of only 14 years in England but achieved much.


The result of his disagreements with Becket was the famous set of decrees, the Constitutions of Clarendon (1164), which reaffirmed the king's ancestral rights over the church in matters such as the appointment of bishops and excommunication.

Henry II established a successful administrative system. This success has been obscured by contemporaries and later historians because attention has often been focused on political and personal events.


It was not until the nineteenth century, when the study of public records began, that his administrative reforms came to light.


These reforms can be traced in the writings of Fitznail on the organisation of the Treasury, and in the writings of the Lord Chief Justice, Ranulf de Glanville, on the laws of England.


Henry II did much to develop two great professions, which led to the emergence of experts in finance and law, and the establishment of a permanent court at Westminster. Furthermore, Henry's edicts ensured that the combination of judge and jury became the norm.

Henry VIII

            Henry VIII became independent of the                          Church of England.


Hundreds of years after Henry II, his descendant Henry VIII split the Church of England from the Catholic Church.


Henry VIII had challenged the authority of the Pope, to whom the country was subject, in order to end his marriage to Catherine of Aragon, who bore him his daughter Mary, and to marry Anne Boleyn in the hope that she would bear him a son who would succeed him to the throne.

Pope Clement VII had no choice but to sign a decree of "excommunication" against the King of England. In 1534, the English Parliament passed a decree making King Henry VIII head of the Church of England. The king ordered the confiscation of all the property of the monasteries and Catholic properties, which amounted to a fifth of the country's land, and redistributed it among his courtiers.

The consequences of this division were the outbreak of civil wars and the eventual execution of the king, Charles I, in 1649.