Read the full story: ARC Magazine
When the monks of Canterbury Cathedral prepared Thomas Becket’s body for burial in the year 1170, they discovered a hairshirt hidden under his vestments. The British faithful considered it evidence of the martyred archbishop’s piety. G.K. Chesterton considered it symbolic of the relationship between beauty and asceticism. “Becket got the benefit of the hair shirt,” Chesterton wrote, “while the people in the street got the benefit of the crimson and gold.”