CANTERBURY'S LITERARY, RELIGIOUS HISTORY BECKONS VISITORS.

Byline: Evie Rapport Kansas City Star

You get off the coach from London in the modest little bus station here, trot down Gravel Walk past a parking lot and come face to face with the Marlowe Arcade.

The Marlowe Arcade? As in Christopher Marlowe? This is appalling. A shopping center named for the playwriting atheist murdered 400 years ago by fellow spies?

If they've done that to Marlowe - who was only born here in 1564 - what have they done to Geoffrey Chaucer, the 14th-century poet who immortalized the town in ``The Tales of Canterbury''? What horrors await? Ye Olde Nun's Priest's Tale Booke Shoppe? The Wife of Bath Oil and Salts Nook?

Mercifully, such dreadful temptations have been largely resisted. Yes, there's the Canterbury Heritage Museum & Rupert Bear Gallery, and one of those slightly cheesy mechanical ``historical re-creations - smells and all'' about Chaucer's ``Tales.'' No doubt during the town's glory years similar ``attractions'' brightened the days of the faithful who had fulfilled their mission at the shrine of St. Thomas a Becket in Canterbury Cathedral.

Canterbury, about 60 miles east of London in the county of Kent, has been a tourist destination for 800 years. After Jerusalem and Rome, it was a premier center for that great medieval religious undertaking, the pilgrimage. Its Christ Church Cathedral had been, since the days of William the Conqueror, the seat of the Primate of All England.

Now, in no small part because of a carefully cultivated ``time capsule'' aura, Canterbury and its cathedral remain destinations for latter-day pilgrims. At the height of the tourist season in July and August, 15,000 people may pass through the cathedral each day. Two million people a year walk the narrow, carless streets in the heart of this town of 35,000.

Its Roman, Saxon and Norman past makes this a beguiling place. Half-timbered buildings of the 15th and 16th centuries list delightfully against one another along Mercery Lane and St. Margaret's Street, their plaster gleaming in the sun.

Stone buildings like the 14th-century Poor Priests' Hospital by Greyfriars that houses the heritage center or the 12th-century Eastbridge Hospital on the High Street recall the monasteries' obligation to shelter travelers.

When you are in these old buildings, so small, bleak and dark, you understand the true genius of the medieval church architects. Their great structures rose effortlessly to still stunning heights and drew in God's light through brilliant windows that were miracles of art and craft. How literally awesome they must have been - and are.

Of course, we see the old domestic buildings without their true fittings. Tapestries or murals on the walls, rushes on the floors, cushions and bedding on stone benches, charcoal braziers in the corners, candles and rush lights - all would have warmed and comforted.

Canterbury honors this past, even back to the bustling settlement the Romans called Durovernum Cantiacorum and the Saxons named Cantwarabyrig. St. Martin's Church, east of St. Augustine's ruins, may be the oldest parish church in England. Roman bricks were used in its walls, and St. Augustine's first convert, the Kentish King Ethelbert, was said to have been christened in it.

A theater in the street called the Friars (another reminder of all those monasteries destroyed 450 years ago) is named for that prodigal Christopher Marlowe, a cobbler's son who left King's School for Cambridge University and then electrified London's theater before his murder at 29.

The town was also the site of the first English monastery. A Benedictine house, it was founded by St. Augustine soon after he was sent to England in 597 to convert the kingdoms of Britain. Through the centuries, other orders built near the cathedral: the Carmelite White Friars, the Franciscan Grey Friars, the Dominican Black Friars. Like many an English town, Canterbury thrived around and with the fortunes of these religious houses, which were also well-managed farms, wool producers and schools.

On Dec. 29, 1170, occurred the shocking crime that was the worst and best thing that ever happened to Canterbury: The bitter power struggle between King Henry II and Archbishop Thomas a Becket climaxed in Becket's savage murder in the northwest transept of the cathedral by four knights who answered Henry's raging rhetorical question: ``Who will rid me of this turbulent priest?''

Within days, the first miracles were reported; in February 1173 Becket was canonized. In July 1174, Henry II submitted to a flogging at Becket's tomb. A few months later, half the 100-year-old Norman church was ravaged by fire. The new archbishop seized the opportunity to build a fitting shrine, starting with gorgeous honey-colored Caen stone imported from Normandy.

Floods of pilgrims came. Their donations made possible ever more elaborate fittings; in a splendid upward spiral, the elegance of the cathedral drew more pilgrims as the fame of the shrine grew.

In 1220, Becket's body was moved into Trinity Chapel and set in a bejeweled and gilded monument that could be raised to reveal the coffin itself.

Becket's shrine is gone now, its site marked by a candle on the floor. King Henry VIII began dissolving the monasteries in 1536, after breaking with the Church of Rome over his divorce from Catherine of Aragon. Canterbury surrendered in 1540, after its treasures had been plundered.

On Location

Canterbury Cathedral is open from 8:45 a.m. to 7 p.m. daily in the summer; off-season, it is open until 5 p.m. Admission is about $3 for adults, $1.50 for children and seniors. Guided tours are offered for about $4; a recorded tour tape costs about $3.

Driving is prohibited within the old city walls, but parking is ample on the fringes of the city. And walking is really the only way to see and sense the sights.

For more information, call the British Tourist Authority, [phone], or the Canterbury Visitor Information Center, 011-44-1227-766567.

CAPTION(S):

Photo, Box

Photo: The medieval city of Canterbury is dominated by its cathedral, the spiritual center of the worldwide Anglican community and the home of the King's School, one of England's leading prep schools.

Box: On Location (see text)