Hugh, Bishop of Lincoln / A Short Story of One of the Makers of Mediaeval England

by Charles L. Marson

We have now reached the year A.D. 1200. King John has been crowned for a year. Hugh was not present at this ceremony, and the king, anxious still for his support, sends for him to be present at the great peace he was concluding with France. By this treaty the Dauphin was to marry Blanche of Castile and become Earl of Evreux, a dangerous earldom, and Philip was to drop the cause of young Arthur and give up debateable Vexin. Hugh also was tempted over seas by the hope of visiting his old haunts, which he felt must be done now or never, for health and eyesight were failing him, and he needed this refreshment for his vexed soul. It was in the Château Gaillard again that he met the king, left him in the sweet spring time at the end of May, for a pilgrim tour to shrines and haunts of holy men living and dead—a pilgrimage made possible by the new peace.

Here it must be confessed that modern sympathy is apt to falter, for though we can understand the zeal of American tourists for chips of palaces and the communal moral code peculiar to archæologists, coin collectors, and umbrella snatchers, we cannot understand the enthusiasm which the manliest, holiest, and robustest minds then displayed for relics, for stray split straws and strained twigs from the fledged bird’s nests whence holy souls had fled to other skies. To us these things mean but little; but to Hugh they meant very much. The facts must be given, and the reader can decide whether they are beauty spots or warts upon the strong, patient, brave face upon which they appear.

His first objective, when he left the Andelys, was Meulan, and there he “approached St. Nicasius.” This saint, a very fine fellow, had been Bishop of Rheims, eight hundred years before. When the Vandals invaded the land he had advanced to meet them with a procession of singers and got an ugly sword cut, which lopt off a piece of his head. He went on still singing till he dropped dead. This brave fellow’s skull Hugh took in his hands, worshipped the saint, gave gold; and then tried hard to tweak out one of his teeth: but such dentistry was unavailing. He then put his fingers into the nostrils which had so often drawn in the sweet odour of Christ and got with ease a lovely little bone, which had parted the eyes, kissed it and felt a richer hope of being directed into the way of peace and salvation; for so great a bishop would certainly fix his spiritual eyes upon him after this.

Next he went to St. Denis, where he prayed long at the tombs of the saints. The scholars of Paris, of all breeds, turned out in crowds to see a man, who, after St. Nicholas, had done so much good to clerks. Kisses, colloquies and invitations rained upon him, but he chose to lodge in the house of his relative Reimund. This man he had made Canon of Lincoln, and he afterwards refused to buy off King John and became an exile for conscience and the patron of exiles, and thus was in life and character a true son of St. Hugh. Among the visitors here were the Dauphin Lewis and Arthur of Brittany. The latter turned up his nose when told to live in love and peace with Uncle John; but Lewis carried off the bishop to cheer his weeping political bride Blanche, lately bartered into the match. The good bishop walked to the palace, and Blanche bore a merry face and a merry heart after he had talked with her.

The next place was Troyes, and here a wretch came with a doleful story. He had been bailiff to the Earl of Leicester, had torn a rogue from sanctuary at Brackley; had been excommunicated by Hugh, with all his mates. They had submitted and been made to dig up the putrid body and carry it a mile, clad only in their drawers, be whipped at every church door they passed, bury the body with their own hands, and then come to Lincoln for more flogging: and all this in the winter. This sentence frightened the bailiff, who bolted; but ill-luck dogged him. He lost his place, his money, and at last came to beg for shrift and punishment. Hugh gave him a seven years’ penance and he went on his way rejoicing.

The next great place was Vienne on the Rhone. Here were the ashes of St. Anthony of the Desert, wrapped in the tunic of Paul, the first hermit. The Carthusian Bruno had caught the enthusiasm for solitude from these ambulatory ashes, which had travelled from Alexandria to Constantinople and so to Vienne in 1070. Of course they were working miracles, chiefly upon those afflicted by St. Anthony’s fire. The medical details are given at some length, and the cures described in the Great Life. For the general reader it is enough to say that Hugh said Mass near the precious but plain chest, and that he gave a good sum for the convalescent home where the poor sufferers were housed. Whether change of air, a hearty diet, and strong faith be enough to arrest this (now rare) disease is a scientific question rather than a theological one; but if, as we are told, St. Anthony sent thunder bolts upon castles and keeps where his pilgrims were maltreated, his spirit was somewhat of that Boanerges type which is flatly snubbed in the Gospel. From Vienne Hugh went to his own Grenoble among those mountains which have, as Ruskin says, “the high crest or wall of cliff on the top of their slopes, rising from the plain first in mounds of meadow-land and bosses of rock and studded softness of forest; the brown cottages peeping through grove above grove, until just where the deep shade of the pines becomes blue or purple in the haze of height, a red wall of upper precipice rises from the pasture land and frets the sky with glowing serration.”[26] A splendid procession came out to welcome him, and the city was hung with festoons of flowers and gay silken banners. He was led with chaunting to the cathedral of St. John Baptist, his particular saint, and that of his Order, upon the very feast of the great herald. There he sang the High Mass with intense devoutness, and after the gospel preached to the people, “giving them tears to drink,” but in moderation, for he begged all their prayers for his littleness and unworthiness, whereas they knew quite well what a good and great fellow he was. Then he christened his own nephew, the heir of Avalon, whose uncle Peter was present, and the Bishop of Grenoble was godfather. The hitherto unbaptised boy was actually seven years old. Perhaps he had waited for Uncle Hugh to christen him, and when he had that honour he was not named Peter, as they proposed, but John, in honour of the place and day. Adam records that he taught the little fellow his alphabet and to spell from letters placed above the altar of St. John Baptist at Bellay.

Then he left for the Grande Chartreuse, having to foot it most of the way up the mountains, sweating not a little, for he was of some diameter, but he out-walked his companions. He took care to drop in while the brothers were having their midday siesta, and he was careful not to be of the least trouble. Indeed, for three weeks he put off the bishop, as he did at Witham, and his insignia all but the ring, and became a humble monk once more. The clergy and the laity hurried to see him from the district, and the poor jostled to behold their father; and each one had dear and gracious words, and many found his hand second his generous tongue. Some days he spent at the lower house. Here, too, he compounded an old and bitter feud between the bishop and the Count of Geneva whereby the one was exiled and the other excommunicate.

Near the end of his stay he made a public present to the House, a silver casket of relics, which he used to carry in his hand in procession at dedications. These were only a part of his collection, for he had a ring of gold and jewels, four fingers broad, with hollow spaces for relics. At his ardent desire and special entreaty the monks of Fleury once gave him a tooth from the jaws of St. Benedict, the first founder and, as it were, grandfather of his and other Orders. This came with a good strip of shroud to boot, and the goldsmith appeared, tools and all, warned by a dream, from Banbury to Dorchester to enshrine the precious ivory. The shred of shroud was liberally divided up among abbots and religious men, but the tooth, after copious kissing, was sealed up in the ring. At Féchamp once (that home of relics!) they kept a bone of St. Mary Magdalen, as was rashly asserted, sewed up in silks and linen. He begged to see it, but none dared show it: but he was not to be denied. Whipping up a penknife from his notary, he had off the covers pretty quickly, and gazed at and kissed it reverently. Then he tried to break off a bit with his fingers, but not a process would come away. He then tried to nibble a snippet, but in vain. Finally, he put the holy bone to his strong back teeth and gave a hearty scrunch. Two tit-bits came off, and he handed them to the trembling Adam, saying, “Excellent man, keep these for us.” The abbots and monks were first struck dumb, then quaked, and then boiled with indignation and wrath. “Oh! oh! Abominable!” they yelled. “We thought the bishop wanted to worship these sacred and holy things, and lo! he has, with doggish ritual, put them to his teeth for mutilation.” While they were raging he quieted them with words which may give us the key to such otherwise indecent behaviour. Suppose they had been having a great Sacramental dispute, and some, as is likely, had maintained against the bishop that the grinding of the Host by the teeth of any communicant meant the grinding of Christ’s very body, then it becomes evident that Hugh put this their belief to rather a rough proof, or reproof. Anyhow, he posed them with this answer, “Since a short time back we handled together the most saintly body of the Saint of Saints with fingers granted unworthy; if we handled It with our teeth or lips, and passed It on to our inwards, why do we not also in faith so treat the members of his saints for our defence, their worship, and the deepening of our memory of them, and acquire, so far as opportunity allows, what we are to keep with due honour?”

At Peterborough they had the arm of St. Oswald, which had kept fresh for over five centuries. A supple nerve which protruded Hugh had sliced off and put in this wonderful ring. This, though he had offered it to the high altar at Lincoln, he would have left to the Charterhouse; but Adam reminded him of the fact, so instead thereof he ordered a golden box full of the relics he gave them to be sent after his death.

With mutual blessings he took his last leave of the Grande Chartreuse, and left it in the body, though his heart and mind could never be dislodged from its desert place. This place was his father and his mother, but Lincoln, he did not forget, was his wife.